The Spiritual Nature of Animals. Karlene Stange
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Six months later, I tried to find the verse Polly quoted about the body and soul being reunited, but could not. I wanted to ask Polly, but I learned she had died. A friend suggested I speak to Polly’s son, John. So I invited him to have tea with me.
John said the verse came from the book of Isaiah. He also told me about Polly’s painful back injury. Surgery had not helped, and the pain medication made her sick. Then one day, no one could find her. John called out telepathically to his mother, asking her to tell him where she was. He walked across their many acres and found her, perhaps somewhere near where their old horse died. She had shot herself.
John also remembered the horse fondly; only he and his father could ride him. The steed had indeed saved his father once by carrying him safely out of a deep bog. He may have had some chronic foot pain, so maybe Polly ended his suffering, or maybe she was getting things in order before she killed herself. Or maybe there is more to the story than I know. For me, it was all as clear as the mud and dust that covered my truck.
I wondered how Polly had come to terms with the Christian teaching that suicide is a sin. I supposed that her belief about not letting horses get old and suffer also applied to her. This is where church dogma and her personal beliefs parted ways. Somehow, she must have reconciled the issue with God.
These two women, one a Buddhist and one a Baptist, made me wonder about the spirits of animals. Somewhere between the Buddhist notion that animals can reincarnate as humans and the Baptist belief that a dead animal is just gone, there must be the truth. . . and I aimed to find it.
Remove judgment and pain disappears.
— THICH NHAT HANH
People tend to frown or laugh whenever they hear about Margaret the Buddhist and Polly the Baptist, and they judge the women as either cruel or crazy. The topic of religious beliefs stirs up strong opinions, childhood wounds, and deep emotions. Wars over belief kill millions. People cling to their faith, believing theirs is right and other faiths are wrong.
Similarly, numerous people have at times been upset with my interest in certain religious teachings. So, it was with trepidation that I began to write this book. I initially stood somewhere between Margaret and Polly, a Christian who believed in reincarnation. I had no idea how many other ideas existed. After much contemplation, I hoped that at the highest level of each teaching, a truth common to all existed. Hence, I searched for common elements among spiritual beliefs and found many positive, unifying themes. For example, the golden rule, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” appears in the texts of African beliefs, Persian teachings, Buddhism, pagan practices, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Native American stories, Sikhism, Taoism, and Zoroastrianism.
Each religion or philosophical belief has an ultimate ideal or supreme spiritual power for which there are many names: God, Goddess, Truth, Yahweh, Allah, the Universal Life Force, the Lord, Brahman, Absolute Bodhicitta, Christ consciousness, the Tao, the Higgs boson, Source Energy, the Great Spirit, Buddha-nature, Adonai, the Force, DNA, All That Is, Wakan-Tanka, the Inscrutable, the Divine. As different as these names seem at first, they have a lot in common. Many teachings, including some Christian and Buddhist teachings, state that the supreme power resides inside us. Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21), and each Buddhist has his or her own inner Buddha-nature. Because the divine is within us, we are encouraged to look there for the truth. The Buddha said, “You should trust the truth that is within you.”2
In this book, when I refer to the “Truth” with a capital T, I mean the ultimate in spiritual teachings. The other kind of “truth” is a slippery, shifty, ever-changing viewpoint from a particular perspective. Ask ten people what they saw at the scene of a crime, and you’ll hear ten different answers, all true. In fact, if multiple stories of a crime are identical, the police consider them to be contrived. We each see things differently, and our story changes with time.
I originally intended to report the Truth about the spiritual nature of animals, but this became more challenging as a myriad of opinions surfaced for each religious teaching. Wide variation of beliefs exists even within a religion, sect, denomination, or church. With no agreement, no simple statements can be made about Catholic, Hindu, pagan, scientific, or psychic beliefs.
Dilemmas also mounted as I encountered my own negative judgments regarding spiritual teachings new to me. In order to present a fair and impartial view, I had to open my mind to new ideas, and the project quickly became entertaining.
Letting go of restrictive opinions opened my awareness to how judgment causes pain. During this time, my stomach hurt when I worried about my patients. My lower back ached as I anxiously raced to make appointments and get to emergencies quickly. I suffered in empathy for my clients and their animals as I wrote sympathy cards, agonizing over each death. Eventually, my mental, physical, and emotional health improved because of what I learned and share in this book.
The physical strain of ambulatory equine practice — floating horse’s teeth, carving out sole abscesses, and castrating unruly two-year-old colts — took a toll on my body. Exhaustion followed long hours. I often came home late from an emergency too tired to cook. Dinner consisted of a glass of sauvignon blanc and dark chocolate. My dreams were shattered by images of steaming bowls of pus and memories of desperate, dying eyes looking up at me. A recurring nightmare plagued me in which my truck would not stop. My foot pressed the brake to the floor and the truck kept on rolling, always in different scenes, through intersections or down steep muddy roads with sharp turns. I was always unable to stop it.
Some puritanical work ethic drove me; I whipped myself like a self-flagellating penitent. I related to Martin Luther, founder of the Lutheran religion, whose life was discussed on audiotapes I played in my truck. The young Luther thought we had to work hard and suffer because we are evil, worthless sinners unworthy of forgiveness. My Lutheran upbringing and German heritage encouraged hard work. The fact that I was doing what used to be a man’s job also put added pressure on me to perform and prove my value.
In January 1995, I visited a psychologist, who told me she could not help me; she said I had to change my life. This was easy for her to say but hard for me to accomplish. I was heavily invested in my job. I loved veterinary medicine — I still do — and I was good at equine ambulatory work. I had no idea how to change. She suggested I take days off, but this was no help. When I did, several people became furious with me when I was unavailable for their emergencies. One woman hated me because I took a day off and her horse died. Another veterinarian attended that emergency, but in her mind, I was to blame.
That kind of judgment hurt, but my self-judgment was even more painful. This was emotional pain. On the outside, I looked like a strong, fit, confident, capable woman. On the inside, I ached. The irony was that I had begged for this job. I had wanted to be a veterinarian more than anything else in the world.
Other colleagues seemed to be struggling as well. One of my veterinary school classmates and friends killed herself by drinking euthanasia solution in her Diet Pepsi. Another died when he rolled his truck on a late-night emergency call. In the neighboring county, a horse doctor committed suicide by shooting himself.
A turning point came for me about ten years later, at the funeral of a veterinary friend who died of cancer in a nearby town. She and I had planned to work together so we could have more time off. At the funeral, her two young children cried, while one person after another stood to tell stories about how this woman had come out at midnight, or on Christmas Eve, or 10 PM on the fourth of July, or 5 AM on a Sunday morning with her children sleeping in the truck. My friend lived with the stress that a large-animal veterinarian works under day and night. She used all her energy to help other people and their animals, but this meant she didn’t have enough left to stay healthy herself. It hit me like a bullet. I was doing the same thing, killing myself by working nonstop. The challenge was to find a way to change.
My animals helped me find relief. At night when I tossed in bed, my cat would come nuzzle my cheek and snuggle into my armpit. Her nonjudgmental nature touched my soul and