Andrew Harvey - Saving Animals from Ourselves: A Manifesto for Healing the Divine Animal Within

Saving Animals
from Ourselves

A Manifesto for Healing the
Divine Animal Within

Andrew Harvey and Carolyn Baker

SAVING ANIMALS FROM OURSELVES

A MANIFESTO FOR HEALING THE DIVINE ANIMAL WITHIN

Copyright 2019 Andrew Harvey and Carolyn Baker.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-7449-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-7450-9 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 05/06/2019

CONTENTS

For Jill Angelo Birnbaum, founder, rescuer, and pack leader of The Moon Dog Farm.

Letaba, first-born son of Marah, the White Lioness born in Bethlehem (South Africa) on Christmas Day 2000. Jason A.Turner

In the midst of a global lion crisis that treats Africas most sacred animals as a killing commodity in cross-border trade, Linda Tucker and her lion ecologist partner, Jason A. Turner, have dedicated their lives to the solution. Against the odds, Linda rescued Marah from Bethlehem, the site of a notorious canned hunting operation - where lions were stolen from the wild and bred for the bullet. With Jasons expertize, they returned Marah and her three cubs to their ancestral wilderness lands in a scientific reintroduction program. After together establishing the Global White Lion Protection Trust, a leadership organisation that has been campaigning for their protection, Linda pioneered the StarLion eco-educational program for emerging youth leadership in 2004, which presented to Nelson Mandela in 2007. By 2012, she founded the Academy for LionHearted Leadershipof which Andrew Harvey was a founding faculty member.

www.whitelions.org www.lindatuckerfoundation .org

BE INFORMED

DO NOT SUPPORT any facility that allows petting of lion cubs, as these places are directly or indirectly linked to canned hunting, a now notorious cuddle-and-kill lion industry.

FOREWORD
BY MARC BEKOFF

At a moment in the planets history when humans are precipitating an unprecedented extinction of species, including our own, Andrew Harvey and Carolyn Baker are exploring the root causes of our disconnection from ourselves, from other living beings, and from the Earth. Saving Animals From Ourselves is not yet another litany of the horrors of non-human abuse and neglect, but rather, a holistic inquiry into the causes of our othering of the more-than-human world and how we can transform our relationship with the animal within ourselves.

Marrying scientific research and mystical tradition, the authors patiently argue that our treatment of other animals in the modern world stems from the notion, attributed to the eighteenth-century Age of Reason, that the animal is yet another machine, devoid of emotions or even what humans experience as physical pain. As a result, non-humans have been objectified and commodified to suit our needs and desiresa notion fostered by early Christianity with its insistence that the Hebrew bible sanctions absolute dominion by humans over animals and the Earth itself.

Through a variety of practices, both psychological and spiritual, Harvey and Baker assist the reader in cultivating a new consciousness of the divine animal within ourselves and in the external world. It is as if they hold the readers hand in grieving the loss of reverence for animal wisdom, as well as heralding the joy inherent in celebrating the little-known intelligence of many species and what we can learn from it in order to become more deeply and dynamically human.

The structure of Saving Animals From Ourselves originates from the authors familiarity with indigenous rites of passage in which the initiate holds a vision of how the rite of passage can lead him or her into the fullness of adulthood. With that vision, the initiate then faces an ordeal or descent which if allowed and endured, unfolds into integration and a deep sense of interconnectedness with all of life. As with traditional rites of passage, the book ends on a note of celebration and tributehomage to several of the most notable heroes and heroines of animal rescue and wellbeing.

Saving Animals From Ourselves is both poetic and illuminating and like its authors, remarkably fierce and tender. It is unique among the torrent of volumes currently cascading from ever-widening discoveries regarding the plight and yet stunning potential of a host of threatened species.

This seminal book is an invitation and an invocation on behalf of the sacredness of all animal beings on Earth in a time of potential extinction. It is also a celebration of what is possible in a world where humans and non-humans desperately need each other.

Marc Bekoff,

Professor emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado (Boulder)

Author of numerous books including The Animals Agenda: Freedom, Compassion, and Coexistence in the Human Age (with Jessica Pierce), Canine Confidential: Why Dogs Do What They Do , and Unleashing Your Dog: A Field Guide to Giving Your Canine Companion the Best Life Possible (with Jessica Pierce)

Andrew HarveyChicago, Illinois

Carolyn BakerBoulder, Colorado

What insights then, about our human psyches appear when we return to Earth, when we remember that we are related to everything that has ever existed, when we reinstall ourselves in a world of spring-summer-fall-winter, volcanoes, storms, surf, bison, mycelium, Moon, falcons, sand dunes, galaxies, and redwood groves? What do we discover about ourselves when we consent again to being human animalsbipedal, omnivorous mammals with distinctive capacities for self-reflexive consciousness, dexterity, imagination, and speech? In what ways will we choose to live when we fully remember the naturalness and ecological necessity of death? Who will we see in the mirror when we face up to the present-day realities of human-caused mass extinction, ecosystem collapse, and climate destabilization? And what mystery journey will unfold when we answer the alluring and dangerous summons now emanating from the human soul, from the dreams of Earth, and from an intelligent, evolving, ensouled Universe?

Beyond insights into the nature of our humanity, what will we discoveror rememberabout the most effective methods for cultivating our human wholeness once we liberate psychotherapy, coaching, education, and religion from indoor consulting rooms, classrooms, and churches? What happens when we rewild our techniques and practices for facilitating human developmentnot by merely getting them out the door and onto the land or waters, but, much more significantly, by fashioning approaches in which our encounters with the other-than-human world are the central features?