How To Connect With Your Animal Guide
When I was 22 years old I took a trip to Costa Rica. Walking through the rainforest one day, a baby hummingbird leaped from its nest in the attempt at first flight and fluttered to the ground at my feet. I delicately picked up this tiny helpless creature that shimmered a brilliant green with a striated ruby throat. He lay there, looking up at me with shiny black eyes, his wings spread across the palm of my hand, too tiny to reach from edge to edge. I held him there, unsure of how to help. I stroked his tiny head and back, while he occasionally extended his long tongue tasting my palm. I walked with him for over twenty minutes in my hand. Then, just as surely as he had laid there, he hopped up, fluffed himself with a shake, and zipped off into the sky in successful flight.
Since then, I have had many close encounters with these delightful little creatures that drink sugary flower nectar, have sex for the pure fun of it, and spin and zip through the world with incredible joy. They often will buzz next to my face when I’m on a hike, or fly down into the window wells of my basement art studio and watch me paint before flitting off to find their next adventure. This animal surely represents the light side of my personality.
What are your Animal Guides? Would you like to find out? First, think of any magical encounter you may have had with an animal that seemed very unusual. Once you can identify that, ask yourself, how you would describe this animal? Then take that description and see where it applies to yourself. Does it bring you joy, or do you struggle to accept that side of yourself?
Lary as a Snake
Lary is a great example of this. He is a long-time lover and collector of highly venomous exotic animals. He described to me that often the first impression people have of him is as a hard, standoffish person. Lary wasn’t sure what his spirit animals were. When I first asked him to tell me a story of a magical encounter he had with an animal, I expected him to share with me the story of a scorpion or snake. I was surprised when his first thought was to share with me this story of how he ran into a flock of wild turkeys in Montana that showed him no fear and were curious with his presence, coming close to check him out in very un-turkey-like behavior. When I asked him to describe turkeys he said they were cautious, shy, but fierce when necessary. When they accepted him and came close, he felt seen and trusted for the animal lover he is. He felt validated for his positive aspects. The turkey is his positive Spirit Animal. When we dove into finding his shadow side animal, he shared how he regularly handled his extremely deadly snakes with no protection, yet they never harmed him. He described snakes as misunderstood, mysterious, and feared. Lary described his own shadow side perfectly that he struggles to accept. He opted to have his Animal Guide portrait created of himself as his shadow side animal.
Through my years of spiritual and psychological studies, I have learned to identify these aspects of the self that come to us in magical ways. Would you like to discover your own Spirit Animal and have a portrait created? If so, follow the link below!