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Echidna - Further Investigation
Keywords:
Uniqueness. Ant and termite energy. Primitive wisdom. Focusing on the little things. Stubbornness. Stability. Remaining grounded at all times. Digging deeper. Look beneath the surface. Technology and electricity. Power. Further investigation. Scrutiny. Earth wisdom. Sifting through old thought patterns for nourishment.
General Description:
The echidna is an egg-laying monotreme, sharing this unique stature with one other animal; the platypus. The echidna is an ant and termite eater, having evolved spade-like digging paws and a sensitive snout that can send electric signals to assist in locating these insects. They are ground-dwellers, but will swim well when necessary. Echidnas will hibernate if the weather is cold enough. They are solitary, except in mating season, when a female can be pursued by many suitors in single file, sometimes for weeks. The echidna possesses spines that assist in its protection, these spines are often erected in burrows to prevent people and predators from extracting them.
Lessons and Challenges:
- Echidna teaches us the value of focusing on the little things. Paying attention to the small details in areas of finance, relationships, our home, or anywhere, can make the bigger picture that much more successful and nourishing. Take the time to look closely at the matters around you.
- As well as looking at the little things, there is something in your life at the moment which requires further investigation. It's time to dig a little deeper. This might be through research, conversation, chasing up leads or simply meditating or spending time ruminating on an issue until 'it' comes to you. Echidna energy is valuable for helping us to scrutinise problems that - up until now - have been mysterious or difficult to understand. Echidna gives you the tools and power to not only look beneath the surface, but tunnel deeply into your problems and thoughts and find nourishment from what you find there.
- Echidna comes into our lives to show us what an asset being stubborn can be! Dig your claws in, brace your spines against your threshold, and protect yourself, your family, your ideas and your creations. When you let echidna teach you nourishing stubbornness, you also access stability. Echidna teaches you to remain grounded at all times, even when you are sailing through the lands of your creative imagination, coming up with new ideas and plans to make your life happier and healthier.
- Echidna energy teaches that it's time to sift through old thought patterns in order to find nourishment. It might be time to restructure unhealthy thought patterns, or find the older, healthier thought patterns of your childhood that sustained happiness and creativity.
- Echidna energy also brings ant and termite energy with it. Working with both energies at the same time will create a greater sense of balance within your life. Chances are, if echidna has wandered into your world, your own ant energy (inner strength / concerns for the future) may have attracted it.
- In my experience, monotremes teach us about technology and electricity. Both platypi and echidna are able to use electricity to find nourishment. We too can use electricity to find nourishment. It might require learning to use new technology, embracing the media, or paying attention to our own internal electricity locked within our busy cells; keeping us alive.
- Monotremes also share a lesson of uniqueness. The echidna is a lot like other mammalian ant-eaters, but differs radically in that it lays eggs. It is a unique creature, and can come into our lives to show us our own uniqueness.
- Echidna shares the primitive wisdoms of Australia if you are patient with its teachings. This knowledge can help you to better understand your place within the land, and help you to centre yourself at times when you feel yourself spinning out of control. It is a grounding earth wisdom, and will help you connect with the deep heartbeat that sounds beneath us at all times.
- Echidna energy is strong, and lends power to ritual, meditation, and 'everyday' endeavours. Echidna energy is not so much protective, as it is empowering, teaching us how to stand up for ourselves and how to stay our ground.
The Shadow Aspects:
- If you have echidna as a shadow energy, you may find that you're flighty, and at this stage in your life frequently have your head in the clouds. Your dreaming and ideas or idealism are stopping you from living your life in a way that is as meaningful and healthy as it could be. Echidna encourages you to stop dreaming, and to start 'doing.'
- You may also avoid confronting old habits and thought patterns that are not only hurting yourself, but others too. This may be in dysfunctional relationships between your partner, friends, work colleagues or general acquaintances. Place your habits under some scrutiny and be honest, let echidna help you to see what you need to change.
Communion:
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. The echidna is more forthcoming than many other energies, though it can be shy with sharing specific messages, and may have peculiar ways of sharing its energy with you. Echidna energy can be contacted through mainstream methods of meditation and visualisation, but can also be located in Australia via bushwalking. The echidna itself is a common creature, and even though you may not see one, its energy has imprinted itself across much of this great continent.
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