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Animism, Panempathy and Human Healing
by
Michael W. Fox, D.Sc., Ph.D., B.Vet.Med.,
MRCVS
Surely it is time for us all to make every effort to evolve as a species and become more fully
human. To be fully human is to be humane.
To be sub-human is to be inhumane. In order to evolve and become more
fully human we must define and refine our ethical and spiritual responsibilities and sensibilities. And we must redefine what it means to be human. The origin
of the word human is rooted in such terms as humus, humility and humane. Then
we may evolve socially and biologically, as our behavior, appetites, needs, values and relationships change.
Feeling for Others: Panempathy
The work religion, like the word yoga means to become spiritually reconnected. But by what means do we establish this connection?
And to what exactly do we become connected? Our inherent divinity is not
actualized or released until we become truly religious, developing the yoga of body-mind integration and harmonic resonance
with the inherent divinity in all sentient beings. The powers and potentialities
of becoming a fully human, panempathetic being, are realized once we begin to reconnect with the sacred, numinous dimension
of reality.
That people do feel pain when the earth is damaged is affirmed by a Wintu Indian woman
of California who said, "We don't chop down trees. We only use dead wood. But the white people plow up the ground, pull down the trees, kill everything. The tree says, 'Don't. I am sore. Don't hurt me.'... They blast rocks and scatter them on the ground. The rock says, 'Don't. You are hurting me.'"
Such empathy leads to a feeling of kinship with all life. Lakota Chief Luther Standing Bear wrote: "Kinship with all creatures of the earth, sky and water, was a
real and active principle. For the animal and bird world there existed a brotherly
feeling that kept the Lakota safe among them and so close did some of the Lakotas come to their feathered and furred friends
that in true brotherhood they spoke a common tongue." Chief Luther also asserted
that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans also.
Australian aboriginal elder Bill Neidjie in the book Kakadu Man (Angus and Robertson
NSW Australia 1986) puts it this way:
"I feel it with my body, with by blood. Feeling all
these trees, all this country. When the wind blow you can feel it. Same for country . . . You feel it. You can look, but feeling
. . . that make you. Feeling make you, out there in open space. He coming through your body. Look while he blow and feel with
your body . . . Because tree just about your brother and father . . . and tree is watching you . . . If you feel sore . .
. headache, sore body, that mean somebody killing tree or grass. You feel because
your body in that tree or earth. Nobody can tell you. You got to feel it yourself."
What and how we feel about trees, grass and all the living and pre-living elements and
components of our life community affects our perception and behavior and is greatly influenced by our beliefs and spirituality. Bill Neidjie is a believing animist who lives and breathes in a way of feeling and
sensing, and therefore of knowing and understanding, that is alien to most western "civilized" minds. He sees through feral eyes. To see in this way, the late Sioux
medicine man Fools Crow told me, is to see in a sacred way.
Philosopher Martin Buber is one European with such vision. In his book I ‑ Thou he writes that, "It can also happen if will and grace are joined,
that as I contemplate the tree I am drawn into a relation and the tree ceases to be an It. . . .What I encounter is neither
the soul of a tree nor a dryad, but the tree itself." Or as the Buddhists say,
"The thing in itself."
The "otherness" of an animal Buber describes eloquently in Between Man and Man
when he strokes a horse at his grandparents' estate . . ."I must say that what I experienced in touch with the animal was
the Other, the immense otherness of the Other, which, however, did not remain strange like the otherness of the ox and the
ram, but rather let me draw near and touch it. . . and yet it let me approach, confided itself to me, placed itself elementally
in the relation of Thou and Thou with me." In my book The Soul of the Wolf,
I described this as communion with a significant responsive Other, the wolf being 'the otherness of I.' This is the essence of communion.
Our spiritual autism has now become so severe, and our egotism and anthropocentrism so alienating
from the rest of the Earth's life community that we wantonly destroy whole forests, watersheds, and wildlife habitats and
unique plant and animal species without any feeling or sense except to make paper for computers and raise cattle for hamburgers. Such trivial ends to millions of years of biological evolution that is being irreplaceably
obliterated, along with the peoples who for generations maintained a more sustainable, if not also a gentler way of life,
must be stopped. There is no future in it.
Those who allow themselves to be intimate with the woods let the trees become their teachers and healers.
The "Powers" of Animals and Nature
Certainly, without the ability to empathize, our ancestors would have learned very little
about the ways and "powers" of animals. The success of gatherer and hunter, and
later agricultural communities would have depended as much on objective, instrumental knowledge as on empathic resonance with
and understanding of animals, plants and ecosystems.
Indeed, much ecosystem and animal knowledge was incorporated into the laws, rituals,
taboos and religion of earlier peoples. Many of their ills -- collective and
individual, were (and still are) often correctly diagnosed and treated because an ecological or environmental element was
identified and corrected: like killing too many deer, felling too many trees;
having too many cattle and offspring. We and our domesticated animals developed
new diseases, and the surviving wildlife also, when we dammed rivers and made swamps, developed unnatural monocultures (biologically
and conceptually) and when we depleted the soils of their life and nutrient value to what we grew and ate.
Animism facilitates an empathic rather than an objective mechanistic and reductionistic
approach to human health and prosperity. And it leads to empathic knowledge,
the vital complement, catalyst and corrective for our scientific, objective knowledge base.
We have, regrettably, developed significantly in the latter realm socially, economically
and technologically. Satellite systems and computer internets, along with our
prowess at manipulating the atoms of matter and the genes of life to serve the illimitable wants of industrialism and consumerism,
become an assault on the biosphere and on humanity when there is no ethical temperance and reverential respect for life. Enlightened animism constrains us, along with empathic knowledge, from commoditizing
life and from becoming a global parasite.
What do the materialists and instrumental rationalists who applaud our splitting of
atoms and splicing of genes think animists might feel, empathetically about nuclear fission and transgenic animals
and plants?
We derive "power" from our totems, like the Pueblo Indian saying, "My help is in the
mountain that I take away with me." This spiritual power or psychic
energy can be drawn upon in times of need. Animals and plants, thunderbolts and
mountains, serve various symbolic functions today on coats of arms, national, regional and military flags, logos, stamps,
emblems, etc. Their totemic use therefore continues in modern society while their
powers and animistic significance have been variously forgotten, forbidden, or debased.
It is no coincidence, for example, that the lion, once a pure totemic symbol of power, was co-opted as a symbol of
power by the British monarchy, among other rulers, and by various manufacturers and product advertisers from motorbikes to
tea and syrup!
I recently asked a Tanzanian tribal elder and wildlife ecologist Prof. Deo-Gratias Gamassa
what is the deepest significance of animals, like the lion and elephant, to Africans.
His immediate response was, "Power."
This generic "power" has many dimensions, from using various animal parts for healing
and divination to rites of initiation, ceremonial purposes, and calling up the spirit of the totem animal in order to gain
psychic energy from its particular attributes. A feather, tooth or bone can therefore
embody to the animist, much more than the "realist" or materialist can ever sense or appreciate. That an eagle's feather, ivory amulet, or wolf-bone flute would be worth far more than money can buy and
more than a perfect diamond or gold nugget to the animist, attests to the very different realities and value systems that
people live by.
Hyemeyohost Storm in his book Seven Arrows says that, "Any idea, person, or object
can be a Medicine Wheel, a mirror, for man. The finest flower can be such a mirror,
a wolf, a story, a touch, a religion, or a mountain top." In his book, The
Sacred and The Profane, The Nature of Religion, Mircea Eliade explained the shift in perception from profane to sacred
that occurs when we have feral vision as follows: "The sacred tree. the sacred stone are not adored as stone or tree; they are worshipped precisely because they are hierophanies,
because they show something that is no longer stone or tree but sacred, the ganz andere or "wholly other." --
Nature Heals; Natural Healing
Just as the earth and living things can be harmed and suffer in their ways, so they
can be healed and heal us. We should therefore also consider that if the healing
powers of Nature can help heal us, then when we have harmed them, made them sick, they will probably harm us and make us sick.
A Taos Pueblo Indian poem expresses how Nature heals him in the following words:
My
help is in the mountain
Where
I take myself to heal
The
earthly wounds
That
people give to me.
I
find a rock with sun on it
And
a stream where the water runs gentle
And
the trees which one by one give me company.
So
must I stay for a long time
Until
I have grown from the rock
And
the stream is running through me
And
I cannot tell myself from one tall tree.
Then
I know that nothing touches me
Nor
makes me run away.
My
help is in the mountain
That
I take away with me.
Earth
cure me. Earth receive my woe.
Rock
strengthen me. Rock receive my weakness.
Rain
wash my sadness away. Rain receive my doubt.
Sun make sweet my song. Sun receive the anger from my heart.
Animism plays an important role in healing, as when our soul (or higher Self) and personalities
are not integrated, and when our relationships with others, lacking spiritual resonance, cause harm and suffering. The prevention and reversal of many diseased conditions, as conventional medicine demonstrates in its limited,
reductionistic and mechanistic/materialistic approach to healing, depend upon understanding the spiritual and psychic components
of disease and well-being. As the late Dr. Edward Bach observes, "Disease is
in itself beneficent, and has for its object the bringing back of the personality to the Divine will of the Soul." He sees the real primary diseases
of man as such defects as pride, fear, cruelty, hate, self-love, ignorance, instability and greed.
Spiritual Development
Animals, plants and Nature have played an immeasurable role in our psychic and spiritual
development. Like the infant who instinctively strives to achieve the physical
transformation from crawling to walking, so there seems to be an instinctual urge to achieve spiritual self-transformation. The "powers" of animals, plants and Nature therefore not only heal, inform and inspire. They can also play a role in our spiritual transformation and acquisition of feral
vision by (as the above self-healing statement by the Taos Pueblo Indian attests) literally getting us outside of our ego-centered,
anthropocentric consciousness. Such transcendence and way of being is facilitated
by animism, and also totemism and panentheism. These should not be confused with
anthropomorphizing. Anthropomorphic thinking, narcissism and anthropocentrism
are coins of the same currency of awareness and perception. Animism and panentheism enable us to begin to develop a whole new currency of awareness and understanding
of animals, plants and Nature which, from the analogy of the infant learning to walk, is a more mature and enlightened stage
of human consciousness.
Panentheism moves the Christian doctrine of transcendence toward the doctrine of immanence. The idea that Christ is within Creation (as the logos, the ordering, informing
and sustaining principle of the cosmos that is manifested in all life and matter) is expressed in John 1:3-4. "All things were made through Him, and without Him was not made anything that was
made. In Him was life and the life was the life of men."
In letting go our attachments to things, ideas, fears and desires, and believing that
trees and other natural creations are sentient, we become open to them. When
we are open, we are able to empathize, to communicate at a pre-linguistic level with other sentient beings. They "talk" to us when we have communion with them. Our lives
are then not only enriched. Our entire perspective changes and the human ego
is cast aside like the shell or case of a more immature life-form and stage in our metamorphosis. New powers and possibilities are gifted to us, some as inconceivable as flight and great distance must
seem to caterpillars yet to become Monarch butterflies.
So it is with the development of the human spirit and potential.
Our collective development, bounded by the rampant egotism of our industrial consumer society, is being arrested, trapping
us in a perniciously persevering stage of adolescence (or addled-essence). Our
liberation therefore entails liberating the rest of creation -- trees, rivers, and all creatures great and small -- from the
tyranny of human immaturity that is manifest as arrogance, ignorance and greed.
Balancing Mind and Earth
Former Vice-President Al Gore has
one picture in his book Earth in the Balance. It shows Plato debating
with Aristotle. What balancing the Earth entails (and which Al Gore did not fully
address) begins with us not dismissing Plato, and his neo-Platonic school of transcendental animism, and only embracing Aristotle's
grounded rational and instrumental materialism, as Gore unwittingly urges, but an integration of animism and materialism;
of spirit and matter; body and soul; feeling (and empathic knowledge) and objectivity (and scientific knowledge). Erich Fromm in his book The Art of Loving states "The Aristotelian standpoint led to dogma and science,
to the Catholic Church and to the discovery of atomic energy."
The pathology of modern industrial consumer society is a combination of objectivism,
materialism and narcissism that is self and Earth negating and destroying. The
antidotes this age is beginning to rediscover, as in ages past is that we will only be well, as Black Elk said, "when we learn
to live in harmony with the Power of the World as it lives and moves and does its work."
Two of our powers, the ability to have empathy and to believe in animism, are ours for the taking: but not the genes and lives of other species, or the integrity and future of Creation.
The human species, in its present state (and developmental stage) has regressed in its
evolution from predator to parasite, and from parasite to a self-consuming Plague. Until
it begins to develop feral vision, empathize and embrace animism and panentheism in spirit and action expressed in reverential
respect for all life, the human species will not evolve. It will not pass the
test of becoming a fully human, rather than some chimeric, schizoid, half-god, half-demon, half-mother, half-murderer, half-lover,
half-rapist monster.
It is as unfair to blame Aristotle for the legions of rationalists, the materialists
and the anti-animists as it is to blame our parents and their generation for the chaos and suffering on Earth today, and for
our ills and unfulfilled longings. It is an immature humanity that looks to others
-- God, King, President, or Government, to solve its ills; or worse, to instruments of war, to improve their condition, zone
of comfort, and power. And it is an immature humanity that sees those who are
animistic empaths, as being "overemotional", "irrational", "sentimentally immature" and "unrealistic." Pity those who see empathy as an extrasensory, psychic ability and not a latent sense in all of us. Pity more those who see empathy and empathizing as something illusory, unreal, mystical,
pagan, subversive, and incomprehensibly alien to their limited sense of self and unity with all life.
Albert Einstein described his vision of the unity of life in a letter o the New York
Post (November 28, 1972) in which he wrote:
"A human being is part of the whole, called by us the 'Universe', a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest -- a kind of optical
delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting
us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. our
task must me to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the
whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but
the striving for such achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation
and a foundation for inner security."
Ecologist Gregory Bateson, in Steps to An Ecology of Mind, gives a more ecological,
rather than a mystical view of what animists see as divine intelligence in Nature. He
contends that:
"The individual mind is immanent but not only in the body. It
is immanent also in pathways and messages outside the body; and there is a larger Mind of which the individual mind is only
a sub-system. This large Mind is comparable to God and is perhaps what some people
mean by 'God,' but it is still immanent in the total interconnected social system and planetary ecology."
Professor Jay McDaniel expresses this view along the lines of process theology as follows:
"The universe. . .has a dominant soul, or a subjective center, which at any given moment feels things, much
in the manner that a mind feels things in its body. This universal soul -- a
whole that is greater than, and yet includes, its parts -- is God, understood as the ongoing Psyche of the universe. The totality of creatures in the universe constitutes God's own body. . .A Christian
spirituality that sees nature in God will attempt to feel nonhuman organisms as God feels them, that is, with openness to
what they are in and for themselves, and with love. It will recognize that nonhuman
organisms are parts of the divine body, and it will recognize that humans, too, are parts of that body."
Right Relationship: The Spiritual Ethic
Though many people claim to be devoutly religious, their lack of reverential respect
for fellow creatures and Creation -- the natural world -- reflects a lack of respect and devotion for the Creator. Therefore, we should inquire as to the nature of their religion, and what ends it serves.
If we were in our right minds, we would be in right-relationship: In right relationship and right mindfulness with each other and Nature, we would enjoy world peace and
the benefits of a healthy environment; and with animals we would enjoy their gifts and powers, finding no justification to
cause them harm and suffering and death and extinction as we do today.
The world's major religions have always encouraged right-relationship, which is based
primarily upon the hallowing covenant of reverential respect, be it for the land, for our own kind or for plants and other
animals. This is right mindfulness.
Pre-industrial civilizations had various rites of initiation, rituals and belief systems
(including animism, totemism) and language structures that enabled its members to develop their feral vision, experience the
sacred and to express the sacred in poetry, the arts, crafts and healing. Reverential
respect grew from experience and did not arise primarily from a set of moral codes, ethical principles and laws. These were derivative, not primary.
But they became primary when anthropocentric, monotheistic religious traditions emerged
and were perverted to serve political and pecuniary ends. These traditions were
opposed to any sacramental or panentheistic reverence for Nature, plants and animals since their god was transcendent and
not also co-inherent. That tangible presence in all things that our senses were
fully capable of feeling and knowing and loving was denied and excommunicated. Communion
with Nature was anathema because Nature was something other, separate from man and god.
Our senses and the potential for divine realization in our children were cut off from the sacred dimension of Earthly
Creation. To have reverence for animals and trees was judged heretical paganism. To believe that all manifestations of creation, wolves, woods, rocks and rivers, have
a sacred dimension because they are all part of divine creation and conception was dismissed as primitive superstition. Anthropologists and others of our contemporary technocratic society call such a belief
system "animistic." Yet as a culture, we still hold to some of the vestiges of
animism when we make arbitrary (and often capricious) distinction between the living (wolves and woods) and the non-living
(rocks and rivers).
Animism: The God-Within
To our ancestors, and to some modern thinkers, biologists, ecologists and theoretical
physicists, rocks and rivers are as living in their ways and as giving to life as part of the life-process, as are wolves
and woods and whales and woodpeckers. But when we treat the seemingly inanimate
(i.e., un-enspirited, dis-godded) components of the life-community as non-living, non-sacred, we disrupt the living Earth
system and harm ourselves in the process.
Reverential respect for Nature means avoiding causing wanton harm or injury. This principle of nonviolence was of instrumental value since it helped constrain actions that would be
ecologically damaging. A Taos Indian, for example, advised, "Do not move the
rock or anything placed in its place by God. Not a leaf from a tree nor a bird
from its nest nor a spider's silver thread. These things will fall soon enough
in their time. The earth has roots, and the roots belong to the soil. If you cut a hole in the soil you have damaged the earth. You must therefore be certain it is necessary.
Humanism, in its most pernicious and arrogant mode of instrumental materialism, leads to a non-sustainable economy
and way of life. Animism, the antithesis of humanism, is no panacea, but a sign-post
pointing our way toward a different way of life and of seeing and conceiving our place and role on Earth.
Religious reasons aside, a major reason for dismissing animism is because it is seen
as being primitive superstition, which is unscientific. Since the "objective"
tools of science cannot determine if rocks and rivers are alive or enspirited, and whether trees and lakes can suffer, or
animals really have feelings, then it is reasoned that animism (also termed pansychism) is irrational. It is an anthropomorphic or anthropopsychic projection whereby we erroneously endow other non-human, "non‑living"
and "living" entities with feelings, spirit, divinity.
However, I believe that animism is a less distorted and dysfunctional state of mind
than humanism and scientism. It is our natural, normal, healthy state of mind
that leads to a more life-affirming, sustaining and self-actualizing way of being that is the antithesis of both anthropocentrism
and anthropomorphizing. It is the first step toward a more anthropo-cosmic world
view.
This worldview begins to take form when we are able to accomplish a kind of conceptual and perceptual
integration and synesthesia particularly in how we sense and feel in relation to other beings as subjects/objects. (As a Taoist would say, when we objectify the subjective, and become one with the object, then the way
of harmony will be found).
Integrating the Subjective and the Objective
We can sense, objectively, in a detached, impartial way, but not completely until all
memories and associations are set aside. Pure objectivity in the realm of the
senses is thus extremely difficult to achieve, although it is one of the blessings and memories of childhood. To see, taste, touch, smell or hear anything as though for the first time is to open a new door every day.
We can also sense subjectively, in a wholly selfless yet feelingful way. Through our senses we become aware of and receptive to the feelings and conditions or state of being of
others. The more selfless we are, the more "otherness" we can experience as we
sense and feel and know. In other words, the ego, our central point of conscious
reference, is no longer exclusively in the self, or in the other (or object of one's attention). Rather, consciousness is relational and arises when there is resonance between subject and object, I and Thou. The quality of that resonance
is determined by our senses and empathy and by the balance between our dual yet complementary modes of sensing and relating,
namely the objective and the subjective. When these two modes are in harmony,
like the strings on a finely tuned musical instrument, a new dimension of human potential is realized.
Philosopher Martin Buber proclaims, "Subjectivism is psychologization while objectivism
is reification of God: One a false fixation, the other a false liberation; both
departures from the way of actuality, both attempts to find a substitute for it." For
Buber, "The demanding silence of forms (of nature), the loving speech of human beings, the eloquent muteness of creatures
-- all of these are gateways into the presence of the word."
Our consciousness shifts constantly from the subjective to the objective until we center
it. In a state of equipoise, we can observe how our many desires and expectations
create diversity, and often conflict and confusion. In such a state we can also
enjoy the equanimity of being without desire or expectation. Then we see the
unity of all things in diversity, beyond the conflict and confusion of uncentered minds and beings. This sate is most readily achieved when we are in the presence of those rare individuals who accept us
without discrimination, desire or expectation: And when we are with animals or
in Nature, beside a tree, a stream or contemplating a sunset or distant mountain range.
Ever desiring, one sees the multiplicity of things. Ever desireless, one
sees the unity of all. As it states in the Bhagavad Gita, "When one sees
Eternity in things that pass away and Infinity in finite things, then one has pure knowledge.
But if one sees merely the diversity of things, with their divisions and limitations, then one has impure knowledge."
Experience is the foundation of belief. Such is
the power of the animist's feral way of sensing, feeling and knowing the sacred in woods and wolves. Belief alone cannot be a viable basis for a meaningful and fulfilling life without experiential affirmation. It is easier to believe what we sense and feel than to shape and distort our perceptions,
feelings and cognition to fit what we believe to be true. Is it not a perversion
of Christianity and of any religion to force certain beliefs on people that are contrary to their feelings and perceptions
of something sacred in Nature? And to their intuitive understanding that all
living beings are as ensouled and of the same divine process of conception and manifestation as they are themselves? Animism and pansychism are belief systems derived from experiencing the sacred and
that enable the sacred dimension of reality to be experienced. Through panempathy,
our capacity to have feeling for other living beings, communities, systems and processes leads to the theology and spirituality
of panentheism. This is the natural developmental progression from more primitive
forms of animism, pantheism, and polytheism that in their ancient origins have more to offer us than contemporary monotheism,
humanism, instrumental rationalism and scientific determinism. These latter conceptual
fabrications of anthropocentrism are heretical and primitively crude compared to the blossoming of a humanity that consciously
manifests its inherent divinity through right mindfulness and relationship with all sentient life.
A Simple Exercise
Find a place where trees and shrubs have not been planted by people and where ideally there is some free running
water or a pond or shoreline, or some cliffs or gorge that wild creatures may still dwell.
Just walk about slowly and carefully, mindful that your presence causes the least disturbance to all that is around
you, above you and beneath your feet. Let your breathing fall in rhythm with
your stride and the lay of the land. Feel the breeze, sniff the air. At comfortable intervals, stand still and close your eyes. Listen.
As you open your eyes, slowly turn in a clockwise circle so that you face the Four Directions. When you feel like it, continue your walkabout, allowing the terrain to guide you in whatever direction
feels right. Stop and close your eyes and circle any time you wish.
Make a mental note of any particular sensation, natural formation or some plant or creature, or a particular
stone, maybe a feather or a bone that touched you in some way. If you feel an
urge to take something that you found, or that found you, on your walkabout, take it with the understanding that it will be
returned in the future. If it is alive, like a cactus or a snail, it is probably
best left where you found it since even removing it for a short time might cause harm.
Bones, shells, rocks and dead portions of plants, including roots and seeds, are all part of the place you are visiting
and should be returned at some future time.
When you have returned from your walkabout, empty your pockets and mind and ask yourself, what did the particular
things that caught your attention or that you took back with you "said" to you. What
unexpected idea or meaning suddenly came to you as a "gift" from some natural object?
Write it down and if it has a powerful visual component, try making a sketch of it.
This simple exercise is a first step into the experiential realm of animism, where natural things speak to
you and where some things that find you have a particular power or personal significance.
These are totemic objects. They give you power and "good medicine" as
you find meaning and significance in them. Your animistic relationship with your
totem is as unpremeditated as it is unmediated except by the power or spirit of the object itself that "caught" your attention
and via your senses evoked certain feelings, memories, associations and awakened your feral vision.
Animism and Human Purpose
In the absence of any appreciation for the intrinsic value of other living things that
are valued only in terms of their human utility, they are emptied of spirit; un-ensouled.
Animism thus plays an important role in enabling us to reconnect with the spirit or divinity within other beings and
Creation. It helps prevent us from ultimately dis-Godding the entire cosmos,
and ourselves in the process. A purely instrumental and materialistic attitude
toward life is the bane of contemporary industrial-consumer society. When we
deny life its sanctity and divinity, we demean our own lives. Animism, panempathy
and panentheism help liberate us from the emotional, cognitive and perceptual prison of anthropocentrism. They help us regain our feral vision. Such liberation is the
antidote to our spiritual autism, freeing us to develop those human potentials that, through empathy and compassion, enable
us to heal and to be healed. We thus make ourselves more fully human and in the
process enable our own inherent divinity to shine forth. Our place and purpose
in being human is then revealed to us. As intermediaries or interlocutors between
the Creator and the powers and processes of Creation, our sacred purpose is given clarity and direction, and inspiration. How and what we feel about other living beings and Nature's elements and creations,
determines how and in what way we perceive, understand and relate to them. How
and what we feel are profoundly influenced by our culture and by the example of parents and teachers.
The "child-within" is the soul-seed that is nurtured by the God-without to become one
as the God-within. When we become opened to the world in this deepest and most
fundamental way, Nature becomes our teacher, healer. Her powers become ours as
sacred gifts that wisdom informs we cannot abuse or use for selfish ends, for then we harm ourselves.
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