Tag Archives: animals

Fear Blocks Love

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I was reading some comments from Mary on her blog in relation to her post ‘Thinking of Dogs’ that I have found very helpful for my own personal self reflection*.

Comment from Amanda on ‘Thinking of Dog’s’ Post:

Mary How decptively simple this advice is. Mostly I rush through reading valuable information to get to the next thing that might help me instead of lingering over what I’ve already heard, feeling where it might apply to my own life (I resist that a lot) and miss out on the opportunity for personal change. That becomes very wearisome eventually and thank God for that.

Amanda.

Response to Amanda’s comment from Mary:

“I’ve found it useful to begin to consider my fears from the perspective of truth and this post is kind of an encouraging word for others to do the same.

When we are stuck in fear we justify its existence and never stop to challenge our fear-based beliefs with truth. We believe we are rational in our irrationality.

‘Thinking of Dogs’ is my way of saying ‘let me consider how I would feel about this situation or this relationship if I didn’t have fear’. I do it often. I’ve found that it’s helped me to get a grip and to strengthen my faith enough to begin to challenge my fears.

Its amazing to do this ‘what if fear wasn’t driving me here?’ exercise and to recognise what a contrast there is between what I’ve been doing and what I would actually do if I wasn’t justifying my fear.

Love
Mary”

* * * * * * * *

Conversation between Mary and Shannon about fear, how it affects us as kids & dogs: (in comments section on same post)

Response from Mary to comment:

“Its funny I was also raised with the message (and experience) that animals can sense your fear. As a child I took this to mean that if you show fear around animals they sense a weakness in you and will exploit it (it is extremely predictable that I interpreted the message about animals and fear in this way given that multi-generational injuries on both sides of my family uphold that the emotion of fear IS an actual weakness that will be exploited by other people unless you hide it). But this is not what really goes on when we are afraid around animals.

If you can remember what it was like when you were a kid and both your parents became afraid you know that as parents go into fear all love is withdrawn from their child at that time, their focus is on preventing fear and any positive, loving provisions they had going towards the child and its environment are suddenly gone. As the child in that situation, you usually feel very insecure and unsafe because of this withdrawal of love and the sudden loss of any sense of security the love was providing.

I believe it is the same for animals around us – when humans are afraid of an animal, the animal senses NOT the fear but the LACK OF LOVE and they begin to feel very uncertain about what is going to happen around them. In other words, they sense danger and often they respond in defence – not because they are aggressive but because they suddenly feel insecure in their environment and fearful for themselves. Does that make sense?”

Reply from Shannon:

WOW!! Yes! That very much makes sense. This totally “flips” how I was thinking on this subject…. I was completely focused on my own fear (like a victim), instead of, my own lack of love (with humility). Thank you so much Mary, this is a very very helpful insight!

Reply from Mary:

“Yes, I think two facts are often overlooked by people in fear

1. While we hold onto fear and justify it we are simply NOT ABLE to love in relation to what we fear. In other words, while we fear something we don’t love it.

2. That letting go of our fear is a choice that we have on a moment by moment basis.

So when fear is triggered and we don’t allow ourselves to feel it we are actually making a choice not to love in that moment.
Under those circumstances we shouldn’t be surprised that people and animals around us feel unloved and uneasy.

I know how easy it is to feel like a ‘victim’ of fear but we really do have a choice to let it go. I also know how much I’ve wanted to believe that I can love something or someone while still feeling afraid of them. It really doesn’t work and just isn’t possible.

The good news is that as soon as we do start to let fear go so many things change and we begin to feel more love for others and to receive more love quite easily.

So glad that the feedback helped.
Mary”

*Thanks Mary, Amanda and Shannon for these conversations!

Soul Experiment Series: Loving Animals equally – Foxes

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Our Friend Mr Fox

We realised some time ago that we had a lack of love for some creatures in comparison to others on the property. We value sheep and cattle more highly as they are/were our income, and we feel small creatures need ‘protecting’. We like native animals especially small and ‘cute’ ones and free and wild animals and love birds often above others creatures. We had very different feelings towards ‘pests’ including foxes, ‘feral’ cats, pigs, large mobs of kangaroos, various insects, eagles etc (we love eagles now but when the family first moved to the property they were deemed sheep killers and so were hunted themselves to prevent attack on the sheep.) Really anything that ‘attacked’ us, ‘our’ food, the livestock, or potentially may ‘attack’ us, the livestock or ‘our’ food.

AJ and Mary were talking to us a couple of years ago about how we don’t love all animals equally and encouraged us to look at the reasons why. At the time Foxes were an issue for us, killing lambs and we feared the attack on the livestock. We had had a shooter who whistled up the foxes and then killed them regularly on the place for years. When we decided that we would eat vegan (for a number of reasons) one being that we no longer wanted to intentionally kill animals, we felt that that applied not only to domesticated animals but to all the animals on the place so we also stopped all contract shooting of any kind of animal on the property.
We also decided to do a soul experiment with the foxes – the hypothesis being if we loved them equally would they feel the need to attack other animals on the property? So we began with our intention set to love the foxes as much as we love other animals and work through our fears, beliefs and reasons that we didn’t value them as much as, say the sheep. God has created ALL creatures and loves all her creations so we needed to ask ourselves why we don’t love all creatures equally just like God does?
For a time it seemed like there were more foxes and we were worried they might ‘take over’ but as we went through the process of working out why we favoured other animals and loved foxes less an amazing thing happened. We noticed that foxes didn’t actually prolifically multiply or attack the livestock. And now there seem to be the least amount of foxes there ever has been on the property.
We talked to our guides about the issue also and felt that eventually the foxes would leave, discontinue breeding or they would regulate their breeding and eat less meat or merely meat that had died naturally rather than having to kill to get food. Foxes have a negative reputation in Australia. But we are finding foxes are a beautiful animal, we found out that up to 80% of their diet is actually fruits, berries, insects and small animals if that food source is available (see scat image below), we feel that the fox (and many other animals that are ‘carnivorous’ at this time) would easily make the transition to eat a diet of insects and fruit if an abundance was available.
Due to humans taking away a lot of preferred food sources for various species they are forced to pray on other animals or what is available. We don’t really consider this when we strip away plants and habitat to graze livestock for money or personal gain, we give little thought to any creature other than those that we can ‘get’ something from, until they become a ‘problem’ or a ‘predator’. What we don’t realise is that we are the cause of the problem in the first place (this is exciting if we can own we are the cause, and find out what the emotional cause within us is, as this is what is going to enable us to change. We need to change our soul not just our intellect on these matters. It is all very well to say ‘we love foxes now’ but honestly that doesn’t work, we tried it and it didn’t stop the attacks. What did stop them was our genuine heartfelt change, the soul change, that is what stopped the attacks*.)
Fox scat: This is what foxes eat

The foxes seem to have now regulated in number. Angelo spoke to us about the fact that when we had been shooting the foxes, generally we were killing ‘an old’ fox with an established den, what happened is we disrupted the hierarchy system and in it’s place maybe 3-5 new foxes would move in increasing the population due to the balance being disrupted. Also the foxes felt hated and attacked by us and due to this bred prolifically increasing the population rapidly (see Jesus’ talks on ‘creating loving eco-systems’ for more information on aggressive and passive creature responses this can also be viewed on YouTube, there are 2 parts to the talk). We have now not had contract shooting for maybe five or so years and we feel quite differently about the foxes and there are the least number there have ever been on the property. They are rarely attacking and have not attacked sheep for a few years that we are aware.

The foxes will sit on rocks and watch us drive past now, they don’t always race away or avoid us at all costs, they are still wary at times but often we will pass a little nose sticking out of the grass just watching us go by. There is even one who lives at the top of the drive to our house.

We did see one who had attacked a galah and we feel the bird life gets attacked at times by foxes (and cats) and so we need to now look at our lack of equality of love in this area. We do love birds more and so they are likely to be attacked until we work through the emotions we have about that.

Now, if or when a creature does get attacked we ask ourselves what are the underlying causes within us that created the attack. We pray to be shown the reasons why these things are happening (we often go into self punishment and feel like we have done something wrong) BUT we are beginning to challenge this and be firm and honest with ourselves about what we feel when it happens. Pete and I voice our feelings as soon as it happens (if we can) and often realise that it is what we say in the first moment that is what has created the incident in the first place. Because the animals reflect us we are responsible for what happens to them on the property. Our soul’s are what protect or do not protect all the creatures great and small. Due to the creatures reflecting us it is an instant feedback system exposing errors, injuries and where we need to heal our soul in order to become more loving and grow closer to God.

Every creature has a purpose and God created them all. Animals, insects, micro-organisms etc are not ‘bad’, ‘wicked’, or intentionally attacking, some are merely doing their job, they are merely reflecting the human soul’s condition of love or lack of it and highlighting the areas where we need to heal and become more in harmony with love. Some of the injuries are intergenerational and have been going on for a long time, some are just starting to be exposed.

So in summation: we feel, and have some strong evidence now, that if you love one creature more than another it will either be attacked or attack (depending on it’s nature) until we love all creatures equally. We feel that when we love all creatures equally then each creature will feel loved and will not feel the need to over breed or attack another creature and the whole environment will eventually be in balance and harmony as God intended it to be.

We are excited and look forward to sharing with you more Soul Experiments, the direct relationship between the soul and the world around us (including flora and fauna) and the eternal wonders of God’s universe that we are finding out about and how our love or lack of it directly affects the environment we live in.

* We are now having a similar situation with the pigs and until we work through the errors within our soul and release all the feelings that come up with each pig attack on the things we love and come to a place of equal love for the pigs and all of God’s creations, I highly suspect (actually firmly believe) that things are not going to change. In fact we know it wont. We have said ‘we love the pigs’, and we genuinely do think they are cute, amusing and have a growing fondness for them, but there are some underlying emotions in us, which are readily and rawly exposed when they dig out the dam walls and furrow through trees we have just planted, that clearly indicate to us that we do not love these little dudes equally – yet.

Note: We love watching documentaries on the natural world, especially David Attenborough, and we find it really interesting when ‘new animal behaviour’ is discovered especially attacking behaviours. With what we feel and know in our hearts now (and with some confirmation and enlightenment from Jesus) we can see the direct correlation with the human condition and lack of harmony with love and working against God’s Laws. For example the Kea in NZ has in the last ten years gone from being a herbivore to a carnivore – now attacking small chicks of other birds as a food source. If you look at NZ’s major exports and what they are economically reliant upon it is meat/animals (and tourism mostly). So the Kea is just reflecting by highlighting the emotional error in New Zealander’s (and the rest of the world) of how we feel that killing and relying on the meat industry is okay. 

Or Termites, it is their job to recycle and clean up dead matter, they are not intentionally attacking us or our houses, they are just doing the job God created them perfectly to do. Another issue is often there are not other food sources available. If we built living structures, which I suggest would actually be healthier for us also to live in, then I suspect that they would not get eaten by the waste warriors as much. Unfortunately instead of looking at our soul condition and the lack of love within ourselves and taking responsibility for what we attract into our lives we just exterminate the Termites. Termites are amazing and without them the foodchain faces real dangers. Termites are vital for so many creatures and they are super genuises in architecture as well, we have much to learn from the humble termite and I suggest taking some time to investigate and find out about them before eradicating or exterminating them.

Soul Experiment Series: Piggy Bumps

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piggy bumps/God’s ploughs – pigs
We have some friends in the animal kingdom who are reflecting to us and showing us about our soul injuries. The creatures we are talking about are Pigs. The kids love the pigs, they are cute and funny and there are heaps on our place. They are excellent ploughs and create fabulous maddocked areas all ready for planting. We were driving around the property the other day and going over their earth works which Izabella named ‘piggy bumps’.
pig tracks
A little background on the pigs:
Pigs are an introduced species in Australia and unless domesticated and being bred for meat are regarded as feral and are shot religiously, feral animals in Australia are culled by law. In fact our nearest little biggish town is renowned for being the capital of the pig hunter. We periodically have calls from people who want to come and shoot the pigs and other feral or ‘pest’ animals on the property. Unfortunately what we are doing by shooting the ‘problem’ is preventing the Law of Attraction and exasperating the problem, here’s how: When we shoot the pigs (or any animal) the emotion that drives that actually causes the pigs to replicate like wildfire. The more we attack them the more they’ll replicate (see loving eco systems talks for more detailed information).
An aside: We did a course a short while back on animal rehabilitation and it is recommended that any non native animal brought in injured or found needs to be destroyed – put down/killed – you are not to rehabilitate them as you are not supposed to release them back into the wild – you can keep them in enclosures if you want to but it was not recommended. This felt really off to us as it is just reinforcing the emotions that are creating the problems in the first place. It was an eye opener though to our own personal desires and desire as a nation to eradicate the effects of our creations rather than deal with the causes.
For the last five or so years we have stopped shooting any animals on the place and begun looking at what our souls are creating and what the animals are reflecting. We believe that animals reflect us – humans – thus their behaviour is directly linked to us. Unfortunately the more they are attacked and shot the more they breed and the more they destroy, they are aggressive animals rather than passive and go into overdrive breeding wise when attacked (refer to loving eco system talks for more detailed information on aggressive organisms and why they do this.) We are noticing that many of the introduced so called ‘feral’ animals do this in comparison to the native animals that actually do not prolifically breed when attacked.
So how does this relate to us? We have been looking at why this happens and why we have attracted it into our lives. Firstly we found out that we do not love all God’s creatures equally. In each of the four souls on the property have favourites and treat different creatures differently. Pigs have been killed and are deemed a pest. When we stopped the contract shooting of pigs on the property we began enjoying the pigs, (they are like barrels on legs, very quiet and really amusing and funny when you come across them) but the emotions have not completely healed/changed within us. There are still fears amongst other things. When we heal the errors within us the pigs will not feel the need to attack the land or breed as rapidly and intensively as they are now. They are showing us things that we may not have seen otherwise, reflecting a whole heap inside of our souls we need to heal.
Recently we haven’t found them so amusing and realise we still have issues to work through in regards to the favouritism emotions and how we feel about ‘feral’, domesticated, wild, native, all different species of creature.

We went out to Standbye paddock a couple of months ago (one of the Summerfest project sites) and we were quite simply devastated to say the least. In fact we felt like giving it all up and that the whole world was working against us. We felt that everything we create gets destroyed and that it was a waste of everyone’s time who helped out if it was going to be all ruined.
Our friends the pigs had been in the paddock and literally dug up dam walls, trees, rooted through newspaper, everything had been foraged. Physically we could say that is the moist parts, etc etc, BUT we went a little deeper and had our beautiful friends visiting, Jesus and Mary, who were able to tell us exactly what in our soul was creating this (as we did not want to see it ourselves at the time and had gone into self punishment and shutdown numb mode for a time) What a gift from AJ and Mary!!.
We have emotions within us of feeling that:
  • Things that we love and create get destroyed,
  • Why even do anything if it is going to all get ruined
  • and the feeling that if we involve others in projects here we are to blame for the loss of their time and effort.
  • How we feel we are to blame when we are attacked and somehow we must have done something wrong and it is our fault
  • Our willingness to accept attack and our unwillingness to feel the grief of being attacked (by someone, something, spirits) causes more attack.

These were a few of the emotions exposed within us for us to feel through which brought us closer to the stuff inside of our souls that needs to be healed in order to care  for the land and animals in our care more effectively.

Jesus had also suggested fencing the areas we were planting down but we chose not too, thinking that it was only the sheep that would be a problem and we would solve that by keeping them out of the paddock. The irony is we thought fences control the sheep when it is actually our souls and this goes the same for the pigs. We are missing a big truth about our soul and how powerful it is. Jesus saw much more than we did and we did not choose to follow his direction on this one and thus set ourselves up to be open to self punishment which we ended up going into with the damage that was done.
We did not see the wild animals as under our control. We saw the fences as the method of control not our souls and the piggies showed us this loud and clear.
We learnt some valuable lessons:
  • Don’t be afraid to see my soul’s true condition at the time and make the appropriate compensation in love, for its condition with as much effort as possibly can at the time.
  • Know I can’t trust my feelings while I have injuries and errors around certain things. If I know I need time to deal with the feelings/emotions and if I have not dealt with them then make some compensatory effect that is loving that gives me time to deal with the feelings while still allowing for the growth to occur.
  • Everything is not always our fault. We are not responsible for everything that goes wrong. Everyone who works on the property contributes to what happens it is a collective law of attraction the areas that have had the gift of volunteers and our time.
  • It has not been a waste of time. It was an awesome and valid project that has highlighted areas where we need to patch up ‘holes’ and feel through emotions that are out of harmony with Love and Truth.
  • Find the reason WHY these things happen so we can feel through the emotions within us and no longer have the holes that allow the attack in the first place.
  • Pray for a willingness to see the things we do not want to see or ‘cannot’ see, if we cannot see them we cannot heal them. So grow the desire to see everything about yourself ( I reckon I need to grow some big humility for this one!!!)
  • Keep working on our favouritism emotions and get to a place where we love every creature equally (this needs to extend to loving every one of our brothers and sisters equally and all God’s creations equally. At this time we do not.)
reptile heaven piggy digging
reptile heaven piggy diggying
It happened again on the 21st May at the bottom of reptile heaven. It was triggered by a specific emotion or set of emotions at a specific time and the end result was what is seen in the photos. The beauty of this is that we could trace it back to what we were feeling just before it happened. The pigs have never been in this close to the houses and where we live. We were shocked and devastated again, highlighting that the emotions mentioned above have not yet been healed.
We thought you may be interested in how the soul affects everything around it and how our soul attracts events to highlight things we don’t want to see, God is continuously wanting to refine us in Love and to teach us about growing closer to her. This is an example of that process and how when the injuries exist within us they are played out through the Law of Attraction. It also highlights how our souls influence every creature around us.
Reptile heaven Piggy bumps (or pig digging/destruction):

Aviary Update

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There have recently been new arrivals in the Aviary including some little fluffy additions also. They are most gorgeous, and facinating. They are so small and trusting and just hang out in the bottom of the aviary seeming to sleep until food is brought to them or they want to feed. We are enjoying observing and learning about these little guys.
The folk at the Aviary now include:
Blue Faced Parrot Finches
Diamond Firetail Finches
Masked Finches
Painted Firetail Finches
Red Star Finches
Yellow Billed Longtail Finches
Yellow Star Finches
Zebra Finches
Some images of the aviary are below.
Painted Firetail & Yellow Billed Longtail

Yellow Billed Long Tails
Yellow Billed Longtail Finch baby (we think) hanging out so still and unmoving (sleeping?). Notice it has it’s eye closed.
Zebra Finch
Zebra Finch Fledgling (Baby Fluffball)
Diamond Firetail Pair
Red Star Finch
Yellow Star Finch
Painted Firetail