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Pure in Spirit
Oct. 24th, 2008 04:22 pmThe lady with whom I work the closest at Sally Foster is a fellow animal lover. A day doesn't go by without Amy telling me the intrepid tales of Flossie the Bull Terrier and Willard the Scottie. She's an absolute joy to be around.
The other day, though, Amy got off the phone with her brother in tears. She'd just found out that her brother's cat, a Katrina rescue by the name of Blaze (because he was found on the roof of a burning house), had cancer and needed to be euthanised. Amy is very tender-hearted and can't deal with stuff like this, not when it comes to animals. She was quiet for a time, then she piped up and said, "Tracy, let me ask you a question. Do you believe that there's a heaven for animals?"
Amy knows that I'm a Witch, or a Wiccan, as that's the term with which she's most familiar. I guess she sensed that I'm also more comfortable serving in the Crone aspect of the Goddess, given her question seemingly from left field. I wasn't prepared for such a question and had honestly never really developed a concrete theory about animals and the afterlife, just feeling that they go through essentially the same cycle that we humans do. Something in her question triggered the Crone within me, though, and I shared with her this theory:
I told her that I believed that there's a heaven more so for animals than for humans because animals are essentially more pure in spirit. Humans have a lot of issues with which to deal, most of it of our own making. Animals come to this plane to do whatever they came to do, then return to that place of spirit to wait on their humans to get our shit together so we can stop reincarnating and join them in the spiritual realm. She seemed comforted by this, but asked if I ever thought that animals ever returned to the physical realm. Unequivocally yes! I think that animals spirits can connect to human spirits to the extent that they choose to return to the Earth plane to be with that human. I told her about Smidgen and how she is supernaturally so alike to Henry and Toque before him, even "patty-caking" to get whatever it is she wants when we never taught her to do this, but did teach Henry, who was a dog and keen to learn goofy tricks like that. Smidgen came to us as a five-week-old kitten, patty-caking her way to indulgence, this behaviour imprinted on her seemingly at birth. I have no other way to explain this than the animal spirit that manifested as Toque and Henry returned to the human spirit with whom it's bonded. I'm assuming that the spirit that's now known as Smidgen will continue to walk the life path with me as long as I'm reincarnating to try to get my own shit together. I'm hoping that this special spirit doesn't tire of my inability to learn and grow beyond the trappings of this plane, leaving me to my own devices to return to the spirit realm where it belongs.
Although I'm very sorry for Amy's family and I feel their pain in their loss of Blaze, I'm thankful to Amy for making me think about the role of animals in this and other planes of existence. I'm kind of ashamed that I'd never thought about it before, but I'm only human and about as far from perfect as any human can be.
The other day, though, Amy got off the phone with her brother in tears. She'd just found out that her brother's cat, a Katrina rescue by the name of Blaze (because he was found on the roof of a burning house), had cancer and needed to be euthanised. Amy is very tender-hearted and can't deal with stuff like this, not when it comes to animals. She was quiet for a time, then she piped up and said, "Tracy, let me ask you a question. Do you believe that there's a heaven for animals?"
Amy knows that I'm a Witch, or a Wiccan, as that's the term with which she's most familiar. I guess she sensed that I'm also more comfortable serving in the Crone aspect of the Goddess, given her question seemingly from left field. I wasn't prepared for such a question and had honestly never really developed a concrete theory about animals and the afterlife, just feeling that they go through essentially the same cycle that we humans do. Something in her question triggered the Crone within me, though, and I shared with her this theory:
I told her that I believed that there's a heaven more so for animals than for humans because animals are essentially more pure in spirit. Humans have a lot of issues with which to deal, most of it of our own making. Animals come to this plane to do whatever they came to do, then return to that place of spirit to wait on their humans to get our shit together so we can stop reincarnating and join them in the spiritual realm. She seemed comforted by this, but asked if I ever thought that animals ever returned to the physical realm. Unequivocally yes! I think that animals spirits can connect to human spirits to the extent that they choose to return to the Earth plane to be with that human. I told her about Smidgen and how she is supernaturally so alike to Henry and Toque before him, even "patty-caking" to get whatever it is she wants when we never taught her to do this, but did teach Henry, who was a dog and keen to learn goofy tricks like that. Smidgen came to us as a five-week-old kitten, patty-caking her way to indulgence, this behaviour imprinted on her seemingly at birth. I have no other way to explain this than the animal spirit that manifested as Toque and Henry returned to the human spirit with whom it's bonded. I'm assuming that the spirit that's now known as Smidgen will continue to walk the life path with me as long as I'm reincarnating to try to get my own shit together. I'm hoping that this special spirit doesn't tire of my inability to learn and grow beyond the trappings of this plane, leaving me to my own devices to return to the spirit realm where it belongs.
Although I'm very sorry for Amy's family and I feel their pain in their loss of Blaze, I'm thankful to Amy for making me think about the role of animals in this and other planes of existence. I'm kind of ashamed that I'd never thought about it before, but I'm only human and about as far from perfect as any human can be.
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