Your Pet Teaches You Stuff

Our pets are more than just someone to pet and decorate the living room couch. They are with us to provide us with lessons, and to be a serious part of our lives. They are angels in furred/feathered/scaled suits.

And I talk, too!

They come to us in a form to which we resonate. The being who has been with me longest, who is currently LiLi-the-horse, came to me first as a horse when I was in my early teens. Oh, s/he was a pistol! Its name was Rainbow, and s/he was a five year old tri-colored gelding. Since we were brand new to horses we had no business having a horse like that, but people do stupid things, and the guy who sold Rainbow to us had a little kid ride Rainbow around, and could tell we were easy marks. Rainbow was gorgeous. I wish I had a photo of him.

He was also smart, sneaky, and only turned in one direction, and we eventually sold him to someone who could handle him. The stories I could tell! The bottom line, though, is that Rainbow came to me to help me with fear. Unfortunately, all I did was become more afraid, so the being who was Rainbow abandoned that idea and came back years later as a cat named Harvey. Same snarky attitude, but in a package to which I could relate.

Harvey as a kitten. She started early with me.

Harvey, and then the later incarnations of AC and Isis (all cats), took me from zero to 1000 on the spiritual scale. I learned about reincarnation, and how everything is connected. Also how everything (and I'm talking plants and even that living room sofa) have choices, and their own agenda. 

The molecules and atoms that make up your couch chose to be a couch. That's a stretch for most people, me included. But the more I treat that couch like something to be respected, the better I feel about it. It seems happy to be a couch (thank goodness!). We tell it we appreciate it, and we love that it cushions us and allows us to sit comfortably.

I talk to my car, too. 

But back to the animals. They are here to teach us things we need to know. A client of mine has struggled her entire life with grasping at external people and things to define herself, and being unwilling to let them go across the rainbow bridge without a fight. She hasn't learned to let go and let them have the life they want. Her current cat has helped her put it all together. If she lets go of control (because we don't control anything except our response to a situation) and lets the cat live the way it wants to, everyone feels better. This cat did the happy dance when she had that revelation! His work worked. She learned what she needed to. I don't know the end to the story yet, but I know it's going to be good.

Rainbow couldn't get me to let go of my fear by being a pistol and trying to take me for a speedy ride in a pasture. I didn't trust him. I trusted the being when it was a cat, and I dropped a lot of fear of the unknown and unseen through the various incarnations' tutelage. My muse helped me to realize that what I do for a living now is what I was meant to do. I had to get through a lot of fear (of being drowned or burned at the stake or just made dead) for believing differently than the status quo. It's a huge gift.

Not me. Not even close at my age.

The being then thought I could release the last vestige of fear by coming back as a powerful, not completely trustworthy horse (a la Rainbow). Nope. Still not going there. Not going to happen in this lifetime. We do have free will, and I've come a long way, but galloping across the back pasture on a big horse that could decide to stop or swerve at any moment (because that's what she likes to do) is not in my cards - at least not at this age. So LiLi coaches in our coaching program when she feels like it, and looks at me with sad eyes. Sorry, girl.

Meanwhile, the more spiritual side of myself continues to open up, and that's where I have my focus.

What have your animals taught you?