Animals as Spiritual Teachers

This is our dog Dusty. He is my spiritual teacher!!! His love is so unconditional.
He is always "here now or in the moment." He loves to play. When he is tired he sleeps and doesn't worry about what did or did not get done. He is always happy to see me no matter what time it is and always willing to give me kisses and he never holds a grudge!!!!!

ANIMALS AS SPIRITUAL TEACHERS: AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. BERNIE SIEGEL
By Sharon Callahan


Sharon
How does our relationship with and treatment of animals relate to our own spirituality and unfoldment as human beings?

Bernie,
If one respects living things, one does not become self destructive. Life has meaning and our relationships are the nature of the meaning and the reason for living. We must recognize animals are our teachers and are living their unique purpose and path. We have the free will to make it meaningful and, in effect, so do animals. They decide. They are more loving, more soulful, less intellectual. That makes the difference. I think because we think it interferes with our completeness. Many of our abilities, senses, especially the intuitive, are blocked by our thinking. Things animals know, and plants know, we don't become aware of love, danger, all kinds of things intuitively sensed. Animals sense. We would be thinking and could not detect these subtle changes that are, nevertheless, scientific changes. They're physical changes involving chemistry. We don't pay attention to our feelings. I say this to people with illnesses.When somebody says "What do you want to do?" ask yourself "What feels right?" The other thing I always tell people is that animals don't live in the future. They live in the present. In other words, they're not worrying about tomorrow and they aren't resenting yesterday. As a matter of fact, at workshops I read a long list of ways to behave. At the end of the day if you can do these, you're almost as good as your dog. People have no idea we're talking about an animal. (The list contains) things like not needing drugs and not resenting people and all the things we judge and animals don't.

Sharon
So it's a matter of being award of the subtle things, isn't it?

Bernie
Yes. I have to say I test this a lot with our animals. They read my mind. There's no question. When I walk towards them thinking about brushing their teeth or cutting their toenails, they scatter. But if I walk into the room to read a book they don't budge. If I go for the nail clippers or the comb, no one seems to wait for me.

Sharon
Who is in your personal animal family?

Bernie
Right now, we have four cats and a home bound rabbit. Before that we had three dogs and many ducks and geese and literally hundreds of animals in the house. When I say hundreds I'm talking about guinea pigs anything with fur that was willing to be cuddled. We had some exotic pets because the veterinarian would send things to our house that people got tired of or didn't know how to care for. We had a house full of animals. They all became part of the family. I made the children learn. If an animal can be brought up, you will become an expert. You will read. You will learn and it will become part of the family. Everybody had a name. Everybody, basically, lived free in the house. We had dead trees in our house that all the creatures could live in. We had crickets all over the place that we fed the reptiles. They would get themselves into our shoes. What it meant later, I realized, was that the children developed a reverence for life. Nothing was injured. They didn't step on bugs, they put them out. Injured birds would be brought in. It taught them about love. One of the greatest lessons came from a recovered pigeon that moved into our yard. It knew our schedule. One day it left. Our daughter was in tears. She had rescued it. It had been hit by a car. I said, "Honey, don't. We're not waiting for a phone call from this pigeon. If he found a girl friend and they flew off somewhere, you should be feeling wonderful about having saved a life, not sad that he didn't love you enough to stay or even send a card." I may add we had to learn how to deal with death. I'd come home from the hospital having dealt with it all day long and be confronted with sick turtles and guinea pigs. That used to get to me. I can't save everybody's
life. Death and illness are there and you have to deal with them, you're going to have that happen. And then there's the joy of hatching turtle eggs and having these little creatures as big as your thumbnail growing up in the house.

Sharon
How do you think our relationship with and treatment of animals reflects our spirituality and our unfoldment as human beings?

Bernie
We tend to love our animals more than ourselves. We are less judgmental of animals than we are of ourselves. I see that over and over again. I say to people in workshops, "Please treat yourselves as kindly as you can." We grow up with shame and blame and guilt. Very few people grow up totally loved. So we're doing self-destructive behavior but not letting our animals be exposed to it. My hope is that animals will bring us back to our spirituality and soulfulness to help us remember God loves us just the way we are. That's something I've truly learned from the animals. They never stand in front of a mirror discussing their appearance or asking to be shampooed. They just know who they are. We'd be concerned about how we look and what people will think. There's a reason we feel down on a bad hair day. It leads to depression and emotional difficulties. It's not just a statement. It literally means something. Animals don't have bad hair days. They don't identify and I think the process connects us with us our spiritual growth, with the idea that there's more than just this external appearance. You become much kinder to yourself, you are not doing things you did in your earlier life that were self-destructive. I shaved my head over five years ago. What I learned is that the mood business influences our whole decision about our bodies. A Veterinarian once reminded me that animals wake up with a broken jaw or leg yet they are joyful. It helped her realize "I am not my body and I am more than that." The other thing my animals taught me was about love and how much it heals. One of my dogs had developed a melanoma. The vet said he had never seen a dog this sick recover. So I told our children we'd had to put him to sleep. They said, "You can't. You don't put your patients to sleep so you can't put ours to sleep." I had to bring this poor, pathetic dog home. Once I had made the commitment to bring him home, I thought "Ok, I will practice what I preach." I gave him all kinds of vitamins, massaged him, just loved him. What happened? Oscar got up, got better, went out into the yard and lived for years. He really taught me that what I am preaching does work! You give love and the creatures respond, whether they're people or animals.

Sharon
What do you think people can do to enhance spiritual life for their animals?

Bernie
My first thought is a quote from one of my children. One morning as they we driving me crazy at breakfast I said to them "Why can't five children get along in a house full of animals?" One of them said to me "The animals get on because they're all the same color inside." I say it to people. We're all God's creatures. We're all one family. We have differences. We recognize each other. It makes life interesting. Basically, we are the same. Just ask a surgeon who opens people. He'll tell you we're all the same inside. You don't have to know and study each person. You know what they will be like.

Sharon
Animals aren't that different inside either, are they?

Bernie
That's right. When you're underneath the skin, we really are the same. When you can really sense and feel that, you look back at creation (and realize) we really are part of the same thing.

Sharon
How do you think we can expand awareness to people so they can begin to consider the possibility that animals are spiritual beings?

Bernie
I'd have to get back to parenting. If we grow up loved, we get that reverence for life. Then I think it's easy to have these other things happen because you experience living things. If you go into a nursing home and give the residents a goldfish, they begin to do better. It doesn't even have to be through touch, just some contact with other living things. But when you grow up not understanding life, meaning when you give up your life to make everybody else happy, you're much more likely to take other lives rather than to stop and think about eliminating what is bothering you. If we grow up with the right parents or have someone teach us what our parents didn't a school teacher that brings in what life is about, a religion that teaches us to love each other rather than destroy each other in the name of that religion all these things can be brought together. Animals, as in Susan McElroy's book, are teachers and healers.The reason they are so effective with people with handicaps, in nursing homes with illnesses is because they teach us what we should have known as we were growing up; that we are loved; that we are forgiven. All of these are wonderful, spiritual messages the animals are giving.

Sharon
How have you experienced the roll of animals in the healing of people's bodies, minds and hearts?

Bernie
In several ways. Animals live in the moment, like children. If they come home with an illness, they don't say "Oh my God, what's the point of eating. I don't want to go out into the yard and have any fun today." They want to eat. They want to go out in the yard. And this focuses you on what you have, not on what will happen. Truthfully, if you live fully and do what you love, who knows where you'll be in a year or two, as opposed to getting depressed and crawling up and dying. Animals show us we are loved and lovable irregardless of our physical development. We always loved our dog I named Tripod because he had three legs. Animals don't see themselves as handicapped. They demonstrate that wholeness isn't related to our bodies. I also feel strongly about the value of touch. If people were covered with fur I think we'd all get along better. Just touching an animal the warmth of their fur is such a wonderful feeling. Last but not least, animals express their emotions when they experience them. They are like children. If they don't like what you're doing, they make noise. If they want to be loved, they demand it. I can be at my computer and they'll walk up and howl until they get their back rubbed. A human baby would bellow if it were hungry or if it wanted someone to hold it. As we grow up we don't let people know we need their love. We repress things. Animals help us know it is ok to express feelings, even anger if you don't project hate. A dog's growl expresses anger. A cat hisses, and you know to leave it alone.

Sharon
How do you feel human beings can help in the healing of animals, animals who have been abused?

Bernie
It may be that we abuse animals because the animals are subjects of what we haven't gotten from other people. A person who would do that, that kind of personality, could go on to killing high school students. A person who grows up with a reverence for life, knows animals aren't to be treated that way, that they are precious creations. They may need discipline. But they also need our love. If you don't treat living things badly, then not only wouldn't you abuse animals, you wouldn't abuse your neighbor or yourself. Love thy neighbor as thyself and love your animal as yourself. But if you don't love yourself, how are you going to love your animal? Often people get so much love from their animals that's who they start to love first, before themselves. There are people who I ask if your animal was allergic to your smoking, what would you do? "Oh, I'd smoke outdoors," they tell me. People who were writing to "Cat Fancier Magazine" sort of blew my mind. A woman's cat died of cancer, two more had asthma. It ended up with her smoking out in the yard so as not to expose her cats to cigarette smoke. The magazine praised her for this. I had to speak up. I wrote in and said, "Excuse me folks, I think you should make the point that she's killing herself and her husband too." I'm constantly bringing that up to people because they can hear that with a smile. They know they are paying more attention to the cat than to themselves or their children.

Sharon
Most people know they're doting on an animal in a way they cannot dote on themselves but they really don't know how to care for themselves in that way.

Bernie
Yes, they have to be re-parented. The animal may be your parent letting you know you are worth loving. It may be a doctor who cares for you. It may be a school teacher who says "You're a great kid. It's not about your grades." Somebody can come along and let you know you're not the defect, the problem. You are a child of God, not a horrible creation. Animals who love us help us learn that we are god's creation and we may do dumb things and act in strange ways but we'll be forgiven and go on and practice and rehearse and become the person we want to be. All of the major poets loved animals. They say the same thing I say. If I can be with animals and children, fine. If I have to spend the day with grownups I'm not to happy about it. We realize grownups have been wounded. Maybe that's something else the animals teach us. It's sad. Every time you read in the paper about abused animals, there are thousands of phone calls. "We'll take them! We'll take them. We'll take them." If you read about abused children, nobody calls. Maybe the animals can connect us with the fact that we're all abused, all wounded and we need to be kind to each other. I think we should start an ASPCH-American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Humans. Laws were passed to care for animals, but not for humans. What amazes me is that one can take the most horribly abused animal and, with a little love, brink them back into good shape. The same is true of people. If you persist in loving them, when you punish them they eventually begin to really transform. The kid who's a devil, the patient who just ignores me, are both testing me. They're asking, "Am I worth loving?" When you have a dog who isn't behaving. You train them. You walk them to the fence. You don't blame them. You work with them. You are less likely to work with children who are difficult, to say I love you and let's work on it.

Sharon
Why do you think that is?

Bernie
It's our view of each other, how we judge each other. With an animal we get down to the feeling instilled by how it was brought up. Why don't we say that about our kids? If a kid was abused, stop blaming. Try to understand. I don't have to like what another person is doing, but if I can understand, I can forgive and love and move on from there.

Dr. Bernard S. Siegel, who prefers to be called Bernie, attended Colgate University and Cornell University Medical College, where he graduated with honors. His surgical training took place at Yale New Haven Hospital and the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. He practiced general and pediatric surgery until retiring in 1989.

In 1978 Bernie founded Exceptional Cancer Patients (ECaP), an individual and group therapy based on "carefrontation," a loving, safe, therapeutic confrontation enabling everyone to understand his or her healing potential. He has written extensively about the mind-body connection in medicine, and has consistently encouraged patients to take an active role in the healing process.

The Siegel family lives in the New Haven, Connecticut area. Bernie and Bobbie, his wife, have written many articles together and have five children and many pets. Their home resembles a cross between a family art gallery, a zoo, and a museum.