Do Dead People Walk Their Dogs? (11 page)

As I’ve said
so often before, our karma is individual and probably not simple. When you are dealing with several souls there may be things between the individuals as well as things that all together are trying to learn or heal. In one twenty-four-hour period, we do and say so many things that either may heal karma or create more karma, so you can just imagine what may have built up over several lifetimes. If we apply a little common sense to our spirituality, I think we have a better shot at healing our karma—family karma, or any other kind. The word “sorry” is a very good tool, for starters. That one word, if it’s offered sincerely, shows a willingness to change. I’ve personally spent a lifetime looking for answers, looking for healing, looking for a way to make each new day better. And I’m nobody special in this regard. It’s pretty much the same game for each and every one of us. For the whole darn family!

The idea that we come here with karma should be empowering and freeing rather than daunting. For example, I have an old friend who for many years suffered from depression. She was in therapy to try to get to the root of it. She went back week after week to talk about all the negative things that had happened in her life. There was no one major thing, just a number of smaller things that seemed to have piled up. She couldn’t seem to let go of them and just get on with her life. It wasn’t until she was introduced to the concept of karma, the fact that, never mind what had happened to her in
this
life, the reasons for her sadness might be rooted in other lives that she had no conscious knowledge of, that she was able to quit gnawing the bone, so to speak, and dedicate herself to finding and creating and spreading happiness in
this
life. That’s all any of us can do. We can’t change past lives; we can’t undo karma. We can only do the best we are able to in this life, balance our karma or burn it off. Knowing that is very powerful.

So much has
been written about the year 2012—how everything will be turned upside-down or even obliterated. Supposedly this is predicted by the Mayan calendar and even, some say, by a secret hidden code in the Bible. There are even some who believe the Earth will be struck by an asteroid, or that aliens will come and either wipe out the human race or colonize the planet. The notion that this year will be completely different from those leading up to it and following it is not really true. We’re not going to be singing “Auld Lang Syne” at midnight, wishing each other a Happy New Year, and then BOOM! The lights go out. Or maybe the lights come on. The changes that are attributed to 2012 are already in progress.

God doesn’t wear a watch—the changes are happening all around us. The question of 2012 is about a shift in consciousness: spiritual transformation. It’s an opportunity that we all are being given, regardless of race or religion—or lack of religion—to connect to God-consciousness within ourselves. It’s a chance to say YES to this invitation. It’s so important because if we say yes, we—humanity—will come, more and more, to rely on love to re-solve our problems instead of force or control or violence. I don’t believe that the world is ending. While it’s not one of the top questions, I’ve been asked about this a number of times. For instance, one woman wrote to me on my MySpace page saying that she was afraid to have another baby because she already had a child and felt that even with this child she wouldn’t have enough time to be with him if the world was going to end in 2012, so if she had another baby, it would only be a toddler, and then they’d all disappear or something. I honestly don’t mean to make fun of someone’s fears—we all have something we are afraid of. But some people like to dwell on the negative. (Please understand, I’m not saying this is the case with the woman who wrote to me; I’m just trying to make a point.) They’re
full
of fears—to them, any change is scary. People don’t realize that we are changing all the time and some changes are for the good! The time surrounding 2012 (and as I said, events that are prophesied are already going on now—things that are global don’t happen overnight) has the potential to see some amazing changes, but the change won’t be dramatic unless we all take God up on the invitation to bring more love into our lives and use love as our primary means of relating to one another. The news doesn’t focus on positive things, but there is good happening all the time. We’re becoming more responsible to each other and to the planet; there are lots of beautiful stories that aren’t being told.

I guess here’s what I would say to anyone who’s still worrying about the world coming to an end in 2012: Don’t worry so much. You can’t spend your life this way! You want to know what’s gonna happen or where you’ll be in 2012?
Plan
something. Put it on your calendar—a trip to Disney World or Italy, as you prefer. Put your change in a jar and label the jar 2012. That’s for your trip. If anybody tries to worry you about “everyone’s all going to hell in a handcart when the clock strikes 2012,” you tell ’em, “
You
can go wherever you want.
I’m
going to Italy.”

The best way
I can say it is that it seems that animals carry God’s love to us. There are all different kinds of animals. I’m not sure that different animals bring different aspects of God’s love or if maybe it’s just that each of us recognizes and relates to a different kind of animal and that’s God’s way of getting His love through to us in a way we’ll be accepting of it. Maybe think of it as product packaging—a different package appeals to a different person. Some people (very few, thankfully) will say they don’t like animals, but then a stray kitten or injured squirrel finds its way into their heart in spite of themselves. Some of us don’t distinguish—we love every kind of animal, whether furry, feathered, or finned. (We might not like all the bugs, but we try!) Every now and then I have a bad night when I’m not able to sleep; maybe I go to bed upset or worried. One particular night I felt completely stressed, just tossing and turning. My brother Harold came to me and took me to a beautiful pond with baby ducks and puppies running and tumbling around it. He told me, “You can play with them, you can hold them.” It was just so calming. Not just calming, but really joyful. I was so relaxed and happy. It’s true that animals are a gift from God—they can change our whole attitude, spending time with them can heal us. The funny thing is that even when we think we are helping them, we are really helping ourselves. If we try to save a bird that has broken its wing, we are giving our care and attention, but the feeling that we get from that might be a sense of self-worth. If we try to calm our big baby of a dog who trembles at the sound of thunder, we’re being given the opportunity to practice compassion. Different creatures bring different gifts, but ultimately all the good stuff is just different forms of God’s love.

Really, there isn’t.
Every animal is from God. Every creature is here for a reason. Sometimes an animal could be in our way or scare us, but that doesn’t change the fact. We have a lot of bears around our home in the woods of New Jersey. This past spring, John was out working in the garden and I happened to look out the kitchen window and saw a bear right behind him. I banged on the window and managed to get John’s attention and he was able to get the air horn (we should call it the bear horn since it’s kept just for this purpose) out of the garage and scare it off. Just a short time after that, after a bookstore signing event, I got a note from a woman who’d attended. She said, “You told me I should be careful on the way home, and as I was driving along a bear came out in front of my car! Good thing I was paying extra attention!” I’m glad the bear didn’t eat John, and I’m glad this lovely woman didn’t hit the bear, but if either of those things had happened, it wouldn’t make it a bad bear. They’re both just bears being bears.

This is a
new one for me, and I’m not really the pet psychic, so bear in mind that this is my best guess based upon my own observations, stories I’ve heard, and things I’ve read. I’d say, yes, I believe this is possible. The Egyptians held that no person could be reborn as an animal (and I know this is true; our souls are different—the energy of animals’ spirits is a different frequency from the energy of humans’ spirits), but they never said that an animal could not come back as another animal. There are certain dogs that behave very much like cats—aloof, persnickety, always looking for a soft pillow to curl up on. Just as one example in the other direction, a friend of mine was telling me about her friend’s cat, who will bring a ball to its owner when it wants to play fetch. This cat will literally retrieve the ball over and over. It loves this game as much as any dog, but that’s pretty weird behavior for a cat. Is this a common occurrence? It doesn’t seem to be, but as I said, I don’t consider myself the expert here. There are other cases you may be familiar with—the giant tortoise that “mothered” an orphaned baby hippo after the tsunami in Indonesia, or the crow befriending the kitten (there’s a cute video I’ve seen on YouTube). Are these examples of animals who have reincarnated with a “remembrance” of being a different species? Or are animals evolving, too, and are these stand-out examples of ones who have learned enough love not to be ruled by their traditional, instinctual fears, to be able to befriend and help others that are not of their kind? Stay tuned! These are great questions, which I hope to learn more about myself.

Absolutely, they can.
Haven’t you ever seen a dog that is just lying peacefully on the floor and all of a sudden, for no reason (or at least no reason you can see) the dog jumps up like it’s had its tail pulled or something and runs out of the room? Or haven’t you ever seen a pet—dog or cat or whatever—look like it’s looking at something that you can’t see? You try to get yourself into the same sight-line to look at whatever they’re looking at and there just isn’t anything there? They definitely are catching something that you ain’t getting! They may not see them all the time, even though spirits are with us all the time. But it’s not at all unusual for an animal to see a ghost.

I used to have a gray and black tabby cat that John and I rescued from a welding yard. Actually, there were two kittens, but we found a home for her sister and just kept the one. We named her Lucia, but one day we came into the living room while she was lying regally on the sofa and John said, “Look at her—looking like Madame Foo-Foo,” just something he made up, but it fit—she had so much attitude, she was looking like “I’m all that and a bag of chips.” It’s funny how those things go—you always think you’ve got the perfect name for your pet but end up calling her something else. From that day on we always called her Madame Foo, or just Foo, or sometimes Foofy. In any case, Foo had the run of the house, she could go anywhere she liked, but never would she venture into my office where I hold my appointments. It was just uncanny how she would avoid that area, clearly because of the spirit activity there. Frequently it happens that if I’m to do a reading for someone the next day, the spirits who want to connect with that person know this and will gather at my home the day or the night before! But they usually hang right around my office area. I’d always feel bad for Foofy just before I’d go do one of my big shows in Verona—lots of people, more than your average gathering of ghosts—and not staying in their usual area. Poor thing used to freak out. She could not find a place anywhere in the house that was a ghost-free zone! Really, that poor girl didn’t know what she was getting into when she came to live with John and me.

Oh, It’s very
common for a pet that has crossed to come back to visit “their person.” And it can be for many reasons. It might just be to comfort that person, to keep them company. It might be almost out of habit—pets often form very strong attachments to us just as we do to them. A pet might come back and make itself known in some way to try to remind us of something—even if they just want to remind us of
them
, and the love they had and still have for us. My friend Page, a writer in Manhattan, told me how on the one-year anniversary of her cat Barney’s passing, she found paw prints on her white living room windowsill, as if a cat had walked in through her window from outdoors. Mind you, Page’s apartment is on the third floor of her building and this was not a window that had a fire escape or any way for an animal to climb up to that window. As Page told me, “I may not be the best housekeeper, but there’s no way I could have had paw prints on my windowsill and not see them for a year!” She knew that her dear little cat had come to pay her a visit and she was very moved by this.