I have been receiving similar messages during recent conversations with various animals explaining the need and want for them to interact with humans and be part of our lives.

They are consciously choosing to be a part of our social structure and are forming bonds with humans to receive love.  (There are many other reasons why a particular animal joins us but that is a post all by itself!) One dog recently expressed a desire to receive love as much as give love.  It’s not just humans who recognise the necessary balance of giving and receiving.

Domesticated animals continually offer unconditional love to us humans but have we truly understood the message and lesson behind this offering?  They are leading by example, walking alongside us, guiding us towards a better co-existence but, as any good teacher, not controlling us.

Animals who are choosing to come into a life of domestication are doing so because they understand the need to interact with us on a much more intimate level.  They are entering our homes and personal space to connect and teach us true love, respect and compassion.  Animals understand the subtleness of a home environment as they gently and patiently open our hearts to a higher vibration.  They are helping raise our awareness and vibration as a species, guiding us with the most basic and powerful tool we all possess: love.  It is the universal language of all animals.  The unconditional love and genuine respect that animals bring into our lives is what we need to embrace as individuals and a species to create a better world.

And it is not just in domestication that they are teaching us.  It is not uncommon to see video footage and photos of ‘amazing’, ‘unique’ and ‘surprising’ interactions between wild animals and humans.  Is there the possibility that our awareness and openness to their messages is why more animals are approaching us as a species?

As our awareness increases, so do the interactions.

As sentient beings, we are all connected by love and this is an interspecies constant.  We feel love, so do our companions.  Besides receiving the love from an animal, there is also the need for our companions to receive love from us and others within their own species.  They desire to be loved as much as we do.

Although we often recognise these interactions between ourselves and our companions, are we too blasé about the emotion of love and do we really recognise it for the strength it has?

The love that forms between sentient beings is a love based on mutual respect and trust.  It is a recognition of that soul and respecting that soul for who s/he is.  We adore our companions and many see love as playing with them, talking with them, (sometimes) dressing them up and just being with them.  With love, must come respect.  A respect of who that being is.  We must be conscious and remind ourselves that they are not humans.  If your cat enjoys popping a Santa hat on at Christmas but then swipes at you during the process, it is because s/he is a cat.

It is not a negative reaction, it is a natural reaction.

That is how animals express themselves.  There would have been many other signs leading up to that swipe but you may have been far too preoccupied getting the hat on straight for the photo to recognise the signs until your companion had just had enough.  As domesticated as our companions choose to be, at the end of the day s/he is still an animal, with specific instincts and needs, who is interacting with you.

For humans, domestication has thinned the line between who our companions are and who we are expecting them to be.  We are forgetting to respect them for who they truly are.  That is when we find pure, unconditional love.

And this is carrying through to us as humans too.

We can often have expectations when we meet someone for the first time. Some call it judgement, others an expectation of behaviour in comparison to what we are seeing in the physical form.  We don’t always look past the exterior to the soul level as animals do.  It is a common trait which needs to be acknowledged and cleared for us to access the unconditional love our animal friends are guiding us towards.

Once we learn to respect an animal for who they are, and the differences between us, then we can learn to respect the differences between us as humans.