"Your path is to be shared...It will be called The Golden Thread Road"
~White Buffalo Calf Woman
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PLEASE NOTE: This blog has run its course and is being continued at windbuffalo.blogspot.com. Thank you so much for reading!!

Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Bear With Me

Lately I have noticed a certain pattern unfolding in my spiritual life and journeys. It actually started a while back but since then has seemed to have gained momentum as time progresses. One night, maybe a year and a half or so ago, during a Sacred Pipe ceremony I became aware of a great brown bear spirit sitting next to me. 

Now my connection with Bear goes way back, having been raised on television shows such as Gentle Ben and Grizzly Adams, and having actually seen a black bear come out of the Minnesota woods while camping with my family as a kid... 

"Hey Dad! Look at that big dog!"

"...That's ...not a dog."

And so here I was about a year and a half ago, performing a sacred pipe ceremony when I became aware of this large, brown bear sitting next to me in spirit. I hadn't been aware of any specific Bear spirit guides or totems, usually chalking up any appearance of bears in my experiences to the presence of Artemis, my Matron Goddess, whose personal totem is Bear, and whose actual name, at least the "Art" part, means "Bear." This time seemed different, though, so I had to ask who she was and why she had appeared. "I am a totem - not personally yours but inherited from your ancestors." I hadn't really ever thought about hereditary totems before, totems being passed down through the generations, but that made sense. Not only are our ancestors literally present in our very blood, but also the accompanying totem animals that guided the clans and tribes of our grandmothers and grandfathers. For as long as I have been on this spiritual path, I still get as giddy as a school boy when I get to learn new things!

Then about nine months ago, after pretty much forgetting about her, during another pipe ceremony, I suddenly saw the huge top view of a bear head filling my inner vision. Again I asked who she was and why she had come. "You called me. I am your Grand Mother -- The grandmother of your grandmothers." It took me a minute to remember that I had actually called to her in the previous months, wanting to know my ancestor's ancestors and my grandmothers' grandmother, then instantly feeling embarrassed thinking about how vast the roots of my family tree were and wondering how there could be only one grandmother. "Duh!" Bear was THE Grand Mother. She was the first Great Mother Goddess worshipped by humanity, as evidenced by her skull and bones buried along with the humans in the oldest known burial graves. My conversation with her is still ongoing, which, translated, means I keep asking for more information and she keeps telling me to rest. I drew a comic about our initial meeting that you can read on my Drawing Breath Comic blog. 


In a previous post in this blog (Bearing It Well) I spoke about my experiences with the great Ponca chief, Standing Bear, how he replaced Siting Bull as one of my guides and how he has worked with me, so I won't recount that here. Suffice it to say he has helped me to regain my bearings (teehee!).

This past August I was doing pipe ceremony on the river with my fiance, Valerie, when another Native American chief appeared to me. I wasn't sure if he were a local Ancestor of the Land or from somewhere else, but his first words to me were, "You do us proud." I asked who he was and I got the name "Skinny Bear" with the sense that "skinny" was meant as in starving. As I drove home Valerie googled him and couldn't find anything about a Skinny Bear, but interestingly there was a "Lean Bear" who was also sometimes known as "Starving Bear." This Lean Bear was a Cheyenne Peace Chief in the 1860s and a member of the Council of  Forty-four, which was a tribal council devoted to maintaining peace with the encroaching white settlers. 



I returned to the river that evening to smoke with Lean Bear, to reconnect with him and basically find out if he were showing up as a guide for me or just stopping by. He replied that he had come to work with me because of the resonance between us as peaceful warriors, and to help me as a negotiator of Peace between seemingly opposing peoples. I saw in this too, along with his first words to me, a hint of my path in the near future - a path that had recently come to light through the guidance of a dear shaman friend, but which I will await another time and post to elaborate on. He did, however, further validate that path at our next meeting.

At the little beach on the river where I'd been doing my pipe ceremonies, I kept getting a vision of a stone Medicine Wheel there. Finally I just went ahead, collected all the necessary river stones, and laid out a small medicine wheel in the sand. Once I completed it and smoked at it, Lean Bear came through and thanked me for following through on the vision I'd been given, saying that these traditions are meant for all people. Those that hold to the specific traditions are not wrong, but neither are they totally right. Traditions are meant to change, evolve, and expand. They are to be shared. When clung to exclusively, for the sake of the tradition, the value of the individual person suffers. The traditions and objects, such as the Medicine Wheel, are filters or lenses through which to connect to the Divine with the human heart. The power is in each individual, not the tradition or object. The point is to move into the awareness of being one people, one tribe. The ways should be shared and taught to bring people together rather than another excuse for separation and division. Then he thanked me for being part of that healing force by respecting and honoring the old ways at the same time I adapt them to fit today's people.  


Through all of this my focus has been on being the bridge of peace and unity between people and things in the outside world. So in the last couple weeks Lean Bear came to me to help me focus on settling my inner battles and becoming a united front within myself. This is still an ongoing process but I have been making great strides which have reflected in my inner and outer worlds significantly. 

It just fascinates me, the patterns that unfold and the threads that flow and intertwine through my life, particularly when it involves an animal, and I am able to at least partially decode some of the underlying currents of influence that run beneath the surface, breaching into the light of day in form or name, and then submerging deep until the next appropriate moment to resurface. Bear is one of those influencers on my unfolding path, and I am so grateful to finally be able to recognize and appreciate her for all she does for me - My dear Grand Mother!


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