Animal Speak Assignments

Empathy With Nature: SERIES 2 ~ Animal Speak

Session 1: What is an Animal?

1) Pay attention to animals. Look at animals out doors, in books, and even on the internet. Take a picture of the animal with your mind, like you're taking a snapshot. Then close your eyes and let the image of the animal develop in your mind, similar to how a Polaroid camera works. Give your animagination a daily walk around the block by visualizing animals. This will build the power of concentration for more Power Animal encounters in future sessions.

2) Pay attention to what comes toward you in life. This can be animal encounters, both outer and inner ones - in visions and dreams. There may be synchronistic signs and omens of other sorts as we approach the "Other-world." Pay attention to them - but don't over interpret them.

3) Ruckshau: Take a few minutes each day to review the events of your day in reverse order. View yourself from an objective, higher perspective, going through your day backwards. What do you see, what are you shown, what do you learn about yourself? This is a way to strengthen many things including mental picturing, memory, empathy and self-knowledge.

Session 2: Where is a Spirit Animal?

1) Look at animals. Look at animals outdoors, in books, and even on the internet. Take a picture of the animal with your mind, like you're taking a snapshot. Then close your eyes and let the image of the animal develop in your mind, similar to a Polaroid camera. Give your animagination a daily walk by visualizing animals. After that you can draw them on paper with pencil crayons. This will build the power of concentration for more Power Animal encounters in future sessions.

2) Practice setting positive intentions. For example, set your intentions before leaving your home that you will have positive encounters with others. Set intentions in the space where you live, that it is sacred space, space that is "set apart" from the disturbing craziness sometimes in the world. Set positive intentions before going to sleep, that you will move into higher astral space and bring back from the Dream-time good things in your soul, to carry you through the day. Even setting sacred intentions before consuming food, that you may get the most benefit from it. If you encounter difficult or dark things, connect to the light of your high intentions.

Session 3: Animal Vibrations

1) Repeat the Geometry exercise, draw different geometric images: circle, square, triangle, 3D tetrahedron, etc. Explore a range. Then close your eyes and visualize them. Feel the qualitative difference with each image.

2) Draw stick figures of animals in the spirit of the cave drawings of the ancients. Explore the presence of geometric shapes in the animal's form: the straight lines, the curved lines, the angles, the geometric forms, ie: triangulation of a hind leg, roundness in head. Sense how animal forms are backed by the architecture of archetypes and geometry in living form. Just as architecture is frozen music, as Goethe said, animals are liberated architecture.

Session 4: The Bird

1) Spend time contemplating birds, outside or even online. Feel into the quality of thinking movement birds demonstrate. Allow this sense of movement inform your own inner movement.

2) Repeat the Animagination exercise of developing an animal-like form from the inside out, moving from a centre point, then gradually fleshing out a form. As a general form emerges, see if specific gestures and features emerge. Let birds images play in you and through you this week. When it feels like you have done enough drawing, close your eyes and re-imagine what you drew. Let the image grow even further in its features, allow it to move within you. See what comes. Let it speak to you. Speak with it. Let this activate your "animagination."

Session 5: The Bovine

1) Spend time contemplating cows, outside in the country if you can or online. Feel into the quality of digestive and will activity cows demonstrate, and the slower movement than that of the flitting birds. Allow this sense of movement to inform your own inner movement.

2) Repeat the Animagination artistic exercise of developing an animal-like form from the inside out, moving from a centre point with the pencil crayon, then gradually fleshing out a form. As a general form emerges, see if specific gestures and features emerge. Let cow images play in you and through you this week. When it feels like you have done enough drawing, close your eyes and re-imagine what you drew. Let the image grow even further in its features, allow it to move within you. See what comes. Let it speak to you. Speak with it. Let this activate your "animagination."

3) Borrowing from the desire exercise of Rudolf Steiner's How to Know Higher Worlds: Visualize an animal that you have observed longing for something, and direct your attention to this desire. It is best to recall the moment when the desire was strongest, and you did not know whether the animal would obtain the object of its desire. Surrender yourself to this picture and what you can observe in your memory, paying close attention to any feeling that the image awakens within you. Allow this feeling to rise up like a cloud on an otherwise empty horizon. You will experience in yourself a feeling corresponding to the inner state of the animal and will begin to notice that this feeling produces a force inside of you. This force then becomes the spiritual perception of the animal's inner state. An image, experienced as shining, enters your field of vision. This shining picture is the so-called astral embodiment of the state of being you observed, the desire.

4) Ruckshau: Take a few minutes each day to review the events of your day in reverse order. View yourself from an objective, higher perspective, going through your day backwards. What do you see, what are you shown, what do you learn about yourself? This is a way to strengthen many things including mental picturing, memory, empathy and self-knowledge.

Session 6: Cosmic-Animal Intelligence

1) Spend time contemplating felines and canines, outside or online. Feel into the quality these carnivores demonstrate and the balance they embody in comparison to birds and rodents, bovines and other ungulates. Allow this sense of balance speak to your own inner sense of balance.

2) Repeat the Animagination artistic exercise of drawing an animal-like form from the inside out, moving from a centre point with the pencil crayon, then gradually fleshing out a form. As a general form emerges, see if specific gestures and features emerge. Let carnivore images play in you and through you this week, looking to cats and dogs, but also wild animals. When it feels like you have finished the drawing stage, close your eyes and re-imagine what you drew. Let the image grow even further in its features, allow it to move within you. See what comes. Let it speak to you. Speak with it. Let this activate your "animagination."

3) Borrowing again from the desire exercise of Rudolf Steiner's How to Know Higher Worlds: Visualize an animal that obtained something it has desired, and direct your attention to this sense of fulfillment of desire. Surrender yourself to this picture and what you can observe in your memory, paying close attention to any feeling that the image awakens within you. You will experience in yourself a feeling corresponding to the inner state of the animal and will begin to notice that this feeling produces a force within you. This force becomes the spiritual perception of the animal's inner state. An image, experienced as shining, enters your field of vision. This shining picture is the so-called astral embodiment of the state of being you observed, the desire fulfilled.

Session 7: Human Beyond Animal

1) Get a book and play a game where you look at how each creature is a creative expression of this threefoldness. How is each creature configured in terms of threefoldness? IE: elephant trunk: used as another limb, drinks water, and feeds itself so is part of third region. Or a snake: like an elephant trunk, is like an intestine, etc.

2) Repeat the Animagination artistic exercise of drawing an animal-like form from the inside out, moving from a centre point with the pencil crayon, then gradually fleshing out a form. As a general form emerges, see if specific gestures and features emerge. When it feels like you have finished the drawing, close your eyes and re-imagine what you drew. Let the image grow even further in its features, allow it to move within you. See what comes. Let it speak to you. Speak with it. Let this activate your "animagination."

3) Repeat the desire exercise of Rudolf Steiner's How to Know Higher Worlds: Visualize an animal, or a human, that either has an unfulfilled desire, or has obtained something it has desired. Surrender yourself to this picture and what you can observe in your memory, paying close attention to any feeling that the image awakens within you. You will experience in yourself a feeling corresponding to the inner state of the animal (or human) and will begin to notice that this feeling produces a force within you. This force becomes the spiritual perception of the inner state. An image, experienced as shining, enters your field of vision. This shining picture is the so-called astral embodiment of the state of being you observed, the desire fulfilled.