When there are sad things going on in the world, I often spend some time with the dogs and donkeys, and this often has me thinking about what I have learned from them that is interesting and perhaps useful.
They don’t use technology. They don’t need it.
Despite our epidemic projection of human thoughts and ideas, they are nothing like us.
They live in the moment.
They use what they need.
They kill when they have to, and only then.
They do not know guilt or shame.
They do not embrace conquest or covet other things. They do not create destructive things. They are not greedy.
They do not seek or need money.
They do not hate, gossip or persecute.
Their identity is about acceptance. Life and death, weather and loss are not dramas for them, or surprises, not “Storm Center”, but the very nature of life itself. It seems that only humans deny the reality of the world around them.
In this way, animals have achieved much of the spiritual life people like me seek.
Because the purpose of a spiritual life for humans, if you think about it, is what animals naturally possess.
In this way, they seem to know much more than we do, even though we insist on thinking that because
we love them, they are like us.
They are not like us. They are not better than us.
They are not worse.
They are in many ways, on a much different plane.
They can teach us a lot.