BECOMING ONE WITH THE ANIMALS

One of the most wonderful things I met was on the last day of a four day meditation. I was with Ken as my partner, a big and quite earthy guy, and quite suddenly I had a very clear sense of moving into nearness with the animals.

In imagery I expressed this as walking into a wooded garden and being surrounded with natural life and animals. As I drew near I was filled with the most exquisite sense of sharing something with them as an equal. It was that we were all within one great transcendent splendour. Again my emotions were ripped open as if I were being burst, or torn apart in my soul. I managed to gasp out to Ken between cries that I had been in this place so many times – the Temple of the animals – but always in the past with a closed heart.

I realised as I was opened more and more that it wasn’t my heart that was closed. It was that I had always been too proud. I had been shutting out the common animal. I had been trying to be so spiritual – from thirteen to my thirties – and had killed out my sexuality, my common humanity because I wanted to be different. I didn’t want to be like the common herd that had, as I felt, rejected me. I wanted to be holy, above them. I wanted nothing to do with the mundane attitudes, interests and emotions of them. I was never going to be like them. I despised them. Only some of this did I manage to blurt out. See Animals – Temple of the Animals