 Realising that I was falling out of touch with my own inner truth, I decided to leave behind city life several years ago and make my home on an old cattle ranch just outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
It's a peaceful place, with ancient energies that communicate to me in nameless ways. I live there with people who take care of me, and friends who come and stay, as well as a host of animals and plants. But the most important being on the ranch is my little dog, Terry. She has taught me to listen to a deeper song of being that has made me more optimistic about what the future of life on this planet could be.
My book, Out on a Leash, is an account of what Terry is teaching me, now that I am taking time to listen. Her thoughts as they come to me are not articulated in English, but in a purer, more direct form, in a language I call ‘humanimal'. What follows, then, is a rumination, a conversation between Terry and me. Those of you who have an animal and live in close proximity to nature will understand immediately. If you haven't allowed an animal or nature to ‘acquire’ you, the journey through yourself will take a little longer. Either way, this journey is the only one worth taking.
Shirley
As I stand looking out at God's country, I try to remember a time when I was perfectly at peace. There are not many moments when I seemed to disappear into what I saw, when I had no concerns, no thought of the past or future, when I was only aware of now. Once as a child I was walking past a garden of colourful pansies when suddenly I seemed to become the pansies, with their colour, their scent, and their essence. In those moments I found total bliss, and I've never forgotten it. I see Terry doing this all day long. Right now she's sticking her little nose into a desert flower and breathing in the white of it. In a while she will nibble on the herbs in my garden.
When we speak of our pets giving us love, what do we mean? Are they always in a spiritual state, a state beyond judgment?
So I look at my peaceful, meaningful landscape and I try to figure out how to be a part of the other, ‘real’, world. Knowing it's an illusion, why do I want to go back into it? It all seems so crazy to me right now. Is that just because of the way I perceive it? If so, then to change the world I have to change my own perceptions. I don't want to live in a world that is enslaved by ambition, by technology, by power, by terror, by competition, by anxiety, and greed. I don't want to give those dark forces substance by thinking they're real. In little ways I've seen the world around me change by the way I perceive it. Could it possibly be that there is no world at all outside of our collective and individual dream?
When my mother was dying she saw all the people in the world as hearts beating in unison, connected to each other by a golden thread. Right before her passing, she said she wished that we could see that thread connecting us all, because if we could, we would never be unhappy again. That moment reminded me of a vision she had had years before, when she saw that trees and the earth and even people were filled with inner light, and there was a gentle wind moving within that light. She said there was also light within the earth, radiating up and out to those of us who walked upon it.
For all her amazing visions, as she approached the time of her passing, my mother told the doctors she could no longer see. After a full battery of tests, the doctors could find no physical reason for it. I think she just didn't want to see anything beyond her inner vision any more. She wanted to be free of life's conflicts. Making decisions had always been difficult for my mother, but at the end everything was simple. There were no complications, just love. Sometimes she only wanted her cat, Gypsy, in the room with her. I think the aloof mysteriousness of the cat was a comfort to my mother as she prepared to enter the great mystery herself, especially by contrast to our hovering, worried family love.
My father's transition was longer. Each day my father would tell his nurses and doctors about his spirit travels the night before, when he visited his father, his mother, and his other relatives that had crossed over. They told him things. They told him about his life before he was born, and about the history of the Earth and the human race. Every morning doctors and nurses at Johns Hopkins would come by for an informal seminar at the foot of my father's bed. It was remarkable because these were conventional medical doctors, yet they all seemed to understand that when someone is in the process of passing, they gain access to privileged information and higher knowledge.
One of the finest surgeons at Johns Hopkins told me later that often when he was operating he felt guided, as if his hands were being held and moved by an invisible master. He said he had learned to let go and trust this force to direct his movements, and in doing so had become uncommonly skilled, saving hundreds of lives.
Terry
There are many angels guiding the human race but they are having a difficult time because the humans don't think it's possible. It doesn't matter though, because everything is happening just as it should. It was determined a long time ago. I just wish people would be more open to the guidance. Then they wouldn't suffer so much. What the people in the world have created is insane. What I am living is sane. I rest in spirit so I am balanced. I close my eyes and I sink into a stillness that is perfect.
From Out on a Leash, copyright 2003 by Shirley MacLaine, published in 2004 by Simon and Schuster.
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