#28: Introspection and Accidental Initiations?

I can't say that I'm really into numerology, but I am constantly amazed at how certain numbers will almost jump out at me and attack my attention.
That's right, I said attack not attract, because for the last year it's like my whole life has been under attack from the universe in a way.
So, I've been forced to retreat from life and lick my wounds, so to speak.

My rented unit #28

The biggest upheaval happened last year when my wife divorced me after a 25 year marriage and the house I had grown to love had to be sold, so the money could be divided and I had to find a place of my own pronto.
I wrote about that house and house number in this old post -
Animal Dreaming at 40

My old house #40

As luck would have it a unit came up that was pretty much what I wanted for the time being and still a short drive from work and quite handy to everything I was used to.
Although not long after I moved in I was made redundant from the job I had for the last two years, so it didn't really matter about being close to work anyway.
It was no big deal, as I was planning on leaving that job at Christmastime once the money from my divorce came through, as I was tied of that routine and some of the people who worked there, so I felt it was time to move on anyway, as it was a sinking ship in more ways the one.
As luck would have it they had to put workers off and since I was the last one on it was only fair that I was the first one off, which suited me fine and gave me about 10 weeks pay instead of me having to work those weeks out and then quit.

#40 in the World Animal Dreaming deck.
Marriage/Loyalty?-)

So, the funny thing was when I was unpacking all of my books into my new rented unit, I found a deck of World Animal Dreaming cards that I had purchased when I saw the author of those cards about a year before, which I wrote about in this post -
Mind, Body and Spirit Festival; June 29th 
I was really after my other deck of Animal Dreaming cards that I drew the #40 Kangaroo card out of for my Animal Dreaming at 40 post, but those cards must have still been packed away in one of the many boxes that I still had to unpack, so I decided to see what card 28 of the World Animal Dreaming cards said to see what my new unit number had in store for me at this residence.

It was the Black Bear card and was about introspection.
Reading what the card meant in the book sounded spot on, too.
"The Black Bear is a wise, meditative fellow who would rather listen to his own counsel than seek that of another.
He encourages us to follow suit; to silence the inner chatter, to sit in silent contemplation and to find the answers we seek within the solitude of our own mind."
Which is what I have been doing for the last few months really, since I took that card out of the pack to see what it represented, as far as the #28 on my front door goes.
"The Bear's cave represents the womb of the Earth Mother and the wisdom stored deep within the subconscious mind.
As such, the cave is a symbol of growth, with the act of entering being a return to the centre of the sacred self, a death of sorts, and our emergence signifying the act of rebirth"
Oddly enough, my own mother is battling what appears to be a losing battle with lung cancer at the moment, where the doctors have stopped her chemo treatment because the tumor is still growing, so now they are going to trial her on some new drugs to see if they will help.
Meanwhile, my father is in hospital with dementia slowly eating his brain and has to go into a full time care facility and my subnormal brother has already gone into a home, because my parents can't look after him any longer, so this year family life will be real tough and I'm not looking forward to it at all. 
"Black Bear teaches us to release that which no longer serves us, thus making way for new beginnings.
The Black Bear may appear aloof but in reality because of inherent sensitivity to the world around them, they are simply filtering and integrating what their conscious mind is showing them to be real in relation to what their subconscious instinctively is reminding them of what they KNOW to be true."

Well, reading the rest of what it says about card #28 seems eerily relevant to my present life situation, so it would seem Scott's new deck has come through with flying colours for me, once again.

I also find it quite a "coincidence" that the year I move into #28 a movie about a guy surviving one of the grizzliest (pardon the pun) bear scenes in cinema history, also happens to star Tom Hardy, the guy I wrote about in this post -

“Exit, in pursuit of a bear” - Work in Progress ... ;-)

Which I wrote a post about not long ago -
The Secret of 'The Revenant'
Not only that, but Dan Haggerty (Grizzly Adams) has recently passed away.
‘Grizzly Adams’ Star Dan Haggerty Dies

Dan Haggerty (Grizzly Adams)

 Life is definitely strange. 

Hmm ... crawling out of the
Earth Mother's womb?

P.S.

The Lord of the Ring riding a bear?-)

When I was Googling for bear pictures from the movie The Revenant, I stumbled across this picture of Putin riding a bear, and since then I notice I've been getting a lot of Russian traffic to my blog in recent months, I thought I would include this picture in the post, as well.

It's funny and it reminds me of my old post about Putin and the Russian Olympic games where he thought he was Lord of the Rings -
Lord of the Missing Ring?
I see nothing much has changed there since the games, as far as Putin's thinking goes. 

Pure Evil's artwork of a thug stealing
an Olympic ring from 2012

Same ring in the
Russian Winter Olympics 2014

Update: 27th January, 2016.missing
Marie just left a comment below about a bear ad doing the rounds in the U.K featuring bears and the Cyndi Lauper song 'True Colors'.

I replied back with this comment (misspelling Cyndi's name as well) -
"Ha, that link was funny and ironic in more ways than one to me.
One, I happen to be quite fond of that song and saw Cindi Lauper sing it live in Brisbane when she came out touring when the song was on the charts way back when and my ex-wife was also with me then.
Two, the bear ad is about family life and being together, while the #28 card with the bear on it is about being alone and introspection.

And three, there was also a Phil Collins version in the side bar of that bear ad in the You Tube page, a version I never knew existed before.
Of course, I've written about how I don't particularly like a lot of Phil's songs anymore because I used his version of 

'Groovy Kind of Love' for my wedding waltz.
I wrote about Phil Collins in this post -
The Clockwork Orange Effect?
Also ironic, is I've started writing my next post about music and a sense of place, which revolves around a book I recently finished reading called 'Sing and Don't Cry'.
The post after that was going to be about Shamanism.
The Trickster can be a cruel teacher it would seem with a wicked sense of ironic humour."