Here is the story:
A few days ago I noticed one of the blue hens was not doing so well. She is a daughter of a Sicilian Buttercup, the sweetest chickens. I did a few things to diagnose and help her, but last night, she was too weak to get up on the roost, though she made it to the coop alright. I helped her, but later found she had been pushed back to the ground. I put her back into the safe "hospital" space, where she settled nicely, like the night before. Earlier I even went back to the house for a few choice bits she was interested in eating. I picked another hen friend to spend the night next to her again.
This morning she was half sitting, half lying on the other side of the only 3 inches of the ground roost. She was weak, opened here eyes to look at me a few times, I gently touched her, made a few sounds, told her I loved her, she even recognized the food bits I showed her, but it was clear, her time of eating any however tempting looking food, was over. Mostly she closed her eyes for longer and longer times. She seemed in a comfortable position, so I let her be.
I found things to do around the coops, some chores had to be done away from it. She was safe but surrounded by the usual chicken sounds of her family. Her breathing, whenever I checked, was even and nonlabored. Not once was there a gasping, no spasms, - no outward sign of any distress.
Checking whenever I passed by the space she was in, her breathing was even.
Around lunchtime, I knew I had to go to the house for a bit ...she must be close I thought, and so I stood looking at her and telling her about her life as a little chick, that she got to be under the wings of a mama hen, grow up with little chick siblings, the got to pick and scratch and be out foraging with the flock. She laid eggs, She was beautiful....and I told her, and: you were loved. ...Then I thought ...wait a minute...she is still here, breathing ...and changed it to: You ARE loved.
Then I closed my eyes and softly chanted a sacred chant I had been taught by a shaman over 2 decades ago. I was turning her over to the spirit guides....then, eyes closed, I saw something white, as if smoke - only it was not smoke but white moving slightly twisting gently coming from her body, or where the body would be if I opened my eyes and looked. This white became a huge chicken shape, hard to say with eyes closed...but maybe 3-4 feet tall? facing me, head slightly cocked, a well demarcated shape of a white so clean and pure and flawless, without any blemish, that I have ever seen. It did not seem to radiate, looked solid but was not...it was very very still, just there, a kind of a light only it was not any light I had ever seen.
The communication was - hey, it's me, I AM HERE. ....stillness, just looking....then:
this is what animated her (this meaning the white shape from which the communication seemed to come) and with that communication there was as if an ethereal glance towards the body. It was one of knowing, of connection, of care, of saying don't violate it, honor it.
There was no thank you for this wonderful life, no sense of relief to be "free" or anything like that...only this - I'm here, it's me, - that which animated her, calm, serene, indescribability serene and still, not dead, just still and here. ..a vague sense of kindness, or understand/wisdom/knowing ..but not the human sense and barely perceivable.
Then ..with my "looking" with eyes closed at the pure perfect white chicken shape standing here facing me - it began to seemingly dissolve with movements similar to smoke moving...into a background of moving white light ...something I could not see past.
When this started to happen ..."I" started thinking ...if this just happened, she is gone, no longer breathing, and I wondered ...and I opened my eyes ... she was no longer breathing. I looked and looked and something in me seemed to be perceving some micromovements, but no breathing. Beak still closed, eyes closed, no spasm or anything. Just like that...like I saw it, or rather, how it appeared for me, that which animated her had left her, and gone back ..just like like that ...
I left her body there, surrounded by the sounds she knew, for a few hours, before burying her beautiful body where it will be transformed into part of the chicken garden and it's trees.
It was interesting how I felt at the same time less involved, less sorrow when holding and looking at the body, while at the same time more honoring of it than any other chickens I buried before.
I had seen that which had animated her ...and whether still connected on some level ...that had gone elsewhere.
Her matrix, her blueprint, not a chicken blueprint, it was HERs, it was animating this one....and it went back where ...I didn't follow it.
A white like I have never seen
her perfect chicken shape
no flaw
... had gone, at the same time being connected to what it manifested as dissolving without any sense of attachment. - selbstverstaendlich - is a German word that comes to mind, a words for which I know no translation.
So, that was "just" a chicken.
I always do orb "runs" for them, always ask the guides for the best possible outcome.
...and I wonder if all chickens, no matter how they lived, animals in general, have that which animates them leave their bodies with such equanimity, this feeling or sense I don't really have words for.
...and just now I wonder: how do we eat something like that - something this sacred, and if this one is so, they all are, it all is sacred. ...and why does it blow me apart in this seemingly sentimental fashion? ....
Life Lessons & Training.
but then, regarding the eating of them ...there is such understanding from their side...there is nothing to worry about.
