The Ethics of Spiritual Awareness

Spirit Can Tell Us How to Engage Each Other Ethically

Recently I watched a fascinating video about a remarkable woman named Anna Breytenbach, an "animal communicator," who helped facilitate the healing process of Diabolo, a traumatized black leopard who had suffered at the hands of previous owners.  

Diabolo had been rescued by the Jukani Wildlife Park In South Africa, but despite his improved quality of life, he was not showing any signs of healing, and continued to be angry and unapproachable. Out of concern and desperation, his new caregivers called Anna Breytenbach for help.

Anna was able to communicate to Diabolo how his new caregivers were different from his previous owners and, in turn, was able to understand and explain to his caregivers the big cat's concerns, including his dislike for the name he had been given.

In this way, Anna facilitated an understanding between the humans and the big cat—who was thereafter referred to as Spirit—and the process of healing began.

Indeed, what Anna did was assist in creating a relationship of ethics and care between the human caregivers and the big cat, Spirit.

Photo of Spirit. Junkani Wildlife Sanctuary

What can we learn, here, about how to create opportunities for engaging the Other ethically in our own lives? 

And by "others", I mean all Others: Human others, such as friends, family, those unfamiliar to us and people from other cultures; and animal others, such as our pets, animals on farms and in captivity, animals used in agriculture, and wild animals; and I mean environmental others, such as forests, wetlands and glacier icecaps.

Anna describes her ability to communicate with animals as a receiving of primarily non-verbal messages in the form of "sudden knowings" and "mental images" that just come to her mind.

Though some might assume that Anna has some form of psychic ability, Anna herself describes her ability as something that has been practiced within some indigenous cultures. And she encourages people to try and communicate with their own animals in the same way, through the receiving and sending of mental images. (See an Interview with Anna here.)

I would suggest that the receiving and expressing of non-verbal messages is something we can all do. Indeed, we do do it ... to varying degrees. Unfortunately, for the most part, we don't do it consciously and/or are out of practice and so don't do it well or make the effort to do it often ... or at least not often enough.

One way in which we can begin to practice our ability to receive and express non-verbal messages is through a concerted effort to attend to our own and other's body language. When in conversation with our friends, we can begin to attend to the subtle movements of their body or face that express feelings and thoughts that are not being spoken.  

Photo by Scott Johnson. Creative Commons License 2.0

People often refrain from saying what they want to say or say things they don't actually mean, but they regularly express what they are really feeling through their body language.  

When we are oblivious to these additional or even contradictory messages from the body, we  cannot respond appropriately to our friend's subtle communications.  Sometimes, we pick up on subtle signs, but cannot or do not bring our observations into conscious awareness, and we respond to them, but perhaps not appropriately.  

It takes a concerted effort to consciously attend to the subtleties of body language and thereby be in a position to choose a response that is most appropriate. Being attentive to the subtle non-verbal expressions of a friend is one way in which we can receive messages that will help guide our response and help us know how to engage the other more ethically.

By extension, it is possible to also see how paying attention to the non-verbal expressions of our environment, such as a sudden change in animal behavior, like dramatic shifts in the biodiversity of wetlands areas, can be heard as a message or even a warning from the environment.  Attending to this message can help us choose to take appropriate action that both responds to the needs of the creatures that live there and protects our shared environment.

Photo by Wendell. Creative Commons Lisence 2.0

These forms of communication are subtle and non-verbal and a heightened attention to these forms of communication can encourage the development of our awareness to even more subtle forms of communication, such as the "sudden knowings" and "mental images" referred to by Anna Breytenbach.

"Spirit" is the source from which we have all emerged. In Spirit, we are One—though we think of ourselves as individuals who are separate from each other and separate from spirit. We live in the state of what is referred to in Buddhism as "ignorance," which is a state of forgetting or unawareness of our true state of Oneness with spirit.

Because our true state is one of inter-connectedness or Oneness, spirit can be witnessed in every moment of every day ... if we pay attention. 

People often refer to messages from spirit as "receiving a sign." "Signs" come in many forms, and while sometimes these signs are verbal, including things people say to us or even words or expressions that suddenly pop into our minds, they are often non-verbal, like the sudden onset of a feeling, or the strange occurrence of a dream or a synchronicity. The problem is we often dismiss these "signs" as meaningless.

It is necessary to be attentive and open in mind and body in order to receive messages from spirit, and much can be learned from a heightened attention to the phenomena of the world around us.  

Increasing our attention first to the subtle expressions of others around us and then to the even more subtle expressions from spirit can assist us in developing the ability to communicate with Others better. And, thereby, help us to respond appropriately to those others in our life who are most vulnerable, those others who are in most need of being engaged ethically.

The trick is make a concerted effort to bring the phenomena that is happening all around us, within the purview of observation, into the conscious attention of our mind.

For more, please see my books The Land of Happiness: Reflections on a Journey and The Six Realms of Samsara available through my Author's Spotlight