This article is the second in a three-part series on Contemplative Cultures. The first and third posts are: Contemplative Plant Cultures, and Contemplative Human Cultures. In each of the three posts, I address the essence of the three cultures similarly. The perceived differences between them relate to form and function, not the unifying spirit of life. I employ similar descriptions and phrases throughout, somewhat repetitively, because this general topic is reflexively dismissed by many of us. Please read each of the three articles carefully in order to feel their similarities.

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Naturally living animals of all kinds arise within profoundly contemplative cultures.

Animal cultures comprise billions of vigorous interspecies relationships, thriving in complexly integrated schools, packs, flocks, and herds much more often than in solitude.

All of the non-human animals of this Earth are sentient, simply because they are alive, not merely because we might deem them to be so.

When the slimy lobes of human brains generate flimsy thoughts that imagine consciousness being exclusively ours, we dismiss all animals’ billions of years of spontaneously intelligent living.

Long before humans stood upright, countless contemplative animal cultures thrived across the Earth.

Those animals whom we evolved from still remain our “familial” companions in this always emerging life-adventure, evolving, and revolving.

Together with most animals, having tree-like lungs and exquisite nervous systems, we are all still somewhat like fern fronds… unfurling imperceptibly… our every inhalation of plants’ life-giving breath-of-air sustaining our brief existence.

And aside from some recently brainy creatures, the primary whole-Earth culture never yielded a conceptually-divisive thought!

The entire natural non-human world is one where acute fear is constantly felt, responded to, and released, whereas the present-time human world primarily functions on the basis of chronically reactive fear.

Not long ago, among all the Earth’s living beings, and within the vastness of this spiralled galaxy, in terms of living consciousness, the great animal cultures’ contemplative fearing-no-more awareness flourished.

And earlier naturally-living human cultures were also contemplative ones, diversely integrated with all the non-human cultures around them, their feeling-observations and awarenesses reaching across great distances, including deep space.

Similarly, all the animal beings are also intimately yoked with the stars and moon, and beyond.

Essentially, planet Earth is one multispecies contemplative culture, arising in endless Mystery.

The consciousness and awareness of every living being, as well as the Earth itself, is forever ungraspable.

Over the last 4,000 years, and immensely increasing through the most recent three centuries, humans have visited upon animal cultures a ruthless, fear-based colonization of their entire natural existence. Few cultures of animals have escaped our disruptive activities.

Enormous animal populations have been decimated by us, along with their profoundly contemplative intelligence and presence, ruining massively rich systems of the intertwining cultures of humans, animals, plants, forests, oceans, and spirit energies.

Heavily contrived cities, pastures, and farmlands have displaced far too many herds, flocks, schools, swarms, and packs.

Ranches, animal farms, and pastures have replaced the environments of all kinds of animals, denying them their free movements about, their migrations, and their naturally rich cultures replete with intricate dynamics.

Because farmed animals are alive, and are usually kept in groups, there is still some culture among them, though very limited.

Much of humans’ animal foods now come from ranches and farms. Vast properties sprawl across the lands. And hybridized, over-sized animals proliferate with the misuse of chemical sprays, antibiotics, artificial growth hormones, and abstract scientific and corporate wrongdoing.

Most hybridized animals eaten today are significantly different than their original forms. Our industrial colonization of them is so complete that many of us have barely seen an actual living cow, lamb, or chicken. Nor would we care to eat them, preferring the highly curated products neatly packaged in our supermarkets!

Animals within the human food-making industry are often made to live in dismal situations, where their original native cultures are forbidden. When they become too rambunctious, or resistive, they are dealt with. And if they underperform, they are eliminated.

Literal prisoners and slaves, animals are seldom intelligently listened to, their true natures remaining conveniently unobserved.

Today, billions of captive animals exist within the confines of human ignorance, constantly subject to the activities of our chronic fear and insensitivity.

And we, likewise, daily entrap ourselves in fearful, unillumined views, desperately seeking self-survival, lusting for mastery over nature, remaining equal prisoners with all those oppressed animals.

Previously, when we hunted animal food from rivers, forests, and plains, we were gifted with not only the nutrition of their muscles, organs, and fats, but also with the animal culture’s essential contemplative, intelligently ancient energies.

Historically, with this awareness, before availing ourselves of animals’ bounty, we made sincere offerings of gratitude to them. In circles and spirals, we intimately blended our lives with the animals we consumed.

If a human disrespected or abused their regions’ animals, that person was disciplined by their culture, or a neighbouring one, and required to make amends.

At the hands of today’s human beings, animals living in factory farms are virtually cultureless, their natural wisdom thoroughly over-ridden. Modern hybridized farm animals are as misunderstood as artificially farmed plants.

One feature greatly, though not entirely, lost from the world is the not-interfered-with contemplative herd or group culture, with its many-layered dynamics, and benignly intelligent leadership.

Other non-human animals live entirely within their collective “group consciousness”, where discrete leadership is almost unnecessary.

And although once informed by superbly intelligent cultures, domestic and farm animals, like us, now generally lack profound cultures, and authentic leadership. Essentially, we have dumbed-down the animal cultures to resemble and affirm our own fears and limitations.

The ways we farm animals today, and how we eat and use them, is a felony against nature – and ourselves.

Having said all of the above, there are numerous good, creative, and relational ways of caring for and farming animals that honour, support, and even enhance almost all animals’ ancient and intelligent cultures.

Many and varied methods have long been practiced by indigenous people, and historical examples of intelligent cultural land-care and pastoral practices are well-recognized.

Although generally benignly favourable, contemporary sustainable-farming methods still lack an inviolate embrace of nature’s subtler contemplative qualities.

Every compassionate, intelligent farming activity, when engaged as spiritual practice, can nurture all the necessary foundational attributes to support authentic future-farming – ethically, culturally, and beautifully. –

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