Why is it that we always try and teach animals OUR language? And why is it such a stretch of the imagination, to consider that we could learn theirs?
Humans often regard animals as simple or undeserving of consideration, and at worst, as possessions, purely a food source, or just something they can use for their own sadistic pleasure and amusement, but I believe our clawed, pawed, finned and winged ones, are the ones who are above us in many respects.
Animals live in synchronicity with their environment and communicate primarily through the senses of sight, sound, touch and scent. So far, this system appears to work well for them; they've been doing it for billions of years after all. Compared to humans, they are the ones that are still in tune with the tides and cycles of nature; they are the ones who still migrate when their senses and instincts guide them too; and they are the ones who still live in respectful alignment with the land and other creatures, hunting only when they need, not wasting anything, certainly not hunting for fun, and they leave left overs for each other. They learn, they forgive, they defer or submit to another when necessary and they can work together in harmony. Above all else, they are capable of deep feelings, of love and commitment as seen in many species that mate for life as well as the protective instincts of mothers willing to die to protect their baby from danger. They are the ultimate empaths.
Learning how to speak the animals’ language is where it’s at, and this is something that I have known, and worked and played with, all my life, since I started talking to faeries in our backyard and having afternoon chats with our family schnauzer, a sweet little soul we inherited from a backpacker returning to Germany, called ‘Geejoh’.
When we travel to another country we make the effort to learn a few words of the local language to not only make our trip easier, but to also show that we care enough to connect with the other persons' culture and values. It shows respect when we extend this courtesy to another human, and yet how often do we show similar courtesy to animals when we encroach on their territory and expect them to show up and perform for our cameras? We don't ask their permission to come into their personal space, we just arrive as if it is our right. We make lots of noise, we leave rubbish everywhere and we disturb their daily (and nocturnal) routines and their natural habitat. If another person behaved like that on our turf, our noses would certainly be out of joint, and yet we consistently see animals all around the globe, graciously tolerating our presence and quietly coping with the effect our expanding numbers are having on their own. Worst case scenario is where they are forced out of their territory completely, into unknown areas that can throw their breeding cycles out of whack and even lead to extinction, as we are seeing more and more each year.
Yep. Mother Nature and the animals are speaking to us. But are we listening?
I have always known I could talk to animals – of all kinds – but it’s taken most of my adult life to embrace this gift fully and without fear, AND to make the deliberate choice to use my talent for the greater good of all. Now when I encounter any skeptics I just let it wash over me instead of trying to justify my beliefs or convince them that it works. You can’t make someone believe something if their heart is closed, no matter how much of a universal truth it is.
Legend has it that eons ago when man decided that he was the headmaster to all within his domain, that this was the exact moment when he lost the ability to communicate with them, and since then, well, it’s pretty self explanatory isn’t it. We have, as a collective species and one that has been here for the least amount of time, managed to royally fark the planet up for every other being that shares it with us. Ecosystems and biospheres included.
Yes, everyone – not just the herbal spiritual ones or those who live on farms, have grown up with a menagerie of pets or those who have been born into an established lineage of shamanic or esoteric practice – is an empath that can talk to animals.
We are ALL cut from the same fabric of existence; we are all borne from the one heart-womb; that of Great Mother GAIA. We are all just remembering this, at different times, when we’re ready to.
An indisputable truth that applies to each one of us however regardless of our stage of personal development, is the truth that every single being whose soul has incarnated on this planet, at this particularly potent time in evolution, has consciously CHOSEN to be here and is therefore a valid and valuable part of the co-creative collective matrix.
Yes, even the power-hungry politicians, animal abusers and environmental rapists that those more awakened among us, pity (and often understandably dislike intensely to put it mildly) so much. Disliking someone intensely (replace with your own passionate adjective here) is a great motivator to wake up a dormant empathy by the way. Those machine-like humans act as powerful triggers for those who are living in denial of their true selves and are needing a bit of a push to sit up and take notice. They inspire you to give a shit basically, even if initially it is just out of concern for your own personal welfare, for without stimuli and passion, humans fall into complacency and energetic slumber. We NEED a certain degree of agitation to remind us of what is important, to us and within the world, and that involves being exposed to the often unconscious and cruel words, beliefs and actions of our fellow man.
Of course when I say this, I do not mean to insinuate that it is good to hate another or direct any negative energy to another person of course, but we are human after all, and that is part of our character, whether you admit that or not. And it has nothing to do with how many Aum’s you recite each day or how herbal you regard yourself. We are all working with ego and its’ various flavors. What I mean here is that when you feel any kind of emotion, good, bad or indifferent, that has surfaced through interaction with another or as a result of you witnessing something, then it is up to one to decipher that reaction and work to clear it within ourselves, so it no longer disturbs our balance and integrity. Every emotional response we feel is valid – be it anger, hate, grief, greed, envy and the like – the task is to explore each vibration as consciously as we can and strive to upgrade it so it moves from shadow back to light as graciously as possible. If you try and see those things or people, as gifts not grievances, then you will start transmuting energy with much greater speed and ease.
Animals are the masters of communication and sorting out inter-species differences. They have specific displays to let each other know when a boundary has been crossed; they use color, movement and sound to their advantage to communicate their feelings and intentions, and when pushed to their edge, they will defend/protect their family to the death if necessary. This is the law of nature where every being knows its place in the greater scheme of things. Man is yet to learn where he fits in.
If we are to survive as a species and not take every other being down the tube with us, it is imperative that we start to talk to the animals again. It is vital that we learn how animals communicate and how each clan contributes to the continuation of life on this planet. We need to remember our tribal roots and to listen closely to their whispers, howls and gurgles, in order to ensure a sustainable existence, a harmonious and abundant existence, for every living being. This involves each one of us connecting to our empathic self once again.
So what exactly is an empathy in ‘denial’, in ‘dormancy’ or ‘fully activated’?
Denial by nature means refusal to face the truth, the ‘what is’ or the reality of any situation. You can see it and your heart may even sense it to be true, but your clever ego and well constructed, patterned inner dialogues, convince you that it isn’t so. They (aka YOU), make you doubt, YOU.
To understand this energy, it’s important to go back in your mind and your heart, to childhood, for this is where doubt most likely got the chance to plant its’ first seeds within you. Feel back in time, to when you can first remember feeling left out, ostracized by your peers, perhaps neglected by your parents, or any memories connected to an experience around rejection and lack of support. You didn’t feel as pretty as the other girls in your group, or you couldn’t hold your own as well as the other boys when everyone’s testosterone started to rise. In those moments, you would have made an unconscious (or sometimes deliberately conscious) choice, to take that critique on and make it part of your energenetic makeup. You chose to believe you were less than, inferior or subservient in some way, and this would have instantly hooked into your sacral plexus as a seed of trauma and disbelief in yourself, as well as feeding into and reinforcing, any inherited stories and patterns. Your sacred inner waters would have been altered, polluted in some way.
Or maybe it was the opposite for you. Maybe when faced with any of the above suggested experiences, you sparked up and refused to take on anyone else’s shit. Maybe that very experience served to empower you more and helped carve a deeper sense of self worth, value and voice for you. We are all different obviously and when we are young, we do tend to react rather than respond because we haven’t yet mastered our minds or our hearts or developed enough self awareness to discern every moment with a healthy dose of mature reserve, acceptance and patience.
Still, your fluid body and how your specific essences of security, safety and self expression move, would have been redirected within you. Doubt has infused this flow.
Some people take all their life to learn this one too lol, so it’s not necessarily a given as you age (!), and many people don’t master this one, ever. Some may wake up as they lay on their death bed, realizing they could have made higher decisions and chosen more consciously, during their reccky on earth, and that’s all part of the story of being human, trusting that we will receive everything we need, as we need it, in alignment with our highest path and purpose on this plane, and regardless of whether it looks palatable or is appropriate to other people or not.
What happens to somebody else is actually, none of our business, and yet we take everything so personally don’t we?! It's really not a healthy space to live in.
Either way, in each and every challenging moment, we have made a decision to either accept or deflect the energy, the lesson, and that is where our conditioned mind comes in and starts arguing with your naïve heart, that what you are feeling isn’t real, that if you give that sensitivity too much attention, you’ll end up getting hurt (even damaged further) and that you have to soldier on and stay in the ring in order to survive. Kill or be killed kind of mentality, that still exists in each one of us of course, remnant and residual energies from a time where we were literally fighting to survive and fending off sabre tooth tigers; as well as other tribes competing for food and shelter.
Every choice any of us make is either motivated by love or fear. Doubt is a tributary of fear.
But whilst we don’t live in that primitive reality anymore, we do still share the same cellular memories as our forebears. We are still vulnerable to modern day predators in the form of big business manipulating our societal beliefs and behaviors; technology and how it influences and controls everything in and about our lives; plus, the ever-present threat that supplies and resources on the earth are going to eventually run out if we don’t do something to protect and repair them and start living the "do no harm" principle a little more deliberately.
Which leads us to the next empath frequency, ‘in dormancy’.
Each one of us is solely responsible for our experiences in this lifetime. I’m sure you’ve heard this one before, and it is a tough one to ingest because it asks us to defy everything we were taught growing up. Things like, “When you behave like that, you upset your mother”, or “When you say that, it hurts my feelings”, or one of the all time favorites thrown about with repetition, “You make me so unhappy/angry/sad. It’s all your fault!”
Now I’m not advocating giving up all moral sensibilities and doing whatever the heck you want without any regard of others or of consequences, in fact it’s the exact opposite. What I am asking you to consider is interpreting the words and actions of another, through a completely different filter, one of neutrality and presence, for when you do this, you begin to dislodge and dissolve your own wounded stories that have accumulated within yourself through years of playing the blame, guilt and shame game. When you can receive someone else’s story and NOT take it on and just hold them as they are, and as you are, in that moment, you set BOTH of you free from repetitive relationship drama. Not to mention the karma you clear when you let go of taking on everything else for everyone else! I know this one intimately, trust me.
When something is dormant, it is essentially asleep, so in order to shift that reality, you need to create some sort of ‘big bang’ or electrical, energetic impulse, to literally wake it up and into participation mode.
This is why so many people manifest a ‘wake up call’ in the form of an accident or illness, to bring their attention to what they are doing with their lives and where they are stagnating or switched off.
Think back to a time in your life where you can remember being activated to change things, through an intense experience or trauma. It may have been a divorce or being retrenched, which led you to eventually finding your true soul mate, or following your creative dream that manifested as a totally new career path for you. It may have been that first moment you watched a video showing whales being slaughtered by the Japanese, or sheep, cows or pigs being tortured and transported inhumanely for human consumption. It might have been the footage of a wild baby dolphin being caught and shipped off to an aquarium to spend its life in isolation from not only family, but its own kind. Maybe it was a post on facebook showing rescue animals on death row that tugged at your heart strings and made you want to do something to help.
Whatever it was for you – or is yet to happen for you – it will certainly be a cathartic moment in your life and one that will serve to wake you up from that dormant empathic state, into a life where yes, you will feel everything intensely, it hurts a lot to witness and you often feel the pain of those you can now connect with, but it’s a hell of a lot better, and ultimately more empowering, to FEEL like this, than it is to not.
Why? Because it puts you in a position of choice, which then leads to being in a position of power to do something positive in the world.
Connecting creates change and change creates connection. For ALL creatures.
This knowledge reminds us that we are living alongside other species and systems, not above them.
The third expression is one of the fully awakened empath; one who sees, feels, integrates and then takes ACTION. One whose animal instincts and psychic senses are alert and aligned with their surroundings.
In the past, empaths have often been viewed as weak, susceptible beings, by others as well as by themselves a lot of the time. The propensity to self-sabotage is huge with those who feel deeply, all of the time. I know, as this was me once and I remember feeling totally overwhelmed by all the information I was able to channel into. I started neglecting my body, my diet, and became consumed with the messages I was seeing, almost like an addiction, but without a way out, or forwards. And nobody else understood; save other empaths who were equally tormented with their abilities. All I wanted was to switch it off a lot of the time because it was so painful. Luckily I didn’t turn to drugs or alcohol as many do to try and numb themselves. I found yoga and that was my savior for sure. It got so bad at one point before that, where sometimes I could literally taste the blood of animals in my own system and I could hear their cries as I lay down to rest at night. Even as I walked around during the day, I would sense things happening in different parts of the world as these creatures - and ecosystems too – reached out for help. I had trees and landscapes calling me as well. It was a very full on phase of my life!!
Back then I didn’t know what to do with it, and I struggled until I did.
It’s taken years of daily practice, of developing personal healing rituals, of studying and of exposing myself level after next level, to arrive where I am today, at a place of even deeper connection and receptivity with all that is and all those that live within all that is, and yet, not traumatized by all I witness and commune with.
The work of the empath is vitally important on the planet right now. Do not give up if this is you, waking from one vibration and transiting to the next.
If you’ve been in denial, acknowledge that, forgive yourself and ask Spirit for help as you now expand. If you’ve been dormant and unwilling (and unwittingly) to grow beyond your boundaries of experience, forgive yourself and ask Spirit for help as you now chose to rise. And if you are now living as an open channel for all beings, or certain species or ecosystems in particular, ask now for the strength, the protection and the guidance to take your goddess-given and seed-soul chosen gifts, to the next level. Ask to be the conduit for your fullest expression and experience at this precious time on Earth, and trust that in doing so, you not only inspire others to do the same, but you fulfill your own purpose as is destined.
* Crack your heart wide open and listen to Mother Nature.
* Ask your animal guides and totems to reveal themselves to you and share their individual powers with you.
* Get outdoors to meditate and pause for a response.
* Breathe into every cell of your intuitive being and ask to be shown what’s next for you and how you can best be of service.
* Practice ritual daily as a way to anchor and develop your gifts.
* Believe in yourself and your own unique abilities, no matter what anyone else says or does (or doesn’t say or do).
* Call in your tribe to support you so you don’t feel so alone.
* Surrender all human wounding and stories from the past, and all your past lifetimes, so you create the inner space for more self recognition and evolution.
* Keep a journal and record your dreams and visions for these are your greatest markers and teachers.
If you feel to reach out for any guidance or support, please do. I’ll be offering private and small group courses in empathic animal communication in 2019, and each retreat that I host next year, will incorporate this work at the sacred sites we visit. When we connect in this way, with the animals and the land, our abilities amplify and we are more likely to initiate long lasting changes in our lives, in our lifestyles choices and to influence awakening in others as well.
Remember, we are animals too. Intelligence is not measured by money or achievement in the natural world; it’s all about self love, community collaboration and mutual respect. It’s about playing your part in the telluric tapestry and being your best so that all life thrives and survives.
So, wherever you are and however these words resonate for you, I hope you hear the call from inside your own divinely guided heart and feel inspired to wake up, show up and level up as your fullest and finest self with all your spooky, woo-woo brothers and sisters now!
Empath, the world NEEDS YOU! Let loose your ROAR and RISE!
AUM
* And yes, the image of the leopard has a double meaning here: I will be leading a retreat to Zimbabwe in 2019 to connect with the Motherland and the Spirit Animals there, so if you're keen, let me know.
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