Chapter three: guardians at the threshold.

   Jung said that soul moves at the weak point where the personality
   is thin, where things are not secure and stable. That's where soul
   has an entry. (12)

Every ascent to the heights is preceded by a descent. Those descents in my life have sometimes been gentle drops, but more often freefalls all the way to the depths. With hindsight I can see that each fall compelled me to find the path to a new ascent. And that path always provided challenges which strengthened me, carrying me to even higher levels.

I wanted to know more about the experience I had with Owl. What I was really attracted to was the experience of oneness, of my identity expanding beyond its normal well-defined limits. I continued to feel somewhat intimidated by Owl, because my associations were with death, and ghosts, and the dark. Maybe I could find a way to journey to the place of boundaryless summit without necessarily doing so with Owl. I began reading what I could find about journeys between worlds, but the immediacy of the journey into my body was receding quickly. Everyday life seemed to take over rapidly, like a jungle overgrowing a small, temporary clearing.

One day, I had a reminder, a "wake-up call" that I needed to get the machete out to reclaim that clearing. A bear came calling to my home. My wife had put up a bird feeder in front of the house, and initially I was annoyed because we were feeding squirrels more than birds. Soon enough, however, a big black mamma bear sauntered out of the forest and over to the bird feeder. She stood on her back legs and grabbed the container of seeds. She tore the block of suet, meant to feed woodpeckers, off its stand and casually sat down to eat. I was watching this bear from my living room window, feeling even more annoyed than I had been with the squirrels. I was angry, feeling taken advantage of. So, without thinking, I ran out the door waving my arms and yelling, "Shooo! Go away now!"

Bear did not flinch as she looked my way with a disdaining glance, and continued eating. I had not anticipated this response, or actually this lack of response. Suddenly I experienced the same chill of fear that I had in my vision quest space, with Owl seemingly challenging me so openly. Bear could easily lunge at me and maul me to death in an instant. And yet I didn't feel that she would, or even wanted to. What did she want?

Then something totally unexpected happened. I was suddenly overtaken with drowsiness, and could not stop myself from collapsing onto the ground with an overwhelming need to fall asleep. Some small part of me became aware of a momentary flash of apprehension, of the absurdity of succumbing to sleep in the midst of confrontation with a bear. Yet I couldn't help myself. I couldn't stay awake. I fell into a deep unconscious sleep, as if my time to hibernate had come, and it could not be denied.

I slumbered in a state of nonbeing, yet with a faint awareness of being. The only experience of "me" or of individual identity at all was a vague sense, through mist, and from a great distance. Vignettes of potential individual identities floated into focus, unbidden, and then dissolved.

I became aware of sitting in a circle with perhaps twenty other people, listening intently to each one sharing profoundly, intimately, openly. I had no personal identity, as if awakening with amnesia into an unknown life. And I "knew" these people in the same way that I knew myself: I knew nothing of their life circumstances or histories, yet I felt deeply connected to and trusting of each one. We seemed to be acting as a governing council, a council of elders, and at the same time to be studying, exploring, marveling at some vast overarching set of principles. I knew those principles in the same way that I knew myself and the others in the circle: I knew nothing of their structure or their content, yet I felt deeply connected to and trusting of them. The scene dissolved, as did my experience of personal identity. Again I basked in an indescribable state of nonbeing.

I became aware of meeting other beings in a similar space of reverie, of amnesia. Next there were cockroaches communicating their life experience to me telepathically. Giant sequoia trees shared their timeless sense of an eternal now. The bear roused herself from the same hibernation of nonbeing as I did, and assured me that the loss of a sense of personal identity carried with it the loss of a sense of separation from all creation. She insisted that it was time to reclaim that clearing in the jungle of everyday consciousness, cluttered as it was with distractions. And she was most explicit: the reclaiming was necessary daily, and was in fact the purpose of every night's deep sleep. Bear spoke to me of that faint awareness of being, of nonbeing really, that descended on me through the misty hibernation.

Gradually I became aware of myself lying on the ground next to the birdfeeder, apparently alone. Yet I felt connected to all the world as if tapping into a root system that we all shared: the insects and trees, the people and the bear. I resolved to keep this perspective and not let it recede so quickly into everyday life, to pull me back into my everyday perspective, the jungle so easily becoming overgrown again. Here 1 could see those self-limiting aspects of myself at work, the fears and agitation, torpor and mental laxity. They seemed like fierce guardians of my separateness and vulnerability. Now, however, they were beginning to appear in their true nature: guardians of initiation and preparation at the threshold of undreamed adventures.