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  • Home
  • About
    • The Happy Fan Club
  • Offerings
    • Redesign Your Life 2.0
    • Get Creative
    • Personal Coaching
  • Creativity Conversations
  • LET'S CONNECT!
  • Blog
    • Live Free Your Way
    • Seeing Things Differently
    • Mistaking Assumptions for Truth
    • How Humor Keeps Us Sane
    • Know Thyself
    • Peach Pie for Breakfast
    • Explore Experience Express
    • Should You Be Downshifting?
    • Stop the Hustle!
    • Do Your Habits Serve or Sabotage
    • Settle Down? Down Where?
    • What Lights You Up?
    • Saying Yes When Your Mind Says No
    • Independence From What?
    • Letting Ourselves Off the Hook
    • Letting Go of Assumptions
    • Is Kindness Allowed?
    • How to Throw a Wrench in the Works
    • Happiness
    • Daring to be Lighthearted
    • What Happens When You See Things Differently
    • Find Delight in Everyday Life
    • Are You Saying What Needs to Be Said
    • Is Your Life in Alignment
    • Are You Trapped by Your Past
    • Can You Love Your Life
    • The Hallmark of Creativity
    • Out Of Ideas?
    • Waking Up to a New World
    • Are You a Possibilitarian?
    • Want to Love Your Life?
    • Is Creativity Necessary
    • What's Stopping You?
    • An Unexpected Discovery
    • Free Your Mind
    • Is Your Creative Genius Hiding
    • Empty Headed or Clear Minded?
    • Is Stress Really Necessary?
    • Will Creativity Improve Your Life?
    • Is Creativity In Your Future?
    • Replace Fear With Love
    • How to Get Out of Your Own Way
    • Just Take A Moment
    • You Don't Have To - You Get To
    • The Good News About Being Stuck
    • Interested in Inner Freedom?
    • Are You a Hoarder?
    • What Remains
    • Co-vid 19 Free Pass to the Roller Coaster
    • Grace Under Pressure
    • Now is the Time To Notice
    • Hanging With the Wrong Crowd
    • Make Your Life Simpler
    • What Could Be Different For You
    • Everything is a Miracle
    • Do You Have A Negativity Bias
    • Are You Really Seeing Or Just Assuming?
    • Happiness and Resilience
    • Wherever You Go, There You Are
    • Is Stress Making You Sick?
    • What I Wish My Humans Knew
    • Looking Backwards
    • Daring to Change Course
    • Lost in Thought or Taking Action?
    • Still Can't Focus?
    • Do Your Thoughts Get Dark and Gloomy?
    • Can't Focus?
    • An Instant Formula for New Ideas
    • Talk Yourself Out of Another Great Idea?
    • Is Your Busyness Keeping You From Getting Things Done?
    • What's that Feeling In the Pit of My Stomach?
    • How Cool is This?
    • How to Make Your New Year Happier
    • Why Be Open To Life?
    • Simple Ways to Transform Your Life
    • Get Clarity and Confidence
    • Are You Driven by Fear or Love?
    • The Number One Way to Keep Your Vision Alive and Well
    • Why Stop Trying to Figure it Out?
    • What Are You Trying to Prove?
    • Do Your Goals Reflect Your Hearts Desire
    • Why My Cat is My Spiritual Teacher
    • Surviving the Holidays
    • 3 Convincing Reasons
    • 3 Secrets to Enjoying the Holidays
    • 5 Quick Steps to Get Your Mojo Back
    • 3 Ways to Keep Your Energy High
    • 5 Reasons to Do Good
    • Pain Relief for the Soul
    • Tired of Living by the Rules? Go Rogue!
    • What? You've Made a Mess? Excellent!
    • Why You Need to Be Inspired Now
    • Change Your Life in Just 48 Hours?
    • The Cure For Mental Overload
    • 5 Infallible Ways to Stay Inspired
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What I Wish My Humans Knew

9/23/2019

1 Comment

 
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Last year, when my cat's health was declining, I wrote a piece called Why My Cat is My Spiritual Teacher. Recently, as a member of Michael Neill's Emerging Voices program, I was given a prompt to write from the perspective of my cat as he made his transition. The following is what emerged.

What I Wish My Humans Knew (on behalf of "Grayman" aka "Earl Gray" (the Cary Grant of cats).

First of all, when I was in a physical body, I had the best home any cat could have wanted: I could roam free, climb trees, chase butterflies, feel the sunshine on my fur and snuggle down on soft beds inside the house when the snowstorms raged. But best of all, I was adored by my humans. And I adored them.

I remember hearing Nina laugh about how John Edward, the American medium who talks with the dead, used to sell his services to people who wanted to make a "really, really long distance call."

But for those of us who are no longer in the physical bodies we once occupied, there's no such thing as long distance. We've never gone anywhere. The love that connected us is still as strong as it ever was and it always will be. Contrary to what most humans believe, that love never dies, it just changes the form in which it's expressed.

Humans attach a lot of importance to being in a body: how it looks, feels, what to do to protect it, keep it healthy, prevent it from getting old, and fearing the day it will die. And they have the same response to other things they care about: they want to hold on to them as long as possible and they fear change and loss.

After I left my body, which had simply worn out after many years of a well-lived life, Nina used to say - a lot - that she missed the "purr and the fur" of me. And of course, grief is a natural response in the physical world. But she often made it worse by the stories she told herself about why it shouldn't have happened and what it meant that it had.

She had fallen into the mistaken thinking most humans have, which is that when the bodies they love are gone, whether human or animal, the love is gone too. But that's the farthest thing from the truth. They just forget where or how to see it. Instead of love being contained in the form of a single body, that love is now free to be everywhere, in everything, all at once. When water evaporates, humans know that the water hasn't disappeared but has simply changed form. They don't mourn for it. They see it as a natural occurrence. But they seem to forget this natural change in form when it comes to love being in a body.

Humans have a funny way of dividing life into good and bad, then avoiding what they think is bad so they only have to experience what they think is good. But life just is.

We can't really know something unless we have something to compare it to. We know joy because we know sadness. We know kindness because we have known cruelty. I'm not sure that you can really evaluate an experience without having something to compare it to. To try to live by only accepting one aspect of life and only feeling the so-called "good" feelings is to only live half a life. It is to live only on the surface, without much depth and without the full capacity for kindness and love that come with living a full-spectrum shared experience with the rest of the beings on the planet.

We animals know, in a way most humans do not, that beyond the basic physical instincts for safety and survival and comfort, that the body is a vehicle through which the energy of life flows, in just the same way as the wind flows through the trees. That energy is made of love. Some wiser humans know this, but most do not.

Animals have no trouble slipping out of the body because we don't find anything wrong or bad about the idea of it. Of course, we love our human companions, but we also know that the love we shared is always there, and we find little ways to keep in touch - through dreams, through memories, and sometimes even making guest appearances so they can actually see us out of the corner of their eye.

When humans are able to set aside their thinking of what should and shouldn't be, they're able to notice so many subtle expressions of the love they once shared with the one who is no longer in physical form.

When they think their hearts are broken, that's only partially true. Their hearts are broken open, not apart. And with that opening, they can, if they're willing, see how love that was formerly shared just between two beings has now expanded into an unimaginably beautiful ocean of love that supports and surrounds everyone everywhere.

It does take a little bit of practice to see this, but I think my humans are starting to catch on to it...


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