The reason animals are with you is to help you with one of the paths you are undertaking in this life; either the spiritual or the physical life path. To begin with we can look at the physical life path, which is to say what you choose to do in the material world. You do not come into this life with it all planned out; instead you make your choices as you go along depending on the ways you perceive what is going on around you and the ways you have learned to deal with things. That is, you are using your physical mind to perceive this, not your spiritual being, although your spiritual being is telling you things all the time about your spiritual thinking as well. This often causes a problem with what you create in your life, because these two parts of your total being seem to be in conflict, so that neither is creating what you really want on either plane of existence.

This means that you are struggling most of the time, driven by some need to achieve you know not what, but thinking you must do or be whatever you are thinking is correct - generally someone else's ideal of human perfection, and usually someone long gone from the Earth, or what you are told they wanted you to be. This means that you are struggling to achieve someone else's will - and this is not God's Will, because His Will for you is whatever is your will. But you are not taking that to heart because you are told you have no right to your own will but must follow what you have been told is the only right way to God's redemption.

Your animals are with you to help you to see that you are your own person, not someone else's way of being; that you have a will and you can use it; that you can do and be anything you want; that you are perfection and have no need to strive for that; that you are part of All That Is and that there is part of All That Is within you. So how are they achieving this? They are showing you, through your self-awareness, that you are spiritual beings as they are, only they are closer to their spiritual roots than a human being, because humans choose to forget their spirituality on incarnating in each life and animals do not. They are saying to you that they can achieve spiritual enlightenment and survive on Earth, so you can too.

The goal of your spirit is to be in the physical on Earth, yet to know yourself as the perfect spiritual being you truly are. To bring the two parts of yourself into the full light of day and be wholly the spiritual being on the physical plane. Not to rid yourself of the physical in order to be spiritual but to achieve both at the same time. That is what animals do, and that is how they show you the way that you can do it

At the same time you are choosing to do something on Earth to help others or to show the route to better ways of living your lives on Earth without destroying the planet or the other life forms on it, and this is another way in which the animals are helping you. They fall ill, or develop other difficulties, in order to bring it to your consciousness what you are seeming not to notice of the problems mankind is creating in the world around you.

Some of them are asking you to see the way you are seeing yourself as perhaps someone who is less than others, who deserves less, or who is not worth the care lavished on others. Some of them, whose problems will only partly resolve even with the best and most natural of therapies, are showing you the limits you are placing on your own achievements or on your own healing. Still more are saying to you "Look at what you are eating, and doing to your bodies" by becoming ill themselves through vaccination or junk food, and all the terrible things you are doing to the world and to yourselves as part of that world.

The problem of their deaths, so often at what seems to you an appallingly early age and a heart-breakingly short life span, is the main reason for these words, but their reasons to be with you in life (often going to great lengths to be with you rather than with someone else) is so important too. This is the reason for the foregoing. Animals are spiritual beings on a similar path to yours; that is, to be on Earth physically whilst being their spiritual selves at the same time, which they can achieve far more easily because they are aware of their spirituality.

When a human being communicates with animals, it is the spirit of the animal they communicate with, not the physical self. But that is what you all want to achieve: the consciousness of your spiritual essence. The reasons given to animal communicators for animals' deaths are varied and sometimes may seem petty but that is only because humans think they know what the way is to the spiritual essence. What these communications are saying to you is that you are unaware of true spirituality and can only see what you think should be there, not see what truly is there. This is not a criticism; all humans are struggling through darkness to see the light because of their choosing not to remember their spiritual roots and so the race as a whole has chosen to struggle rather than to move toward their goal speedily. But there are always those loving beings you call animals whose love for you is so strong that they come to you to save you and your world by their own living and dying.

There is so much that could be said about their reasons for being in the first place, and even more about their reasons for dying the way you see them do, but the main reason they die is to make a change in their beingness, to move on in some way; either in the physical by changing to a different form (for example, a chicken coming back as a hamster so that she could get closer to her person, as is detailed in Penelope Smith's tape on Animal Death) or to move on in a spiritual way.

It is so difficult for humans to understand this, because you are so fearful of death, but that is as it should be (as is everything that occurs on Earth, however it may seem to your eyes), because there is nothing that is or can be wrong. Nothing. What you see as wrong is just your judgement about something, which is fine, but there is nothing that is intrinsically wrong - or right. Everything is just as it is, that is all. There is no sin, no judgement of anything anyone does; just what is, as it is.

The animals know this, and they understand why you do not and they love you despite it and despite any action you can take, or not take. There is no way you could change their choices about life or death; it is their choice to take and they do just that - make their own choices based on what they see as being in your best interests and theirs. Only they see your best interests (and theirs) from a spiritual viewpoint, not the physical one. They are prepared to suffer if they can remove themselves no other way, because they see suffering as it truly is - simply the movement of energy from one point to another, not the agonising pain and misery it is to humans. Humans too could see it this way could they but let go of the need for things to be as they think they should be, rather than as they truly are.

So, when your animals don't heal, despite what you see as your best efforts, it is not that you are failing in your duty, or seeming not to be capable of healing anyone or keeping anyone safe, it is just that they see their going as the next best step, their own path to healing of the spirit rather than of the physical body. Remember that healing is not just cessation of physical symptoms, or simply a return to apparent physical health, but it can be just as well a dying, which is simply a move towards the Light, a new beginning in whatever form that takes, if form it does take.

So, don't despair at the deaths of your beloved animals, nor at the seeming plight of those you see or hear of apparently suffering elsewhere; it is not as it seems to you in your grief. Your feelings of guilt are not necessary, since there is nothing you can do that is wrong, however it may seem to you in hindsight, and there is nothing that any other human can do that is wrong, whatever it seems like to your way of thinking. The animals accept all, understand all, forgive all, and love all the human race. And there is no need to despair either of not meeting up again with your sought-after animals because you are one and there is no separation between you, not even on the physical level. Even though you cannot see or feel their presence, they are there and always will be.

This information was channelled on June 2nd, 1999