Do you feel more comfortable hanging out with animals than with people? Or maybe you notice how good you feel when you’re with animals? A couple of years ago I wrote this blog
looking at the energy aspects of animals vs. people and why highly sensitive empaths often feel more comfortable with animals.
While working with a mentoring client the other day a light bulb went off and I wanted to share this insight. My client was relating how she has felt comforted in the presence of animals since she was a young child. We talked briefly about the energy connection and the unconditional love we feel from animals.
That’s when it hit me.
The unconditional love we feel from animals reminds us of the unconditional love we knew before we came into these physical bodies.
Being with animals is like “going home”.
It feels like being with God, Source, the Great Mystery, however you want to label the infinite Love source we come from.
In our human form, it’s difficult to give pure unconditional love to another because our ego is in a constant state of “protecting us” from anything that might cause a hurt (emotional, physical, etc). The ego’s job is to note experiences and then keep us safe from having to endure anything similar again. The ego learns its job from experiences in childhood and since “bad things” can happen to us at any point in our life, the ego is always on guard. Our brain is wired to protect us too…more on this next week. Unfortunately this protection from the ego (and our brain) can create problems.
The ego causes us to judge…and as long as we judge ourselves we will judge others. It’s human nature. As we learn to love ourselves unconditionally, we begin to love others without conditions. Yet even the greatest spiritual teachers of all time confess they have not perfected unconditional love. It is a continual process of accepting ourselves (warts and all), acknowledging our humanness and allowing others the same grace.
These masters and some others are exceptional at emanating love. You feel emotionally safe and accepted when you are with them but they tend to be the exception not the rule. Animals provide many of us this same feeling of safety and acceptance. They don’t care if our hair is messy or our mascara smeared. We don’t need to have achieved any amount of acceptable “success”. We don’t feel judged. As long as we show up they love us.
Some of us have been immersed in this unconditional love for brief moments here in these bodies. Experiences of being out-of-body, near-death or other spiritual awakening moments reconnect us to the awareness of infinite unconditional love. For most it is a fleeting experience we want to recapture. Meditation, ecstatic dance, drumming, and chanting are some ways of creating a similar feeling although in my experience none of these has been as intense as being out-of-body.
For many, being with animals allows them to feel this love and acceptance.
It’s our nature to crave unconditional love and acceptance. We are social animals and thrive on connection. We are seeking what we knew and felt before we came into these physical bodies. What we knew as pure Spirit.
Animals are our touchstone to remembering where we came from and who we really are.
They help us remember…
we ARE unconditional love.
and by the way…
Love is all there is.