Listen to Bronwen Logan read A Love Note to all the Animals in my Life
You must be moved to write a love note, and so I am. This particular love note is the gift from myself to those animals that have gifted me by just being.
To truly love is to share a reciprocal limitless openness with another. A purely boundless state of being that doesn’t hold grudges or seek revenge, but gives over to trust and faith. This is what I have come to realise is the experience of Reiki. In loving myself I give over to being in a state of Reiki, in loving others I do the same.
From this boundless state of love I remember my interconnectedness with absolutely everything, and today it is the animal kingdom, the sentient world, that I move into this state and express my love with.
And so I choose to begin my meditative love note by connecting with my closest ancestral heritage, my mum and dad.
My mum almost died a week ago and the reminder of the frailty and strength of the body leaves me in awe of the physicality of all beings. To connect with others who might not be near us or even in this world, it is the memory of their physicality that is the perfect place to begin. I think of how my parents look or looked. What they might wear, or where they liked to be in the world and a picture begins to emerge.
As I sit here and think about my parents, I slowly move past the physical and a sense of our indivisible connection rises up into my consciousness. I recognise them, their stories, our stories and the love that sits at the base of it all. The love that is deeper than an ocean and broader than a sky. The love that is beyond the pains and joys we have experienced together. And in that space of infinite depth, therein lies the acknowledgment of my parents’ influence on who I am in this moment, and the influence of my grandparents, and their parents, and their parents and so it continues. Back into the history of humanity on this planet and further.
I move beyond my intimate connection with humanity, to that of the other beings that I personally know and knew. I remember Humphrey D Dog my beautiful Australian cattle dog that I grew up with, Sam the original grumpy cat, and then my more recent pals like Flora the pig, Totem the horse, Bowie the dog, Precious the cat and everyone else in between. I remember the ants I refused to step on at school, the wild birds that have visited me as messengers, the tropical fish that I swam with on the coral reef, and I sense their nature in me and mine in them. We all move with the rhythm of the universe together. We all move as one.
I recognise that all that I am comes from these beautiful beings who are in my life now and into and beyond my past, and I feel overwhelming gratitude for their presence in me.
The sentience that we share as animals, that is the ability to perceive or feel things, is what offers me the opportunity to perceive this unlimited interconnectedness with everyone and everything.
As you live in me as a memory, or by my side as a companion, I sit with you in love. Thank you.
Check out Bronwen’s upcoming webclass “Distance Healing with Animals” .
Based in Australia, Bronwen Logan (Stiene) teaches the system of Reiki is co-founder of the International House of Reiki and Shibumi International Reiki Association as well as co-author of the critically acclaimed books The Reiki Sourcebook, The Japanese Art of Reiki, A-Z of Reiki Pocketbook, Reiki Techniques Card Deck and Your Reiki Treatment. Bronwen is also the voice of their audiobooks and of the Reiki meditations available in the shop.