Spirit Guides and Totem Animals

From Menletter July 2008

By Tim Baehr

Embracing the Bear

It just seemed too easy, too pat. I was sitting in a rustic building in a camp on the shore of Lake Sebago, in Maine. It was my first week-long men's retreat, in 1990. One of the leaders was talking about totem animals, and I was mightily resisting - not the idea of totem animals but one particular animal.

The totem animal is a part of the Native American heritage and tradition we sometimes try to emulate in the U.S. as we explore male initiation and the forming of male communities at men's gatherings. Some men adopt, or feel adopted by, animals they identify with or whose qualities seem to guide their thinking and behavior. I've seen this happen with women, too, but my main experience has been among men.

My last name is Baehr. It comes from ancestors in an ancient part of Germany. The word, with various spellings, means "bear," and it was probably some kind of clan name. But why should the bear be a totem animal for me? There was no obvious connection, other than the name. If I simply gave in, thinking logically that bears have some nice qualities that I would like to adopt, I'd be fooling myself.

Later in the week, someone mentioned something about bears. Perhaps it was their being endangered in some way. Perhaps it was some aspect of bear behavior. At any rate, my heart and eyes filled up. I felt a kind of choking emotion.

"O.K., O.K.," I said to myself. "If that's the way it's going to be, I guess the bear will be some kind of personal totem for me."

Some folks might say that the "spirit of the bear" had "chosen" me. I don't subscribe to that view except in the metaphorical sense, and I'll return to that idea later. But something inside me had moved, and I now had some reason, some responsibility, to explore what bears are about and how the bear might be a suitable personal totem, an ally.

I didn't have to look very far - the bear is mostly solitary, alternately playful and ill-tempered, omnivorous, usually slow but with an ability to move swiftly when motivated, sluggish in the winter, and so on. I could see many connections. So for the next fifteen-plus years I came to regard the "spirit" or the essence of the bear as something that resonated with my own essence.

Stone Bear

Flash forward a bunch of years to 2006. I am on a medicine walk, a one-day hike in as much wilderness as I could find close to Boston, in which I took in my surroundings, fasted, and sought a purpose for an upcoming vision quest. The Blue Hills Reservation is a hilly wooded area with many outcroppings of bedrock. Toward the end of the day, I stood transfixed by one particular boulder, a long, low slab emerging from the leafy litter. There was nothing special about it, but it captured my imagination. Here it had lain for thousands of years, and it was likely to remain there for thousands more. But it did come from somewhere, and it would eventually change and perhaps even move - broken perhaps by a freeze-thaw cycle, tumble down the hill when undermined by rushing water, worn down by wind and rain. For the many thousands of years it would exist as a recognizable boulder, I was seeing a tiny slice of its lifetime. In fact, if I looked at it for my entire life, it very likely would not seem to change.

And what did it tell me about myself? The people closest to me have seen me as hard-headed, stubborn and unmoving, slow to change - but nevertheless capable of changing. They've also seen me as stable, steady, trustworthy.

Like a rock.

And I recalled that for several decades I had been saving large and small rocks as informal souvenirs of places I'd been. I hadn't catalogued them or anything like that; I just had them lying around my study to look at from time to time.

Could it be that rocks had "chosen" me, and that they too were a kind of spirit guide?

I put the idea in the "provisional" category.

Later, during the vision quest (a four-day solo campout in the wilderness with minimal shelter and no food, just water), I found more stones that seemed to be calling to me, and I would stand or sit for long periods touching them, staring at them, wondering at their beauty.

And when I emerged from the woods, I had a new name: Stone Bear.

Adopting a new name is often a way of marking a life transition or a change in how we regard ourselves or others regard us. Sometimes it's an unwanted nickname (hey, Stinky!); sometimes it's part of a ritual or series of rituals (Confirmation names, names given or chosen in initiation). Sometimes the new name becomes the everyday name. In my case, I reserved the new name for use in a very small circle of men. Mentioning it publicly now doesn't change anything; most people continue to know me by the names I grew up with (including just "Baehr," which is what my wife has called me for 25 years).

The Process

I've given a lot of thought to the process of acquiring a spirit guide or animal totem, including perhaps a new name associated with one. I don't subscribe to mystical or mythical theories about being "chosen" by a totem, as if they're somehow "out there" waiting for us to receive them. After all, I don't know anyone who has been "chosen" by a cockroach, or a stink bug, or a lobster, or a millipede, or a slug. They've all been "chosen" by allies that are nobler, more powerful, or more attractive creatures like wolves, eagles, bears, rattlesnakes, butterflies, and the like. I mean, given my sometimes lazy, slow-moving nature, I could easily have been "chosen" by a slug (except for the sliminess and the aversion to salt!).

My theory is that our spirit guides or animal totems reflect essential qualities we already have. We become who we are through many, many influences, from our genetic inheritance to our family ancestral history to our parenting and schooling to our life experiences. We may not even give a whole lot of thought to this process, or to its results.

Occasionally we may be opened up spiritually or psychologically and then have an encounter with an aspect of nature that resonates with reveals to us our essential self. The opening up may come about through a meditation practice, a religious or non-religious spiritual retreat, a major life crisis or other major disorientation, or perhaps just a particular walk in a particular place on a particular day. An animal or object comes into our environment or into our mind, and there's a sudden flash of recognition, almost as if we're looking into a mirror. In a real or metaphorical sense, we could say that the animal or object has spoken to us.

This is much different from saying, "I like wolves, so I'm gonna be a wolf-man" and then going out and buying a bunch of wolf statues, wolf jewelry, and wolf posters. The flash has to be there, the sense of shock, in my opinion. And even then it's a good idea to rest with the notion, do a little investigating of the nature of the animal or object, test the "fit." (Not everything pans out. I had an encounter with a fox during another vision quest, and had a provisional connection to what foxes represent. It didn't stick.)

Spirits

Do objects and animals have spirits? We have no way of knowing that for sure. Whatever it is that we resonate with, whatever we see in our psychic mirror, may be spirit. The bear and the stone, for me, have a set of qualities or an essential nature that I feel a connection with. I would be willing to call the essential nature of these things, along with my own essential nature, "spirit." Whether they're metaphorical or somehow real doesn't matter to me. What's important is the connection.

Once the connection is established securely, the most important thing is the connection itself and not the trappings (though I've collected enough bears to be the butt of considerable family ribbing). The connection to a spirit guide can be to a comforting ally to visit under stress; a focus of attention to remind us of the inner qualities we need in making decisions; or just simply a backdrop in life's tapestry, a context in which we play out our days.

The Opening

People go through entire lifetimes quite happily without a spirit guide or animal totem. But it doesn't hurt to be open to the possibility. The opportunities can come in whatever activities we undertake that might be considered a context for psychological or spiritual self-awareness and growth. They could include a men's gathering, a vision quest, a solo camping trip, travel to a foreign country, a religious retreat, an arduous day hike, an ongoing life challenge (to name a few). The idea is to go into such experiences with the intention of, or at least the openness to, discovering an ally in the world outside the human domain.

The emphasis here is on intention and not expectation. I think the discovering of an animal totem or spirit guide should come as a surprise, not a confirmation.