Animal Totem
Discover who your animal totems are, how they assist you and the medicine or teachings they carry. In Native traditions, all the creature beings - the four-legged, the winged ones, the finned ones, and the creepy-crawlers - are our older brothers and sisters because they were here before us. As such, they have a responsibility to help and teach us - their younger brothers and sisters. As a child we may have been aware of a special animal that helped, protected or kept us company.
When you have a special affinity for a particular animal or creature, ask that being to come close around you to assist you and give you messages about situations in your life. Each totem carries a certain medicine or teaching, skill or talent. They can share their wisdom with us if we open our hearts and minds to them and listen for the messages and signs they give to us. Whether they appear in the physical or in dreams, these animal totems are here to help us if we will listen.
In this ceremony, you will identify the animal totems and the direction is which they sit that are your helpers, teachers and protectors. Then experience a shamanic drumming so you can journey in the dreamtime with them, inviting them into your life and honoring the medicine and assistance they can give you. Working with your animal totems on a daily basis, you form a deep and abiding relationship with them so they become an integral part of your spiritual growth and healing.
In my own experience, I have always received assistance from the Creature Beings when I ask for assistance. In 1990, I asked Spirit to lead me to a new spiritual path - one that would be more earth-based and honoring of the Divine Feminine. Dragonfly then unexpectedly appeared in my life. As I was leaving my office one day, something glittering on the pavement caught my eye. Someone leaving the card shop next door had dropped a multi-colored, shimmering sticker of a dragonfly. When I bent down to pick it up, the exact same shape was in shadow on the pavement. I looked up and saw a real dragonfly hovering there above me. I was working with my dreams and knew this was an important dream symbol for me even though it came to me while awake! I couldn't find it in any of the dream symbol books so I meditated on it and got the answer that somehow this dragonfly was going to help me with the trance healing training I was offering for the first time, but I sensed there was more information I needed.
In my pursuit to find out the full meaning of dragonfly for me, I went to one more metaphysical bookstore. I saw two blue boxes on a bottom shelf with a bear on the front but it meant nothing to me. I was pacing around - I knew there was something there for me, I just couldn't find it. When I was ready to give up and leave, a women came into the shop, picked up one of the blue boxes and stood in line to pay. I asked her what it was. She replied that her daughter asked her to get if for her - it was a book and cards about animal totems. I ask if there was anything about dragonflies in it. She handed the book to me so I could look myself. The book opened right to the chapter on Dragonfly -one of the Guardians of the Dreamtime and Keeper of Illusion and Reality. The blue box held the Medicine Cards by Jamie Sams and David Carson. This was my first taste of Native American spirituality and I loved it! I never dreamed that my path would embrace Native American teachings. Dragonfly came in response to my request for a new path - leading me down the Red Road. I am grateful that Dragonfly still guides me in my healing work today.
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