By: J Nighteagle
The exercise that follows is one that will assist you in meeting your animal totem. We will be using the Creative imagination to help open up the animal realm to you more effectively. Don’t worry that you may be making it up. You would not be imaging it if it did not have some significance to you.
It is important to be relaxed and not preform the exercise with any preconceived notions. Let the animal totem present it self to you. Let it choose you, rather then you choose it. Keep in mind that the totem will have symbolic significance to you. The more you learn about it and meditate on how it may reflect your own life, the easier it will become to access its energies.
In exercises like these, most people get into trouble with the interpretation of the images encountered. Your nature totem may be a bird, a mammal, or even an insect or reptile. Read, study, and learn about your nature totem to facilitate your being able to relate to it yourself. Don’t just except a totem without question. The imagination is a wonderful tool, but if not used properly, it can mislead. Put your totem through a simple verification process: How does it feel?
What emotions / sensations does it arose in you? Is it an animal that interested you in the past? What does it make you think of? What is your heartfelt response?
Do not haphazardly discard it, simply because it is not as glamorous as what your ego might have wanted. The totem may be quite appropriate to you, but you will not know unless you study and explore more closely the qualities and characteristics of it. Use dictionaries to assist you but, do not limit yourself to them. Do your own exploration. Searching out the significance of the totem and its application to you and your life circumstances is a way of honoring it. It is the first step in opening a communication that can lead to true animal-speak.
If after your studying and exploration you can not find its application to you, preform the exercise again. If you have a totem appear with fangs showing or its in any way frightening, simply come out of the exercise. There will be no harm. You can end whenever you wish. You can experience as much as you wish. Totems teach that there is but one moment and you are in charge of that moment.
