Groundhog showed up
Well the groundhog showed up at our door on Jan 21st 2015 and then last night while in Books a Million Pam ran into the dream meaning of the varmint and turns out to be everything that we are experiencing at the house. (of course) Even my sister who does not want to believe anything was shook by how perfect this fit our experience.
Short video pertaining to the varmint!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKqlarQ1A2s&feature=youtube
http://www.oocities.org/tammlynn/groundhog.htm
Keynote: Mystery of Death without Dying~ Trance~ Dreams
Cycle of Power: Winter
The groundhog or woodchuck is a burrowing rodent, actually a member of the squirrel family. It has chisel-like teeth, and it lives at the edges and open areas of woods and forests. It is known for its digging and tunneling ability.
Symbolically this reflects the ability to get deep within an area of interest. It is not unusual to have a groundhog appear at a time when a new area of study is about to open up. Since a groundhog does not fully mature for about two years, its appearance as a totem can reflect an endeavor that may take two years to come to full fruition. This may reflect two years of intensive study, digging, and building.
The groundhog makes elaborate dens with multiple exits and storage rooms. It spends half its time underground. The bedroom area is always located above the lowest end of the tunnel. This is so it won't be flooded. They clean up after themselves, burying their own excrement. Within their burrows they have separate toilet chambers.
Groundhogs are generally non-territorial, but they will not allow others in their tunnel. Groundhogs can tell if a burrow is occupied, as fresh dirt will be piled outside the entrance. For anyone with a groundhog totem, it is important to give definite signals to the boundaries you wish to have respected in your life. (This has been all encompassing for Pam and Sharon)
Groundhogs go into a true hibernation and spend about four to six months in that condition. They prepare for this by fattening themselves. They gorge through summer and late fall. They will curl up in a frost free chamber of their burrow, and their life processes will slow. Their temperature will drop from its normal 96 degrees to about 40 degrees, barely above freezing. The respiration slows to one breath per minute and the heartbeat plunges from 110 beats per minute to about four or five. They achieve a state of unconsciousness and will usually awaken in later winter or early spring.
Hibernation has always had great significance to it. It symbolized death without dying. Some societies used methods to induce these states as a symbolic ritual of death and rebirth. Thus hibernation reflected a time of initiation. Winter is the season of power, for that is when the groundhog reveals and uses its most effective medicine~ hibernation.
It is also a symbol of opening fully to the dreamtime, the heavy winter sleep, allowing the individual to use the dreamtime more powerfully. Those with a groundhog totem will find that there will be increasing ability to develop lucid dreaming~ especially during the winter. Any time groundhog shows up, the clarity and power of altered states will be amplified. Dreams will become more significant.
Many shamans, yogis, and mystics would teach methods of slowing down the metabolism of the body. This was often used to create trace conditions. This could facilitate healing or be directed toward out of body contacts. It can also be used to develop shamanistic trance. In this form of trance, the individual learns to shut down the body and then leave the body (leaving it protected), and then goes off into other dimensions to learn and to bring back knowledge.
When groundhog shows up as a totem, there will be opportunity to explore deeper altered states of consciousness. Lessons associated with death and dying and revelations about its process will begin to surface. Groundhog holds the knowledge of metabolic control. Its medicine is that of going into the great unconscious to touch the mystery of death without dying.
So this seems like the perfect moment for this synchronicity with the groundhog in this forum.