Animals Teach Us
Spirituality
by Mary Lou
Randour, Ph.D.
 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 sense 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:
Animal Grace: Entering a Spiritual Relationship with Our Fellow Creatures
by Mary Lou Randour.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher New World Library, Novato,
CA 94949. ©1999. 800-972-6657, Ext. 52. www.nwlib.com.
Info/Order this
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