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A Spiritually Enlightening Online Magazine. March's Theme: "Action and Inaction" It's a testament to the powerful insight of creativity that one of the biggest keys to deeper communication with all beings — be they four-legged, two-legged, winged or gilled, or even hidden aspects of ourselves — is summed up in the name of one of the most celebrated animal communicators of all time: Dr. Dolittle.
The good doctor was created by writer Hugh Lofting, who had such great fondness for animals that he invented an inquisitive veterinarian who embraced the task of learning their language. Lofting wrote over a dozen books celebrating the exchange of thoughts and ideas between humans and animals, thus inspiring many readers to regard the furred and feathered in a very different way.
Although Dr. Dolittle is fictional, it's intriguing that Lofting chose that name. For central to effective communication with animals is the realization that there is little we need do. In fact, the more we scurry around trying to do this or that — buy a book! take a workshop! buy a universal translator device! — the more we tend to negate our innate abilities. Thus, we further remove ourselves from a genuine and personal deep-down connection with all life.
The Taoist sage Lao Tzu puts it this way: There is no need to run outside for better seeing, nor to peer from a window. Rather abide at the center of your being. Search your heart and see: the way to do is to be. Exactly!
On the other hand, if we don't do things, how does anything get done? It's cool and smart in a Zen-like way to say that all will get done when we learn how to 'be', but how does this work, really? How can we learn to talk with animals without 'doing' anything? What does finding ourselves through be-ing actually entail?
The short answer reveals itself more easily through experience than words. It is often accompanied by a slide step of consciousness in which we shift from not so much doing something as realizing that something is doing us. We all know the feeling: we're so engaged in writing, cooking, loving, walking or daydreaming that it suddenly fills our world. Easily, effortlessly, we become an open channel, an organic conduit pulsing deeply with the flow of being. Yes, our body may be writing, cooking or walking, but our conscious awareness is no longer just skimming the surface. We are larger, fuller — a human being celebrating be-ing. The words flow, the chopped carrots slide into the pot, our foot presses down upon the earth and suddenly, inexplicably, we know who we all really are.
The Tao Te Ching has this bit of wisdom to share: By letting it go, it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try, the world is then beyond the winning. There's some good truth and advice held in those few words, not only for life in general but for opening ourselves to conversing with animals, plants, mountains and stars, too. By letting go — by lessening our addiction to doing, doing, constantly doing — we naturally deepen into being. Simple and elegant!
As we open our awareness to the energy that flows through all life, we open ourselves to instant relationship. Authentic, personal, deep down I-know-you-in-my-blood-and-bones-and-soul relationship. We know that we share a common awareness, for we feel it flowing through us, connecting us with every other living being, uniting us in one amazing song: a richly complex and harmonized uni-verse.
In such a spacious state of consciousness, all manner of meeting and dialogue and sharing is possible. In doing little, we feel more. We are open to more. Yes, of course, we still do: we make breakfast, go to work, walk the dog and talk with our family over dinner, but something has changed. Our doing is no longer hurry-up-and-get-it-over-with doing; rather, it is infused with the sparkling presence of being. Everything suddenly holds magic and mystery — how could we have not seen this before — for our doing is filled with being.
Dawn Baumann Brunke is the author of Animal Voices, Awakening to Animal Voices and the recently released Shapeshifting with our Animal Companions. Her books explore the deeper nature of our relationship with animals, nature, each other and ourselves. For more, see Dawn's website.
Be sure to read the reviews of her book "Awakening to Animal Voices" in our May 2005 Issue and her book "Animal Voices" January 2006 Issue.
Volume 7 Issue 3 ISSN# 1708-3265
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