by Mary Lou Randour
http://www.innerself.com/Miscellaneous/animals.htm
Animals have been the spiritual companions of humans
since the beginning of recorded time. The earliest indication of the
spiritual significance of the human-animal relationship can be found in
the 20,000-year-old cave wall paintings of Cro-Magnon people. In many if
not most cultures, animals have served a variety of spiritual functions:
They have been linked with supernatural forces, acted as guardians and
shamans, and appeared in images of an afterlife. They have even been
worshipped as agents of gods and goddesses. Many ancient creation myths,
for example, depict God with a dog. These stories do not explain the
existence of the dog; like God, the dog is assumed to have existed from
the beginning. In this assumption, these primordial people revealed
their intense attachment to their animal companions.
That animals touch us in a deep, central place is not a
modern-day phenomenon, but one that pervades the history of the
human-animal relationship. We sense that we can benefit spiritually in
our relationship with animals, and we are right. They offer us something
fundamental: a direct and immediate sense of both the joy and wonder of
creation. We recognize that animals seem to feel more intensely and
purely than we do. Perhaps we yearn to express ourselves with such
abandon and integrity. Animals fully reveal to us what we already
glimpse: it is feeling -- and the organization of feeling -- that forms
the core of self. We also sennse that through our relationship to
animals we can recover that which is true within us and, through the
discovery of that truth, find our spiritual direction. Quite simply,
animals teach us about love: how to love, how to enjoy being loved, how
loving itself is an activity that generates more love, radiating out and
encompassing an ever larger circle of others. Animals propel us into an
"economy of abundance."
They teach us the language of the spirit. Through our
contact with animals we can learn to overcome the limits imposed by
difference; we can reach beyond the walls we have erected between the
mundane and the sacred. They can even help us stretch ourselves to
discover new frontiers of consciousness. Animals cannot "talk" to us,
but they can communicate with us and commune with us in a language that
does not require words. They help us understand that words might even
stand in the way.
Lois Crisler did not use human words to achieve a
spiritual connection with animals. Instead, she used their language.
Sitting in a tent with her husband one twilight morning in Alaska, she
heard a sound she had never heard before -- the howl of a wolf.
Thrilled, she stepped outside the tent and impulsively howled in return,
"pouring out my wilderness loneliness." She was answered by a chorus of
wolves' voices, yodeling in a range of low, medium, and high notes.
Other wolves joined in, each at a different pitch. "The wild deep medley
of chords," she recalls, "...the absence of treble, made a strange,
savage, heart-stirring uproar." It was the "roar of nature," a roar that
brings us back to an essential place we have known but lost. It returns
us to nature and to creation, not intellectually but viscerally. We
recollect in the cells of our bodies, not in our heads. If we open to
it, we can make out the image of our animal kin by our side.
Fulfilling our longing for the wild, our primordial
desire to hear "the roar of nature" within ourselves, does not require
that we camp out in Alaska, or even encounter an animal in its natural
habitat. Spiritual contact with an animal can happen under quite
ordinary circumstances.
I once took a yoga class while visiting my sister in
Sarasota, Florida, in a beautiful studio with floor-to-ceiling windows.
As the class was engaged in exercise, we noticed a dog standing outside
the window, innocently looking in. The dog seemed curious, and wagged
his tail in a relaxed motion. Soon, he was joined by another dog, who
also watched us through the window. Occasionally one or the other would
bark -- not a loud bark, but a "here I am" kind of bark. For the entire
hour-and-a-half session they stood there, noses to the glass, looking in
with interest. They seemed calm, but intensely attentive, and clearly
interested in joining us. One could assign any number of explanations to
their absorbed interest. I think, as did others in the class, that they
picked up on some kind of "positive energy" generated by our collective
yoga practice.
I put quotes around "positive energy" because I don't
have precise language to describe what I think the dogs sensed. And that
is the point. They were able to perceive, and experience, something some
of us are dimly aware of and would like to understand, but cannot find
words to describe. Animals can teach us to live outside of words, to
listen to other forms of consciousness, to tune into other rhythms.
It was the rhythm of music that one musician, Jim
Nollman, used to communicate with whales. Along with several other
musicians, he recorded hours of human-orca music in an underwater studio
every summer for twelve years. Positioning their boat so that the whales
would approach them, the group transmitted their music through the
water. Most of the time the orcas made the same sounds, regardless of
whether the music was played or not. But not all the time. For a few
minutes every year, a "sparkling communication occurred. In one
instance, the sound of an electric guitar note elicited responses from
several whales. In another, an orca joined with
the musicians, 'initiat[ing] a melody and rhythm over a blues
progression, emphasizing the chord changes."'
An uncanny meeting with a whale proved a decisive
spiritual moment for another person, a retired female teacher who I have
enjoyed hiking with in northern California. While hiking along the
ocean, she decided to rest on a large, flat rock jutting out over the
depths. She lay there, relaxed, listening to the sound of the water and
the sensation of the breeze on her body when, she reports, she felt a
presence: "The hairs on the back of my neck went up; I was compelled to
sit up." Sitting up, she saw a whale, resting perpendicular on her
fluke. As her eyes met the whale's, time stopped. As they gazed at each
other, the woman entered an eternal stillness, feeling an unmatched
intensity. Difference dissolved; words were irrelevant. She felt a deep
sense of connection with all of life. No longer restricted by the
categories of "them" and "us," she felt herself flow into a seamless web
of existence in which all of life is one. In complete harmony with the
whale, this retired teacher felt that she inhabited a web of relations
some call "God." She had encountered God in, and through, the eyes of a
whale.
Cross-species communication may be so extraordinary
because we cannot rely on identifying with the creature the way we
identify with human beings for connection. Our human relationships are
often based on relating to a being like ourselves: We can identify and
empathize with each other because we share similar experiences. Of
course, there is nothing wrong with this. The ability to identify with
others forms the basis for personal relationships, social bonds, and
social justice.
Animals, however, offer us a unique opportunity to
transcend the boundaries of our human perspectives, they allow us to
stretch our consciousness toward understanding what it is like to be
different. This stretching enables us to grow beyond our narrow
viewpoint. It allows us, I believe, to gain a spiritual advantage. How
can we possibly appreciate and move toward spiritual wholeness if we
cannot see beyond our own species? How can we come to know God, or grasp
the interconnectedness of all life, if we limit ourselves to knowing
only our own kind? The goal of compassion is not to care because someone
is like us but to care because they are themselves.
Any spiritual discipline, in any tradition, invites us
to open our hearts and minds. This invitation represents an ongoing
exercise; the desire and attempt to open to others in our midst are the
essence of the spiritual process.
Animals can lead us spiritually in a variety of ways.
They can teach us about death, participate in our social and moral
development, enhance our physical and psychological well-being, and
heighten our capacity to love and to experience joy.
This article is excerpted from the book Animal Grace by
Mary Lou Randour.
�1999. Reprinted with permission of the publisher New World Library,
Novato, CA 94949. www.nwlib.com
800-972-6657, Ext. 52
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