What Informs How We Behave?
Recently, while watching Anna Breytenbach’s fascinating documentary, The Animal Communicator, it occurred to me that I do not habitually listen for information beyond the obvious – the obvious being what I hear going on around me and how things look to my eyes, that is from my “Western consensus reality” perspective. Over the years, after various holistic trainings and much practice, I have learned how to pick up non-verbal communications, but my default is still to focus on the obvious. What am I missing with this limited Western perspective, I wonder?
Anna Breytenbach has dedicated her life to raising awareness about our potential to communicate with other-than-human animals. She talks about the prevalence of “separation sickness” in Westernised cultures and how we all have the potential to relax into a way of being where we can communicate – non-verbally – with animals. Anna realises that to many people with the “Western consensus reality” mindset, this is too far-fetched for words, and yet all the while we remain in this “separation sickness” our Earth is being negligently and often wilfully destroyed in the pursuit of profit from industrial growth. This is clearly to the detriment of both human and non-human animals, and yet we persist, perhaps in part due to our collective blindness to the integrity and interdependency of the whole.
The Animal Communicator is a poignant reminder that we share our planet with many other amazing beings, all of whom have as much right to be here as we do. It is one of the foundational tenets of Earth Law to recognise that all beings on Earth are of value and have the right to exist, to flourish and to regenerate, simply by virtue of the fact that we exist. Perhaps if we extended our cultural norms to include learning how to listen to and communicate with non-human beings we might appreciate and respect them more…
This brings me on to an event taking place in Findhorn, Scotland on 25th and 26th January 2014: WHOLE – Working Holistically On Legal Evolution, which will give participants the opportunity to find information in other-than-consensus-reality places. This event follows on from the Evolving Earth Law workshop, which took place in Findhorn in May 2013. Through the International Centre for Wholistic Law, Mumta Ito and Lucy Thomas are pioneering the use of systemic constellations in legal disputes, particularly in the context of environmental issues, to accelerate societal healing and change. Read Mumta’s article about the potential for systemic constellations to heal and change seemingly intractable situations here.