I’VE READ A lot of metaphysical books over the years. When I was a teenager hanging out in libraries, I discovered shelves of books about achieving your greatest potential. I read Born to Win, all the transactional analysis books, Carlos Castaneda on the teachings of Don Juan. Kahlil Gibran was big back then, and so was R.D. Laing, whose book Knots tied me into a great psychiatric knot of my own. It was all hip and cool, fodder for a young mind searching for answers.
I augmented those books with readings from the works of Freud and Carl Jung. I dipped into Nietzsche, The Art of War, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I spent one memorable rainy weekend with the Upanishads. My head swam with ideas, and while I was struggling to find work or even a predictable routine for my days, those books kept my spirits up and my intellect on fire.
In the 1980s, I discovered Edward de Bono’s Course in Thinking, books on dysfunctional families and co-dependency by John Bradshaw and Melody Beattie, M. Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled. If you were looking for answers, it seemed there was a host of writers, talkers, celebrities and gurus, all with the definitive solution.
Pop psychology was big business, and there was a huge audience and readership for it. Self-help was the buzz word, and I was right in there helping myself. I wore Birkenstocks. I bought crystals, incense, candles, relaxation tapes, mindfulness meditation CDs, recordings of shimmering instrumental music and a hundred varieties of tea. Along with all of that, I had my First Nations sacred medicines, smudging bowls, eagle feathers, hand drum and rattles. I visited psychics, seers, shamans, medicine people, channellers and people who communed with spirits from vanished civilizations. I went to seminars, workshops, lectures, experiential gatherings, sharing circles, warrior weekends and self-parenting retreats. I was prayed for, prayed over and preyed upon. If there were solutions to the problems in my life, I was hell bent on finding them.
All that searching took a lot of energy. Everywhere I went there were posters and brochures advertising the next big thing, the next breakthrough that would lead me to bliss. Mayan priests, Aztec shamans, Toltec teachers and even a reincarnated spirit from the land of Mu offered to bring me back to the teachings. It was mind-boggling. For a while there I didn’t know whether I should bang a gong, beat a drum, play a flute, tinkle a bell or stand on my head in a corner.
Nowadays, I’ve realized that all I need to know about successful living and psychic health I can learn from my dog. Molly doesn’t charge exorbitantly by the hour. She doesn’t use ethereal language. She can communicate effectively using just her eyes, and there’s a spirit in her that’s kinetic and magical. If ever there was a being blessed with awareness, it’s Molly.
Molly is wise. She’s sage. She lives entirely in the moment, and she finds joy in everything. She eats regularly, takes a substantial nap every afternoon, drinks a lot of water, stretches before doing anything and is never afraid to express love or to ask for what she needs. She’s never too busy to listen, never too overwhelmed to find the smallest thing interesting and never pretends to be anything other than what she is. She welcomes everyone with abandon and feels sad when they leave. No one is neglected when it comes to Molly sharing her enthusiasm, and she’s willing to be friends unless you give her a reason to be skeptical. Molly knows there’s nothing better than feeling the sun on your belly and nowhere as comforting as home.
Life is much simpler now that I’ve become dog-wise. There are no thick books to read, no products to buy, no deep meaning to search for. Instead, there’s the satisfaction of knowing that the world is full of interesting smells and sounds and sights, of wonder and infinite possibility, and that if you venture out into it, you’ll always find someone willing to take a walk with you.