Animal Body
How do you speak to your favorite pet? Soothing tones? Exaggerated, slightly infantilizing ? Just as you would a child?
You acknowledge their consciousness is on a different level to yours and you’re most likely trying to accommodate that as best you can.
You’re simply trying to convey feelings of love and safety for your animal friend, it makes sense to affect your speech patterns in such a way - you’re not talking to your boss! (Some might argue that point, but that’s a whole different story…) I think you get the picture.
The animal responds in accordance with the level of love being projected toward it. Speaking in harsh and unloving tones would only engender fear and anxiety - you’d never do that to your loving pet friend would you?
So why then would it be OK to speak harshly to yourself (whether voiced or unvoiced) or hold any kind of derogatory intention toward yourself?
Is it because you imagine your “higher” human consciousness can tolerate such assaults more easily given it’s superior rationalising capabilities? You know that’s not true. In spite of our superior intellect, we are just as much an “animal” as our animal friends.
We respond positively to simple and kind directions and are very likely to respond negatively to angry tones and unclear demands.
It’s time to honour the animal part of our being in a new way. Imagine we are, at a very real level, just as innocent as the beautiful animals all around us. Stop imagining you can just override that portion of your existence.
It’s time to recognise the little animal we are also and speak to ourselves from that understanding.
Try it out. Copy the same banter you have with your pet. Speak to yourself in exactly the same manner. Especially in times of stress. Speak it out loud, listen to how it feels and don’t excuse yourself from the exercise on the grounds that other people might think you’re weird - you can keep it to your private alone time of course!
Just be as kind to the animal YOU are! Being kind to animals is an excellent philosophy for people to live by, so long as the human animal is included.
