There was a time when all the creatures roaming this Earth communed in perfect harmony. The biggest beasts and the smallest insects were your friends and helpmates. They ate as you ate, lived as you lived, and loved as you loved. When you began to kill, they began to kill; when you bit into their flesh, they bit into yours; when you slaughtered your own, they slaughtered their own. Even the insects started to bite when you believed it was fine to swat them. Have you ever wondered why they bother you at all when they have such a multitude of food to feast upon? They only attack because you have an aura that says "attack" is acceptable.
Animals don't have a mind of their own in the sense that they make contemplative decisions. They repeat patterns to get what they want. They also serve as reflective energy. Your pet can tell you a great deal about yourself because the animal takes its cue from you when interpreting life. Yes, whether you have a dog, a cat, or a canary, their disposition will mirror your own. If you're fearful, hostile, or aggressive, the animal will accordingly reflect timidity, anger, or will attack you. When you play victim, it will cower. If you're nervous, it will be edgy and if you're undisciplined, expect the animal to be untrainable. However, when you display a joyful attitude, expect to see your pet radiate the same benefaction.
If you have several pets, each will reveal a facet of your personality. How well you deal with each pet's character depends on how willingly you look into that aspect of your own. So don't expect them to return a nature to you that you don't embrace yourself.
Animals work purely on instinct and their natural instinct is to love, regardless of how you treat them. But they learn how to behave from you. Even the animal trained to kill won't feel hatred toward his victim. He just performs the task he's been taught to do.
Young animals learn how to fend for themselves from their parents, but it is my belief that the consciousness of the wild animal reflects the temperament of the wildness in man. What do you suppose invites an animal to attack? What makes you ready to? Are the two of you really so different? Abused animals react the same as you would, if abused. When they've received more mistreatment than they're capable of handling, they explode as you would in the same situation.
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What makes a wild animal tame? Some people live with these beasts in their homes with no ill effects whatsoever. In fact, owners and pets are quite devoted to one another. An animal has no inclination to harm his/her master, if all it receives is kindness and love. Why would an animal want to hurt you in the first place? The animal doesn't reason that someone took something from him and, therefore, should have to pay for his cruelty. Animals act through their instincts for survival. If a species has been threatened enough times, the members develop a new instinct that will enable them to survive.
If you have a hard time believing that all the fauna were once your friends and helpmates, ask if you have a hard time believing that of people as well. If there was a time when everyone lived on this Earth as an adoring soul in the Garden of Eden, where death was unheard of, beauty all-pervasive, and nature understood as man's own magnificent creation, how could there be animals who reflected something else? Who would have created them if God was the Creator of everything? Animals began to feel differently about the blessedness of energy when you did.
The beasts of this Earth aren't going to find a healthy existence until you find your own. God senses your widespread hope for the end of cruelty, but creating this blissful co-existence isn't about changing your eating habits or protesting the meat industry. It's about remembering that all who inhabit this Earth are a part of you.
Vegetarianism does not end brutality, it just defines your diet. Animals will stay alive when you discard the idea of killing. And when you stop killing each other, your focus for kindness will move to the fauna. If you prefer a diet of vegetables, by all means honor your pleasure. If you enjoy meat or poultry, but deny yourself because of guilt, ask what there is to be guilty about if the animal's sweet essence is already back in God's totality. When you deny what is pleasurable, you just increase your belief in denial.
The mistreatment of the animals will end when you stop mistreating each other, and this is the only healing that will work. There may be beasts and insects now who can only survive on the feeding of carnivores, but as the mass aura changes, these creatures will either adapt or perish. The same is true for the human species. As the mass consciousness decides that peace is what satisfies their inner longings, those who can't adjust will depart. Not to die in ignominy, but to reconsider why they thought the human experience was such a blessed path to begin with. Insects will cease to feed off of you if you cease to feed off of other sensate hearts, and you can test this theory individually if you care to. Bugs won't be attracted to you if you don't share their instincts, just as you won't spend time around those who don't share yours. If the entire population stopped eating that which existed through God's pulsating heart, then insects who had to survive this way would disappear.
"God's pulsating heart" means anything that lives with feelings. You are your emotions, and they connect to everything else that has them. Therefore, when you are cruel to other feeling creatures, you are cruel to yourself.
When you welcome these creatures as the gift they truly are, you receive the help you thought they would offer. When you deny that the energy around you has anything to do with yours, you live in cruelty in its purest form. This puts you in a state of isolation where nothing can care for you.
God's nourishment is an energy, regardless of the look it presents when it arrives. If this energy is bestial, take a good look at its behavior, because this is the mirror of yours. If you want your pet's temperament to change, change your own. If you want his habits to change, change your own.
The animals are here to aid your rebirth into Godliness. Be attentive to how they can teach you more about yourself. Then, when you notice their sweet inner essence emerging, you'll be sensing your own.
Animals express and embody the devotion of God, the curiosity of existence and the playfulness of matter. Study them well to know yourself.
THIS ARTICLE WAS EXCERPTED with permission from the book:
You Are What You Think: Make Your Thoughts Delicious
by Betsy Otter Thompson.
Info/Order this book.
About the Author
A native Philadelphian with a B.F.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, Betsy Otter Thompson worked as an account executive for WFIL radio in Philadelphia, and from there went to radio stations WPEN and WFLN. After that, she became a commercial print model and acted in television commercials in New York and Philadelphia. For seventeen years, she worked in Los Angeles at the motion picture and television company Castle Rock Entertainment as the Assistant to the Chairman and CEO. In August '99, she followed her boss to Warner Bros. as he took a new position there as President and COO, and became his Executive Assistant. She is now writing full time. Betsy's writing began unexpectedly while going through an especially difficult time in her life. She believes that her books were the answer to her prayers.
