Originally Posted by CanceledCzech
Wow, Iris, that's totally cool.
And for animals and self-awareness... what exactly do you mean? Because animals are aware of themselves. If you put a red dot on a monkey's forehead and then put him in front of a mirror, he will touch the dot on his head - in other words, he will recognize this image of a monkey, an image that is outside himself, as himself. To me this desplays a certain level of concept of self. Are animals capable of meta-cognition? I don't think so, and that ability seems to be the tip of the pyramid for Self-awareness. But even though they cannot think about thinking, it doesn't mean they aren't aware of themselves.
It is cool, I love it. You want to know why this happens, my psychic pets? Just before I got Shaman, back in 2000, I had seen a special on tv on one of the news magazine shows, maybe 20/20, not sure, but they had a segment about an animal psychic, who had been hired by a zoo to try to help an extremely upset elephant. The psychic spent some time with the elephant, and apparently learned from the elephant that another elephant had died recently, and the other elephants had not been allowed their usual mourning ritual, so she was very upset and depressed because of it. The zoo still had the deceased elephants skull, and they brought it out for the elephants, and the elephants danced around the skull, and then the depressed elephant got better! Apparently, elephants too mourn their dead.
At the time, I was also a tad skeptical about this, you see, so what happens when I try to hang on to skepticism is I get a personal experience to show me. So I got this dog, and started seeing his dreams. LOL... well, then I understood how the psychic could see what the elephant was needing. I think it's a very interesting thing too that such a story could even be shown on a major network news-zine.
I love the monkey story. Lily is very nervous about mirrors, still, though getting better. I'm not sure what bothers her more... that she sees herself in there, or that she seems ME there too! She's cute though. I always spend a little time with her, pointing at her by name, and then at me as "Mommy." I'll have to try putting something on her first and see if she notices.
There was an article on AOL's front page yesterday about dogs having the intelligence of an two-year old human. I didn't read the whole article though, because sometimes, I think they only display that, perhaps, but there's more going on than we think.
Sometimes, I think there's an angel riding piggyback with the dogs, maybe. There are so many stories of dogs, and even cats, doing miraculous things to save a family member, things a dog or cat couldn't be expected to know how to do. Oh, like yowling into the baby monitor when an infant isn't breathing, which I read years ago about a cat. Or a dog more recently who knocked the receiver off a phone and dialed 911 when his owner fell unconscious. How else to explain that?
Or a more personal event involving a robin. I was at the computer for long, long hours over a period of days. During this time, every time I went to the kitchen, I would look out my window, and see the gargoyle in my back woods area, with the gazing ball between her wings. I would also see this crazed robin leaping back and forth between the wings, lost in gazing at it's own image in the mirror! This went on for several days, all the daylight hours, and I began to fear the robin was going to starve if it didn't stop. Another robin, a lovely lady I suspect, came and tried to woo him away, but he wasn't having any of it. He just kept hopping from one gargoyle wing to the other, gazing in the mirror. FINALLY, after a few days of this, it connected that *I* was spending too much time on the computer, gazing into the mirror of the screen! I was spending so much time, in fact, that I wasn't taking the time to fix proper meals, or get my exercise, or do much of anything else for myself at all. So I turned it off, and the robin was released to go on his way. Since then, I limit my computer time, and usually only have one forum or email list going at once. Lessons come in mysterious ways. I sent a silent thank you to my robin friend.
The Great Mystery is full of wonder, for sure...
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