Human-Animal Connection

A Dog Named Stickeen Stickeen changed forever the way John Muir viewed the animal kingdom. In fact, the experience made him a leading proponent of the fundamental unity and sanctity of all life despite the accepted view in the 19th century that stripped animals of their intelligence, passion, and souls. They were commonly thought to exist only to serve people's needs and were further diminished by scientists who maintained that animals were without original thought, only capa...ble of mechanical, instinctual responses to their environment. That day on the glacier presented Muir with a piece of knowledge that contradicted the official view and changed Muir's understanding of the world. He saw a different truth as he watched Stickeen, a dog driven to his utmost limits, rise to the challenge of the formidable glacier that threatened both of them with a cold death. What Muir witnessed was a revelation. What he saw in the small dog was not very much different from what he saw in himselfintelligence and passion, original thought, courage, and triumphant exhilaration. "He enlarged my life, extended its boundaries," wrote Muir. From that day on he discarded the word instinct, realizing how much the word hemmed in people and prevented them from seeing animals rightly. Fully story by John Muir, retold by Donnell Rubay (1998).

It felt like love. Joe Meeker was in Alaska studying moose with the Park Service. One day he was following this beautiful moose who turned out to be a mother. Joe made the big mistake of coming between her and a new calf. Within seconds, the moose lowered her head, charging Joe full force. He scrambled up a tree and stared down at her as she snorted and pawed the ground. Joe said her eyes were bloodshot with rage and white clouds puffed out of her nostrils. He stayed up in th...e tree for six hours or so. Then a strange thing happened: Joe was looking down at that moose and she was staring up at him for so many hours that they got kind of use to gazing at one another. Joe said when he’d look away from her, he’d get kind of lonely. Then he felt kind of dizzy and realized...well he’d fallen in love. That is what it felt like anyway. Love. The moose must have felt is too. Because she just stepped back, still gazing up at him. He knew it was safe to climb down the tree. And when he did, she just stood there, still staring at him. He thanked her and she let him pass. Between them was complete acceptance (Peterson, B. (2002) pp. 107-8).

Message from a Jewel Beetle Psychologist Sam Keen received unexpected help from a beetle in a dream. It was in the months before his 60th birthday, and he was preoccupied with death. Although he had explored the Buddhist beliefs in karma and reincarnation, he still struggled with a recurring nightmare of disappearing completely when he died. One night he dreamed about a silver beetle that could detach part of itself and then come back together. The dream insect walked into a ...piece of wood, disappeared, and then reappeared on the other side. Then it vanished into stone and once again reemerged. Finally it entered a transparent gem-like substance and disappeared from sight, but Keen knew that it would reemerge whole from that journey too. He awoke with a profound sense of relief, comforted without knowing the meaning of the dream. In the following days, the dream worked inside him until in a flash of insight, he remembered that in the religion of ancient Egypt, the scarab beetle was a symbol of immortality. He thought perhaps the dream was telling him that he too would disappear into death and then reemerge. Although he still had his doubts the dream gave him a "momentary peace that passes understanding." (The Voice of the Infinite in the Small, 2002, p. 116)