We never wanted a third dog. Neither did we have the space, nor did we have the money, and I in particular had neither the drive nor the desire to deal with a new puppy. I wanted to finally turn my notes into my book. Actually, I didn’t want to have any more dogs once our two had died. But everything comes as it comes.
And so Juli came to us. Juli was a young dog. A large poodle. Black, very young, very big, very wild. Black as coal, eight months old, big as a pony and wild as an ADHD patient on speed. Restless. Always on the move, always doing, searching, finding, eating, destroying and above all: observing. Suspicious. Alert. Every noise. Every person. Everything. And Juli was then hard as Krupp steel, determined, no longer responsive. Rigidly she stood there. Right at the front of the row. The tail way up. The body to the front. Her gaze fixed and immovable on the object of suspicion. Animalistic. With an aura of untamed brutality and full of merciless will to survive. Unpleasant, reflexively appealing to the basest violent instincts in oneself as a counter-defence – A dog, exactly as I had always dreamed him…
How was it that Juli had found his way to us? To us, who apparently didn’t have the best material conditions for it? An acquaintance, Angi, wanted a dog. A beautiful „Bello“, just as you imagine him. Always happy and a loyal and problem-free companion. She listened to her word and let herself be cuddled for hours. Something like that, anyway. Angi is in a wheelchair and has spastic paralysis. The dog, Juli, came to her when she was three months old – he was not the expected „Bello“ and he taught Angi a whole lot of unexpected things. He taught her – to her horror – that she was very much like her father. Namely (and at least) when someone didn’t immediately function as desired. He taught her, the social pedagogue, to feel her fatherly harshness. Her mercilessness. And above all, he taught her to realise that she could not really love. That almost broke her. That she felt nothing for the dog. She, who always discussed and talked out any interpersonal problems with her large family, now realised, on a being with whom nothing could be discussed to death, for whom she would have needed another, a „non-ego approach“, that behind her words there was nothing feeling and had never been anything. She analysed. But she felt nothing. Try as she might now. With the dead imitation of people who treated their animals differently. Copied theatre play. Horrified, she realised that Juli was just a series of technical problems for her to solve – technically – so that her „Bello“ would then function beautifully as quickly as possible. Functioned the way she wanted it to. She could not see the young dog full of the joy of life. She only saw the problem that the dog did not listen one hundred percent to the commands. If it did listen to one, there was no joy about the puppy’s performance. About the growth and the intelligence and all the many other things that made up this being. No, he immediately moved on to the next „construction site“ without comment. – Mouth wiped, problem solved. Next! – And then only focused on this new „problem“. „Bello“ had to be adapted and functioning as quickly as possible. That was Angi’s inner plan, from which – full of horror at this realisation – she was unable to free herself.
Juli grew up in this environment. Well nourished. Without real closeness. And without guidance and support, because Angi slipped deeper and deeper into a personal crisis after each further realisation and could offer neither herself nor the dog any support. She cried a lot. So the dog became nervous. So she cried even more. So the dog became even more nervous. So she became more nervous too. And the dog – too. Walks became a gauntlet. Both were done with nerves when they got back home. Then came anger at the dog, the supposed cause of the pain. Maybe even hatred in between. In this vacuum, the dog, the baby, who had experienced nothing in his life so far except restlessness and lack of support, instinctively took over. It began to figure out how to satisfy its needs in this unstable and crazy world. Began to trick, to push buttons, to manipulate. Seeking its advantage. Angi was vastly inferior to the dog. For five weeks I moved in with Angi to mediate between her and Juli! In vain! There was no approach in this matter.
To top it all off, one morning Angi couldn’t take another day in her personal state and with her pony-sized pubescent bundle of nerves. Sent into gruelling subliminal guilt by her family for not being able to live up to her parents‘ and siblings‘ expectations in terms of time, discouraged because apart from doubts about her suitability and the rejection of the dog combined with an utterly jaded and unbearable worry – even before the dog was even there! -, nothing else was given on the part of her family, Angi cut her arms and drank a good swig of toilet cleaner… It was biological cleaner. She called the ambulance and then from the ambulance she called me. I drove the 200 kilometres to her flat and took care of Juli. The trainer Angi had got the dog from didn’t want to take him back despite contractual arrangements, he would have ended up in kennels with her parents, someone else couldn’t be expected to take Juli in the condition she was in and voilá: Our third dog was there.
Why am I telling you this? Maybe someone who has taken a close look at Angi and her behaviour, her state of consciousness, already suspects… But now on. Juli was with us. Our dogs made it clear to me straight away that no help was to be expected from their side. I had brought this crazy, raging monster with me. So it was also my job to bring some calm into it. They stayed out of her way – not so much because they didn’t like her, but more for safety’s sake, since they were a lot smaller than Juli. „Puppy training after all…“ I groaned. „No one cares whether you want to or not.“ my wife grinned every time I tried to complain, exhausted. A phrase I myself was very fond of using – with a certain schadenfreude, I admit, but also with anticipation of what good things would grow out of it – towards people who had also just had to take a difficult but necessary step in their development. „That is your task.“ „Yes, yes…“ That’s how it was.
The first two weeks were bad. In addition to all the already existing restlessness and unresponsiveness, the change of location added to the symptoms. Juli was completely lost and unstable. Left to her own devices, in a world that seemed to offer her no stability. She had learned nothing else in her short life than restlessness, mistrust and boundless activity. An unlimited ego in its purest form. After two weeks she calmed down. We came into contact. My influence began to work. I guided her very closely. I made it clear to her that I was in charge and wanted to be in charge. That I could carry it. I gave her completely overflowing ego a limit and it came to rest. Juli’s consciousness could surrender. She no longer had to guard everything. No longer had to be on the verge of panic. Stopped tricking and manipulating. When Juli no longer felt like she was in a constant battle, I could test the closeness. I could be generous and do things she wanted to do. Things that were good for her. Allow boundaries to be crossed again in a controlled way. So that she could learn something from it. I let her grow in a space that I protected and a framework that I determined. Always in balance, making sure that the panic-stricken ego did not flood her consciousness again, but that there was always plenty of space for the soul to perceive. This is how real joy came into Juli’s life. Not the excess that is only excitement, lonely restlessness and close to destructiveness. Joy in walking, joy in running, joy in looking at myself and realising how sheltered one is. Joy in life itself. And so Juli is now a pubescent still wild, but well wild, growing wild young dog who is no longer afraid, who is brave because he knows he is sheltered. That he has a leadership he can trust. A leadership that is not only father but also mother at the same time. And it has been a hard (but mind you: short!) path. A path that also required a lot of patience. And above all, a lot of love. Wanting to let it grow. The joy of letting it grow…
Of course, Juli could have been put in a kennel for the rest of her life, well fed. Then the problem would have been solved. Much easier. With less personal pain. It would have required less sacrifice and reduced the goal regarding Juli’s development to just one: A dog that can no longer cause you trouble, that can no longer cause you pain: Peace through maximum control. Peace through an apparent death. Buried behind bars in the back corner of the property…. That could have been done… And that’s how it would have been with Angi’s parents. This is how Angi, her siblings, her parents and the generations before were brought up. All of them were put in the kennel and kept nice and quiet in a controlled way. They were all inculcated with the fear of joy, of wildness, of losing control, of being different, and as a preventive measure, they were all put away at an early age. Because „letting grow“ was not an option, because only the paternal aspect, the ego, the fear ruled. The mother, the knowledge, the security, the meaning had not played a role for them for many generations.
When I picked up Juli, I went to Angi’s parents‘ house again to hand in the key to the flat. I said deliberately cheerfully, more cheerfully than I might have been at that moment with the prospects: „I’ll take Juli with me for the time being. It’s not a problem. I like the dog!“
„I don’t like him.“ her father replied coldly.
In a society where only the father, the ego, the mind, matter, fear rules, there is no growth to greatness for beings. They become lonely and unstable and thus fearful, aggressive and nervous. Two paths are then open to them: In a weak environment, they become distrustful and controlling tricksters and manipulators who rely on nothing and no one and know only about themselves and their advantage. In a strong environment, they end up in the kennel and are sedated. Without the security of a common maternal-knowing and paternal-limiting leadership, only stagnation in fear is thus possible (explosive or controlled to death). And this is passed on, every generation, every day, every second….
In this story, dog and man, both are lost without guidance. But that guidance must be the Divine. The one that includes the mother, that includes the soul. And if the guidance is not directly the Divine, then the earthly guidance itself must be guided by the Divine guidance. That is the prerequisite for growth. For wholeness and for love. Without this guidance, it ends up like Juli and Angi. In fear and violence… or in the kennel under limitation until death, because in the end no one has anything they can fall back on reliably, where they can rest securely. Because all are only limited and do not have the eternal and infinite behind them.
Life is too big if it is only approached in the fatherless, materialistic, motherless, godless state of consciousness. It is just too big for that….
Epilogue
Angi always told me back then – when she still had Juli and one abyss after the next opened up for her – that she wanted to feel. That she wanted to love the dog! That she wanted to do something for it! I could only tell her that doing was not enough. That there was nothing to do now, because her ego was in power. No matter what she did, it would not lead to true love. Her ego would have to surrender. Then there is room for soul experience. For the perception of love… Well…, and so it came. Unexpectedly, as it sometimes happens.
Angi had a profound spiritual experience in the clinic. Probably the first in her adult life. She has now reached a turning point and from there things can go on anew. In a consciousness with access to soul knowledge. The ego had to give up first. It had to be ready to die. Sometimes it takes a dog in the unleashed maximum ego and a biological toilet cleaner…
And this is the event that still lies ahead of humanity on its way to becoming whole: The destruction of the ego. Who will be our Juli? The mercilessly egoistic materialism itself, which cares for nothing but itself and has such tremendous power over people and the world? Or will it be one of his emissaries? Born directly from him and commissioned to plunge childishly playful, responsibilityless and clueless, egoistic child-humanity into the pain from which there is no escape? Into the final pain? After which nothing comes but the death of the ego? Followed by the resurrection of soul knowledge. Or are we all slowly but surely being forged into the emissaries of materialism? Are we all already pursuing the ultimate goal. The goal of collective suicide? The final consequence of a world devoid of soul and thus meaningless? But the soul lasts forever. If it has the space in human consciousness, then it will become visible. And it will be as if it had never been lost.
Angi had no choice. Too much was riding on the fact that she could not give Juli away prematurely. For herself, for her surroundings, for Juli. At the moment, most people still have a choice. And before their ego suffers irreparable damage, they dispose of their pain-makers and ego-crushers „in time“. In time so that their ego does not have to give up. In time, before consciousness could grant space to the soul knowledge. But the time will come when humanity will also no longer have a choice. It will no longer be in a position to keep its childish ego in power in consciousness with the well-known methods of separation….