Above the Animals, or Among Them?

How our spiritual stories shape kinship and control

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At sunrise in Bali, I’ve watched roosters sing the light into being.

Dogs lie still like monks in the temple courtyard, eyes half closed, as if in prayer.

Monkeys share food with their sick. Cows bellow with grief.

And at dusk, birds fill the trees like stained glass windows trembling with song.

I used to think these were instinctual patterns.

Now I wonder:

Is this worship?

Is this wisdom?

Is this… soul?

We often think of soul as something uniquely human.

But maybe soul is what pulses through all life.

Maybe the sacred didn’t begin with us.

And maybe the way we’ve told the story — that it did — is where the forgetting began.

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Across time, every culture has told stories about animals.

Some told stories of reverence.

Others, of hierarchy.

Some placed animals as guides.

Others, as proof of what we must rise above.

How we tell the story of the animal is how we tell the story of ourselves.

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In many Indigenous traditions — across Turtle Island, Aotearoa, West Africa — animals are kin.

Not symbols. Not lesser. Not metaphors.

Kin.

The raven carries messages.

The wolf teaches loyalty.

The bear protects.

The spider remembers the web.

These aren’t fairytales. They’re relationships.

To harm an animal isn’t just to harm nature.

It’s to break the sacred bonds of kinship — to fracture the circle of life in which we all belong.

In these stories, human and animal are not separate categories.

We live among.

We belong to.

We are.

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Other traditions placed us above.

In the Book of Genesis, man is made in the image of God and given dominion —

over fish and bird, beast and seed.

And so a ladder was built:

God above man.

Man above beast.

Beast above land.

That ladder has justified a thousand atrocities.

Against the earth.

Against animals.

And against fellow humans called “closer to the animal.”

Even now, the language lingers:

“He’s acting like an animal.”

“They’re no better than beasts.”

“She’s wild, like some thing that needs taming.”

But this isn’t just insult.

It’s exile.

Exile from the sacred.

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Other spiritual traditions, like Buddhism and Hinduism, tell a different story —

one of cycles, not ladders.

In these teachings, all sentient beings — cow, insect, bird, human — are part of a great spiral.

Each life holds lessons.

Each form, dignity.

You might be reborn as any one of them.

No permanent hierarchy.

Only flow.

Only interbeing.

Only compassion without category.

Here, suffering is not stratified — it is universal.

And therefore, so is care.

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So why does this matter?

Because the way we see animals is the way we see the world.

And ourselves.

And each other.

If we see ourselves as above, we dominate.

If we see ourselves as among, we belong.

If we believe animals are soulless, then it’s easy to exploit them.

If we believe only humans are sacred, then the rest of life becomes… expendable.

But if we remember that all life carries soul…

then every encounter becomes holy.

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You know this already.

Not in theory — in your bones.

You’ve felt the heartbeat of a dog pressed against your chest when you were grieving.

You’ve met the gaze of a bird through a window and felt something ancient watching back.

You’ve whispered sorry to a spider as you carried her outside instead of crushing her.

You’ve stood before a cow at the edge of a field or a slaughterhouse and wondered:

Do you know?

Do you forgive us?

Do you dream?

In those moments — weren’t you equals?

Two beings.

Two breaths.

One field of aliveness.

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There’s something dangerous about trying to be “above” life.

That’s how systems of oppression begin.

That’s how violence gets justified.

The same story that said humans are above animals was used to say men are above women.

Colonizers above the colonized.

White above Black.

Reason above feeling.

Civilization above wildness.

That story doesn’t elevate us.

It severs us.

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This isn’t about assigning human morality to animals.

It’s not about calling them virtuous or kind.

It’s about ecosystems.

About interdependence.

About remembering that life is made up of relationships, not rankings.

The fox does not ask permission to eat the hen.

But neither does she hoard, pollute, or invent war.

The wolf does not manifest his dreams.

He meets the moment — as it is.

In hunger. In cold. In kinship.

He walks in step with the whole.

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And that, perhaps, is what we’ve forgotten.

Not how to dream —

but how to dream with the world.

Not how to want —

but how to want in relationship.

We are creators, yes.

We can birth what we need, want, and desire.

But not in isolation.

Not at the expense of life.

Not by climbing over the backs of our kin.

The I&I — I and I — includes all life.

When we remember that, we stop asking how to rise above the animal.

We start asking how to return to the animal with reverence.

We begin to belong again.

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Let’s keep walking together, love.

The path is muddy, yes.

But it’s also alive with pawprints, feathers, song.

And we were never alone here.

Never above.

Always among.