I recently suffered a bereavement of our dear doggy friend, Barley. Barley was a golden retriever who had had the most magnificent doggy life- he had had a golden life full of walks to rivers, lakes and mountains and much companionship . H he had sometimes worked as a thera pet with some of my music students. He was a firm favourite with my early years students ; he would wander into the singing circle and huffily look about for fallen raisons that was an ending ritual for the class. He would lie down like a gentle teddy bear and let all the children pet him.
When he passed, I took the day off work so I could spend the day with him as he transitioned. I stroked him, sung mantras to him and told him all our happy doggy memories. He didn’t suffer and passed peacefully into the light. A peaceful and beautiful death. Barley lived and died in a cloud of warm, kind Wagginess.
The next day, I went in to the Steiner school where I teach and taught the whole school choir. All the children and teachers knew I had had to take the day off, the day before, because of Barley. After the session people spontaneously lined up in order to hug me and offer their condolences. One class – who had mostly come to my home for early years music sessions- had lit a candle for him and said prayers the day before. I was struck by how many people were praying for him and how many people his gentle golden Wagginess had touched.
This led me to reflect on something quite profound. Barley lived through simple joy and he gave this, consciously and unconsciously to all those he met! How beautiful and how transformative. He was loved by so many . He lifted peoples hearts and connected them to love and cherishing just by being his simple sweet doggy self and engaging with people in joy and Waggy happiness.
We can all learn a simple lesson from dear Barley. We can take joy and spread it out into the world and to other people- we can make the world a better place by smiling, being warm, light hearted, by connecting to our own inner joy and light and consciously engaging with each day through it. It is simple, yet deep and profound. Joy is a simple feeling of delight/ rejoicing/ being glad .
We can develop this practically through meditation. There is a buddhist meditation called Taking and then Giving. In these two meditations we first take away peoples suffering in an imagined way. As we take we imagine our own ego/ selfish minds lessening. Finally we imagine all suffering has been dispelled and we develop a mind of joy. This joy is the key point of the meditation. In the second meditation we imagine giving to different groups of people/ animals/ the world . Then we develop joy as a mindset. These two meditations are very powerful ways to shift mindsets, karma and how we live our lives.
Joy can be wrapped through and around our daily lives. It is simple, uncomplicated and totally profound and life changing. It is a smile, a touch on a shoulder, it is spontaneity, it is consciously moving through ones day with mindfulness, simplicity and ease. It is not giving space to the complicated, the grey, the complicated stickiness of mental turmoil. It is light, it is golden, it is creative and giving and totally expansive. Barley largely exemplified this state.
As humans we have an incredible capacity for choice- how we lead our lives, how we act and how we think. We can consciously choose to have mindsets like joy and live our lives through that energetic prism. We, of course can not do this 24/7 but simple aims and practices can take us a long way. In this way we shift energy, the karma of human trajectory and our effect in the world. If a doggy can do this- so can we!
I leave you with a lyric from a song I wrote, which is sitting in my To Do file. It is ready to release but I don’t have the finances for a PR campaign and release . …..
“I will look for the rainbows
though they are hard to find.
And see the joy in surprising things
To create my own garden, garden of delight”
Go find your rainbows and create your own beautiful garden of delight….we can to learn to Wag our way with simple joy , touching life in a beautiful way, making it simply a better and more enjoyable place.
Abi's World of Music 