How to Approach Animal Communication
Animal communication must be based on the authentic desire to retrieve information for our highest good and to use it for our welfare, “our” being inclusive of the animals.
Approaching Animal Communication
Humans are a stubborn species: we often lean towards self-centeredness, which is not to be confused with selfishness. Self-centered means putting ourselves in the center of a situation, viewing it from our perspective, usually a narrow or one-dimensional one. How does it affect me? Why is this happening to me or in my world? When it comes to our relationships with our animals, we extend this central theme and often become species-centric. When an animal develops a behavioral problem sometimes people are unable to view it from the animal’s perspective and see it as their inconvenience which “must be stopped.” Such is the case with clients who call an animal communicator seeking a simple solution to an emotional or behavioral issue, seeing it from their isolated human perspective rather than from the animal’s.
I recently had a client who approached a distance reading this way. After arranging for the consultation, the woman sent me two photos of her dog with the request, “I need her to stop attacking my other dog.” Sometimes as a communicator I forget that new clients need guidance in asking questions. It was an instruction, not a question, and it came from the owner’s frustration of living with two animals who weren’t getting along. Before I would delve deeply into the reading, I tuned in to the dog and picked up a feeling of jealousy and resentment based her feeling “less than” the other. However, I needed more information and so responded to the owner this way:
I want to redirect your question. Instead of saying “I need her to stop,” we need to ask why she is doing this. Animal communication is a dialogue between the communicator and animal…, you, the owner, would provide the list of questions you have for me to ask Shadow. In that regard, I act as a medium and relate answers back and forth between the two of you. It would help if you gave me a bit more info: when did this behavior start, who is the older dog, have they lived together a while before the attacking began? How old are they?
Reading works like a consultation with a therapist, whose first questions are usually exploratory. Somehow people get the impression that they must withhold information from a psychic, almost to “test” her ability, which immediately erects an energetic wall that interferes with a reading’s clarity (in both animal and intuitive human consultations). Information sharing works two ways – from the client to the reader, and from the animal to the reader. Any deliberately veiled information results in an unsuccessful session.
A few years ago, in an animal communication class I taught, one of the students complained she had taken similar classes but “just couldn’t get it.” I was her last hope. It turned out that (naturally) I gave her the same exercises and guidance that her previous communicators had. She came to the second class disappointed: “It’s not working.” I asked her what wasn’t working. “The communication.” I told my dog to go get her toy, and she didn’t do it.” I took a deep breath.
“Why did you ask her to do that?” The woman replied, “Because I wanted to see if she’d obey me and then do it.”
Of course, the dog didn’t get her toy! She didn’t want to obey some arbitrary rule for her owner to prove just how powerful and skilled she was. Her motivation was all wrong. The dog was all right not to pick up her toy. Bravo to the canine will.
Animal communication (just like any psychic communication between reader and client) must be based on the authentic desire to retrieve information for our highest good and to use it for our welfare, “our” being inclusive of the animals. Anything else will not yield beneficial results. We are not the center of reading.
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About the Author
Lisa Shaw is an animal communicator, Reiki Master, professor, and grief counselor specializing in end of life and afterlife issues with our pets. She has been an English professor for over 30 years, and an intuitive counselor for 30 years, holds an M.A. pastoral ministry with a concentration on loss and healing and has trained as a hospice chaplain. She lives in Ft. Lauderdale with her furry and feathered family. www.reikidogs.com
