--In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <steve.sundur@...> wrote : Hey, thanks Curtis.
Ever since I viewed that video about Anna Breytenbach that Ann posted I've tried my hand communicating with the doggies next store,and our cat, who is afraid of me, even after ten years of kindness, and not particularly sociable to anyone in the family. I cannot report much in the way of results, but it has opened a channel for me, that heretofore, I had not really thought much about. C: Some kitties have a wild gene that makes them spooky for life. I usually make friends the old fashioned way with food. Is your cat friendly with the person who feeds it? You can make yourself the source of food by doling out the food whenever you are home. Cats are opportunists which is why we have any association with basically a wild animal. Whenever you see your cat, try and establish eye contact and blink or look away. That is cat for "everything is cool." Do you have a chase toy like a feather on a string with a stick for you to hold and fling the thing around? If a cat associates you with their continual martial arts training that can build a bond. But as I said in the beginning, some cats are just on flight or flight (I intended it that way!) You only win them over in inches. But even an inch into another creature's world can feel good sometimes. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <curtisdeltablues@...> wrote : I am fascinated by animal intelligence and am always curious if I can breach the rapport barrier and connect with their intelligence enough to understand a little bit of what is going on in there. Although I know this may be verging on an idiotic question Ann, I will ask it anyway. Can you describe at all what your impression is of what is going in in a horse's mind enough to describe some qualities of it? I have had profound connections with a squirrel monkey, cats dogs and ferrets. (I am excluding gerbils because the obvious jokes would just write themselves.) In my interactions with them I have come to some conclusions about how they are processing the world differently from each other, and from me. It is all borderline fantasy, but if you interact enough you kind of get a sense, like feeling some object in the dark and drawing conclusions. I hope that serves as a writing prompt because I love when you write about horses here. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <awoelflebater@...> wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <fleetwood_macncheese@...> wrote : This is an interesting experience that always happens when I practice TM with my wife. I can feel my nearly pure awareness contact hers, and then the boundary is gone, and it is simply oneness, without boundary or ownership. I always flinch mentally, just as the boundary dissolves. It is as if I am suspended in an empty room, dimly lit by blue lights, and I sense another room, this one also empty, but dimly lit by purple lights. Then, suddenly the divider between the two is gone, and it is one room. This is probably more common that it sounds, especially given Share's experience in the dome ("ovals of light"). I only get this riding my horse! The athletic movement of the horse and finding the way in which my body can work and move with his back is the goal. Couple that with the mental partnership of asking and responding and you can start to appreciate why this sport is so amazing. You take an animal with its own free will, its own ideas and you take its strong body and you sit on that body and communicate through touch what you would like to do and lo and behold, the horse responds and then your responsibility is to find a way to stay out of the horse's way, to integrate yourself with its mind and its physicality in order to become one thing moving as dynamically and effortlessly as possible through space. It really is all that!