Ganimals as a mirror of the soul. In many traditions they are their presence can reflect emotions and moods that sometimes we do not recognize in ourselves. For example, A dog that follows you with loyalty it could be a symbol of the loyalty that you need to cultivate within you, while A cat could teach you to develop independence and the ability to stay at peace with yourself.
Selene Calloni Williams: “Animals part of our soul”
Yesterday he came to see me Marina and I asked her to take off her shoes at the entrance of the house. “But if you have a house full of dogs and cats that continue continuously from the garden full of mud to the house?!” She told me.
For me, the dirty of my animals and that of the marina shoes is different. His comes from foreign places, that of My animals comes from my garden, which is a part of my soul.
Does this make sense?
When I sit at my desk in front of the computer to work and I don’t have anyA, I feel demotivated and I feel an emotion of despair. But then my little dog climbs to me on my legs and accounts in my womb, while the other dog, bigger, sit at my feet, under the desk. Then suddenly I feel motivated.
Selene Calloni Williams: “My great mother’s messengers”
The writer and founder of the Shamanic Yoga Selene Calloni Williams
I consider my great mother’s messengers dogs And I feel that I’m here to tell me: “Go ahead, don’t give up!” But “let yourself go, work effortlessly, let your hands slide on the keyboard, do not mull, do not analyze, do not reflect, everything will come by itself”. And, in fact, the words flow from my fingers. I always start from the feeling that we are here to protect nature and in this task is our greatness. So, and only then, my job acquires a meaning. I couldn’t do my job without my dogs.
The life of the early, the paradise of the origins
The truth is that animals, both domestic ones we can touch every day, and wild ones, Like the birds that we can see through the windows of the window, they remind us of a life of the early, a paradise of the origins, in which we lived in communion with nature e we bowed to the power of animals, recognizing in it the mirror of our power.
The animals represent the primordial symbolic system of our possibilities, most of which we have given up to be civilized, but that we can always find with an act of healthy, illuminated rebellion.
Animals have a natural wisdom, A voice that can help us better understand our psyche, representing instincts and primitive desires that we often neglect in daily life.
Furthermore, essential quality bearers, such as instinct, vitality, spontaneity and connection with nature arethey are symbols of those psychological traits that we have lost in our process of civilization and rationalization, but which we can try to rediscover in our path of psychological growth.
The Leopardo delle Nevi
In 2003 I founded in Switzerland VoyageSillumination, a tour operator cHe has the purpose of organizing trips to the most mystical places on the planet, meeting the real great “outsiders” of our times, such as shamans, ages, sufi, hermits.
Since then, every year, Until the outbreak of the war between Russia and Ukraine, iOr I made at least one trip a year to Siberia. I attended a lot of those lands in via of the shamans who live them and for nature and forests in part still not touched by man.
It was there, in a period when winter was about to end, that I saw a nevi leopard very close. He walked quietly between yellowed shrubs and not yet dissolved snow blocks.
I was with Rusky, my Horse Altaico, I was walking, I kept it for the bridle. Rusky must have seen the leopard before me because he immobilized himself, fortunately he did not nitrite. The leopard stopped a moment, looked at us and then resumed walking with his elegant step.
A strong resolution in the heart
The following day, as soon as he wakes up in my yurt, I had the leopard’s yellow eyes in front of mine and I had a strong resolution in my heart: I absolutely had to teach my body to thermoregula. COsì feces! I teaches myself not to suffer the cold and the heat thanks to deep relaxation and meditation.
Even today, when I lie in the snow and teach my students who, calming the function of the breath and cultivating the psychic heat (the high schools and Tibetans call it “dumo”), It is possible to transform the cold into a resource for the body, into a powerful healer, I see see That leopard with a feeling of immense gratitude in the heart.
Sometimes I discover I love him so much that he has tears in his eyes.
The highest task of humans is to subtract animals from cruelty
Selene Calloni Williams while playing the drum
How many things have I learned from animals?
I believe more than I learned from humans. I come from the forest. At just nineteen I entered a Buddhist Romitage in the Habarana forest, in Sri Lanka, e There I was for over six years to study Buddhism under the guidance of my teacher, The venerable Gata Thera and particularly under the guidance of nature.
Émile Zola wrote that “the highest task of man is to subtract animals from cruelty”. If there is truly something I understood clear and strong, it is that the man’s task is to protect, defend nature.
The fact that my species, at least in its vast majority, at the moment, is doing that far, I do not exempt me to carry on my commitment, on the contrary, it feeds it.
For Buddhists and shamans, as for primitive man, God does not live in a distant sky and is not omnipotent; The creator is in the creation itself, therefore for them protecting nature is to protect the divine.
And I, who am a little Buddhist, a little shaman and certainly very wild and primitive, I feel this like the very reason for why I am here, in this world, who, to put it in Keats’ words, is “the valley of doing soul”.
Selene Calloni Williams: “Animals are symbols of our own soul”
On the way of doing the soul at a certain point, it is understood that an individual salvation, which does not also involve the salvation of the leopard of the snow, the usual, the violin spider or the marine turtle, is not a true salvation. Because animals are symbols of our own soul, They represent the aspects, the powers, the possibilities.
How many powers have “killed” us, extinct? How many soul fragments have we lost? How much “hunt for the soul” will we have to do to recover our integrity? Certainly you have to do it now.
The moment is now! And the tool is meditation. To find my meditation teacher, the venerable Gata Thera, taught me to meet me to find me to turn to the animals, any animal, a spider, a snake, an eagle, an elephant, with these words: “Master, please, help me to help you help me! ».
This is what I have been doing for forty years and every time it is a discovery, a rediscovered wealth, a communion of spirits, a festival of hearts.
Can we really be happy in this world? I answer yes, we must find the state of man-animal non-duality: distinct but not separated.
Complications, allies, never truly real, never truly unreal, in our mutual give us to each other, made of pure love: emptiness. Nothing and all that are reflected. The man and the animal who recognize each other.
For love, the animal has chosen to rely on us. For love we must protect it: it is simple, it is the greatest meditation: subtract animals from cruelty! It’s like that!
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