This Jungian Life

When far from life in the wild, relationships with animals are often through pets. We find kinship and difference in our friends of very foreign origin. Pets let us be tender, elicit nurturing, and help heal trauma through secure attachment. Our creatures keep our secrets. They accept our lapses and shadows. They invite us to play and appear in our dreams--and when they are gone, we mourn. Henry Beston said, “In a world older and more complete than ours [animals] move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.” Through our pets we can stay in touch with the magic and mystery of animal life. They remind us that we are part of a larger, living whole.    Dream The dream began when I found myself climbing up a steep snowy ledge on a tall cliff. There was a trail of footsteps, as if I had been there before. As I trekked upwards I contemplated my teenage years of debauchery and the lies I told to keep my mother comfortably unawar