Spirituality for Living

What if in the course of acting out animal instinct, one fails to see beyond their own desires and harms others? That is a valid point. Can you avoid doing any harm? In trying to avoid harm, is it proof against your harm? If you refuse to engage, can that not itself cause harm? In pursuing instinct you may cause harm, but I offer that it will be controlled. Instinct isn’t an excuse for licentious behavior. Those extremely selfish acts are the product of human thought, of human rationality, not of instinct.  A child gets hit by a peer, the instinctive reaction is to hit back, not go all berserk and bloody their face.  Just to strike back, and it’s done.

Repression creates a pressure cooker experience? Yes, I speak against it. A person disrupting a meeting likely felt he had a moral or ethical agenda for being hostile.  Likely he felt quite justified and thus took an adversarial stance. Repeatedly offering poorly considered criticism. My friends, I respect other peoples thinking, their views, feelings and intuitions. If we are in the same place in our hearts only good comes from it. He was offended not by the topic but by the weakness of his own stance. People are free to not further attack the meeting, or we are free to respond. This is in fact very animal. It is spooking the herd.

Here is another example, have you ever tried to argue with your pet? Convince it of anything? Rationalize your behavior to it? It doesn’t work. Should it work? Should you be able to rationalize your behavior to your dog or cat? Should they care? They do remember when it’s feeding time, and they don’t rationalize feeding time either.

In contrast to that I offer a story. My aunt had a very normal beagle, not at all interested in humans beyond a functional sense. He loved to run through the woods chasing rabbits and such, just being very much a dog. He didn’t seek petting and didn’t want to play with people. Once after a heart rending bout of criticism from my grandmother, I found myself totally despondent. I couldn’t think straight and I collapsed to the ground weeping in despair and did it for a while. This beagle (they named it Snoopy) came and crawled into my lap having never before shown any indication that he liked me. As I shook and wept he began licking my palms. For no reason I could tell he just was determined to lick my palms, not my face, palms, and he didn’t stop until I calmed. He rested with me for a bit, and then took off to chase rabbits again. Now should I have been able to rationalize my thoughts with it? It was quite at peace after, so is an animals thinking foolish just because it’s animal?

I have heard of dogs picking up on nervous human traits? They can and do. We are more connected than even just a mystical notion can show.  I knew a Shit-tzu that refused to let people hit anyone. They could yell all they wanted, but hitting would get you bit. This little dog didn’t care. You hit, it bites you. He was named Huggy and was otherwise very friendly.

Beagles do what beagles do, and humans do what humans think we do and often fail to do, but we don’t know it. We convince ourselves we’re doing stuff.

There isn’t the animal world and the human world, it is just the world. When considering what you should do remember you aren’t alone, and we are more kin to life here than we are strangers. We are only as estranged as we choose to be. The great spirit, wakhan tanka, ruach or the fire of life, the blessing of the sun, it’s the power of the whole world, chi. Tai chi was taken in large part from animal movements as was other forms of kung-fu.

So be well friends. If you’re feeling growly, hey why not growl? Want to hibernate? If it won’t make you go hungry maybe hibernate for a bit. Feeling the need for physical contact? Why supposedly is it immoral to crave what your instincts give you? You are alive in an animal world.  Find your brothers and sisters, they can maybe teach you something.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~

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