The Power to Act

About 5 years ago, I was awakened in the middle of the night by a dream I can only describe as startling, puzzling, and life changing. There was a polar bear that lived in a lean-to beside my home.  As strange as that was in itself, the thing that really troubled me was that this bear wore a muzzle.  The image tormented me; I couldn’t get it out of my mind’s eye. Why was the bear wearing a muzzle and what was it doing living beside my home? Why wasn’t it living in the wild? Just thinking about it brought me to tears and made my stomach clench tightly.

Whenever I have a physical reaction to a dream, I pay attention because I know I’ve struck a vein of pure gold. With the help of a Jungian analyst, I came to understand that the polar bear represented my powerful instinctual energies and the thing that was muzzled was my voice.  How it played out was that I did not trust myself to speak my truths, or to speak out in large groups.  I was tentative in expressing my creative side and denied my own needs and importance in relationships that mattered. I unnaturally deferred to people around me. I was disconnected from my instinctual drive; I was domesticated. But I longed to live in the wild free of the muzzle that I wore.

Over the years I’ve continued to explore polar bears; I’ve read, drawn, collected and adopted them.  They embellish my office bookshelves.  I’ve taken singing lessons to free my vocal cords and attended drum circles to get in touch with my instinctual rhythms.  And I’ve continued to write. Holding the haunting image of my polar bear close to my heart, I’ve trusted that, just like a polar bear emerges from winter hibernation, a clear idea would emerge from the recesses of my soul and I would know how to express my developing voice.

I knew blogging was right the second my husband suggested it.  Something awakened within me—I got energized.  Writing has always been an important part of my spiritual journey.  Over the years I’ve been told that I should write a book, but it seemed too daunting.  A blog would allow me to marry the two things that have nourished me over the years—writing and my spiritual journey.  When I write, I lose time.  I love the process of putting ideas on paper, which allows all of my chaotic thoughts to become a visual masterpiece.  I’ve filled dozens of journals over the years trying to make sense of my life. It is a perfect marriage of voice and venue!!

To the brave or embolden, writing a blog may seem like nothing. The creation of the blog itself was not the issue; it’s what the blog represented that made it so daunting.  I compare it to how I would feel doing a tandem jump out of a plane for the first time; frightening as hell.  Truth be known, jumping out of a plane seemed easier because then I would have a professional parachutist by my side, prying my fingers from the side of the plane’s door.

These past three months, the tight grasp I had on the airplane door has released, and I’ve made the metaphorical jump.  The view from the plane was not nearly as frightening as I feared; truly it was intoxicating beautiful.  From the vantage place of someone who has taken the jump, I wonder what took me so long.  It is such an exciting experience, and best of all, today my polar bear energies no longer wears a muzzle and she is  free to explore her natural habitat. This new part of me was born to be free!

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