A DOG HAS A CLEARER UNDERSTANDING of what it means to be a dog than you and I have for understanding what it means to be human. Not only that; they are happy about it. It is difficult to imagine a dog musing about being a dog, or writing about the “virtues of being me.” She might see this as a waste of her time. I suspect she gives it little thought, if any. And she is the happier for it. “Self” is very plain to her. Not only is it plain to her, she lives with sort of a healthy detachment from it. She is free, therefore, to invest her energies in more worthwhile pursuits. It’s a big life, after all, and there is little time to get it all in.

To say that the dog lives at capacity, is to say that the dog lives in that enviable state of absolute selfhood. Awareness and acceptance live in agreement together. She knows who she is, and she accepts who she is without debate. She can do this because she is fully aware of what that means, of what selfhood is. Life takes on the glow of authenticity. You can see it in her bounce, in the buoyancy she brings to life.

Her perceptions are not distorted by vanity, or other psychological saboteurs. Shame has no voice inside her. She can approach life with concord and with hopeful anticipation, because of the clarity that such awareness affords her. If speech were an option, you might hear her say, “I am happy to be me, because I know what that means. I am at peace with myself. I know where I fit in the scheme of things. I acknowledge nothing that frustrates me from being me. And I can love you fully, because I live fully. My surrender is absolute, because I understand myself absolutely.”

Of course, her god is a visible one.

For you and me, things are a bit more complex. We have psychological knots and tangles that the dog will, with all probability, never suffer. If love seems elusive, if it seems aloof or a bit too much work, it is usually in proportion to our attachment to or our absorption in self, that part of us which is just as elusive, just as aloof, just as demanding. Self behaves rather like a god, and because of this, our allegiance becomes obscured and divided. One master per dog; that’s the rule. Of course, the dog knows that.

An adaptation from Chapter Six — THE JOY OF BEING WHO I AM