Bear, Passion, and Middle Age
A guide for men
About ten years ago, I began to explore Bear in a way similar to how one might explore Hermes, Aphrodite, or Zeus—that is, as a psychological style or psychic being. I conducted this exploration from my particular standpoint at the time—as a middle-aged man, entrepreneur, seeker of passion, father and husband. In doing so, I experienced a profound confrontation with Bear; an engagement that has mattered to my perspective on myself, my work, and my sense of passion and purpose in the world.
I came to thinking about Bear through a small men’s group I was in. After many years of insightful perspective through the King-Warrior-Magician-Lover framework, that angle had grown tired and worn out. I was having trouble seeing the world in all its beauty because my ideas were not rich enough. In my business and work world, I was stuck with the literalized notions of profit, growth, process, systems, and so on. In our group, we were stuck with these stale concepts of King, Warrior, Magician, and Lover. We were living with a paucity of ideas so we found some richness and vitality in other ways—especially though music and ritual practice. But the soul work, the psyche-work, was lacking. When we shifted the frame and added animals as psychological ideas, we opened new vistas. In my mind, this was a new perspective ripe for adventure and exploration. First up for me was an exploration of Bear.
So let me begin with a few observations about Bear:
Bears are large animals that move with a lumbering sort of grace.
Bears hibernate each winter, essentially sleeping for months on end.
Bear eggs are fertilized but do not become embryos immediately. Rather, the potential life, called a blastocyst by science, rides along in the mother’s womb without being implanted in the nourishing wall of the womb for a period of time. It doesn’t grow, it just waits. Later on, it implants.
Bear cubs are born during hibernation, 2-3 months before the mama breaks hibernation.
These observations are rich with metaphorical implications, and I suspect a person could spend many good hours contemplating them, much as you would the detailed images of a good story.
Hibernation is a good place to begin. The long winter slumber has always put Bear close to the dream world. Indeed, she is the keeper of dreams in many cultures. She is the keeper of the secret inner den. As such, Bear reminds us to reflect. It reminds us to go inward. It reminds us to sleep. It reminds us to hold without growing, and to wait for the right time. Bear reminds us to pay attention to dreams.
If there is any god or animal that knows and lives passion, it must be Bear. Big Bear. Lumbering Bear. Powerful, patient, persistent bear. Indeed, passionate Bear. Embodied in Bear, this passion is unstoppable, inevitable. The sense of it is captured in this poem of Mary Oliver’s:
Spring
Somewhere
a black bear
has just arisen from sleep
and is staring
down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring
I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue
like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:
How to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black and leafy ledge
to sharpen her claws against
the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else
my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its glass cities,
It is also this dazzling darkness
coming
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;
all day I think of her—
her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.
Yes, love; lumbering love. Inevitable love that is lived through the entire body. That dazzling darkness, as Oliver says, comes inevitably down the mountain. That’s passion.
Oliver’s poem is titled “Spring”, and it carries the re-emergent feeling of that season. At the other end of the seasonal shifts, my friend Jim Jacoby described Bear as she heads into her winter den:
“Bear is preparing her Den for the Deep Sleep of Winter. Part of the preparation is to look back, to reflect, to see and know from whence she has come.
“She has foraged hard all summer, the harvest season is over and the winds of winter have already begun their journey out of the deep darkness of the far north. She is lucky to have found a new den as she has traveled far across the days to explore these distant high mountains.
“She lies down in the grass one last time, in deep gratitude, to enjoy this beautiful vista and to remember how far she has come since emerging from her den into the cold and wet spring. We are an elemental force deeply rooted in the earth as is the Bear.”
This reflective aspect of Bear is central to the middle age experience. No doubt, some of the reflection will be beautiful and full as Jacoby describes it here. And some of it will make us wince as we see not just how far we’ve come, but also how deeply we have failed. Failed to live our passion, failed to live our peace, failed to live our power and grandeur. I find myself in such a reflection now.
In my own life, I turned away from passion many times. Walked right up to the door, then stopped and turned away. I bought the logs and almost bought the land, then let my “build-your-own-log-cabin” dream die on the vine. My first organic farm caved in to fear, and we walked away when I became a father and lost my sense of center. I lost track of my passion to be a great father when the chance was right in front of me and corrupted that dream with work and other distractions. I suspect most men at middle age can list a few of their bad turnings, missed cues, and denial of their own dreams.
Why? Why do men make this mistake? What grabs us and holds us so that we don’t see through our own actions, decisions, and commitments? What can Bear show us about this?
If Bear is as close to passion as I say, then in Bear’s being, she illuminates the confusion at the center of these decisions. Bear is persistent, powerful, and patient. Bear is also passion. Even when running or hunting Bear is living passion. Bear’s gift at middle age is that she brings this passion—the full-bodied, momentum-driven, lumbering, powerful passion. Bear gives life its passion, which comes out in the voice and longer term action for men.
Passion versus Intensity
As a younger man, my alternative to passion was intensity. Intensity belongs to the cheetah, not Bear. Intensity is the gift of the heron who hunts while standing in water on one leg. Intensity is what we often use to replace passion, or perhaps mistake for passion. Intensity occurs when the passion recedes. For me, writing and imagination awaken the passion. Work, logistics, metrics, and money yield intensity. Manifestation—i.e., doing something in the world—lives in the tension between these two states.
The mistaking of intensity for passion is almost certainly a young man’s mistake. A good example is Tim Ferriss, who wrote the Four Hour Work Week. Ferris was an innovative thinker at the time, and in the early part of his book, he suggests that we need a question that is different from the typical starting place: “What do you want?” Ferriss suggests that the better question is: “What excites you?” But excitement is inherently intense, and so the question tends to lead a man down the path of intensity.
Ferriss is right that we need a better question, but he seems unaware that the question you ask actually tones the answer you will get. His replacement question gets you intensity. A more bear-like question would be: “What experience of life do you seek?” The young man consciousness will inevitably be tempted to turn this into a “bucket list”, but that’s not what I mean. Such lists are not lists of experiences, they are lists of events one seeks to go through. Perhaps a bucket list is a good thing, but the question remains: “What experience do you seek through the occurrence of that particular event?”
I am referring, of course, to James Hillman’s idea of deepening events into experiences. Bear helps us do exactly that. While its waking life embodies the persistence, power, and patience I’ve been talking about, bear also has this enormous turn inward at hibernation. It is a long, inward focus, and people think of it as a connection to the dream world. Imagination. Yet at the same time Bear slumbers, the females are actually gestating this new life in the womb. We will know our deepest experiences when the experiences also carry these Bear powers.
Bear’s Introspection
Midlife brings about Bear’s introspection. It is when we consider, in Mary Oliver’s words, what we have done “with this one wild and precious life.” We ask about inner life—our happiness, satisfaction, vitality and experience—as well as the outer life, and its events, achievements, and recognitions. Of course, it isn’t always clear. Let’s listen to Hafiz:
Two Bears Once After a hard day's forage Two bears sat together in silence On a beautiful vista Watching the sun go down And feeling deeply grateful For Life. Though, after a while A thought-provoking conversation began Which turned to the topic of Fame. The one bear said, "Did you hear about Rustam? He has become famous And travels from city to city In a golden cage; He performs to hundreds of people Who laugh and applaud His carnival Stunts." The other bear thought for A few seconds Then started Weeping.
There are three bears in this poem. Two are on the hillside, and one of them speaks. One weeps. And one is famous living in a cage. It is easy to assume, if you look at the world in a certain way, that the weeping bear is weeping at the misfortune of Rustam. He sees Rustam as trapped in that performance cage and trapped in his own fortune. We assume that from empathy, the silent bear weeps.
But do we really know that? How many men have also wept for a different reason? How many have wept because the possibility of what they could have been and could have done did not come to fruition? Is it always better to be back on that hillside talking, but never achieving? In other words, does that bear weep not at the lost freedom of Rustam, but rather, for the lost potential and possibility in himself? Is he grieving due to the trap he finds himself in—a trap of constant ongoing foraging, entertaining no one, having no purpose, and eventually going to death? Which is it, do you suppose?
Bear brings us to this question. Half way through our lives, we find ourselves living the question. We are caught in this massive presence of Bear. She brings us to this reflective place, and by example, she even shows us what to do... Walk toward the den. Now pause. Take a look over one shoulder, and you can see a certain road of greatness that was not traveled. You see the achievements shunned, the awards not won, the hopes now dead, the grandness of the Self not lived. But you also see the choices, the reasons, the values invoked instead. Now, look over the other shoulder, and a life of simple groundednesss unfolds—also not lived. You see the contemplation not practiced, the inner peace not won. You see the spiritual mastery unengaged. Look! Over here are some things of the greater Self, yet they too were tempered in the vessel of life. It is at this point that the bear steps into her den, carrying the potential, ready to reflect. She’s reviewed both possibilities now. Neither was fully lived, and there is relief in that. The way forward is not new effort, but rather a long engagement with the inner world. She enters the den. She lies down in trust, and lets the dreams come.
Anthony Signorelli
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References
Moore, Robert and Gillette, Douglas. King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine. 1990, Harper Collins.
“Spring” is from House of Light by Mary Oliver, 1990, Beacon Press.
Four Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss, 2007, 2009, Crown.
Re-Visioning Psychology by James Hillman, 1975, Harper.
“Two Bears” is from The Gift, Poems By Hafiz The Great Sufi Master, translations by Daniel Ladinsky, 1999, Penguin Compass, page 123.
The poem ‘Happy Calf’ by Ted Hughes is a joyful portrayal of that inner world.
Really good Anthony. I have a herd of cows on the farm and they keep me grounded. The Bear analogy has some parallels with what I notice in the slow lane with ‘my’ lumbering beasts.