Embracing Deer Medicine - The Flower of Kindness

by Marguerite Uhlmann-Bower (with the help of Bonnie Kavanagh)

How do we as holistic healers interface our work in a society which values the material? How can we prevent our healing work from getting caught up in the disconnected system of things? How can we develop a belief paradigm where our true intentions can originate from a place of integrity? Clarity? Open hearted gentle loving kindness? Where our authentic selves may walk in beauty.

Our hopes for today’s class are to share with you Deer Medicine concepts. For the purpose of re-defining our old belief patterns, for not only increasing the quality of our healing work as practitioners, (for friends and our own well being). But to also not loose site of the underlying reason we have accepted to walk this path as healers on this Earth, of this planet, for the Nature that we are.


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The story of Deer Medicine as told by Jamie Sams and David Carson in their Medicine Cards book: 1999
”So gentle and loving you are. The flower of kindness, an embrace from afar. One day Fawn heard Great Spirit calling to her from the top of Sacred Mountain. Fawn immediately started up the trail. She didn’t know that a horrible demon guarded the way to Great Spirit’s lodge. The demon was trying to keep all the beings of creation from connecting with Great Spirit. He wanted all of Great Spirit’s creatures to feel that Great Spirit didn’t want to be disturbed. This would make the demon feel powerful. and capable of causing them to fear him.”

”Fawn was not at all frightened when she came upon the demon. This was curious, as the demon was the archetype of all the ugly monsters that have ever been. The demon breathed fire and smoke and made disgusting sounds to frighten Fawn. Any normal creature would have fled or died on the spot from fright. Fawn, however, said gently to the demon, ‘please let me pass. I’m on the way to see Great Spirit’ ’’.

”Fawn’s eyes were filled with love and compassion for this oversized bully of a demon. The demon was astounded by Fawn’s lack of fear. No matter how he tried, he could not frighten Fawn, becauses her love had penetrated his hardened, ugly heart. Much to the demon’s dismay, his rock-hard heart began to melt, and his body shrank to the size of a walnut. Fawn’s persisten love and gentleness had caused the meltdown of the demon. Due to this gentleness and caring that Fawn embodied, the pathway is now clear for all of Great Spirit’s children to reach Sacred Mountain without having to feel the demons of fear blocking their way. Deer teaches us to use the power of gentleness to touch the hearts and minds of wounded beings who are trying to keep us from Sacred Mountain. Like the dappling of Fawn’s coat, both the light and the dark may be loved to create gentleness and safety for thos who are seeking peace.”

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The following is our experience with and our interpretation of Deer Medicine. Along with hours, days and years of group work in sister-hood to this Earth. The wise work of many gifted healers and mind seekers (see resources), and, the Fifth Dimension Protocols from the channeled books of Telos and Seven Sacred Flames (see resources).

It is here we share 3 simple steps for opening up our hearts to a new belief system (yet very ancient) using the principles of Deer Medicine and the book of don Miguel Ruiz, Mastery of Love. And, … we apply these principles to our varied activities of daily living circumstances. What we hope for? Solution for deepening our trust in Divine Universal Wisdom. Deep Truth.

This offers us the potential to catapult ourselves to dissolving our perceptual distortions, disharmonies, counter-balances, … our negative internal dialogue (defaulting beliefs) or even more insidious our subconscious sabotaging beliefs. Deer’s gentle, loving kindness ways with her source rooted in gratitude and Great Spirit, guides us to shift from a fear based mode to an allowing, open hearted, healing relationship mode. From the wounds we’ve carried for millennia, to the knee jerk, emotional, button pushing reactionary hurts. Deer and don Miguel’s 3 step process of love shows us how eventually, these wounds (layer by layer) can disappear (or not have the same grip on our self-worth, work and vision). We become better able to face our ‘trials and tribulations’, from bleeding its poison (belief’s) into our well-being that can lead to various dis-eases.

These believes come as reactionary emotional hurts to our psyche, taking over as high-jackers of our wits. Producing feelings of resentment, anger, guilt, shame, doubt, despair, distrust, fear. However FEAR is the bottom line, triggered from all unskillful beliefs and judgments (be they conscious or subconscious).

A Few Examples of Beliefs We Face in our Healing / Work:
1) Events or Social Impacts:
a. state licensure
b. one size fits all protocols
c. FDA
e. institutional policies
f. sickness
e. death

2) Someone or Something:
a. industry / trade organizations
b. accountability
c. liability
d. cancelled client appointments
e. irritating personalities
f. aggressive personalities or passive-aggressive personalities

3) Self-Inflicted:
a. waking up on the wrong side of the bed
b. self-criticism
c. continually allowing our boundaries to be leaky
d. “living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see”
quote by John Lennon

By applying the following to one or more of the above to your own circumstances, along with Deer’s gentle loving kindness and don Miguels 3 steps to love, our daily challenges, needs, wants, thoughts, feelings and actions suddenly become a whole lot less controlling over our lives. Its because our authentic selves makes itself known. We become clearer as to who and what we really are and want. We begin to be 100% ourselves, 100% authentic, 100% of the time. Well, at least as close as possible to 100% of the time. The world transforms before our eyes. We’re empowered rather than over powered. Better able to maneuver our core truths in a complex world which tries to keep us asleep. In fear. Under control.


The Basic Three Steps:
use Truth, Forgiveness and Love (by don Miguel Ruiz in The Mastery of Love)

1) We start by telling the truth
Fawn had one awareness. And that was in the truth of Great Spirits (along with her own as there is no separation) connection to all beings. Therefore she was not frightened when she came upon the demon. She derived power from Great Spirits connection in truth. We all have this innate connection with Divine Oneness. And as Eric Ericksons Stages of Development depicts, trust is the very first stage we enter this life with as infants. Unfortunately, most of us in this very vulnerable first stage of development, discover distrust instead. Basically - fear.

How can we apply Deer gentle loving kindness principles for ourselves?
To do this we first must get past the wall. This wall is the programming we’ve been and still are being bombarded with. Those lies and judgments we believe to be true. These lies and judgments hold back from fully finding our inner most truths.

So we start with soul searching questions. Getting in a quiet place in order to hear ourselves reply. And, writing the answers down to review later on, and we ask…what belief systems limit me? What judgments do I still hold? What do I know to be true about me? Do I love myself unconditionally? Do I trust myself? What do I feel guilty about? Do I accept myself? (see resources: Telos Vol. 3; Feeding Your Demons, Biology of Belief; Mastery of Love, Heal Your Body).

Don Miguel Ruiz in Mastery of Love challenges us to look at our struggles as though they are a wound (such as our demons, emotional garbage, emotional hi-jackings). The first think he says we do when we approach a festering wound is to open it to see what’s going on. Truth telling is the way we open up to our inner most resistances and fears.

We open the wound with truth:
We do this by asking ourselves the above and other challenging questions. When we do this, the questioning, then the listening, writing and re-questioning …we come face to face with our inner most truths. We begin to understand what walls are keeping us in distrust and fear. And we begin to get past the very source of our distraction and resistances.

This then brings us to the next step, we got to clean out the wound. What do we do that with? ...forgiveness.

2) What comes next is forgiveness
Fawn was unable to see the ugliness and fear provoking ways of the demon before her eyes. Why is that? Why did she not see this fear provoking being?

How can we re-create this same guiding force of Deers gentle loving kindness in us and apply this for ourselves? By searching the garbage inside us. Those which cause our buttons to be pushed and our old wounds to bleed. Those that still thrive in the depths of our being. That we often default to in times when our boundaries are leaky, when we give our power away, when we play small.

We clean out wound with forgiveness
This second part of our ‘wound care’ as don Miguel challenges, is to take action by cleaning out the wounds debris [the subconscious and conscious garbage, the emotional baggage] with forgiveness [self-forgiveness]. And with forgiveness we can begin to clear out those past hurts, layer by layer. We learn to accept ourselves for all we’ve done or perceived we have done or how we had harshly judged ourselves or another. This second step is a most powerful step. By listening to our answers and accepting them through forgiveness, we suddenly find the demon has no hook on us. There’s no big evil machine causing us to hurt. To worry. To feel anger. To feel separated. The demon was only a segment of our belief system. A result of all our years of programmings and judgments.

Now, the next thing we do after cleaning out the would, we now need to help get that wound to heal and close up. We do this with love and compassion.


3) We right things around with love and compassion
Fawns eyes were filled with love and compassion for this demon. And so no matter how they tried, they were unable to scare Fawn. Her love penetrated the demons heart. No longer does anyone have to feel ‘fears’ blocking their way to truth.


This heals the wound with the medicine of Love and Compassion
Love and compassion heals all things, is the catalyst and accelerator of the medicine needed for wound healing, and which is the same for every being we encounter. Inside us or outside of us. In our heart of all hearts. Love and compassion holds the key. Love and compassion is the language of Oneness. Of seeing Great Spirit in all beings and all things. All things.

The above is a life long arduous process of releasing our ego mind (demon) albeit in layers. Forever. As long as we are here on this planetary plane. Yet, we will always require this ego mind to be here with us until we’re done here. It helps us get around in our daily life. Like knowing when to cross the street, eat dinner, cross your ‘T’s’ and dot your ‘I’s’. And that ego mind can also be our barometer too. That is, it can be our ally and assist us to recognizing when ones deep dark defaults rear its ugly head. This can actually guide you rather than take you down the rabbit hole. Once you know and practice these things, you most often now have a choice if you want to go down that rabbit hole or not. That ego mind, if used correctly, can open up our awareness to our deep divine truth of love, compassion, and gratitude for ourselves. And then, others.

Basically this is like a re-alignment to the unified presence where truth informs our thoughts, … thought informs our emotions, … emotions informs our actions. Since action speaks louder than words, truth is exists or does not. As we fully employ this, right before our eyes we are transformed and fully empowered unified human being.

Remember: how ever we view ourselves, this is how we view the world.
It percolates from within us into our presenting personality.

Helpful hints when applying these 3 steps of don Miguel Ruiz and Deer Medicine vision:
The inherent frequency of the heart (oneness) is trust, gratitude, receptivity, wonder, acceptance, passion, openness, connection, inter-dependence, joy, integrity – these frequencies align with truth. Allow this to percolate through your personality.

The inherent role of mind (ego) is to learn, store knowledge, analyze, intellectualize, quantify, qualify... However, we get stuck in the minds sticky egoic patterns of control, dictatorship, separation, independence, distortions; its demands, restrictions, and genetically speaking, it’s pre-disposed patterns to believe in fears (demons, beliefs, and defaults). These are programmed patterns for our survival, which is not needed in all daily activities now.

So, as you work with this, say out loud:
- hello Marguerite, I’m glad you are witnessing the world
- my mind is in service to my heart
- my heart guide’s me to rediscover the language heart consciousness

Resources / Further Reading:
Blackfoot Physics by F. David Peat
The Nature of Consciousness by Rupert Spira
The Living Energy Universe by Gary E.R. Schwartz, Ph.D &
       Linda G.S. Russek, Ph.D.
Erik Erickson’s Stages of Psycho-Social Development
Animal Medicine Cards – Jamie Sams & David Carson
Animals Speak by Ted Andrews
Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm by Stephen Harrod Buhner
Feeding Your Demons by Tsultrim Allione
The Mastery of Love by don Miguel Ruiz
The Four Agreements by don Miguel Ruiz
Children of the Sun Foundation
Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian L. Weiss, MD
A Course in Miracles as channeled by Helen Schuman
Heal Your Body by Louise L. Hay
Telos, Volume 3, Protocols of the Fifth Dimension by Aurelia Louise Jones
The Seven Sacred Flames by Aurrelia Louise Jones