Tamed By a Bear. Priscilla Stuckey
at all but only a coil of rope. Snake or rope? It can be devilishly hard to tell. “Now we see through a glass, darkly,” wrote the apostle Paul to the ancient Corinthians, which pretty much summed up my own view on the matter. I may have yearned for reality to be different, but the truth was—as my industrious woodpecker of a mind never ceased to remind me—that knowledge beyond the world of the five senses is impossible, and even here in this tactile world so much depends on your perspective, your point of view.
And then there was the biggest bugaboo of all: How could I trust anyone who claimed to speak words from God? After decades of studying religion, I was aware that recorded history, at least in the parts of the world I knew best, might well be written as a single ginormous argument between people on one side—individuals, groups, nations—saying, “God told us this!” and on the other side, “No! God told us that!” All the murder, rape, and pillage committed in the name of the divine, the forced conversions and slavery imposed through supposedly divine orders—it all took place side by side with kindness to strangers, sharing with the poor, and humbleness of heart, virtues also supposedly recommended by that same divine. So how could I possibly believe anyone’s claims to hear the “real” God? Like most modern people, I was sensitive to any whiff of “God said this,” and I regarded all such claims with a big dose of skepticism. To be perfectly honest, I discounted them all. Every last one. New Agers who claimed to hear Spirit Guides or Helpers were, to my mind, even less trustworthy. For no person, as far as I knew, could really hear God. There was no Extendable Ear reaching to heaven.
All of which left me living a huge contradiction, as even I had to admit. During book readings I was talking with audiences about how wonderful life could become if only we listened to animals, trees, and Earth more deeply, and in between trips I would sign up for more sessions of listening, through Chris, to my animal Spirit Helper. Yet, though Bear said during those sessions that I had a facility for hearing the Helpers, and though Bear recommended that I allow my connection with spirit to deepen and flourish, for without that connection a person walks crooked through life—a hitch in their step—and though Bear said plainly that one of my contributions in life would have to do with listening to wisdom from another realm and offering it to others, I didn’t have confidence in any of what I heard. I couldn’t bring myself to believe it was real.
Though I was enjoying the sessions with Chris immensely, I was having a hard time taking them at all seriously.
5
On the phone with Chris in mid-March I tried to put my dilemma into words—loss of direction, too much snow—but before I could get very far, she suggested a shift. Up to this point in the sessions Chris had acted as translator and interpreter, and I would listen while she passed along what she received from Bear. Today, instead, she would stand by, taking notes, while I listened directly to Bear. She called it “going on a Journey” with one’s Helper. “Want to give it a try?” she asked.
I closed my eyes and immediately sensed a bear—good-humored and warmhearted—rubbing paws together gleefully and chuckling at me. The sensation was so unexpected, and so welcoming, that I decided to play along. What harm could come of seeing where this fantasy led? There was a sense of sympathy too, as if this bear, though amused at the situation, was also commiserating in a kindly way.
I spoke aloud what I was sensing from Bear so that Chris could hear. Why did it feel so strange to voice what I was experiencing? It took me a moment to remember that though I had grown up in a praying family and a praying church, I’d always shrunk from speaking prayers aloud. This Journey was the closest thing to prayer I had experienced in years, and narrating it aloud made my skin crawl with self-consciousness.
I swallowed hard and kept going. Some images appeared of a locomotive rolling through lush green land—images that Chris and I spent a few moments looking at together, noting but not analyzing. Then a picture of a wide-open blue sky with the thought, “It’s okay right now not to read books; just stare into space if you like.” A feeling that all would be well if I continued to let my mind empty and allowed it to stay that way “because that’s one route to appreciating spaciousness.” Not to worry about how I would make a living in the future; it would not be a problem. And then a strong sense of something like this: that the end of the story had not been written yet, and I shouldn’t jump to conclusions. That if I could calm my impatience, the story would go a lot smoother.
Soon the session was over.
6
There is a danger in describing how this path unfolded for me. One person’s experience recorded in detail can leave the impression that there is a pattern, a usual way for things to happen. Nothing could be further from the truth. One person might slip easily into meditative Journeys while another spends years practicing, yet each is walking in the center of their own road, discovering what is theirs alone to discover. The Universe helps people toward clarity through many different means. There is no formula, no right way. Each traveler is held by the same loving hands, guided by the best wisdom toward their own particular destination. For some travelers the path may include meditative or shamanic Journeys; for others it may not.
In my case, though I had an aptitude for Journeys, I stumbled on this speaking-aloud business. I could understand what Chris meant when she said that it tended to help the mind stay focused on what was happening in the Journey. I could even appreciate that recording a Journey, as she recommended, would help jog the memory later about its nuances. But speaking aloud? It just felt strange.
Nevertheless, two days later when for the first time in my life I fumbled on my own toward that inner connection with Bear, I did it with cell phone in hand, narrating what I experienced into a phone app—modern technology applied to an old, old kind of meditation.
Just after six that morning I climbed out of bed and wrapped myself in a blanket to ward off the night’s chill. The world was dark and still. Tim wouldn’t be up for a while yet, and Bodhi, our blue heeler mix, was still curled up in his favorite spot on the sofa. I turned on the phone recorder and tried to bring my mind into a still center.
Immediately images of the locomotive returned. Click-e-ta, click-e-ta, click-e-ta. A train moving along the tracks, steady, humming. I described what I saw and heard into the phone. There was a feeling of confidence in the train’s momentum, as if I were suddenly a passenger on that train, traveling swiftly forward. How I wished for such a feeling in real life! What would it take for me to travel that smoothly? Then a thought, like a very gentle voice in my ear. I spoke it into the phone: “Notice how putting yourself there imaginatively already makes you feel more put together. More hearty. More here.” It was true; the sturdy rhythm beneath my imaginary feet was helping my physical voice grow a little stronger. “Try starting here. Every day,” the gentle presence suggested.
Just then, more than three miles from our house, a train approaching town laid on its horn. Though all our windows were shut tight against the wintry dawn, the sound of the horn slipped inside the house and into my quiet time with Bear. The phone mic even picked it up. “Is there more about being on a train?” I asked, wanting to understand the image more fully.
The train blared again. Whooooo. Whoooo-hoooo.
I waited for more insight. Then waited a little more. I had no idea where to go from here. Finally it dawned on me: this not-knowing point in the conversation was exactly how I felt in outer life. As soon as I spoke that thought, a new suggestion arose: that just as I was learning to trust that some little piece of a picture would show up in the Journey, this would be good to practice in outer life as well.
The train bellowed once, then again. A double exclamation point.
As the train receded and finally grew silent, different images appeared. I caught a glimpse of jigsaw pieces—familiar from years I’d spent putting puzzles together in childhood. What was it about puzzle pieces? Bear responded immediately: “They come in from different corners. You sometimes have to search a while for the right one, the one that fits. But when it fits, it really fits. There’s no making it fit. It’s made to fit.”
That’s when I lost it, sobbing quietly into the phone. How fervently I longed for such a fit, how afraid I’d become that it would never be possible!