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Bilby - The Downward Spiral
Keywords:
Downward Spirals. Escape. Dark Night of the Soul. Crisis. Recovery. Dowsing. Engineering. Sibling Relationships. Underworlds. Mysteries. Loss of Faith. Loyalty. Survival. Confronting Darkness. Fear. Courage. Inner Darkness. Earth, Soil and Sand.
General Description:
The nocturnal bilby is a small, rabbit-like animal that belongs to the family of bandicoots. It is a soft-grey silky-furred creature with long ears, robust legs for digging, pointed snout and whiskers and a long black tail with a white tuft at the end. This is one of the most widely loved of small marsupials in Australia today. The bilby lives in eucalyptus/acacia woodlands, mulga scrub and desert grasslands, is also found in numerous concentrations in the wheatbelt. Bilbies live in downward spiraling burrows during the day that can reach three metres in length. Often if you try to dig a bilby out of its burrow, it'll dig its way out of the other end.
The bilby lives almost exclusively on termites, ants, seeds, bulbs, fungi and fruit. Often approximately 50% (20 - 90%) of their faeces are sand, so they also eat a lot of dirt! They risk predation from eagles, foxes and cats and extinction through habitat destruction caused by humans, pastoralism and rabbits, they also die easily through trap and poison bait distribution.
Lessons:
Please remember that if this animal is contacting you, it will often be the best resource for teaching you what its lessons are. What I write is only intended to be a guide, it is not absolute, nor is it infallible.
- Perhaps the primary lesson that bilby helps us to understand, is comprehending the necessity in all lives for times that are known as the dark night of the soul. These are times when all hope is lost, we experience what it is like to feel truly lonely, sad, despairing and sometimes suicidal. These periods can last hours, days, months and in some cases years. They can trigger depressive episodes, and they can draw people away from all that might make them happy or content. Bilby's presence in your life is very likely suggesting that you are in this state, or that it is coming to an end and you are being presented with the resources to dig your way out of it.
- Bilby can signify a loss of faith, which is common to all people who experience trauma or despair. If you are experiencing bilby energy, chances are you are also questioning or having problems with your faith. Do not fret, bilby reinforces the healthiness and appropriateness of this process.
- When we hit times of crisis, one of the silver linings on the horizon is that there will be a recovery. How we recover from crisis - or help others recover - depends on our emotional and physical resources. We call our ability to withstand crisis; survival, and bilby also teaches us how best to survive through a crisis when all we might want to do is give up.
- On a more mundane level, bilby highlights sibling relationships and presents its energy to help reinforce sibling relationships and make sure that they're working as smoothly as possible. We might need to work on boundaries, or on letting down some of our shields with our siblings, but bilby lets us know that it's time to work on these relationships.
- Bilby often lends excellent energies to those interested in dowsing. Not just for water, but also for precious metals and sands.
- Those who work with any sort of engineering, either on a physical or spiritual level, will be benefited by the energy of bilby who is a master at engineering in substrates that aren't always ideal for construction. On a lateral level, bilby helps us engineer shields, good relationships, and other 'structures' in difficult circumstances.
- The bilby is one of the animals who can be found in the underworlds (it is thought that not all animals go here), and teaches us the mysteries inherent in the darker places of our psyches and of the world in general. If bilby has come into your life, it might be to tell you that it is time to learn about life from the shadowy places, and from the darker realms.
- Even when there is a loss of faith, bilby reinforces the idea of loyalty. For even in our darkest times there is a loyalty we have to ourselves which is never truly lost. It is that loyalty which takes our spirit into a darker or painful place to help us to learn or to grow. And it is that loyalty which brings us back out into the light again.
- Bilby teaches us how to confront darkness and face our fears. There is particular emphasis on inner darkness. Most of our fears are spawned from within, and many times we go on downward spirals, we do so because of internal dilemmas and shadows that we do not understand. Once we can name the fear, half the battle is over, and then bilby helps us to realise that we actually have the courage within us in order to persevere through the darkness that we may have hidden or run from in the first place.
- Bilby also teaches us how to connect on a very deep level with earth, soil and sand energies. If we are having problems finding the beauty or practicality of the earth or sand around us, bilby energy can come into our life to help us appreciate both the beauty and practicality of these elements in all elements of our lives.
If you have Bilby as your guide:
People with this animal as a guide will often manifest traits similar to the animal itself. I work on the philosophy that we only have one guide, and it teaches us lessons as well as representing the core aspects of our personality. Therefore -
- People with bilby guide often have very strong family ties, though they go through teething problems with their family throughout their lives. They are often found at family gatherings, and have very strong relationships with siblings and parents. This sense of family often extends past blood relations, and bilby people often merge friends into family gatherings and vice versa. Bilby people are very good at maintaining a strong sense of boundary with others later in life, after having problems with boundary maintenance when younger.
There will be other ways your guide manifests, and you will recognise them with awareness and communion.
As shadow guide/guide:
The shadow guide is the animal we often fear irrationally, that teaches us things about ourselves that are profound and difficult to confront. Often the traits we fear most within the shadow guide, are the traits that we dislike in ourselves. We must scrutinise why this is, and learn how to work with them.
- Those who are frightened or dislike bilby generally have a problem with confronting their inner selves and subconscious, particularly the parts of themselves they may not like - or the parts which require the most work!
- People who have bilby as a shadow guide or guide tend to find that they refuse to grow past traumas, and instead of recovering from depressive episodes, stay mired in darkness, refusing to ever find nourishment 'above ground.' These people may be more prone to despair, and often sap the energy of others because they live without spiritual and sometimes physical nourishment.
Contacting Bilby:
Like all animal helpers, this animal will only appear when right and appropriate, and cannot be forced to visit you, commune with you, or share messages with you. Bilby is best approached via visualisations that involve tunnels and the ground or sand. I have had a lot of success contacting bilby through hissing / singing and other vocalisations. Bilby energy tends to be quite accessible when compared to the energy of other Australian marsupials, and so will more likely turn up in journeys and visualisations when requested.
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