extrait anglais de "Straight From the Horse's Mouth"
from Straight From the Horse's Mouth: How to Talk to Animals and Get Answers (Crown Books, June 2001)
Foreword. "Boo Boo, Where Are You?"
I happily agreed to take care of his animals and home while our son Jeff was away refurbishing our old vacation house on Cape Cod. After all, I already fed the chickens and gathered their eggs, then walked and fed the dogs and yard cats every morning anyway before I worked out on his exercise equipment. Indoors was Boo Boo, his house cat, who had had her front claws removed and who had her routine, too. We basically worked out together and shared the equipment, so Boo Boo received plenty of attention while I exercised.
The first morning after our son left, Boo Boo didn't greet me at the sliding door as she usually did when I came to visit. I thought she probably had been accidentally locked in somewhere, but after opening every door and cabinet and searching every inch of the house, I found no sign of Boo Boo. I called Jeff, figuring she must have snuck out while they were moving things to his truck. He mentioned that whenever she went out, she always stayed near the house. I searched every acre of the property and the basement calling her name over and over. No answer or sign of Boo Boo. I left her food dish and litter outside, but they went untouched.
A week went by with no sign of our beloved Boo Boo. I was certain she had been carried off by some predator, since she had no claws to protect her or help her to climb a tree. We were all depressed. The only hopeful sign was that it looked as if someone were raiding the food bowl of Eanie and Meanie, the outdoor cats. Could it be Boo Boo? (Meanie was just what her name implied, mean toward everyone. Even the dogs stayed away from the yard boss.)
I had to go to San Francisco for the Kinship For All Life Conference sponsored by the SPCA, so off I went with heavy heart. Jeff's friend watched over the house and animals while I was away. He also reported no sign of Boo Boo. While at the conference I met Amelia Kinkade, an animal communicator and intuitive. I briefly shared what had happened at home, and we discussed the possibility of her helping locate Boo Boo.
It broke my heart to return to Jeff's empty house and work out or sit and read the paper with no Boo Boo to demand love and attention and keep me company. For the next week, Jeff's dog Cybil and I toured the yard every day, calling out for Boo Boo with no luck.
Amelia and I began to e-mail, and I kept bringing up Boo Boo and my feelings of loss. Amelia agreed to try to help me by visualizing what Boo Boo was experiencing, even though she lives in California and we are across the continent in Connecticut. Amelia asked for a photograph of Boo Boo but each time I entered the house I was so heart broken and lonely I'd forget to look for one. She began to give me clues but I still did not have my heart in it, believing Boo Boo was long gone.
Then one day an extensive e-mail arrived from Amelia describing Jeff's house, where she said Boo Boo was hiding, and what the little cat was going through. I had given her no details about any of the things she mentioned. I couldn't believe her accuracy in describing the house; she correctly said it was up on a hill, with a fountain (which is in the pond to aerate the water), a sprinkler system, a Dumpster in the yard for garbage on land scattered with pine cones. She told me that Boo Boo was hungry, fearful and could see the full moon so she had to be alive.
Amelia described two dogs in a penned-in area (Cybil and Bruiser, a recent addition to the household), a black cat with white paws (Meanie) who had driven Boo Boo under the house, threatening her and refusing to let her out to eat when she was hungry, effectively holding her prisoner. Amelia also got my wife's and son's first names and the name of our veterinarian, Michael, whom she said Boo Boo wanted to see.
With this and more information, I went right back to the house, choked with emotion, convinced that Boo Boo was there. I circled the property, continually calling Boo Boo's name. After fifteen minutes I heard a cry coming from beneath the long wooden staircase that leads from the house down the side of a hill. I lay down and peered into the darkness. There was Boo Boo! I cried with joy, but she was too frightened to my outstretched hand. I ran into the house and got some food for her and enticed her to come toward me. I finally managed to pull her out; it was tight fit. She was fearful and angry, and she hid immediately as soon as I got her inside. She eventually came out when she realized she was safe. She was covered with sores. I cleaned them and applied antibiotic ointment.
She had lost a pound or two, and even though we returned to our exercise routine, she still wasn't her totally playful self yet. I knew because each evening she used to hide four play balls under the exercise equipment that I would have to find each morning before we began our workout. Three weeks after finding her, I could find only three of the four balls, so I looked under the treadmill and sure enough, I found that Boo Boo had hidden the missing ball. We are back to normal again.
I still grow tearful as I share this and can't thank Amelia enough. I have always been open-minded, but now I am a believer. With Amelia's training, I can now communicate with our cats and house rabbit. I hear what they are thinking, and we talk without words to each other. The rabbit, Smudge Bunny, now lets me pick her up in the front yard (prior to this only my wife had that honor), and the cats (Miracle, Penny, Dickens and Gabriel) allow me to clip their nails, brush their teeth, and comb out their knots without complaint because I can now tell them what I'm doing and why. Now if I could just use this technique to read my wife's mind! Ah well, that will probably take some graduate work with Amelia. Women are a tough species to communicate with. Amelia may be an exception.
--By Bernie Siegel, M.D.
New York Times #1 bestselling author of Love, Medicine $ Miracles and Prescriptions for Living
The Wanderer
Caitlin called me in desperation when her cat had been missing for over a week. The circumstances felt so dire to me that I agreed to make a house call rather than wait for her to send me a picture. I drove to the woman's home way out in the Orange County suburbs to look at photos of a big fat orange cat named Sal. He was a loud-mouthed, needle-nosed, redhead--a lady-killer, an indoor-outdoor man who roamed the neighborhood freely looking for love (and food). Sal was a wanderer. Over the many years that he and Caitlin had been together, he had disappeared for a few days at a time, but never for this long. His mother was at her wit's end. Sal was the love of her life.
Caitlin was a charismatic woman with a warm, wide-open face, now tear-stained and strained from lack of sleep. The pressure was on. These emotionally charged situations make for very stressful readings. It's not always easy to stay out of the client's fear and see the answers clearly. The dense vibrations that emanate from a panicked client can cast a veil between me and the truth of the situation.
I perched tensely on her cat-hair-covered couch, anxiously milling through stacks of cat photos, looking for the picture of Sal that held the most energy. Focusing on one that captured my attention, I settled in to make contact.
I asked him the usual preliminary question, "What's your favorite food?" before I prepared to ask him the only question that really mattered which was, "Where the hell are you?"
Pork chops and bacon. The words came in like gangbusters. This was a favorite food I'd never heard before. If this answer was correct, I knew I had Sal on the line. When his mother confirmed, my heart flew up into my throat. I was getting a feel for Sal: if Sal were human, he would be a blue-collar bowling champion, a Fred Flintstone kind of guy, who liked to barbecue in his backyard in the suburbs of New Jersey. Laughing, I shared this with Caitlin, who was quick to verify Sal's personality was coming in loud and clear. She lightened up a little, so I tried to relax into the connection. I got the distinct impression that Sal was still in the world of the living, because he was ravenously hungry; this is never a complaint that comes from the Other Side.
I pretended to be casual as I worked my way around the high-voltage question. After a few more mundane questions, I asked him what he could see. Gestalting him, I looked out his eyes, but all I could make out in the shadowy darkness was some clutter. I was worried sick that Sal had gotten himself trapped somewhere he shouldn't be, like someone's attic or garage. I poked around for clues:
"Sal, what do you smell?"
Dust. Car. I'm very thirsty. Afraid he was dying, I tried not to panic.
"Sal, can you tell me what's under your feet?"
I don't know, he answered. Eventually I worked my way up to the really loaded question.
"Sal, do you know where you are?"
I don't know. It's dark. I'm very thirsty. Can you get me some water?
"You've got to help show me where you are so that we can come get you. Then you'll get plenty of water, okay?"
I'll try. I'm getting very weak. I need to eat, and I'm so thirsty.
When I Gestalted his body, I felt his life force waning. It's difficult to telepath when you're desperate, so I prayed for guidance and tried to calm myself down. Asking the right questions is 90 percent of the battle. I struggled to think of a strategy that would lead me to him. I scribbled down notes as I fixated on Sal's picture.
"Can you tell me the last thing you saw before you went into the darkness?" I asked. Thank God, that was the million-dollar question. Sal was perfectly willing to describe the last house he saw from the outside. He showed me approximately where the house was from his own house, as if I were looking at the neighborhood from above in an aerial map. I urged him to outline exactly what path he took when he walked out his front door. Gestalting him, I found myself skimming ten inches above the sidewalk. He took me one block south, turned left, went down a half block down, and crossed the street. A giant weeping willow stood in the yard of the house next door. He described the house: glass blocks piled on top of each other, white brick, wood with blue-and-white trim, pretty flowers in a garden growing close to the ground.
There's a rainbow in the front yard, he said, displaying the image of beautiful pastel colors lined up in a row. I couldn't make heads or tails of it, so I just wrote it down. Then, with urgency, he showed me the garage door. It was white.
"Sal, are you in there?" I asked. I didn't wait for him to answer. When I shared this information with Caitlin, she pulled me out of my chair. "We've got to walk the neighborhood. Let's go find it!" she cried.
We followed Sal's directions. Caitlin said she thought she knew the house with the weeping willow, and the house next door.
Here's what made me love Sal: not the blue-and-white trim he had described perfectly, or the glass blocks that were built into the house, not the border of pansies lined with white bricks along the driveway, when I stood in front of the house, I saw something that made me yell out loud. Sal's rainbow was in the front yard! There, before my astonished eyes, was a yard decoration of a donkey pulling a cart. The slats of the cart were painted in multi-colored pastels. Each board was a different color.
"The rainbow! There's the rainbow! Can you believe it? This is it! This is it!" I screamed. Caitlin and I beat on the front door. There was no answer. We rang the doorbell over and over. Nothing. We ran to the garage door and called Sal, quietly at first so as not to scare him, "Sal, honey, are you in there?" Nothing. We knocked, then we banged, then we howled and begged. We pounded and cried, both of us refusing to give up. I knew he wasn't dead because all he could see was darkness. On the Other Side, animals always see trees and flowers and people. Sal couldn't see anything but shadows, and he had described clutter and something about a car. He had to be in there! I was confused because I was certain that if Sal were in there, he would answer our call, no matter how weak he was. Utterly bewildered and terribly disappointed, I stood in front of the house, unable to receive any further transmissions. My phone line went dead.
We started ringing doorbells up and down the street. We found some neighbors who told us the owners of the rainbow house had gone on vacation days before. We deliberated about calling the fire department or knocking the door in with a hatchet, but we had nothing to go on--that is, nothing but the hunch of a crazy animal psychic.
Slowly our hearts sank. All of our efforts were in vain. It was well after dark before we finally gave up.
When I went home that night, I couldn't let it go. I was furious to have gotten such clear information that didn't pay off.
In my mind, I kept hunting for Sal, but I kept seeing the same scene: shadowy darkness, clutter, some kind of car, some grease and occasionally a whiff of dust or gas fumes. I knew he couldn't be dead! I felt him growing more and more thirsty, becoming deathly weak. He had to be trapped somewhere, alive! But every time I asked where he was, he'd show me the front of the house with the rainbow in the yard. I knew he was running out of time.
"Hang on, Sal. Hang on, honey," I pleaded with him.
Night and day I tracked Sal, and Caitlin went back to the rainbow house again and again--I begged Sal to meow but Caitlin never heard a peep through the door. I insisted that Sal was still conscious.
Two nights passed before my tracking transmissions changed dramatically. Sal sent me visions of himself prowling through tall grasses under gargantuan trees. He was frolicking outside in some idyllic forest environment, chasing butterflies. He showed me fresh air, billowy white clouds in the sky and carefree, laughing people. When I got the scenery, I broke down and cried. It looked too much like the environment cats describe to me when they are on the Other Side. I was certain Sal was dead.
Tearfully we both wished Sal well and tried to release him. Caitlin was devastated. She called in sick at work and went to bed. I sent Caitlin some flowers to express my sympathy. This case had touched me as deeply as anything I'd ever gone through in my life. I felt like I had lost my own Mr. Jones.
I don't know who was more thrilled and shocked, Caitlin or I, when she received a call the next day from the people in the rainbow house. As she called to tell me the news, I cringed and held my breath. I thought perhaps the people had come home from vacation to find a dead cat in their garage. Guess again. The people were calling from central California, where they had found a live cat in their trunk! Cantankerous Sal had been poking around in their garage when they were loading luggage for their vacation and gotten himself trapped in the trunk for a long, long ride. When he finally got released, he really did go frolicking in tall grasses under gargantuan trees. The family was in Sequoia National Park! The trees he described to me were sequoias! His hosts found his name and Caitlin's phone number on his tag.
Sal enjoyed a lovely vacation in the country for a week before he came home to his exasperated mother, who was so happy to see him, she forgot to scold him. The little devil had had a great time while he put us through hell. After this ordeal, Caitlin and I were the ones who needed a vacation.
Battles Are Never Won. They Are Transcended.
Telepathy and Gestalt do not work from the consciousness of duality. Something remarkable happens when the two hemispheres of the brain work together in tandem. The third form of consciousness is born when neither side of the brain is hard at work. This new heightened consciousness is not found in the brain at all, but in the heart. Without this paradigm shift from head to heart, from duality to trinity, psychic ability can remain inaccessible or limited at best.
If you really want to master the art of telepathy, your commitment to finding the God/Goddess within you needs to be rigorous. Our brainwashing has been fierce. Since our earliest childhood years, our religions have imprinted us with illusions of unworthiness. The creation myths of every major world religion are suspiciously similar: The original Gods of every culture created mankind, but man immediately performed some unforgivable cosmic boo-boo (eating apples and what-not) that caused God to fly into a rage and abandon his creation. Where God might be now, history fails to tell us. Our reconciliation with him is still projected at a later date…and the terms are conditional, i.e., chosen people will be collected, commandment watchers will be commended, kamikazes who die in His name will get instant access into the pearly gates, those who don't eat the forbidden foods will go to heaven and be free from the yoke of reincarnation. Whatever the persnickety terms, the initial sob story on every continent is almost identical: We were created by a dead-beat dad who dumped us here on earth and went away mad because we performed some cosmic SNAFU. Thus, we've been shamed all our lives into believing that not only is there a distinct separation between God and man, but the separation is our fault.
Joseph Campbell spoke of this duality in The Power of Myth, describing how Adam and Eve got the boot from the Garden of Eden:
There is a basic mythological motif that originally all was one, and then there was separation--heaven and earth, male and female, and so forth. How did we lose touch with the unity? One thing you can say is that the separation was somebody's fault---they ate the wrong fruit or said the wrong words to God so that he got angry and then went away. So now the eternal is somehow away from us, and we have to find some way to get back in touch with it.
There is another theme, in which man is thought of as having come not from above but from the womb of Mother Earth. Often, in these stories, there is a great ladder or rope up which people climb. The last people to want to get out are two great big fat heavy people. They grab the rope and snap!---it breaks. So we are separated from our source. In a sense, because of our minds, we actually are separated, and the problem is to reunite that broken cord.
Campbell says it is our minds that separate us from our God source, and I couldn't agree more. All the problems of the human race lie between our ears. That is why the most valuable channel of communication is not the mind, but the heart. The dualities are present in the mind, but when you focus on the heart, the presence of inner divinity is indisputable. (My inner divinity is pistachio flavored.)
Make Me a Channel of Your Peace
There's a saying, "The longest distance you'll ever travel is the journey from your head to your heart." The greatest paradigm shift to open your intuitive channels is triggered by moving out of a state of "trying to get" into a place of "wanting to give." Most prayer is based on trying to "get." We tend to ask the Goddess to deliver to us all sorts of goods, answer a thick stack of questions and we pray that we might live without pain, thus without much learning; then we might get infuriated or despondent when She doesn't clear her social schedule to immediately fulfill our requests. Neediness is a self-perpetuating state of mind. It's opposite, gratitude, elevates you into a paradigm of such loving abundance, that divine grace wafts out to bless the people and animals in your lives.
I'll never forget a story I heard from ex-boyfriend Benjamin, a high-powered Hollywood businessman. Every day he parlayed requests from people who, no matter how well-meaning, all wanted a chunk of him. He told me he had only one friend who was a billionaire. The friend would call just to say, "Hi, Benjamin! I don't need anything. I was just wondering if there's anything I can do for you today. Anything at all." In our society, there's an urban legend that only sharks get ahead in the business world, but I'd like to think this man's generosity of spirit was the reason he was a billionaire.
How often do you think the Goddess gets a phone call from an earthling just to say, "Gosh! Thanks for everything! What can I do for you today?" Could you imagine how tickled She might be to be able to take a deep breath, put Her feet up on his desk, and not have to work late at the office?
Give it a try. Make it a practice of praying every morning to ask what more you can give, how you can help and how you can contribute to the animals. Then sit in the silence and listen. If you don't get any imagery, hear voices, or have any bursts of inspiration, don't despair. Instead, be acutely observant of the world around you for any signs or signals of the task at hand. Trust your urges. Read billboards, listen to words of songs, if you open a newspaper to a particular page "by accident" read it, or if your friend blurts out a suggestion "out of left field," log the information. The Goddess has to use the three-dimensional holographic puzzle pieces around you to play charades. Coincidentally enough, when you find yourself in this new paradigm of giving, you may discover that your requests for goods and services got fulfilled along the way, or that perhaps you didn't really need them after all. She may dramatically change your agenda, getting you "de-hired" from employment that no longer serves you, or ejected from relationships that don't contribute to your newly assigned mission. Try to trust that in serving the Goddess to better the world, your highest good will be honored in the divine plan.
If you're suffering through an illness or trauma with one of your animals, as much as you want to pray, "Please take this pain away," the question from a higher perspective is, "What do I need to learn from this? Please let me see the lesson so that this situation can be resolved and not have to repeat itself." The paradigm shift of "What can I give to the animals?" will help make you a more receptive instrument for their thoughts and feelings. Start with your own in a spirit of infinite giving. Gary Larsen drew a cartoon where one dog is telling another, "My name's No! No! Bad Dog! What's yours?" If it were true that animals don't know their names, but only what we repeat to them all day, Mr. Jones would think his name is "I live to love you," and Oscar, "Can I get you anything?" This daily outpouring of love comes back to me ten-fold when they allow me to see the imagery in their little furry heads.
God's Not Out to Lunch
When the savior of the Christians said things like "We are all created in the image and likeness of God" and "The Kingdom of God is within" and "These things that I do, so will you do and greater," I think he meant, "Wake up, folks! There is no separation! Take responsibility for all your magical powers!"
Meister Eckhart said that "the ultimate and highest leave-taking is leaving God for God, leaving your notion of God for an experience of that which transcends all notions. I and you, this and that, true and untrue---every one of them has its opposite. But mythology suggests that behind that duality there is a singularity over which this plays like a shadow game." It is in this singularity that you will find an underground channel, a network of interconnectedness like a psychic subway system just under your conscious level of awareness. Here, in this psychic mass transit system, every living being can communicate with every other living being. In this place of divine interconnectedness, God is no longer a concept, but an experience. You will experience the oneness of all living things and be able to hear the thoughts of animal friends.
Grace wanted to know how to catch hard-to-reach spiders to put them outside. I honor all spider savers everywhere, but even some of my best friends are not spider savers. There's something about having too many legs that gives most people the willies. I wonder where we get this prejudice. Most people are fine with four-legged animals, but more than four is considered just too many legs. I remind my friends that spiders are magical and intricate beings and that most are completely harmless. What on earth is more dazzling and awe-inspiring than a dew-laden spiderweb spun in a single night? I can't carry around enough building material in my arms to build my own house, much less in my abdomen, nor do I have the smarts to perform such a feat. Spiders are represented in mythology by the powerful Greek goddess Arachne, and I give special credence to any animals that have gods created in their image. I also remind my friends that every creature, no matter how small or leggy, is just a little animal trying to make a living in the world.
Imagine That You Are a Spider.
You just built the most magnificent home of your life. (If you were a human, you'd be an architect to rival Frank Lloyd Wright.) You've picked a prime piece of real estate, out of any drafts but in an open corner where you spied a few gnats moving into the neighborhood. You worked like a mad fiend all night, crafting your dream home. The next morning, you're waiting quietly for breakfast in your glorious new house, thinking your spider-thoughts, maybe humming to yourself, minding your own business, when a shadow descends upon you--a really big shadow. The monster proceeds to spray some toxic chemicals in your direction and destroy your perfect new home with a really big bristly stick. Fortunately you are still young and spry, so you manage to outrun the monster and hide yourself--albeit trembling and terrified--in the molding of the ceiling. Later, when you dare to emerge and make sense of the tragedy, you find the wasteland that was once your home, much like Scarlet, returning to Tara after the Yanks have pillaged the mansion and burned it to the ground. You wonder at the hideous beast that tried to kill you and--is your mind playing tricks on you--or when you backed up far enough to get a decent look at it, did it really have just two legs? Two legs! Eeuuwh! How disgusting!
"The really valuable method of thought to arrive at a logical coherent system is intuition."
--Albert Einstein
Practice: Build the Bridge
Practice with the animals in your neighborhood. A cat may come up to you as you walk past her house. Instead of seeing the cat as an inanimate object, build the bridge.
1. Drop down into your heart. Unplug your mind. Breathe. Inner focus.
2. Reach out with love. See a beam of light radiating from your heart to connect with the heart of the cat.
3. Retreat. Deepen the awakening. Wait in the silence.
You might hear the cat say, Hi. My name is Bernice. I recently lost my mate to cancer.
Or you may not receive anything clairaudiently. In this case, all the incoming data will work like a Web search or a pinball machine knocking your questions through different mazes (chakras), challenging you to receive answers in different subtle modes.
For instance, you might ask, "What's your name?" and hear the "b" sound or the "r" sound (Barry, Bernard, Barney). Or perhaps you won't hear the name at all. You might receive a sudden flash of a black cat, larger than the one you're talking to. A stab of pain in your stomach or an ache of loneliness in your heart might follow this image (loss, separation). Remember, it happens instantaneously.
The normal, rational thing to do at this point would be to disassociate, to tell yourself you're imagining all this, and to give yourself a good swift kick in the head. But if you don't, and you listen carefully while assembling the different images and sensations with lightning speed, you will find this cat has given you a nonverbal story line: The black-and-white cat (heavy and big-boned, so he must be male), a warm feeling of affection connected to him (he lived nearby and she loved him), the depth of the attachment (they spent years together), the feeling of loss, (his death; she feels bewildered without him). Cancer could come as a word--the "c" sound, the "s" sound, as a stab of pain somewhere in your body, as a vision of the cancer tumor itself or a sudden flash of memory of a human you knew who lost her battle with cancer.
You could follow up questioning by asking, "Live together?" Send a thought of the two cats sleeping together on a couch or bed. An immediate image will follow. For instance, a Yes answer might be the image of the two cats sleeping yin/yang, superimposed over the imagery you sent and thereby confirmed. The cat might correct it slightly and send back the image or feeling of two cats sleeping together on, say, a bookshelf but not touching. A No answer could be an image of the two cats meeting outside on the wall. If you are more clairsentient than clairvoyant, you may feel the cold wall under your paws and the wind in your face, meaning the cats didn't share a house: they were neighbors.
You may get this much information, but it's perfectly all right if you don't. You may get nothing but a feeling of intense sorrow radiating out of this cat. You may just get a "hunch" that something happened to her mate.
If you have the courage to trust yourself and your own perceptions, you will find yourself in a wonderful position. Rather than ignoring the cat as all the humans around him inevitably do, you may actually be able to comfort her in her time of grief. This is an honor that few humans around you will step forward and accept. You may be the only living being in this cat's world who can offer her any comfort. (That's what makes all this worth it, when your friends call you "crazy.")
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