Loving My Dog
We have a wonderful dog we got from the animal shelter a little over a year ago. We named him Angus. He just seemed like an "Angus", and I learned upon researching the name that it was Gaelic for One Choice. I guess he was our one choice. I love him to bits.
One of my brothers, who is a long-time dog owner, told me once that dogs are so great because they give you unconditional love. They don't care what you do or how successful you are, they just love you. I guess that's true. Although whether they "love" you or just respect you as the pack leader may be the question. It's certainly nice to believe that they love you.
On one of my winter walks in the woods with Angus I stopped as I often do to commune with my favourite tree, an old hemlock I call Grandfather Tree. There are many ways a person can quiet themselves in order to access one's inner wisdom. In Soul Coaching I help people do that by taking them through guided meditative journeys. Many other folks sit and meditate on their own in various ways. I like participating in shamanic drum journeys where someone drums a beat while others lie down and let themselves drift into trance in the "underworld" to gain wisdom from their power animal.
And sometimes I just stop and hug Grandfather Tree on my woods walk and ask for "his" wisdom. Sometimes nothing much comes, and other times words flow that seem to be from a source beyond me and my experience. On that particular day with Angus this is what the tree told me:
He said, "You know that DOG is GOD spelled backwards?" I said, "Yeah, I've heard that, I know that." He said, "Y'know why? Because God is Unconditional Love, and Dog is what elicits Unconditional Love from us. It is the flip side, (not the opposite)."
He said, "People have it wrong. They think they NEED love, they want to BE loved, to FEEL loved, when in fact it is in the love-ING, loving one another, that the good feelings come, not the other way ‘round. You don't really get good feelings just from being loved by another unless you are also loving them at the same time, and then what you are actually feeling is your love for them.
"You cannot really feel another's love, although you might empathetically. You may get pleasure from the things they do for you or give you in their loving but not from their love itself so much. So loving your dog unconditionally takes you closer to your goodness, your "GOD-ness."
And that was that. Hmmm. I get it, I think. I know for sure when I am in a state of loving someone (or some critter) I feel good, I feel God I guess, although I've never been one to use the word God much as I still connect it to the idea of a single Being as per some traditional western religious views with which I was raised. But I get the idea, I sense the Ultimate Goodness, Pure Love, the Universal Loving Energy kind of idea of what God or Creator or the Great Mystery may be.
And I suppose we can never really "know" when someone is loving us. We can sense when they are being kind, or accepting, or generous, or passionate or compassionate with us, but maybe it's hard to truly know it's "love" coming from the other. But we do know that when we are loving, truly loving, unconditionally, it feels good. It is heart opening.
We often love dogs unconditionally because we don't place high expectations on them, we don't have long histories with them or any "issues", we don't think they have to act a certain way or believe what we believe. They're just dogs. Cute, furry, playful, but "just" dogs. We accept them for who they are. Which seems to be the foundation of unconditional love.
We don't love them only if they buy us flowers for Valentine's Day, or pick up their socks, or say, eat all their kibble. We forgive them for chewing our shoes or scratching at the door because a) they're "just dogs", b) they're cute when they look at you with their big brown eyes and wag their tail and for some reason that makes your heart melt, and c) we realize at some level we may have contributed to their behaviour by ignoring or mistreating them. Or maybe we know that being mad at a dog or creating a story around what they have "done to us" is kind of futile or meaningless.
Granted, not everyone is kind to and accepting of their dogs, but I've often heard of people who would rather be with their dog than with other people. If only we could apply the kind of acceptance and lack of projection of our own expectations to the humans in our lives that many dog lovers apply to their canine friends. Most people don't "mean" the incidental harm they do, any more than your dog "means" to wreck those new red shoes. Most people are just trying to make themselves feel good, to be happy. They just don't always know the rules we have set up for them, or if they do, they have learned ways of being that don't fit our ways of being. Sometimes, like a dog, people just don't know any better.
Anyway, this is just what the tree told me, and my musings on that, the idea that it is in the loving more so than the being loved, that the good feelings come. What do I know? Just that loving feels good to me, accepting "what is" feels good. I love my dog Angus. And my kitties. And especially my amazing husband. Loving them feels good, and that's where my heart is this Valentine's Day.
Love to you too.
~Mary
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