Introduction

Every being has a soul, is an expression of Source experiencing Source nature, and is self-aware. All souls are connected in a shared soul matrix I call God, Source, and divine Creator. Through our shared soul matrix, we can and do communicate with every other created being, whether we are conscious of doing so or not.

We, no more exempt from nature’s laws than plants, are as heliotropic as they, but the light we seek is not the light of the physical sun. We seek the divine light of the soul. Most of the time most of us have no idea of how, where, or when that light will shine on us, and we are grateful for every moment of relief we can find.

For many of us, turning to our animals soothes us and that is enough.

We in the West have inherited a foundational story which insists on a hierarchy in which humans serve as overlords of all other life forms. This hierarchy does not serve our higher good, our search for a worthy path, our capacity for joy, our well-being, or the Earth, on which we rely for our lives. Holding an image of ourselves as above all other creatures not only separates us from the natural world, it burdens us with an outrageous responsibility beyond our capability.

When we limit our view of life to that hierarchy of separate and unequal life forms, we isolate ourselves from each other and from the real selves we may not even dare hope live deep inside us. We go through our lives clutching a small view of who we and others are or can be, hungry for what we may not allow ourselves to want.

And so we grow up assuming separation. We say it’s OK to treat those who are not “our kind” as we would not want to be treated. Rather than seeing animals as partners and teachers, we see them as soulless tools and resources. And that point of view not only is a tragedy, it creates tragedy. If you doubt this, turn right now to the last chapter, and read about Pelusa, an elephant who lived all alone at a zoo for 40 years.

In my 20s, my search for the divine taught me that all species are ensouled. But until I listened 30 years later to what non-human animals told me of their longings and dreams, their love for life and their people, and the nature of consciousness, I believed we lived on one side of the glass and animals on the other.

The sudden recognition I felt hearing a pregnant mare’s grief-sodden words, “Because they leave you” knocked the hubris out of me, instantly banishing any sense of hierarchy I may have had about humans’ superior awareness.

Hearing one dog after another say they didn’t mind dying and even being in pain if their person wasn’t ready to let them go yet; witnessing a healing between two dogs separated by time and space; and feeling the resonance of a dying elephant’s willingness to make an effort to be strong enough to withstand her move to sanctuary brought me to my knees in awe and opened a vast field of wonder to me.

In 1987 I swam with dolphins in a dolphin discovery center in Florida. One of the females swam right up to me, pushed her nose into my right breast, and swam away.

I stopped, treading water. What had just happened? I had no idea. Two years later, at a conference on interspecies communication, I asked the animal communicator who had just given a wonderful talk about the likely reason for this behavior. Turns out she knew the dolphins at that discovery center well, and she asked which dolphin it was.

“Li’l Bit,” I replied.

She paused a second, and told me that Li’l Bit was a very caring individual, very sensitive and helpful. She said, “She probably gave you a healing. She probably sensed that there was something wrong with that breast, and she used her sonar to heal it.”

I had no idea that dolphins could, or did, use their sonar to effect anything, including healing. I didn’t know that dolphins could heal themselves or others, didn’t know that dolphins (or any other animals) were sensitive to the states of others’ bodies or states of mind, body or spirit.

Until I heard a white horse named Malone say to me as soon as I tuned into him, “I welcome you in the name of all divine beings,” it still had not occurred to me that non-human animals could consciously access and articulate higher consciousness.

Many years and many animal communication sessions later, I am stilled awed, thrilled, inspired, and moved to the depths of my being at what I hear and feel non-human beings communicate to me and to others. They are my teachers.

The intuitive communication sessions I have with animals take me into a loving, bright universe, to and over the threshold of the Divine into a field of possibility beyond hierarchy, into the infinite flow of unconditional love, which is the nature of the universe.

I have written this book to share with you the wonders I have found in them so that you, too, can experience this wonder, the threshold to which may be no farther than your own furred or feathered friend. Further, there may be animals who may right now yearn to share their stories with you.

As you read my conversations with animals in this book, you’ll notice that although the sessions happened in the past, I use the present tense, and you may also notice that occasionally I use the word “you.” The reason for these choices is that I type the conversations as I communicate with an animal long-distance and then send the written report to the animal’s person. The “you” addresses my client, the animal’s person. You will be reading, then, the words I heard coming from the animal, often replete with nuanced intonations.

There are three kinds of material in these pages: messages from and the text of my animal communication sessions with animals in a sans serif font; information which I consciously composed, which is in this serifed font; and information which I was not conscious of making up in my conscious mind, but which came to me from an expanded point of Self which feels like a sweet updraft I call the Field of Light, and those are in a serifed italic font.