I am fortunate to have been guided (literally) and taught lessons by animals - mostly birds, and my shamanic companion, dear Friend Rat. Now, I have two main animal guides, each working with me in a different way, and I love and honour them both.
One is a wolf, not the idealised wolf that is so popular with 'spiritual' people, but a lean, gaunt, lone wolf who can flare with resentment or anger because he is continually hungry, the dangerous wolf of fairy tales who has revealed to me aspects of myself to which I was blind, and also reminds me of my own deep craving for nurturance.
This is the wolf described by Marie-Louise von Franz as a “growling wolf within, the iron grim” …"very often the result of great frustration in childhood, which had built up a kind of bitter resentment on one side, combined with the greedy desire to have and eat everything" (in Individuation in fairytales). Yes. Even now, I have a great longing to be held, to be nurtured.
He is also helpful. Like the wolf in Russian fairytales, if treated with respect, accepted for what he is, he takes me where I must go; he is stern, and will not let me shirk my responsibility to myself. I call him Lobo, and he is always close.
The other 'wolf' has only come into my life in the past few months, the maned wolf who is really not a wolf but a beautiful shy creature who first came in a dream, and now appears often. In one dream, he invited me to come out of the forest onto the savannah with him. I decline, saying that I feel safe in the forest, and protected. 'You will be safe here," he says, but I am afraid to go where I will be more exposed.
I know that he is urging me to stop hiding, to venture into the open with its different opportunities, but I admit that although I know he is right, and though I am being called in many ways to step out into the wider world, I hesitate. Lobo guará, as he is called in Brazilian, waits and the invitation is still open.
Comments