Animal Teachers
Since time immemorial animals have been humankind’s spiritual companions. The earliest indications of the significance of the human-animal relationship can be found in the twenty thousand year old cave wall paintings of the Cro-Magnon people. In many if not in most cultures, animals have served a variety of spiritual functions. They have been linked with supernatural forces, acting as guardians and shamans and appearing in images of our true home, the world of spirit. They have even been worshipped as agents of Gods and Goddesses sent to our world by the Highest. Many ancient creation myths depict God with a dog. Although these stories do not explain the existence of the dog, the primeval people revealed their intense attachment to their animal companions through the belief that dogs existed from the beginning, like God.
That animals touch us in a deep inner place is by no means a new discovery. It is a phenomenon that pervades the history of all human-animal connections. Somehow we have always felt that we could benefit spiritually from our relationships with animals, because they offer us something fundamental and that is an unspoilt sense of the joy and wonder of creation. Witnessing how animals feel much more intensely and purely than we are capable of doing, we may yearn to express ourselves with their abandon and integrity.
Animals reveal to us the characteristics we can only glimpse in ourselves, but nonetheless form the core of our true inner self. The structure and organisation of their societies, as well as their behaviour patterns can tell us a great deal about the instinctive reactions of our lower earthly animal nature. It is possible to sense through our relationships with animals how we can recover that which is true within us. Through this a better understanding of the spiritual direction of our own life can be found. Most importantly, animals teach us about love. How to love, how to enjoy being loved, how loving itself is an activity that generates more love and the way it radiates out and encompasses an ever larger circle of others.
Animals share their whole being and their abundance with us and invite us to do the same. They teach us the language of the spirit. Through our contact with them we can learn to overcome the limits imposed by our individuality and the notion that human beings are all different from each other. They can help us reach beyond the walls we have erected between the mundane and the sacred, and stretch ourselves to discover new frontiers of consciousness. Although animals cannot speak to us in human languages, they can and do communicate with us in ways that do not require words. They show us how words often are not even helpful and can get in the way of understanding.
To paraphrase Mahatma Gandhi, I believe that the evolutionary level of any person and nation, as well as of our whole world, reveals itself in the way we treat our animals, not merely those we keep as beloved pets, like cats, dogs and horses, but all of them – loving them sufficiently to refuse eating them.
Recommended Viewing:
• ‘Mother Polar Bear And Cubs’
When one considers the size, power and might of this magnificent creature, isn’t it all the more astonishing with what patience and tenderness, love and kindness she takes care of her offspring? A mother bear is at all times prepared to defend them, if need be with her own life. Could there be a finer manifestation and worthier demonstration of the meaning of love anywhere?
* * *
The above is a chapter from ‘Astrology As A Lifehelp In Relationship Healing’.
If it has whetted your appetite to read more, please follow the link below:
‘Astrology As A Lifehelp In Relationship Healing’
