Bear

My son said he recently saw a mountain lion one morning biking to school, and that it was as big as a couch. We have deer poop in the backyard, and my dog, Sergeant Pepe, is extremely interested and alert over another strong, new scent there. There was a black bear on our neighbor's driveway last night. The sheriff came around, the lights swirling in the darkness as if there were some arrest. It dawned on me that this time of year, living so close to the foothills, that the apples mushing on the ground in our back yard were attracting bears. As is my compost experiment of just chunking food scraps into the bushes.

There is something deep about all these animals appearing at this time of year. As the trees put on their gorgeous cloaks of red and yellow leaves, and the chill fills the air, I sense and feel a different energy. That dying and going within. Something transitioning, something coming up from the darkness that is emerging as it hybernates. And this energy connects me with all things.

I remember my body as container and as a protective shield. That being so deeply sensual, present and self-aware of how my body is feeling at all times puts me in tune with the now and with nature's rhythms. I walk a lot in the foothills of Boulder with my dog, Pepe. To be in glorious nature is my church, and that brisk, full alignment of the body walking is such great yoga. And to be out with nature there is the edge of sublime. Truly nature - trees, rocks, animals - they put you instantly in touch with the spirit world because they connect you instantly with the deepest archetypes of being. They point to the depths and you get in touch intuitively with that great beyond. You feel it moving through your body, as you, participating in duality. It's like the High Priestess card in the Tarot. I understand the dark side, the negative feminine. I accept my dark side and integrate it into me. I don't reject it. And once you do that you are whole, and you can pass through duality to the transcendent easily on the royal road. And then you become the Magician, in full power of all nature's forces. Whatever your psyche is pulling up from the unconscious is done with great awareness then consciously projected and manifests. But then there is other stuff that you can't quite control, that keeps coming at you.

In yoga practice, I have opened my hips considerably. Tight upper inner thighs are opened with extreme stretching and a good block. Tucking the tailbone and really achieving Mula Bandha opens you up and lets the heart come forward. I do snake pose and mermaid pose, in honor of that heaven and earth union. Then the bird poses, that heaven, and squats, the frog. I am totally into sitting on my sit bones. Even in the car (how those things take the spine out of you!) You really have to make an effort to sit up straight, but that makes all the difference. That and deep breathing. I am really into the legs, janu shirsasana, upavishta konasana. I can actually get my head to the floor, although I know the heart should be there first. But something is opening. Something is changing, transforming. It's the root chakra really connecting again to the body, to nature, to the container and the energy there.

But bear is big now in its presence. I remember I had a dream once of my mother, what was wrong with her? I asked. In the dream I saw her seated at a table and a big bear came along and swiped off a chunk of her head. I interpreted that dream as the powers of the unconscious - the bear in hybernation and its powers, and how my mother was swallowed up by it - in the head with too much thinking, insanity. So somehow the bear, with its eternal cycles of life, hybernating, awakening, has a message for me. This time of year, all the dark stuff can come up from the unconscious. Like you have to accept the most disgusting aspect of yourself. Today walking on the trail Pepe pooped twice, and I had only one plastic bag, already filled. I scooped the poop up with the bag, and had to carry it. It was messy, disgusting. But there is nowhere to dispose of the plastic and it's so damn unsightly on the trail, as people do leave their plastic-wrapped poop on the trail but I could not bring myself to do it. So I carried the poop. I thought poop is sacred too, so the natives even eat poop to say all this is of the creator, of Shiva. I certainly wasn't open to eating eating it so just carried it. I thought about the movie the Matrix. How Neo knew that everything - even Mr. Smith - was part of him. All the dark parts. So carrying the poop was just that too.

All around me on my walk the natural world was so pristine, I could not dump the dog poop not even in the man-made cylinder guiding a flow of the creek water. I just walked with the poop and I forgot about it eventually. Pepe reminded me of duality - his black and white body, the trickster. He comes when I call him 50 percent of the time. The other half you are not sure what to expect of his behavior. Isn't life like that? You just never know what is going to happen. Even if you are conscious. Sometimes you can predict, other times you cannot. So you just surrender to the moment and navigate from there. And you sense the energy changing and make a choice.

Picking up my daughter today at my father's, my father said he hasn't been feeling well. In his gut area, the third chakra. He has begun to throw things out again. That's what's blocking him; to really clean out that house. It came up again that I would have him live with us a little while, enough time in the next 9 months to gut the house, clean it up, start massive gardening on his third acre for our food and self-sufficiency, and we'd move back in by the time my lease is up. So we shall see. We shall see what bear has in store for me this fall.