The Spiritual Nature of Animals. Karlene Stange
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Opinions about right or wrong, good or evil, represent a dualistic belief system that involves moral judgment. Some animal behavioral scientists and religious scholars believe that animals do not develop moral opinions. I question this supposition and explore it more fully throughout this book. We have no way of knowing for certain what an animal thinks or feels. We have trouble trying to understand other humans. We do know that a dog learns human rules about right and wrong, but the animal may not share our human perspective. A dog will romp through the house with muddy paws wondering why their person is so upset, and moments later, the episode forgotten, the dog wants to play; tomorrow, the dog will have no remorse or qualms about spreading mud on the carpet again. At the same time, animals who live in social groups, such as wolves, appear to have rules that teach them right from wrong in the pack. They argue about these rules and they also forgive, which leads me to consider the idea that some level of morality exists among some animals.
Children, especially, come to appreciate an animal’s characteristic nonjudgmental, forgiving nature. As a youth, I found solace with my Shetland pony, Earl. He played with me and accepted me even if, in some human’s opinion, I was fat, stupid, ugly, or wrong. One man shared with me that he hid with his dog in the doghouse after hearing his father refer to him as “stupid.”
Even the great philosopher Socrates appreciated this quality in a dog. As Thomas Cleary wrote, “Socrates used to take shelter in a barrel with a little dog. Some of his students asked, ‘What are you doing with this dog?’ Socrates said, ‘The dog treats me better, since it protects me and doesn’t annoy me, whereas you desert me and yet annoy me, too.’ ”3
When our pets accept us without judgment, it feels like love. Unconditional love means being accepted under any conditions, right or wrong, smart or stupid, Buddhist, Baptist, Muslim, or Hebrew. As I explored religious beliefs about animals, I considered the issue of moral judgment for several reasons: First, nonjudgment is another core Truth in the spiritual teachings of Jesus, the Buddha, and many other religious leaders. Jesus said: “Judge not, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye but do not notice the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye” (Matthew 7:1–5). The Buddha told followers not to set themselves up as a judge of others or make assumptions about their motives. You can destroy yourself by holding judgments about others.4 But also, I wanted to investigate what I could learn about whether animals differ from us in terms of a moral sensibility. Finally, spiritual teachers like Thich Nhat Hanh and Eckhart Tolle teach that pain results from judgment, and I needed to learn to free myself of negative judgments, self-judgment, shame, and pain.
According to Eckhart Tolle, “If you stop investing [the pain] with ‘selfness,’ the mind loses its compulsive quality, which basically is the compulsion to judge, and so to resist what is, which creates conflict, drama, and new pain. In fact, the moment that judgment stops through acceptance of what is, you are free of mind. You have made room for love, for joy, for peace.”5
This idea of accepting rather than judging what is arose dramatically for me when I met Dana Xavier. On a Sunday in early December 1999, Dana called with an emergency — her stallion had lacerated his face — amid a blizzard of wet snow. Dana lived up a steep hill, on a mesa, and her driveway was gravel and clay with no guard railings. It was a tense drive, even though the four-wheel-drive Ford handled the slimy mud. As I sutured the horse’s wound, I asked the small woman what she did for a living.
She said, “I’m a clairvoyant.”
“You mean a ‘psychic’?”
She nodded. She had a curious way of communicating; she didn’t offer much, just giggled a lot.
About a year later, in March 2001, I made an appointment with her to discuss the spiritual nature of animals. During our talk, I told her how badly I felt if a patient did not heal, and she laughed. Then she laughed some more. She laughed until she cried and almost fell off her chair.
I felt insulted. “I’m glad I can be a source of amusement for you.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes and regaining her breath, “but it’s not your fault if an animal doesn’t get better.”
“Really, well, then what do people hire me for?”
“Oh, you help, for sure, but there’s a lot more going on than just what you do. Maybe the animal had other plans. Maybe the animal and their human are trying to learn something together.”
“Animals have plans?”
“Yes.”
“So, what am I supposed to do when an animal is not improving?”
“All you can do is pray for the animal and the people to receive the healing they want.”
I had trouble with this and thought Dana was a bit crazy.
Then she said, “Don’t judge the situation. Judgment is pain.”
Clearly, I had much to learn: about the realm of clairvoyants, about the “plans” animals had, and about how animals and humans learn together, but that had to wait for future meetings.
I decided to put what Dana told me into practice — to stop judging myself, others, and situations. The perfect opportunity presented itself several months later with Dawn, a lovely woman who first hired me to treat her horses, then to perform acupuncture on her six-year-old shepherd-mix named Apache.
It started when Apache jumped out of Dawn’s truck and ruptured a spinal disc, becoming paralyzed in the rear end. Dawn had rushed her to Albuquerque for spinal surgery, and she had called me from there the following day.
“The surgeon said I should think about putting Apache down because she has no feeling in her hind limbs. Karlene, what am I going to do? I can’t lose this dog.”
“Does the surgeon know you were once paralyzed?” I asked.
“No, I didn’t tell him.”
“And look at you! You’re walking around just fine. And you were paralyzed from the neck down.”
“Yeah, they told me that I’d never walk again.”
“Right, so we won’t listen to him,” I said.
We started electro-acupuncture on Apache right away — twice a week at first and then weekly — and after five weeks, post-op, Apache had regained feeling and movement from head to toe. She wagged her tail and had bladder and bowel control.
One day about this time, as I drove up to Dawn’s ranch to treat Apache, I saw her waiting for me next to the barn, a tall, slender redhead wearing a long, russet denim jacket and irrigation boots, looking like a model for a farm-supply catalog. She also wore a frown and was holding a lead rope connected to her mule, Candy. I knew something was wrong. It is common to have a client say something like, “While you’re here, doc, can you look at. . .,” and I will add another animal to the day’s schedule.
Dawn was worried that Candy might have “stringhalt,” a jerking motion of the hind limb caused by nerve damage. I started my exam by making friends with the mule and trying to lighten Dawn’s mood.
“Howdy, Candy girl,” I said as I rubbed the mule’s face. “You’re a good girl.” She rubbed her head against my hand. “You like me, don’t you?” I cleaned the sleep from her eyes.
“Horses must like us,” I told Dawn. “Otherwise, why would they put up with us? Some people think they only love us because we feed them. Well, it may be ‘cafeteria love,’ but how does that differ from men? They always say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. I remember a time when I was in the Denver airport. A man on my flight kept staring at me with