Last week my blog discussed our cruelty to animals and the guilt that that caused us to feel, whether we recognise it or not. This week, I wanted to remind everyone just how important animals are to our welfare,
In the past, we have only considered animals of importance if we had some way to use them for our benefit. This is the way that the ego looks at everything: “What’s in it for me?”
We have used animals for their meat, their milk, their blubber, their skins, their wool. We have used their body parts in medicines, in musical instruments, in kitchen utensils. We have ridden them, made them drag heavy loads, and forced them to do any number of dangerous or painful tasks for our work or for our pleasure. We have taken them from their natural environments, and denied them their natural behaviour. We have caged them and tethered them, sometimes for their entire lives.
Yet, when we allowed them to, animals have become our friends, and sometimes even part of the family. Interaction with our domesticated animals has caused us much joy. Even on the internet, we find that animal antics provide us hours of pleasure and laughter.
Some animals have even become extensions of ourselves, as our guide dogs and service dogs.
Anyone who has stroked a cat or dog will know how soothing that can be. One reason is that, as we focus our attention on the animal, we are forgetting about whatever is troubling us. Another reason is that the love we give to them is always returned to us. Once we get that love back, we start to notice it in ourselves. We become more loving, because what goes around always comes around, but it also strengthens. So the more love you give, the more love you get, and the more you have to give.
Some prisons are now developing programs which allow inmates to interact with animals, because they know that this has been shown to have positive effects on prisoner behaviour and recidivism rates.
Animals who are treated with love, or in their natural environment, naturally exude love. Animals exude only positive energy, unless and until they have been affected by human negative energy. Their positive energy provides a counter-balance on our troubled planet for all the negative energy which we humans exude.
When animals are poorly treated in factory farms and transport to slaughterhouses, or otherwise affected negatively, their energy is no longer counter-balancing our negativity but adding to it.
When we consume animal products, we are consuming this negative energy. This negative energy strengthens the negative energy we are already harbouring, and our societies become more violent.
The effects of our meat-based diets were clearly shown, when a prison in California began to feed its inmates vegan diets. The recidivism rates of inmates released from that prison was 2%, compared with the normal 95% from other prisons.
It is entirely possible that if everyone in the world switched to a vegan diet, war and crime may be totally eliminated.
Just as we are one with all of the other humans on the planet, we are one with the animals as well. Telepathic communication with animals is therefore possible. Many pet owners have had this experience, even though their ego minds may try to deny it. Animals have much they can teach us, when we are ready to listen – not least of which is how to love.
Instead of eating them and exploiting them, it is time now to allow animals to take their rightful place in the world. As part of God’s creation, they are worthy of equal consideration.
Many people have quoted the Bible as saying that humans have dominion over the animals, but my interpretation of those passages is that humans should become stewards of Mother Earth and all of her inhabitants. God does not call on humans to eat animals, but to tend to them and to care for his creation. He nowhere bids humans to eat these animals.
In fact, in Genesis 1:29-30, God says: “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.”
Could it be that, if all humans were to become vegan and the planet’s negativity was greatly reduced, then all animals would begin to evolve to be plant eaters once more, just as they were in the Garden of Eden. Perhaps then, the lion will truly lie down with the lamb.
I believe it is only our inflated egos which have set ourselves so far above the rest of God’s creation – our egos which were made in the separation from our awareness of our creator. As we tame our egos, we begin to understand the right to a natural life for every being on the planet, including animals. We begin to honour our creator’s request to become stewards of this beautiful planet with which we have been entrusted.
http://jthomasniu.org/class/589/Assigs/Pdf/Strimple2003.pdf
http://vegetarianspotlight.com/2011/vegan-diet-impacts-california-prison/
http://www.animalsaustralia.org/
Image courtesy of hin255 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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