Teaching What We Most Want to Know

Animals as Guides for the Soul: Stories of Life-Changing Encounters
by Susan Chernak McElroy

In her New York Times bestseller Animals as Teachers and Healers, Susan Chernak McElroy movingly explored the wide and enriching horizons of human relationships with animals. In this new volume of reflections and true animal stories, she invites us to broaden and deepen that relationship.

While living with her husband and animals on a farm in Oregon, McElroy pondered the ancient bonds that connect humans and animals: the healing gifts of animals, the genius of people who talk to them, and the power of animal messengers. She also asked herself the tough questions that engage every true animal lover. How can we soothe our anguish and guilt when a loved animal suffers or dies? How do we atone for our mistakes? When are animals prisoners and when are they fulfilled? Is it moral to eat other beings? And how can we go about transforming our relationship with animals?

Through daily experiences with the animals around her and those in her dreams--along with compelling true stories sent to her by readers--McElroy began to find answers. She discovered that animals are guides in the development of our souls. A frail llama teaches lessons of joy and unconditional love; a barn cat proves that service need not be imprisonment but fulfillment; a mortally injured hawk infuses a cancer patient with renewed strength and faith; an attentive rabbit awakens an abused child from a trance of sadness; and a skinny white horse does more for a damaged six-year-old boy in one hour than any human has done in six years.

In this deeply personal yet universal testament to the profound connection between animals and humans, there is wisdom and blessing. As the author reminds us, the fingerprint of God is often a pawprint.

Chapter 1

"In all things, even in the most recondite mysteries of the soul, nature is the first and finest of teachers."

- THOMAS MOORE

After the publication of my first book, Animals as Teachers and Healers, my publisher, Maureen Michelson, had an alarming dream about me. She told me that in her dream, I told her I would be dying soon. "What do you mean?" Maureen had replied to the dream me. "There is too much work you need to do! You can't be leaving now!"

Her dream came as no surprise to me. When I completed my first book, I felt as though my life's work was finished. In fact, I was so certain that I was done that I had begun to fear my life would end soon, probably with a recurrence of the cancer that had visited me ten years before. The way I saw it, if I had done what I'd been put on earth to do, why would I expect to stay around much longer? I found these thoughts bizarre and troublesome. As a first-time author, I had no idea that it is not unusual for a writer to feel utterly "finished" at the end of a book project. When Maureen told me about her dream, I admitted to her my feeling of being "all done" and confided that I couldn't possibly imagine what work I still needed to do.

Maureen said, "Your work is just beginning. Stick around and you'll see."

That was more than two years ago, and with hindsight I can say that we were both correct. In one sense, I was finished. The part of my life that existed before my book came into being died soon after the book reached the bookstores. Instead, I was reborn into a whole new life, one that demanded that I begin exploring more deeply the values I'd espoused in Animals as Teachers and Healers. In truth, my work was just beginning.

What I had committed to paper in my first book was the rough outline of a life-path: one nourished by contemplation of relationships other than human to human, a celebration of lessons learned at the four-footed threshold. In many ways, Animals as Teachers and Healers was my personal mission statement. Creating a mission statement is one thing. Living it is quite another.

In Animals as Guides for the Soul, I explore what it means to actually live a vision that acknowledges all living beings as gifted teachers and healers. Such an undertaking can be an enormous challenge in our obsessively human-focused culture. It is a commitment that enlists the soul.

By soul, I do not use the word in its religious dress. I have come to understand soul as the unseen, oftimes disowned inner guardian of our lives, a force weaving together the threads of heart, mind, and spirit that fashions us into an integrated piece of work. Thomas Moore describes the soul in this way: "`Soul' is not a thing, but a quality of dimension of experiencing life and ourselves. It has to do with depth, value, relatedness, heart, and personal substance. ... We know intuitively that soul has to do with genuineness and depth." Genuineness: This life quality surfaces repeatedly in my writing and in my life. To live in a manner that integrates conviction and action is to me the heart of a genuine life - a soul-full life.

Descartes said, "I think, therefore, I am." That I am has never seemed to me worth ruminating about. Of far greater consequence is who I am. Who I am is a woman who loves animals. This was not a choice, mind you. My enchantment with animals was a given from the moment I was born. My enchantment with animals dates back to before I could speak. My first stuttered word was parakeet. Psychologist James Hillman writes: "Sooner or later, something seems to call us onto a particular path. You may remember this `something' as a signal moment in childhood when an urge struck out of nowhere, a fascination, a peculiar turn of events struck like an annunciation: This is ... who I am." My soul spoke to me early in life about my connection to animals. I spent the next several decades, as many people do, conveniently ignoring its wise voice.

My first book was a fresh acknowledgment of that soul's whisper. The next task of my life, then, became twofold: First, to see how fully I could live as a woman who loved animals. Then to chart the emergence of other animal-oriented souls. Such a collection of life stories would serve as guideposts to others on a similar four-footed sojourn.

Although I am committed to living my life through an animal-based philosophy, my experience makes one thing abundantly clear: Nothing that happens between humans and animals is separate from what happens in every other aspect of human life. Who we are with animals mirrors who we are - our fears, our joys, our dreams, our actions - in every other arena of our lives. "Each species is a master of a particular way of being that foreshadows something about ourselves," observes human ecologist Paul Shepard. A commitment to living a genuine life with animals cannot help but lead to richer human relationships.

Why do I think of animals as guides for the soul? Because love for animals is who I am. Each person has a unique passion or soul-voice that cannot - must not - be denied. But for those like me who have a deep affinity for animals, I believe animals offer a particularly rich and rewarding track to personal awareness and to a more genuine and soul-filled life. Animals, for example, do not allow us the luxury of complete and total projection. Unlike many other time-tested devotions such as theology, art, philosophy, or meditation, animals are living beings with soul-lives of their own. They demand of us that we be in relationship with them. They remain - for all our current attempts to rid the world of many of them - in our faces. Although we can effortlessly project our ideal fantasy selves onto an evocative piece of writing, an inspired painting, or a religious icon, it is much harder to dismiss one's true nature in the presence of, say, a spewed-up hairball on the floor, an attic full of insulation-shredding raccoons, or the sixth pile of puppy poop on one's white sofa.

Animals, in their blessed state of total presence, require our presence as well. All animals possess the enviable quality of complete acceptance of the moment - a quality some of us meditate on for a lifetime, only to achieve in small measure. Coming into animal presence, we may find ourselves refreshingly alert to living in the moment.

Over the centuries, many animals have achieved archetypal status, defining for us in their consistent purity of expression certain states of being. Snakes reveal to us the secret of casting off old life-skins for new ones. Crows and coyotes teach us the power of foolery and folly. No living creature defines a life of devotion and loyalty better than the dog. When we take the time to thoughtfully observe the lives of animals, these qualities speak to our spirits, inspire us, warn us, heal us.

In following an animal-inspired life-path, I find that the richest ground is often, coincidentally, the rockiest. Our relationships with animals are highly conflicted ones. "We adore them and we curse them. We caress them and we ravish them. We want them to acknowledge us and be with us. We want them to disappear and be autonomous. We abhor their viciousness and lack of pity, as we abhor our own viciousness and lack of pity. We love them and reproach them, just as we love and reproach ourselves," writes poet Pattiann Rogers. At the juncture of this conflict between humans and animals rests an enormous opportunity for self-revelation and growth. It is within the act of choosing where and how we will stand on this rough ground that our true spirit often reveals itself. When life plunges us into duality and confusion, the soul, whispering through the voice of our emotions, insights, symptoms, or dreams, encourages us to live in greater accord with what we value.

© 1998 by Susan Chernak McElroy.

About the Author

A former technical writer and editor, Susan Chernak McElroy is the author of the New York Times bestseller Animals as Teachers and Healers. Susan has enjoyed a lifelong love affair with animals. Her enchantment with creatures great and small has been nurtured and strengthened through a lifetime of work with animals, first as a vet assistant, then a zookeeper, humane educator, puppy trainer, kennel and stable hand, and wildlife rehabilitator. She currently lives with her husband and animal family on a small farm in Wyoming named Brightstar.