Life – The Greatest Teacher

When I was young I had a dog named Trixie. I called her Trix-Rabbit for short (why, I don’t know, since that name is longer). The dog constantly amazed me. She was a small dog that had been abandoned by her previous owners. They had taken her into the basement like any other time, locked her in, and then had simply moved. She had to survive down their by hunting anything that she could find. She almost starved. One day, finally, someone just happened to open the door and she got out. She spent a lot of time after that roaming around with a homeless man, until I got her and brought her home.

She was a beautiful, intelligent dog, but she had the visible marks of a very difficult life. She would often walk with her head down and her tail lowered. Whenever we went to the park, or wooded areas, this would change. She was totally transformed as she raised her head, waved her fan like tail, and dashed out across the open fields in regal form. As many female dogs often do, one day Trixie got pregnant. We waited for her to have the puppies. She disappeared somewhere, and then came home thin. Where were the puppies? We discovered them under a porch up the street.

I crawled under the porch, got the puppies and took them home as she danced around with a look of concern on her face. First I took them into the basement. She had been scared to go into a basement since the betrayal by her previous owners. She cared so much about the puppies, that she forced herself to come in. I eventually took them upstairs to the back porch and left them there, where she nursed them. When the puppies were old enough to be weaned we took them to a neighbors house because it was time to go on vacation. My sister stayed home with the dog, but was working, so she couldn’t care for the puppies. Apparently, however, somehow this dog discovered that the puppies were in a house several blocks away and had been making daily visits.

When I got home from vacation, here came Trixie running. Every time I tried to pet her she ran. This happened several times, like on Lassie, until I finally followed. She led me right around several corners to my friend’s house. When I got there he told me that Trixie had come to his house the previous week in the middle of the night and had stolen all of the puppies. He was about to go crazy because he didn’t know what had happened to them. The next day my sister called him and told him she had found them all hidden in the basement of our house.

This dog who had been abandoned in a basement and who would never go into a basement as a result of that betrayal, had hidden these puppies in the basement. She had slid them in through a back window. Could she have been that clever? I wondered. It seemed that her love for these puppies had overridden her fear of abandonment.

When I see things like that and the things that dog went through during its life-time, I wonder about animals and the way human talk about them. We seem to think of them as a series of glands and organs with no souls. I wonder if this could just be part of the “masters of the universe” human mentality that is so prevalent in the age of science. When we speak of animals having feelings we are accused of anthropomorphizing the animals. I think, some times, that what we are really doing is un deifying human beings.

When we think about our own pets and the way that they communicate with us and show us their feelings and personalities, can we honestly sat that they are just a bunch of glands and organs with no persona on the inside? When we look into the eyes of our pets most of us who are sensitive see something more than firing glands inside of them. Why it is so important for human beings to see themselves as the only thinking, feeling beings on earth?

Many people in their theories about the fall of human beings take pride in the fact that humans were supposed to have been the highest of all created beings. I even question that. Who says that human beings were and are the highest of anything? Humans wrote those books. If a dog would have written them God may have barked the universe into existence. If we look at nature and observe animals we can see that they have a certain type of intelligence. They work very well with their environments to live the best way possible. We humans think they aren’t intelligent because many of us have learned to lump them in with the environment and then separate ourselves from it in our heads, and to work outside of it or against the it. In the west nature is even described as an enemy that needs to be conquered sometimes. Perhaps that way of thinking was necessary for a time, though I doubt it. Now I think that it is important for us to reclaim our innate intelligence. It is important to learn how to work with the environment and the earth, and to realize that every being on this earth has the right to survive and has intelligence. It is important also to realize that if there are any such things as souls they are not only the providence of human beings.

The fact is that the name animal comes for the root word animus, which means soul. It is therefor ridiculous to say that something named soul doesn’t have a soul. This, I think, is something to take into consideration. Throughout history before it was acceptable to brutally exploit a person or thing, it was necessary to objectify it and take away all of its sacredness. This, I think, is the reason that we separate ourselves from animals and the environment. Instead of doing this, however, separating so we can exploit things without feeling discomfort, it is time to work with the environment accepting the fact that some things have to die so that others may live, and that we owe a dept to all of the plants and animals that die so that we can live. The debt is to make the world the best it can be. It is to remove all of the necessary pain and suffering of all beings on this earth and enhance their ability to have life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

This is old thinking: thanking the animal for giving its life so that we can live. Even though it is old thinking, it is right thinking. In actuality that is what is happening every day of our lives.

Dr. J. W. Gilmore is a Writer, Spiritual Coach, Anti-oppression Consultant and Wellness Consultant. He is a Certified Massage Therapist and Reflexologist, a Reiki Master Teacher, a Martial Arts Instructor and a Spiritual Coach living in Costa Rica. For more article like this or similar information, and information on our new Cyber School, visit: www.dswellness.com.

Reunion of Souls, Dr. John W.Gilmore. A book of deep spirituality in Sci-fi form.