This morning, on a longer-than-usual five-mile walk with puppy Shadow, our encounters were not just pleasant, but, as ever, I could not help but consciously notice how each mutual, smiling greeting filled me with energy, flowing through and lifting the opened heart.  All, that is, except for two people, one of them a young woman with earbuds, so lost on her phone that she didn’t even appear to notice us, though I yelled softly, “Good morning!” as we passed within two feet. The other, an old old man in his wheelchair, smoking, gone, apparently dead to other humans. Yet, on balance, just about all my personal encounters with others in this town are not just pleasant, but gracious, kind, enlivening.

I say this because it does appear that two starkly opposed realities now blanket this planet. One, mine, is shared by I have no idea how many; however, I suspect that this reality is way larger than we realize, since it appears to be eclipsed by the other so-called “reality.” This second reality is, in the main, virtual (i.e., at least one remove from direct personal experience), and filled with rancor, division, hatred, violence and chaos. This virtual reality is blared into our conscious (and unconscious) minds continuously via mainstream propaganda, social media, far-left politicians, CRT doctrine in schools, accelerating, murderous, child-sacrificing false flags — and so on.

Always, the question is: Which world do I choose to live in? Which do you choose to live in?

For me, it’s important to know just what the “bad guys” are up to; and then to continuously counter that evil wind with kindness, goodness, LOVE.

Every day, in every way. All I know is Love.

I mention this today because I decided to post something on human interaction with other species, especially animals. And how, during the plandemic, so many many people, in their isolation and misery, adopted at least one animal, to keep them company, and even, as they discovered with dogs, to actually learn how to love! Those who adopted cats learned something else: how to be independent, not influenced by others’ views of them. I consider cats and dogs our teachers in these two dynamically “opposed” (i.e., paradoxical), mutually necessary qualities: Love and Truth. Connection and Independence — abstracted politically as Socialism/Communism and Capitalism. Each of us needs to learn how to constantly center, maintain, balance and rebalance these two foundational attitudes within ourselves if we are to have any hope of not just achieving internal equilibrium, but of actually harmonizing the currents of fear and hatred (projected fear) that get broadcast daily.

And let’s go further. Let’s notice how animals of all kinds connect with humans, when we allow it. When we actually notice that they are living, conscious beings, with their own essences, both on a species level and an individual level.

In this context, I offer you a deeply informative podcast that features Charles Eisenstein interviewing Anna Breytenbach, an “interspecies communicator.”

Anna Breytenbach: Interspecies Communication (E57)

What strikes me, above all, in this podcast, is how we are pulled back into our original deeply embedded connection with the natural world through our animals, if we allow them to help us do this. And they will, IF we can put ourselves inside them, walk in their paws, or hoofs, empathically, to feel what they feel, sense how they sense, desire what they desire — not just on a species level, but also individuals within any species. Each individual, of no matter what species, has his or her own essence, mutually interconnected with the myriad lifeforms composing the infinitely expanding, radiating biosphere. And, what one perceives depends upon where one stands, one’s own “point of view” (point from which reality is viewed). Thus many human individuals can each empathically connect with the same individual animal, and empathize with different facets, depending on their own personal, internal makeup.

“Truth,” as Anna Breytenbach put it, “is a diamond,” with many facets.

As with animals, so with humans. Can I empathize with a grizzled Islamic man who herds camels? How about a black woman and her family somehow managing to get by in an inner city ghetto anywhere? Can I empathize with a seemingly deranged homeless person locally who appears, at least to me, to have been taken over by demons? Or with any of the (MK Ultra?) “lone male shooters:” Can I feel what goes on inside each of them, what makes them tick? Can I even empathize with the stranger next door who seems to prefer estrangement, with nary a glance or a quick hello?

More. Can I empathize with those I would have called my “enemies” at earlier times in my long life — the fellow college teacher whose philosophy of education was diametrically opposed to mine? The lover who “ghosted” me? The woman, and her friends, who shunned me for reasons I still don’t understand? As my dear old friend Claudia said to me recently, “The older I get, the more I realize that all the people in my life, even those who “betrayed” me, they are all, all of them, MY BELOVEDS.” Yes. Pity that it took the better part of nearly 80 years for either of us to achieve that heart-based perspective.

Meanwhile, I heard someplace, can’t remember where, that the “bad guys” may decide that to kill all our domestic animals in order to eradicate “monkey pox.” Could they really dare to go that far? (Think China.) I didn’t even want to mention this possibility, yet I think we do need to be prepared for any eventuality, in order to counteract it ahead of time.

Finally, this, a compilation of encounters of wild animals with their long lost human protectors, some of which you’ve probably seen before.