Dog Envy

Our guest blogger is Lee Eide author of Overcome Any Personal Obstacle, including Alcoholism, by Understanding Your Ego.

Dog Envy

I admit it. I envy my dog and my cat and hell, even my five fish. Why would I envy living beings that are so obviously inferior to me from an intellectual sense and lack my position of power and status as a homo sapien? The reason is that they don’t know who they are and they’re so completely okay with that.

Animals lack the realization they have a label that’s been applied to them. They don’t know their essence has been reduced and narrowed down to a certain set of traits. And they’re not only none the worse for it, it gives them the complete liberation that often elude the most earnest of spiritual seekers that stand on two legs and have opposable thumbs.

My old dog Indy doesn’t know he has a name, age, breed designation, height, weight, and so on. He is unaware of his separate identity and is, as far as I can ascertain, completely okay with this. The same applies to my adorable, adventurous and mostly carefree Orange Tabby, Shaggy II. Neither one gives a rat’s ass about what other living beings think of them. And this is exactly why I so envy them. Envy is one of the Seven Deadly Sins so I need to come to grips with this issue of mine.

Since my beloved animals don’t know they have separate identities, they relate to other living beings freely and lovingly without worrying about division. I wonder how much different life on our planet would be if more human beings were like that. That is, if people acted as spontaneously as animals did, they’d likely be a lot more caring, loving and compassionate. But as it stands, the predominantly ego-driven, spiritually disparate masses are more likely to be so concerned about protecting the fallacy of their ego that what results is mostly division in the form of isolation, misunderstandings, conflict, violence, and hatred.

Yes, I know that in the animal kingdom, when you look at truly wild animals as opposed to the domestic ones like dogs and cats, that violence and killing is part of the everyday life for many species. But the motivation behind that violence is a need to survive by killing and consuming the conquered the prey. It’s not driven by the predators’ misnomer that they need to kill and conquer in order to enhance or protect their sense of self but rather it’s their method of feeding themselves.

The primary issue is that ego-centric human beings rely on conceptualization when they perceive the world around and inside them (i.e. – their thoughts and emotions). By conceptualization I mean people form concepts in their heads to tell them how they should view people, places, and things. Life is actually one indivisible, vastly complex, interconnected and interwoven gift from God. But when one uses conceptualization, that process separates the beauty and majesty of the One into many separate parts.

I propose (for me) a nonalcoholic toast to our beloved dogs, cats, ferrets, birds, horses, sea urchines, goldfish, pet snakes and all the rest of God’s creation who don’t have enough sense (and are too loving and enlightened) to know they’re supposed to be separate from everyone and everything else.

Lee A. Eide

Overcoming Limitations of Ego and Novel in Book Form (THE DARKNESS BELOW) Blogs: http://www.atcontent.com/

“Overcome Any Personal Obstacle, including Alcoholism, by Understanding Your Ego” Book ordering site: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/leewriter