Dogs have adapted to become our domestic partners and have specialized their traits to the various ways of relating to mankind. Dogs are one of the most diversified species; shapeshifters, so to speak, meeting the needs and preferences of their human fellows (think chihuahua vs St Bernard).
Dogs are relationship masters; they intuitively move toward those who are suffering or sad and sit with them in their pain, they greet us with joy after a long day at work, they comfort us when we are in despair, they can change a grumpy mood into laughter, they are our companions and partners, and they are truly man’s best friend. Dogs are fierce protectors, and they will often fight to the death to protect their people.
Dogs, are like shamans and travel to the underworld to retrieve what we’ve lost. They retrieve the parts of us that have been lost or knocked out of our reach through the traumas that are a part of our lives. They might bring us back our Joy, our courage, our peace, our feeling of acceptance, our sense of safety, our sense of belonging, our ability to nurture, our ability to love another and be loved by another.
The dog is known in mythology as a “hunter would,” who drives errant sheep back to the divine Shepherd (Hound of Heaven). In many religions, the dog appears as the guide to the land of the dead, and in Egypt it was the jackal-headed god Anubis who brought about the resurrection of his father Osiris. Because of the dog’s relationship to the beyond, there are also in many places folktales about ghost hounds,dark wrath-like figures like the “hound of Baskervilles.” They always either carry to his death some individual who has committed evil, or else protect the offspring of one who has died. Good ghost hounds often bring a cure, and in Ancient Greece the dog was also one of the most frequently manifested forms of god of healing, Asclepius. In many religions today, people still believe that a dog’s lick can cure. A dog’s tongue serves s medicine… say the French.
Published by Professor P
My name is Paityn Masters, my friends call me P. I am queer, Pisces, & an ENFP. I am trained as a psychotherapist, and my roots were as a youth pastor. As a psychotherapist, my specialty is in trauma and complex PTSD. I met my best friend and my cosmic partner, Jenni McCullum in graduate school. Together, we began discovering the spiritual world and the psychic gifts that had laid dormant in our psyche. We both went through a wild initiatory process that joyfully and sometimes even painfully expanded our capacity to both SEE and to HEAR, beyond the limits of the five senses. We are both intuitives, and Jenni is also a medium. As traditional psychotherapy frowns on the mystical modality, we had to start our own practice, and sacrifice licensing in order to answer the Call. Fortunately, we found our theoretical home in a branch of psychology known as Depth Psychology, that has its roots in the discoveries made by C. G. Jung, and seeks to study the soul rather than behavior, and sees the whole person on a spiritual level first—then works down to personality, family influence, upbringing, biology, heredity, physicality, status, image, and complexes.
We see symptoms as more than something to eliminate, we see them as messages from the Soul. Psyche means Soul, but not many people know this, because our culture can’t seem to get beyond its dependence on the “safety” of the logical/rational mind. “Whenever you are in the realm of Soul, things will always go over your head. The statements of the conscious mind may easily be snares and delusions, lies, or arbitrary opinions, but this is certainly not true of the statements of the soul: to begin with they always go over our heads because they point to realities that transcend consciousness.” (C.G. Jung, Answer to Job).
Healing means “making whole,” and many either think they are already whole, or fear they’re broken beyond repair. Healing involves the courage to look at the wounds that caused the brokenness to begin with. Symptoms are a huge help in identifying not only the injury but also the gifts one possesses. Marion Woodman said, “the wound is where the God enters.” So, we look at pain and trauma from the standpoint of Soul Making.
I speak of God in my writing quite frequently, and like Soul, God is something that transcends our ability to conceptualize what that means. When I say God… I mean the God that I have discovered within… the same one that is within you. Folded up within each of us is the entirety of the cosmos. How we relate to our inner world determines how we will relate to everything. Our primary wounds and our deepest wounds are in the realm of relationship—beginning with the way we relate to our own inner selves. We are wounded in relationship and so we must be healed in relationship. That’s one of the things that we hope to do in our work here in this earth school. We hope to hold up a mirror so you can see your true nature, the image of your soul; reflection brings about insight, knowledge, and Wisdom.
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Dreams and Symbols 