Amber D's Advice Column

Amber D is an outspoken donkey who lives on an animal sanctuary co-founded by an animal communicator. So Amber D fortunately has many avenues available to her for expressing herself. She barged in on the newsletter making process and answered a couple of cute questions in her sassy manner, but then started a question and answer column with very thought-provoking and heart opening responses. Here is an excerpt with permission from the folks at Spring Farm Cares and more can be found on the Spring Farm Cares website :

http://www.springfarmcares.org/amberd.htm

Here is one of her fun and spirited answers.

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Dear Amber D: Do humans really hear us? --Crazed Cat.

Dear Crazed:

This has been a question that has perplexed all animals for a very long time. We know from long-time research by dogs, that if you stare at them long enough, they do seem to get it. At least something seems to register that you are trying to tell them something. Some of them start guessing and will try feeding you, taking you outside, petting you, and even singing to you, when all you were trying to say to them is “hello.”

My personal opinion is that the human brain is so large that it blocks out their hearts so they don’t listen well. My advice to you is to try the staring technique and, by process of elimination, you may actually get them to do what you want.

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But grab your kleenex for this profound understanding of unconditional love.

Question: There is one thing I always have trouble with and that's the notion of unconditional love. I think humans (myself not excluded) are mostly so narcissistic, that the thought of being loved by animals no matter what a huge egomaniac one is, might not necessarily be a healthy concept. (If I use an extreme example - Hitler was very fond of his dog, but I find it difficult to imagine that the dog found Hitler to be a wonderful person? if the dog had any idea what was going on because of his/her human, which I assume he/she had.) I think it often is absolutely OK and necessary to judge - when values and ethics are involved. What do you think? Do animals judge? Do they judge AND love - and could you explain what animals think about this.

Amber Donkey: This is probably the most popular question I, and other animals at Spring Farm, are asked by people coming to the farm to learn from us. We don't always understand why this is such a difficult thing for humans to grasp or understand. But I think it is because you have become separated from the notion, the ideal, the principle, and the understanding of unconditional love and forgiveness. To think that unconditional love could be "unhealthy" speaks volumes for why so many of our human friends are sick all of the time. Unconditional love is pure health and vitality and oneness and it is nothing short of being universal truth. I have asked Dawn to share a story that she experienced first hand with an animal and a human who did less than right by them. This story is a prime example of how animals operate within the understanding of forgiveness and unconditional love. I will tell you that this same principle applies to the example you used above regarding Hitler. But that example is so heavily charged by the magnitude of the atrocities that this entails, that the human heart and mind cannot wrap itself around the understanding of it. This is why I asked Dawn to share her experience as it will be easier to understand where we are coming from.

From Dawn: I often have the privilege of working with my colleague Lillie Goodrich, Animal Communicator and Co-Founder of Glen Highland Farm, a Border Collie rescue, quite a bit on more challenging cases. We have learned a ton of information from animals who we have worked with together. One of the most outstanding and memorable topics is about unconditional love and being nonjudgmental. This is an exact real life example of what Amber Donkey refers to above.

Lillie contacted me to help work with a dog she had just brought into her rescue. The history on this dog provided all the answers as to why she was very skittish. She was relinquished to a humane society by a person who arrived drunk and told the shelter personnel that he routinely punched her in the face when she annoyed him. A couple of days later, after sobering up, he tried to adopt her back from the shelter. Instead, she was already on her way to a new life at Glen Highland Farm and to find a person who would adopt her and love her forever. Lillie excels at helping Border Collies who have come through some of the most extreme and sad situations you can imagine. The farm is very healing for them and they get to experience life as a Border Collie. But this dog needed a little extra help. I had worked with Lillie on several occasions with this dog and she was gradually improving in her self-confidence. Dogs give so much to humans and it is beyond sad to see that life force dimmed by things humans do to them. This dog was one such case. Within a few months, Lillie was contacted by the humane society who sent her this dog with some interesting news. It seems that the man who had abused and then dumped her had found himself another dog from someplace else. He had just been found dead in his home and his dog had been eating on his corpse. Our reaction, of course, was probably the same as some of yours. He got his just desserts. But then, as quickly as the thought came in, the dog came through for a message for Lillie and for me. Both Lillie and the dog have given permission to use this story and for you to hear what the dog had to say about the fate of this person who tormented and abused her.

From the dog: If you find yourselves feeling that justice was served, then you are not looking from your heart. This is a story of a life....lost. A mission.... incomplete. A heart.... still closed. A soul....still playing out this troubling aspect of itself. It is also the story of two healers whose missions were not effective. It is of a hope lost. Of a rescue never fulfilled. You know the feeling.... when you just have to console yourself with the realization that you can't save them all.

This was a man whose heart was so closed that he lost his own sense of direction and purpose. Instead of love and joy.... he could only feel pain. Instead of knowing success... he could only realize failure. Only one thing could change that for him and that was for him to open his heart. But he forgot that in his pain and his entire focus became one of hiding from the light at all costs. Yet his soul knew its journey. His soul yearned for the love from his heart. And his soul asked for help and help was granted.... as it always is for all who ask. Again, the quickest way to his heart was chosen. A being who could love him in spite of all the darkness he could muster. A being who would still welcome him home although he brought nothing but pain. Because that being was guided by the one truth that all living beings are born with into the physical realm - that all hearts can open, no one is truly lost, and nothing is ever hopeless. I arrived.

I tried to open his heart the easy way -with love. But he couldn't accept it. I never gave up. Until out of a last attempt to save him from himself, I tried to take some of his darkness away. This dimmed my own light by giving up my own trust in my own life. I knew he needed strength.... so I gave him mine.... the ultimate sacrifice. Now I am left to find my own strength once again - for which I will because I am willing to receive.

Sadly, the man did not find that strength I left him, yet he knew something was there and he tried to find it again. A second friend entered the fray. This friend too, could not reach the depths of the emptiness in this man's heart. We ask you now to give light to his soul. The task he came here to complete, went unfulfilled and uncompleted. He will need to try it again. With help, we can all send him light, love, and strength.... exactly what I and the second dog tried to do, so that our missions to help him were not in vain. Our thoughts for his journey to find the light of an open heart - like you so richly have in your own lives - will ease his journey the next time. No one is ever left behind without help.

Also understand that the second dog meant no revenge, had no anger, no false motives other than to help this lost person find his way. Send your thoughts to this dog who is feeling the remorse of a lost mission, and whose only thoughts in chewing on this human's body was first to wake him up, and then as a last attempt at survival for its own body. Revenge was never part of the plot. Send that dog the comfort of knowing it did all it could do and did not fail. Send that dog the light it will need for itself, as it also chose to give up some of its own light as a last attempt to bring the man to his own heart. And last..... remember that your own soul evolved through darkness just like this man. Your journey to your own open heart was not always filled with the light you now have. You too once took baby steps in darkness..... and made mistakes. Someone was there for you .... to show you the way. Because of your willingness to live in your heart, and truly feel your feelings... you have been chosen to teach with the teachers. We can't save them all ..... but we can send them love and light to ease them through their journeys the next time around. You are blessed.

From Dawn: This is not an isolated communication. I have received many just like this from animals who have suffered untold pain and abuse at the hands of humans. Yet I have seen them move on with forgiveness, non-judgement, and unconditional love. Unhealthy? I think that judgment is one of the biggest man made illnesses to plague us.

From Amber Donkey: Thanks Dawn. To further add to the last part of the question: Do animals judge and love? I will say that you can not do both at the same time. To love unconditionally is to do so without judgment. It is to understand that we are all one. To understand that the "dark" side you see and judge in others is also a part of yourself. That no one is beyond loving. No one is beyond forgiveness. And no one has the right to take away someone else's hope. That is what we are trying to say.