A human being is a part of the whole, called by us the 'Universe', a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security. ― Albert Einstein, New York Post, 28 November 1972
"Animals have a profound capacity to open the hearts of humans, no matter how tightly closed or locked the human heart may be. Even when the humans are abusing or caging the animals, they still remain capable of loving." ― Leslie Temple-Thurston
The moment we become happy and joyous, we feel like sharing and celebrating...only in a blissful state of consciousness, do we respect other life forms...what Albert Schweitzer called REVERENCE FOR LIFE!! life is invaluable...and we have no right in messing with nature with her magnificent splendour, which she is kind enough to share with us!!
I feel strongly, that this ‘love’ of animals requires recognizing that they have value independently of us. They don’t exist just to be useful to us. They have value for themselves and for the divine. Our treatment of them should respect the value God has given them in creating them. We humans have a duty to LOVE animals, just as we have a duty to love our fellow humans. The best way to learn to value our fellow animal creatures is to learn to be one with them, to recover the sense, so powerful that our own sense of being one is part of the oneness of the whole creation.
WISE WORDS from one of our ancestors... "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated... I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man" ― Mahatma Gandhi
Animals are the bridge between us and the beauty of all that is natural. They show us what's missing in our lives, and how to love ourselves more completely and unconditionally. They connect us back to who we are, and to the purpose of why we're here. All creatures, they are a sacred part in our lives! The unconditional love we receive from our animals can never be replaced by humans. They accept and trust completely. Their spirit is one with ours. We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Isn't it so easy for us to not want to reason with them. It would be a disturbing, unnerving, diminishing experience; it would bring about all manner of awkwardness and guilt to us! Our actions and states of mind DO matter, because we're so deeply innerconnected with one another and, our fellow creatures. Working on our own consciousness is the most important thing that we are doing at any moment, and being Love is the supreme creative act.
A heart of COMPASSION, builds character! Mankind's truest moral test, its fundamental test (which is deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. The wonder of principals and metaphysical Laws of creation, is to Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.
Do we stop and think that All animals have the same core emotion systems in the brain as we, the people do? When our pet animal at home, express their feelings they pour out like water from a spout. We can share our emotions with them, we can understand the language of feelings, and that's why we form deep and enduring social bonds. Emotions are the glue that binds. The beauty of their emotions are raw, unfiltered, and uncontrolled. Their joy is the purest and most contagious of joys and their grief the deepest and most devastating. Their passions bring us to our knees in delight and sorrow. Do they not teach us of hope; They are living souls. They are not things. They are not objects. Neither are they human. Yet they mourn. They love. They dance. They suffer. They know the peaks and chasms of being, providing us with an endless supply of smiles and the certainty of unwavering companionship. That is a divine gift to us, so clearly proven!
Animals are born who they are! They live with greater peace than we, people do. One of Henry Beston's quote, stating some simplest form of truth, how beautifully said! “We patronize the animals for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they are more finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other Nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time.” They are splendid beings in their own right, who have evolved alongside us as co-inheritors of all the beauty and abundance of life on this planet.
Why do many of us pride our self on our superiority to the animals? Our instinct to both exalt and control them? Caging their life in the garden of captives? They are without sin, while we, with all our greatness, we defile the earth wherever we appear and leave an ignoble trail behind us - for almost every one of us! “The wild things of this earth are not ours to do with as we please. They have been given to us in trust, and we must account for them to the generation which will come after us and audit our accounts.” ― William T. Hornaday. Our world with all its living things, is a wide place where we are stumbling like children whom need to learn to walk, where we have to learn to see. Our world's vastness at least reminds us how tiny we are, and how much we don't yet understand. We are mere babes in the universe, all brothers and sisters in the nursery together, unconsciously humming and welcoming darkness. --Can our daily choices be a reflection of our deepest values? And may we use our voices to speak for those who need us most? those who have no voice, those who have no choice? -- -- Take a moment to consider this statement.
What kind of humanity do we embrace? Are we grounded to the values of our spirit? Do we have it in us to make the behaviour and attitude changes necessary to change our destructive course? Our human ingenuity has a way of outrunning our human conscience, and some things we do only because we can - forgetting to ask whether we should. There is no question in my mind, that perhaps in the past, people thought they needed to enslave animals and people to survive, and that the cruelty involved in it was somehow allowed them. It's obviously not necessary for us today, and the sooner we can awaken from the thrall of the obsolete mythos that we are predatory by nature, the sooner we'll be able to evolve spiritually and with a kaleidoscopic possibility, discover and fulfill our purpose on this earth.
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