Ah… beautiful. My inner wonder child now wants to throw up her hands and cheer, and then go off to dream bear dreams!

Don’t cry little one, Don’t cry little one, The Bear is coming to dance for you

So glad you dream and dreamed from Bear. You brought her into the “real world” for me when I read your stories and heard you sing that song. She brings me home to what is real and that has opened all sorts of games with children.
And then I get to feel Gratitude once again
Patty

Oh what a beautiful poem, evoking so many memories.
And here’s something from my dreams last night: I look down at my legs and think, “Oh I need to shave my legs.” I lean over to run my hand over one of my legs. Oops, not a hand, more like a paw! “Oh, I’m moving into ‘bear mode’”, I say. I laugh out loud. My laughter turns to soft growls.

This one is going in your poetry book right? Along with all those others that have been turning up here and on your other blog? I’m looking forward to it… words dripping in honey.

In some dreams and meditations where I have set healing intentions, this amazing bear energy has shown himself. He has appeared in many ways to me (black, grizzly, one-cloudy eye, wearing bands of cloth, etc.), but he is always a powerful presence and I always feel honored.
I recall once meditating for the healing of a friend who had gone through a serious allergic reaction to chemicals. I saw and smelled a huge brown-colored bear sleeping in a cave. I was frightened and left the cave, but then remembered that my friend was in need of healing, so I reentered the cave and asked the bear to wake up to help my friend. I was shaking in my boots, and he wasn’t the happiest bear, but he came out of the cave briefly to speak to me and I felt as though I was given a gift. He then went back into the cave to sleep. About a week later, I visited my friend in his newly rented cottage out of town where he was staying to recover from his illness. Brown bears and grizzlies don’t live anywhere near this part of the U.S. in waking life, but there was one picture on the wall in the bedroom directly above the headboard of the bed. The head of a roaring grizzly. It was one of those ah-ha! moments from the Universe. Even though he is still sensitive to the specific chemicals that made him ill initially, he is doing much better nowadays. I truly felt that he would get better eventually, after seeing the large brown bear both in my meditation and in his cottage. Hoorah for bear!
Margie

A dreaming friend has sent me all his grizzly bear dreams – probably 20-30 of them in the past couple of years. I’m sending him the link to this poem!

Margie – Hooray for the Bear, indeed! And thank you for sharing this wonderful report of braving up to Bear to seek healing for another – and the confirmation you received.

Azima – You may want to encourage your friend to post a summary of his grizzly bear dreams here. I am getting ready to write an article about dreams of the Bear.

Justin – Thanks for this honeyed bear claw, goading me to get on with publishing my first poetry collection. Yes, this Bear poem will be in it.

Carol – Thanks for this fabulous glimpse of your second life as a bear I want to write an article about shapeshifting dreams in which we find ourselves in the body or at least the skin of an animal or bird. I’ve recorded quite a few.

I’m Azima’s friend. In my bear dreams, the grizzly is almost always a female and has a cub with her. In the early ones, she scares me but slowly over a 2 year period she enters my home and embraces me on my couch, gets drunk on spirits in my living room and now we have full English tea in a cottage.

ManWoman – I am greatly in favor of entertaining and feeding the Bear, and I am delighted by your picture of sharing “full English tea” with your mother grizzly. If the bear isn’t scary when it first shows up, it is probably not the bear! Thanks for sharing.

I love all of this poem, but most especially the ending. Thanks.

Thank you! Bear hugs.

Robert, I also do art from my dreams. I have about 5 paintings of the bear dreams. Is there a way I can share these images with you?
Manny

Manny – I would love to see your bear paintings. If you have scanned them, you can email them to me at mossdreams@gmail.com

Thank you Robert. Coincidentally, a couple of hours after our postings, an appliance repairman came to fix my washing machine and he left me a 2011 wall calendar with a picture of a huge grizzly bear roaring and charging on the front! Margie

In some of my Grizzly dreams, I’m tired of running away from her, a sow and her cub, that I run right at her wanting it to end. In one dream, the Grizzly is red.
In some of the bear dreams, the women I’m with are safe from the bear or unconcerned about it’s presence while I’m running indoors, hiding, afraid.
In one, I think of hiding in a tiny shack and Grizzly Mother smashes it flat, then, she has me pinned face down on the ground with my head in her mouth.
My energies are definitely shifting. I’m claiming much more of my power as a leader. My attitude now is, if the Grizzly comes back, I will stand my ground. A native friend told me to embrace the bear and hang on no matter what happens.
Grizzly Mother is bringing me gifts. The first gift that comes to mind is Fearlessness. The gift I’d like is total surrender, letting of the false self and full ownership of the real self. There is the implication of annihilation but also transformation. The bear hibernates and is reborn each spring. Also bears don’t herd, they tend to be solitary and sovereign. Bears suggest the unconscious, the mystery.

Margie – I often call coincidences “secret handshakes from the universe”. This one sounds like a not-co secret bear hug!

Hi Robert,
I love the way you posted this. I am reminded that poems often express thoughts much better than prose does. And I do feel an affinity with bears. I do see them in the wild from time to time, but nowhere near as often as I used to years ago. I enjoyed your poem very much. Thank you for posting it.

Thanks, Don – I enjoy the poems you share at our forum, so often infused by your deep love and knowledge of nature.

ManWoman – I like the way your relationship with Grizzly Mother is evolving. I think your native friend is correct: we want to embrace the Bear, even if that will require braving up, big time. When the connection is made, we may then learn the need to temper and moderate the power that is with us, and be sure it is used for protection and healing and not in the berserker (the word means “bear-shirt”) ways of Old World ancestors on the warpath.

Robert, thanks for your feedback
I saw a note from you saying that you are also interested in dreams where people are in animal bodies or wearing animal skins. Here’s one I had recently.
In a dream, I’m crossing a rolling prairie. I crest a hill carrying the entire skin of a male lion, head and all, on my head. Suddenly, I’m surrounded by dangerous animals – tigers, bears, cougars and a wolverine. I’m most afraid of the wolverine, which is very black in colour. I think I should stay downwind but it’s too late.
Here’s my interpretation – the lion is about being sovereign, king of my jungle. I have his skin to wear. The wolverine is a very solitary, creature of fierceness and independence. This is also a part of me. I’m fiercely independent but it isolates me. Being part of a herd is not my path. It’s the price I pay for being inspired.
Manny

Manny – Thanks for sharing another fascinating experience. I love the lion as I love the bear. If this were my dream, I would notice that I am in an awkward situation if I am carrying the lion and all that it represents entirely in/on my head. I need the power balanced and centered. .

Returning to this again. If you don’t mind I wish to take this healing poem as my own today. Have it as a reentry portal and see Her.
Thank you

Patty