This great photo came Friday from friend Andy over in the UK. He didn’t provide much information with it, not that such a beautiful photo would be in need of such. But I would like to speculate a bit about it.

Andy and I have been email pals for several years, as he first started writing to share his thoughts related to various podcast episodes I posted when I first started. Though we’ve never met in person, I know for certain that Andy is definitely a seeker, and I know he practices meditation in order to stay centered in his life. So I’ll guess this photo appears to be an example of how one’s inner peace can spread to every being nearby. It's quite apparent that Andy's dog ally, Tilly, is in that wonderful energetic space that Andy established through his peaceful heart while they walked along the picturesque English countryside. It's a bucolic scene all of us would love to experience in person.

For sure, the photo can represent how peace can spread out into the world. It can start with one and spread to the other, then on and on. Peace is a symbiosis among many. But it is also a dynamic, which gives it power.

There are times, for example, when a beautiful friendship will reverse my speculation and prove that it is our animal friends who will offer us the chance to enter into serenity and peace. I experienced such an opportunity just yesterday.

I was rushing around like a wild man! I had so many things I wished to accomplish, but was not managing very well. Everything seemed scattered and resistant. At one point, while preparing to write an article about how to make a small medicine bag, I temporarily placed one of our small pouches next to the Grandmother Drum (link will open new window) in our home. I was distracted for a bit, and was grumbling and agitated when I finally returned with the camera to photograph the pouch. Instead, I discovered one of our family members had been drawn to it and was waiting to offer me a chance to slow down and find my center.

Flash, our usually very active kitty, was so sanguine and peaceful. He had connected with the good medicine in the pouch, and had simply decided to be with it in a way that was meaningful to him. And I realized he was reminding me, helping me to reconnect with Spirit and to regain my balance.

If you have an animal in your midst, you know how it can have such a positive effect on your outlook. But even if you don't, there is a certainty that you are surrounded by spiritual guides and teachers, many of whom are totemic animals.

There is ample evidence on cave and rock paintings, pottery, and other artifacts which indicates our ancient ancestors had an abiding reliance on animals and their spiritual counterparts for help and healing over countless eons. Even modern society, with all of its technological prowess, continues to remember that old, old knowledge of the special gifts of animals, even though in mostly superficial ways, like in the names of athletic teams, or automobiles or the like. There is a science, though, working on animal communications and the like, called interspecies communications. (It was even big in the UFO field for a while, I recall, and may still be, when applied in an attempt to understand alien language.) I heard a news report a few weeks ago that scientists were about the crack the code language of dolphins. I doubt that effort will get much further, however, until or unless such an approach includes "interspiritual" communications, too. It will not be so impressive when science finally figures out that a certain dolphin sound or sonic emanation equates to something like "cold water," or "big ship." But imagine what a scintillating discovery it would be if a dolphin were to mention God. Wow!

It will never happen, though, unless science opens up its willingness to allow room for Spirit.

Besides, the code has already been broken. Shamans and other spiritual seekers and explorers have practiced interspecies and interspiritual communications for millennia. Like ancient peoples, we—you and I— possess the animal instincts deep inside that allow us to connect in meaningful ways with these beings, if we but open our hearts and power down our egos for a while. Whether in the flesh or in spirit, animals know much more than we about many things. And they show us how to communicate with and learn from them and All That Is in the simplest and most beautiful way.

Just... being. Dialing out distractions, letting loose of worry, fear, expectation, cutting through the mind's chatter. Slowing down and simply allowing the emergence of our inherent state of sacred s-e-r-e-n-i-t-y... and peace.

Seems to me the world would be a much better place if, say, political leaders, business executives, religious doyens and scientists would spend more time with the animals.

Aho & Namaste,
Bob

PS: Thanks for the photo, Andy. And thanks to Tilly, too!