Summary:
- Background and Career
Kim Sheridan began her career as a nutritionist and naturopath, but her life took a dramatic turn after a profound near-death experience. This event led her to explore spirituality, animal communication, and the afterlife. - Animal Communication
Sheridan discovered her ability to communicate with animals, both living and deceased. She emphasizes that this skill is not unique to her and believes that everyone has the potential to communicate with animals. - Views on Afterlife
- Animals in the Afterlife: Sheridan firmly believes that animals have souls and continue to exist after death. She shares personal experiences of communicating with deceased pets and wild animals.
- Near-Death Experiences: The interview delves into Sheridan’s own near-death experience and how it shaped her understanding of the afterlife.
- Book and Research
Sheridan is the author of “Animals and the Afterlife,” a book that explores the spiritual nature of animals and their existence beyond physical death. The book includes numerous accounts from people who have experienced connections with their deceased pets. - Spiritual Perspectives
The interview touches on various spiritual topics, including reincarnation, the nature of consciousness, and the interconnectedness of all living beings. - Throughout the interview, Sheridan shares personal anecdotes and insights from her work as an animal communicator, offering a unique perspective on the relationship between humans, animals, and spirituality.
Full transcript:
Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of conversations with spiritually awakening people and about spiritual topics. We’ve done over 700 of these now, so if this is new to you and you’d like to check out previous ones, please go to batgap.com and look under the interviews menu where you’ll see them organized in several different ways. This program is made possible through the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. So if you appreciate it and would like to help support it, there are PayPal buttons on the website and a page explaining alternatives to PayPal. My guest today is Kim Sheraton. Kim is an award-winning author, naturopath, entrepreneur, and more. Her focus includes animals, the afterlife, health, the environment, veganism, and all topics related to compassion for humans and animals alike. She is a highly respected expert on life after death for animals, and much of her time is devoted to rescuing animals, caring for them, and providing hospice care for elderly animals making their transition to spirit. Kim is the author of Animals and the Afterlife, there’s her book, and the founder of Compassion Circle, a non-profit organization with a mission to expand the circle of compassion to all beings. Compassion Circle is comprised of animal rescue, animal sanctuary, and a line of nutritional products for animals, all proceeds of which help fund the rescue and sanctuary. Kim’s goal is to help make the world a better place, to provide comfort to those grieving the loss of a beloved animal, and to be a voice for the voiceless, teaching compassion and respect for all beings. And I just want to read a little blurb from the back of her book. Kim grew up with animals as her constant companions, each time she faced the death of a beloved animal along with the pain came the same questions, to which she could find no answers. Then, mysterious things began to happen that she couldn’t explain, which led her on an incredible journey to uncover the truth. Along with her own extraordinary experiences, she compiled heartwarming and meaningful true stories of everyday people around the world and discovered compelling evidence that forever erased her own doubts about an afterlife for animals. This book provides enormous comfort and reassurance to anyone who has ever cherished an animal and food for thought for anyone who has ever questioned the place of these beloved creatures in the larger scheme of things, both here on earth and beyond. Okay, thanks Kim. So Kim has been very busy lately and and she’s really been doing backflips to get ready for this interview amidst a million other things she has to do so I really appreciate your doing all that Kim and you don’t look like somebody who didn’t sleep much last night.
Kim: Well, I’m glad to hear I hide it well. Thanks for having me.
Rick: Oh, you’re welcome.
Kim: It’s an honor.
Rick: Oh, it’s an honor to have you. And I really enjoyed your book. I read most of it. I read some of every chapter, but all of some chapters, and I really enjoyed it. It was full of very uplifting stories and really nice quotes from people like Mahatma Gandhi and Albert Schweitzer, perhaps he was in there, and others about the importance of how we treat animals as a barometer or an indicator of the, I’d say, the spiritual maturity of our society. And I’m afraid that in many respects that barometer is not very high on its scale yet, but what you’re doing, I think, is helping to raise it.
Kim: Doing my part, you know. We all do our part.
Rick: Yeah. So, let’s do the usual biographical thing. I alluded to it in that little blurb from the back of your book, but take us back, you know, to your childhood and what got you going on this, I would say, life’s mission that you are now so engaged in.
Kim: Well, I was always a really sensitive child, I guess what you would call an HSP, and I always loved animals.
Rick: Highly sensitive person, yes.
Kim: Highly sensitive person, yes. And so I’ve always felt a connection to animals as long as I can remember, and I just felt compelled to help them. Like if a bird had fallen out of a tree or whatever, it was just sort of second nature to do my best to nurse them back to health. And so I always definitely felt a kinship with animals in some ways more than humans. I mean, I was really close with my family, but as far as other kids, I was often more comfortable just in the presence of the animals. So yeah, it started really, really early. And simultaneously, I was a very interesting, a very, I don’t know, different, unusual kid. A lot of the kids would be out playing and I’d be studying things like ghosts and the afterlife and, you know, infinity, the universe, you know. I was just very introspective. And so I kind of had those two interests pretty much growing throughout my life from a very young age, for as long as I can can remember actually, right from my earliest, earliest memories. In fact, my earliest memory is of lying in my crib with this toy that I found disturbing because it had, it was like a stuffed bunny rabbit, but it had a hard plastic kind of scary human face on it. And I found it very creepy, so I used to throw it out of my crib. And then my mom would, bless her heart, I remember she’d come in the room and pick it off the floor and put it back in my crib thinking I had, you know, I wanted it and I’m thinking, “No, she doesn’t understand. I don’t know how to talk yet, but she doesn’t understand. I threw this thing out because it creeps me out.” So anyway, that was probably my earliest experience with an animal was it had a human face on it. So I kind of, you know, I tend to resonate more with animals with animal faces.
Rick: It’s amazing you remember that, you know, from such a young age, you couldn’t even talk yet.
Kim: That was the first memory. Yep.
Rick: Wow. Aside from, like, an intellectual interest in this kind of thing, reading about ghosts and the afterlife and the other things you mentioned, did you have any, what we might call mystical experiences as a child?
Kim: I had a lot. I regularly, and still do, have dreams that come true, precognitive dreams. And it got to the point where my family would ask me, you know, because they took it seriously because they saw that my dreams would come true. I would see auras glow around people, I still do. And I remember before getting on an airplane, I always just had this sense that I should check everybody’s aura who was getting on the plane to make sure that their aura was intact. I don’t know exactly how to… And I didn’t even know the word aura yet. I just knew that I needed to make sure that they had this life force glow around them. And if they did, then we’d be safe getting on the plane. But if they didn’t, we shouldn’t get on the plane. So, you know, for the rest of my dad’s life, rest his soul, he would always ask me, “Are our auras intact before we get on the plane? Are we good to get on the plane?”
Rick: That’s great. Especially if the pilots’ are intact, you want to know that.
Kim: Yeah, for sure. And it’s interesting, years later, like, I think not until I was in college, I was studying the work of Edgar Cayce and I learned that he had this same gift, or whatever you call it, and one time he was about to get on an elevator and he saw that none of the people on the elevator had auras, if I remember the story correctly, and he did not get on the elevator, and then that elevator crashed and they all passed. So, I don’t know exactly how to explain that other than there must be some divine order, which I always come back to, and their souls have already on some level checked out because they know that their time is up. So, yeah, those were early memories. I’ve had mystical experience. I’ve had angelic encounters, sensing presences at the foot of my bed. Lots of profound experiences throughout my early childhood all the way to today.
Rick: Did you ever have like a dark night of the soul period, like maybe during your teenage years, where you lost these abilities and just kind of got too involved in the world and then they came back or did that never happen to you?
Kim: You know, there was a point when I was a preteen and a teenager when I had a lot of dreams in which I saw the death of somebody. And it wasn’t usually someone that I was particularly close to. One time it was the next-door neighbor who I didn’t actually even know personally, and another time it was the father of a friend at church. And then I would feel pretty devastated because I would know it was about to happen and yet… People would, I would have, many times I would have the experience of having a dream in which someone I knew of, or someone I knew or knew of, was about to pass. Or in the dream, actually in the dream they had just passed. And I knew from experience that what this meant was that they were going to pass. And so I would have this dilemma like, “Okay, well I know this, what can I do to prevent this?” And it was a real burden. And then when they inevitably passed, just as I saw in the dream, I felt heartbroken. You know, I felt like, “Well, why am I seeing this if I can’t do anything to stop it?” And I remember my mom called the wife of my pastor and told her about this. And I remember what she said, she just, the pastor’s wife, really sweet lady, said, “Well, it must be a gift from God.” And so I remember grappling with that, if this is a gift, why is it so painful and why am I really not able to make a difference? So I think at that point, I did turn it off for some years as best I could. It never went away entirely because I have this interesting experience that’s happened more times than I can count where I’m pretty much on the verge of dying, whether it be a car accident or an earthquake or some sicko, or in one case a guy running a tank truck through a parking lot, and something will tell me not to be there at that time that I should have been there. And I get these warnings. One time it was a full-blown vision not to go to the prom with somebody or I’d die in a car crash and I saw the whole thing. I saw the future that would have unfolded had I gone to the prom with this guy who later passed actually the way that I saw in the vision. He drove off a cliff. So I can’t say I ever turned it off entirely because even when I tried, it was always there to save my life. And so I did have to finally surrender to the fact that, yes, this is a gift and I’m very grateful for it. And it must not be my time to go because, you know, I’m always somehow protected and I’m grateful for that. And I think so one of the things I have had to find peace with, maybe they call it survivor’s guilt, I don’t know, is that, you know, when other people are not protected or prevented from passing, what I’ve really concluded is that means it was their time and on some level, some soul contract they had already agreed to or planned or it was already ordained or whatever to pass when they did. That’s how I’ve found peace with that, with particularly with close loved ones in my own life. When you lose someone really close to you, that’s I think the only way you can find peace with it is to know that they’re okay, you will see them again, and it was their time.
Rick: Yeah. I mean, obviously, if one reads your book, there’s just so many stories that reaffirm the notion that we don’t die when the body dies. It’s more like casting off a worn out garment, as the Bhagavad Gita puts it. And the Gita says what grief is there in this, you know? It’s like you’re changing clothes. [Laughter]
Kim: Right, yes. Yes.
Rick: But still, you know, we’re human beings and we have human emotions and it probably is a little unnatural to get all cold and philosophical about it if someone or some animal very dear to us dies. It’s natural to grieve.
Kim: I think it’s impossible to get cold and philosophical about it, I guess unless you’re a sociopath. But for the other 96% of us, you know, we do the best we can and I think we use all of this information, which is what I’ve done with my research, to provide as much comfort as we can, knowing that grieving will still take place and that is a necessary, a very painful but necessary part of the human experience. And I do also think that there’s strength in numbers, so to speak. In other words, if someone has been through something traumatic and then you go through something traumatic, there’s some kind of a bonding that takes place. I know that for me, I’ve found comfort from others who have been there and get it, and I try my best to be that person for other people who are going through it. And, you know, in many cases with animals, losing a pet, that’s that person’s best friend in the whole world. You know, that’s the person who was there, that’s the person who didn’t argue or fight back or take advantage, that’s the person who was just there to love unconditionally. And then when that person, that person in fur or feathers or fins or or whatever is gone, it’s absolutely devastating and I acknowledge that. And anything I can do to help someone going through that, you know, I’m all on it.
Rick: That’s great. You know, as I was reading your book, I was impressed by the intensity with which you have loved your pets and also the intensity with which you grieved when they died. And I think that somehow correlates with what you were just saying about how you’ve had this subtle perception all your life of, you know, seeing auras and sensing future events and all that stuff, you know, perhaps it’s kind of natural for a person to be, if they’re as sensitive perceptually as you are, perhaps that’s indicative of a very open heart, you know, which is capable of both loving and grieving deeply.
Kim: Well said, yeah. You know, every time a new animal comes into my life, I do think to myself, okay, here comes another future broken heart. But I’m gonna love ’em to pieces anyway, you know?
Rick: Yeah.
Kim: And ultimately, it is worth it, even though sometimes it’s hard to, yeah, it’s hard, you know? There’s no other word for it. It’s hard, but it’s rewarding. And I really wouldn’t have, well, I shouldn’t say I wouldn’t have any other way. I would. I would have it that no one ever died, but, you know, in this realm, or, you know what I mean. But seriously, the love is so worth it every single time.
Rick: Well, it would get kind of crowded if no one ever died.
Kim: This is true. I’ve grappled with that in my mind also. And I hear about the immortalists talking about living forever. I’m thinking, well, that’s not really practical A, and B, at this point I know way too much about the afterlife to be that excited about staying here forever. [Laughter]
Rick: Yeah. I once had a spiritual teacher who said, he was talking about immortality and he said, after all, if we want to be immortal, there must be much better bodies than these in which to do it.
Kim: Oh, well said. So true. And the spirit bodies that we and all of our animal friends end up with are way better and they don’t have all the aches and the pains and the, you know, and the emotional torment that we can all go through on this plane, for sure. And you know, back to what you’re asking about a dark night of the soul, I did have another one as an adult, and that was when I had a missing pet. And I felt responsible for her getting loose, and I enlisted a whole bunch of professional animal communicators to help me to find her. and it was an amazing experience that I will write about in a future book. But in the end, it turned out that she had passed, and she wasn’t missing, she hadn’t gotten loose, she had passed. It’s a really long story. And then I was grappling with this and I talked to the professional animal communicators about this, and that was before I understood that, you know, because they’re tuning into the spirit of the animal, they don’t always know that the animal is out of body, either. If that little being is still around describing exactly what’s going on, they’re still around describing exactly what’s going on, they are still involved, it’s just we don’t see them. And I found that, it was an interesting time. It was like, oh my God, everything I thought I believed and now they weren’t even here. But later I kind of came all the way around to that gave me an actually a deeper understanding of how things work.
Rick: I see. So you were saying that you kind of began to doubt the animal communicators because they were getting messages from this pet and it turned out the pet had deceased. And so you kind of thought they were phonies or something.
Kim: Well, I was like, well, how come they didn’t know that she had passed? And that’s when I had a conversation with each of them, and I really, yeah. But before I had that conversation, I was really like, I’ve been going down this path, and she’s been dead this whole time, and she’s been right here.
Rick: Yeah.
Kim: You know, she’s been right here, she didn’t go anywhere, she’s just dead. Anyway, it was a bizarre experience, but one I think I needed to have so I could communicate even better that this is a gift of the Spirit.
Rick: Yeah. And there are a number of accounts of animal communicators in your book who, which may make at least some of them seem really quite legitimate and accurate in what they do.
Kim: Absolutely, profoundly, profoundly accurate. And I will say there are some who actually have a, you know, we all have gifts in different areas and there have been particular animal communicators. Of course, all of the ones in my books are amazing. And at the time that this animal went missing, it was after my book came out and none of them were available because after my book came out, they all got even busier. And so, I had to start fresh with new animal communicators who I wasn’t as familiar with.
Rick: Yeah.
Kim: So, I think that played a role in that whole dark night of the soul I went through, as well. But I will say, yes, it’s a true gift that they have, for sure. And some of them have more of a gift toward being able to discern whether an animal is in spirit or in the body, and some of those are actually specialized in finding lost pets. And that’s a true gift, because I mean, my goodness, what a horrible experience to go through when someone loses a loved one, whether animal or human, and they don’t know where they are. There’s no closure, there’s just this constant tumultuous, heartbreaking, unchecked box, like, where are they? So anyone who goes through that with people and does that work, I just have the utmost respect for.
Rick: Yeah. Talk about not being able to sleep. It would be hard to go to bed at night.
Kim: Yeah, for sure.
Rick: Yeah. And it sounded like you were fairly rigorous in testing these animal communicators. You know, you kind of like matched them against each other and did various, it was almost like a scientific experiment sometimes to winnow out the more accurate ones.
Kim: Absolutely. Even though I’ve always had these very profound spiritual experiences, I’m a very like logical-minded, OCD, no stone left unturned, thinker-analyzer personality type who doesn’t just take things at face value. You know, they say a sucker’s born every minute. I was like the off minute because I’m the one who’s always suspicious and testing and so forth. So I think that was good. I was actually put in this in this role in life because, one, I can really be there to test and make sure that this is legit. I’m not going to put anything out there, as out there as it may seem, unless i’ve really tested it to the utmost and, b, I think for me personally it has helped me to have these otherworldly experiences so often in my life because, I hate to say it, but i’m one of those people if I didn’t experience it any of this myself, I wouldn’t believe it. So, I kind of have that duality within me, that real strong skeptic along with that personal, okay, well, I can explain this the way I want, but this is what’s happening right in front of my eyes. So, I think it’s a real balance. It’s a real gift. I consider it a gift for which I’m grateful.
Rick: Yeah, I think that’s really what our society needs more than anything is a balance of the scientific and the mystical, if we want to call it the mystical for lack of a better word. You know, know, because we’re way too top-heavy on the scientific these days and mystics are dismissed by the scientific types as being nutcases, I guess, you know, like unrealistic people. But you know, I think that obviously, as your book discusses and many other people discuss, there are many realities to this universe that the scientists don’t have the tools to investigate and they kind of need the mystics if they really want to understand, or if we as a species want to really understand what makes the universe tick. We need both. And there’s no reason they can’t be collaborators rather than opponents.
Kim: I couldn’t agree more. And I think the interesting thing, or the irony, or whatever you want to call it, is that someday when all these scientific types pass away, and the body is gone and decomposing and they’re in this whole vast universe, this whole spiritual realm, they’re gonna realize that they were kind of in many ways the ignorant ones and the thing they poo-pooed is reality ultimately and they just knew tiny bits about a tiny piece of reality and so much was missed. That’s a shame.
Rick: Yeah, I have a good friend named Curtis who, we have these long, friendly debates. And he’s pretty much an atheist, and although kind of open-minded, but basically he’s pretty convinced that, you know, when you die, that’s it, lights out. And I am the complete opposite. And, you know, so we have these lively debates. I keep trying to think of, like, you know, what evidence is there that I could present to him that would put a crack in his conviction? But I ultimately end up kind of saying, “Well, don’t worry, Curtis. You know, when you die you’ll be pleasantly surprised!” And you’ll say, “God, I should get in touch with Rick and tell him he was right.”
Kim: Yeah, totally. Maybe he will. You never know. But yeah, it’s interesting. But you know, I try to tell people, I mean, skeptical people, you know, it doesn’t matter what you tell them. If they’ve made their mind up, they’ve made their mind up. So, it’s like banging your head against the wall. However, you know, I mean, at this point, there’s so much evidence, okay? There’s so many categories, you know, we talk about mediums, we talk about animal communicators, we talk about personal experience, visions, etc. But NDEs, yes, near-death experiences, there is so much, I mean so much in those experiences that cannot be just explained away or dismissed when you think about the, you know, the people who are floating outside of their bodies and they’re seeing what’s going on, they’re describing the, “Oh, you sewed a syringe up inside of my body,” or, you know, whatever, “I saw you drop your pen under the thing and then…”
Rick: There’s a red sneaker on the roof of the hospital.
Kim: The red sneaker, exactly, you know? And then they come back in their body, they describe these things, they’re still on the bed, and those things that happened and those things are true. And there’s absolutely no way, I mean, no way, they could have known that unless they were out of their body, actually witnessing these things. And so that right there, it’s like, I mean, how is an atheist or whatever gonna explain that away? I mean, they’ll probably try to find ways, but it’s like, come on, there comes a point where we need to acknowledge that this is, there’s a bigger picture. And also, we’re so intricately, intricately created, you know, that the way the body’s put together and the lungs to breathe and the, I mean, for this to all be random just blows my mind. To me, that would be much harder to wrap one’s mind around when you really start looking into the grand design, the design of our world.
Rick: You’re singing my song. It’s just like, I love this topic and it’s almost like God is hiding in plain sight if we just, you know, have the eyes to see and the insight to accept what we’re seeing. You’ve probably heard of the idea of fine-tuning of the universe, how there are a whole bunch of different variables that if they’re off by just a fraction of a percent, we either wouldn’t have have a universe or it wouldn’t have life or you know things like that and you know scientists when they look at that it’s like they they come up with the notion of a multiverse because they said okay well there must be an infinite number of universes and we just happen to have lucked out to be in the one where all these variables were just right and the odds of them being just right are astronomically small and so that’s kind of their cop-out that well there must be lot of universes and all the other ones are duds and we lucked out. But it’s just kind of a desperate attempt to avoid admitting that there’s some kind of intelligence orchestrating everything.
Kim: Well said, and it actually sounds desperate to me, but you know, whatever keeps them comfortable in their paradigm.
Rick: Yeah.
Kim: And you know, back to what I was saying also about, you know, the design of us, I’m often struck because of all the animal rescue work I do, you know, from time to time I see animal x-rays and to see their little bodies look so much like ours, you know, I mean right down to the lungs, I mean there are differences obviously, but I see the little spine and the legs and you know what I mean? It’s like, wow, they’re like little miniature, in some cases large, like horses or whatever, you know, versions of us and that is coupled with, you know, my experience with them, being with them, being in their presence, looking in their eyes and seeing how they behave and seeing things they do that are not just survival, not just instinct, but seeing one animal go out of their way to assist another animal, an ailing animal, an elderly animal, whatever, for no personal gain other than to help this other animal. And, yeah, just to grand design…
Rick: Yeah, tell that story from your book about where there was an old rat and she couldn’t see or move very well or anything.
Kim: Yes, Natalie.
Rick: And then this other rat brought her all these banana slices and guarded it so she could eat them.
Kim: Yes, yes.
Rick: I just told the story, but go ahead and embellish it.
Kim: No, no, you told it well. Thank you. I didn’t have to test you. Did you read the book?
Rick: I pretty much did, yeah.
Kim: Yeah, and then, yeah, so that was just one example of many, yeah, the older rat couldn’t get around as readily, and so the younger rat would grab her all the, actually the best slices, the most choice slices of banana, and run and put them there, and yeah, and stand guard right in front to make sure she could eat enough without any of the, you know, less honorable little creatures coming to take her stash. And I see those types of things again and again. And it just, it moves, it touches my heart. And yeah, it’s like the God within all things, you know, the love, you just see that in all creatures. And it’s so rewarding to be a part of, you know, to be getting to know these other little creatures and to have a level of connection and communication that goes beyond human speech. And I think that’s one of the things that does bond us with them. There’s that, it helps us to get more in touch with our spiritual aspect when we don’t have words in the way. I mean, think about all the times humans have had misunderstandings, whether verbally or in emails, you know? “Well, I didn’t mean to have a tone in my email,” or whatever, you know what I mean? And with animals, that’s all stripped away. And it’s just pure bonding, pure connection. And it’s a beautiful part of life. And that’s another part of life that I think a lot of the really serious scientific types are missing out on. I mean, obviously, some have a dog or a cat or whatnot in their life, but for many, there’s just never been that connection. And it’s like that one quote, you know, “Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.” And I think that’s true. I think it’s a part of life that a lot of people have missed out on. But thank God a lot of people have that. I think that is what gets a lot of people through life. You know, enough humans let you down, you’re sure glad to have your beloved animal companions in your life.
Rick: Yeah, to quote the Bhagavad Gita again, there’s a verse which says that the enlightened being sees the Self in all beings and all beings in the Self. The second part of it means the Self is so universal that we’re all contained in it like fish in water. But all the Self and all beings means you look into the eyes of a dog or a cat or a rat or something, and basically you see yourself.
Kim: Yeah, yeah. We’re more similar than we are different, for sure.
Rick: Yeah.
Kim: For sure.
Rick: Our essence is completely the same.
Kim: Yes, yes.
Rick: Yeah, kind of like there’s a verse from… “Light that is one, though the lamps be many.”
Kim: Well said, I like that.
Rick: Yeah.
Kim: Yeah.
Rick: It’s a line from The Incredible String Band, which was before your time, I’m sure.
Kim: I have to look them up.
Rick: From the 60s, yeah. I had a couple of interviews with a woman who’s an animal communicator and very good at it, Anna Breytenbach, if you’ve heard of her, and she’s from South Africa originally. And we had this little debate, which we never resolved, in which she was asserting that there’s no hierarchy, that all levels, all beings are kind of like of equal value. And I said, “Well, what about, let’s say, in Africa, children are dying of malaria, and we want to do what we can to control the mosquito population so kids don’t get malaria so much. Is the life of a child more valuable than the life of a mosquito?” And she couldn’t agree that it was. And it’s funny because my last time I interviewed her, she had a a stye or an eye infection of some kind and she was taking antibiotics and putting an ointment on there and I thought, I didn’t think to say it, but I thought, hmm, how about those little bacteria? They’re biting the dust for the benefit of her eye.
Kim: [Laughter]
Rick: What do you think about that? The whole idea that there are levels of evolution and in some respects, perhaps, the more complex forms of life are, it’s like God has more invested in them than it does in the simpler forms of life.
Kim: I, you know, I’ve grappled with that one a lot and it kind of, here’s where I’m at currently with that. I do, I don’t see it, I don’t see a hierarchy. I’ll say that for number one. Like, in other words, I know a lot of rats or dogs or cats or whatnot, or fish, who I feel and I see a greater spiritual evolution and then some, well, a lot of humans I’ve had experiences with. So I don’t, on that level, I don’t see a hierarchy. However, as far as you’re talking about, you know, bacteria and mosquitoes, and I had my own experience with bedbugs, and I will admit to the world that I allowed the bedbugs to starve. I didn’t feed them the blood feast that they live on. I actually had to move out of the bedroom for over a year, but anyway, that’s another story. But the way I see it, I mean, if you look at it biblically, you know, don’t kill or eat creatures with the lifeblood in them, my interpretation of that is very different than what historical humans did. They saw that to mean you just bleed someone alive, you know, gut them and bleed them alive in front of the other terrified animals and then eat them. I see that as animals who don’t really have blood like us in the first place. So then that does bring to mind certain creatures that are different from us. And so, yeah, do evolved and evolving souls like us and our animal friends, do they inhabit bedbugs? You know, I don’t know. I mean, I think that the life of a person is more or an animal is more important than the bacteria that you’re using antibiotics or whatever you’re using to kill. I don’t know if that’s clear what I’m saying, but I’m kind of wrapping around to saying I agree with you.
Rick: Yeah, it is sort of a hierarchical consideration, although there are kind of negative implications to the word hierarchy, and that notion has been abused a lot to justify a lot of mistreatment of animals.
Kim: And of different groups, races, or women, you know, like the early rabbis, the things they said about women, you know, don’t be in their presence, you know, you might as well be killed if you entrust some, you know, any spiritual knowledge to them and so forth. And so, yeah, I’m sorry, I’m grossly misquoting that, but you get the idea.
Rick: I know what you mean, yeah.
Kim: Throughout history.
Rick: All sorts of egregious examples.
Kim: Yes, yes.
Rick: And that spiritual teacher I alluded to earlier also once said, if you have to eat somebody, eat lesser evolved life. I think what he was getting at is, you know, a cabbage is less evolved than a chicken, or certainly than a cow, and whatever. So, he was advocating vegetarianism basically there.
Kim: Yeah, and I agree with that. Like I’ve always said, you know, the day my broccoli screams and tries to run away from me is the day I stop eating broccoli.
Rick: Yeah.
Kim: So…
Rick: Yeah. Okay, so, where should we go from here?
Kim: And to take that one step further, actually.
Rick: Yes, please.
Kim: You know, like the secret life of plants and all of that type of research. When you think about it, the plants, when they know that, at least from the research I’ve looked at, I’m no expert on this, when the plants know that a person is about to come in and do them harm, they will put themselves in, I guess, what we would consider a coma, you know what I mean? They’ll like check out. Whereas the sentient beings among us, you know, the humans and the animals, we don’t tend to have that luxury. You know, there is the suffering and the torment, and I think that’s the difference. If we don’t want to contribute to suffering, we just take a look at that with our every choice.
Rick: Which reminds me actually of what you said about people getting on an airplane who didn’t have an aura or on an elevator. It’s like in a sense that they somehow have checked out. There’s some kind of premonition that they weren’t even aware of themselves, but there was some kind of a checkout process. And I’ve also heard of people like in car accidents who felt like just before impact they rose above their body or something and and were out of it when the actual trauma injury happened.
Kim: Yes, yes, I’ve heard cases of that as well, and I’ve spoken with people who’ve had that experience. So, yeah, there is that level of, you know, there are multiple levels in this, and I think we as human beings as we are right now only make the best choices we can with what’s in front of us, you know. And most people don’t see auras, checking out or not, and so we just, you know, we consider that when there’s a sentient being in front of us, we treat them the way that we would expect to be treated.
Rick: Yeah. Oh, okay.
Kim: And yet, at the same time, when we’re on the, in the experience of grieving, to remind ourselves that there is some kind of divine order.
Rick: Yeah. Um, let’s, as we talk, feel free to sprinkle our conversation with stories from your book because there’s so many good stories in there and if anything we’re talking about reminds you have a story that helps to illustrate the point we’re making, just go for it and bring that up.
Kim: Okay, awesome. Thank you.
Rick: Any now come to mind?
Kim: Well, I mean, the chapter I have on people having actual visitations where people see the animal, come visit them, and I’ve had many experiences. The one I’ve had quite often is feeling the animal, like jumping on the bed and so forth, which is a real common one as well. It’s a reminder to me that when people have, even when people have checked out, it’s not like some people think, “Oh, they’re now living in bliss.” You know, how’s that gonna help somebody who’s grieving the loss of an animal, really? Or a person, you know? And I’ve had some major human losses in my life that I will write about at some point. That was a whole ‘nother dark night of the soul that I’m probably still coming out of. And the thing is, that doesn’t help anybody, and I don’t even think it’s true. In my experience, when people and animals pass, and often when I say people, I mean animals, I’m trying to clarify here, because to me, they are people, they’re just people with different costumes on, they don’t usually just move on. In my experience, they stick around at least long enough to let us know, to try to let us know that they’re around. We don’t always get it because when we’re grieving, it really does tend to put up a wall makes it hard, can make it harder for us to see what’s right there. But they do, in my experience, try to find some way to let us know that they’re okay. And because they do still care about us, there still is that connection. Leaving the body doesn’t change the perception at all. I mean, I’ve had my own out-of-body experiences, and I remember the first time I had a waking one. I think, I believe we have them often when we’re asleep, but my first waking one, where I consciously felt myself leaving my body. I remember I still felt, actually, I still felt a little bit nervous, like, “Oh my gosh.” You know, I was still me. I was still totally me. So, they’re still totally them. And there are experiences where people actually see them. Some people have the gift so they can see “ghosts” more readily than others. I have a good friend who has that gift, and I always tell her, it scares her, but I always tell her I’m jealous of her. I wish I had that gift. But a couple of things, actually, I’m sorry, I’m kind of rambling, but this brings so many things to mind. One of them is that, A, if you don’t have this experience, it doesn’t mean they’re not trying to let you know that they’re okay. It doesn’t mean they’re not around. It just means maybe you’ve got a wall up because you’re just so deep in grief, and I’ve been there. Sometimes they will find someone else to let us know that they’re still still around and they’re okay. And when it comes to an animal, one of the biggest things we need to hear and I’m talking about myself here just as much as anyone else, we need to know we made the right end of life decisions because that’s never easy. It’s never easy. I mean, maybe it is for some, I’ve never had it be easy and I’ve been at the bedside of at this point, you know, literally hundreds of beings, some really close humans and you know, hundreds of animals. And we need to know that they’re around and they are. And whether it be a professional animal communicator or a medium, as I talk about in my book, whether it be an outside person who has to bring us that message or whether we get that contact ourself, they really are letting us know. And what I was starting to say when I went off on a tangent was the number one thing I do believe we do need to know is that we made the right decision. That we weren’t, we didn’t mess up. We’re not the reason they died. We’re not the reason they suffered. Every step of the way, we did the best we could in the moment. And they know that. And they’re not in that moment anymore. I think the biggest thing we have to do when we’re grieving, or one of the biggest things we need to do, is get ourselves out of that moment and remind ourselves that they’re not in it. Even if it looked horrendous at one point, it was just, it was just that time. And it’s long in their history now. And they feel great. They’re in their spirit bodies. And spirit bodies don’t hurt, which is wonderful.
Rick: Yeah. Yeah, we’ve had a few pets that we felt afterwards that we had dragged it out too long, you know, before having them euthanized and that, you know, obviously they wouldn’t have remained alive in the wild, although domesticated animals wouldn’t anyway, but, you know, it’s like, what were we thinking? They were just so far gone and blind and, you know, walking around in circles and okay, we should have just put them down, but it was so hard to do that, you know. But we didn’t beat ourselves up afterwards for not having done it because we felt, okay, now they’re in a good place and maybe we should have, you know, live and learn. Maybe next time we’ll not drag it out so long.
Kim: Good for you for not beating yourselves up. You know, that’s something I’m actually still working on. They say you teach what you most need to learn. I’m still working on that one. So, you know, the coulda, woulda, shouldas, you know, that’s something I’m still trying to banish from my world.
Rick: Yeah. Well, I’m still beating myself up over my childhood dog that I got when I was like 12 or 13 and, you know, she was like, just a constant companion and I can tell you stories about how close we were, but at a certain point, you know, I was a little older, in my early 20s, and a spiritual teacher had said that, you know, don’t be that close with animals, they drain your energy and I believed it. And so I started behaving very aloof toward the dog and, you know, just kind of like whole different mindset. And one evening I was going for a walk with friends and I saw my dog sitting like a couple hundred yards away in a neighbor’s yard, just sitting there like forlorn and I thought oh my god, and what have I done? So I kind of like I completely like, uh, you know, please forgive me. But uh, yeah, it’s weird. Yeah, yeah, this is like over 50 years ago but it still comes to mind sometimes and you know, I wish I had been more sensitive or something
Kim: You know, we’re on our journey. We have we all have our regrets. Regrets are rough. But we all do the best we can in the moment. And you know, that also brings to mind a lot of spiritual teachers in various religions, religions and philosophical beliefs. I’ve had some people come to me who were told some horrible things that can’t help anybody. And I’m thinking, “Who is this person, this human being?” I don’t care how enlightened they think they are. They’re not very enlightened at all if they’re saying something to somebody that is so obviously hurtful. Like oh, there’s no afterlife for pets. You’ll never see your dog again. I mean what kind of a human?
Rick: Yeah. Someone gets cancer and they say it must be their karma.
Kim: Must be their karma. Yeah, okay, well, if that’s the case then everyone has bad karma because you stick around long enough just about everyone ends up with cancer. So the ones who got it early, that must mean they had good karma because they got to go home sooner. So there! To all the people who say that but yeah, it’s… People need to be sensitive to other people and I truly believe that I don’t care how enlightened somebody thinks they are, to say that, to have that lack of compassion, even if they believe it. Okay, let’s say some spiritual teacher really believes that there’s no afterlife for animals. So say they really believe it. If they’re enlightened they’re still not going to say that to somebody who lost a pet because, I mean, Compassion 101, hello! You know compassion is a key component of love and that’s all missing. So in my book, write them off, they’re not a good spiritual teacher anymore. I know the one you mentioned, that was a whole different topic, but that just brought this to mind because this has come up a lot from people in various religions or that the animals are going to a different place or that they’re going to reincarnate immediately in some other form and they’ll never see them again. All of these things I’ve heard I will say right now, from my research, none of it’s true. You know, we’re souls and we form bonds and those bonds don’t end when we pass, and some people have their pets waiting for them when they pass, other pets return to do some more time with them here on the plane because they love them so much and most of them tend to have shorter lifespans than we do, there have been many cases of animals coming back. I’ve had the experience and many others have and I do talk about that in my book as well. Some have criticized my book for that topic, for saying animals reincarnate, but I’m happy to debate them over this. There’s, and I don’t care what religion, there’s biblical evidence of reincarnation and I have a background in Christianity, and a lot of biblical studies, and I’m very familiar with the scriptures and the ancient and the various interpretations and the misinterpretations, and the original Hebrew and the original Greek and so forth. And so, I say that, you know, just to kind of let people know, I don’t feel that we should let any “religion” scare us away from believing what’s right in front of our own eyes. And the evidence that animals do sometimes come back to us is completely overwhelming. And at this point, I’m comfortable admitting that publicly.
Rick: Sure.
Kim: Again, reminding, talking, you know, going back to what we talked about at the beginning of the conversation, I wouldn’t put something out there and put my reputation on it unless I had seen enough evidence to really be able to stand behind it. And I mean, what kind of a, you know, God is love. Of course, God loves us. And if God has brought this beautiful creature into our lives to bring us love that perhaps we never got from another human being, and that animal passes and does return in another form to us, I mean, that seems like a beautiful gift from God. And I’ve had many people who’ve had this experience and it ran counter to their religion and they were confused by it. And so, I feel it’s important to address that. It’s nothing to be confused by, that’s what love would do. It’s like, what would love do? What would compassion do?
Rick: Yeah.
Kim: And that’s not to say that they always come back to us, it’s just to say that there are times when they do, when it’s on their life journey as well. But regardless, I do believe 100% that that reunion will happen, whether it’s here or in the afterlife.
Rick: Yeah, I’m afraid that many religions have become perhaps very distorted from what they started out to be. You know, like some great sage like Jesus or somebody comes out and has a very pure teaching and then it’s like the party game of telephone, it gets passed around and around and around and around until it bears little resemblance to what was originally said.
Kim: It’s very true. And I feel that in some ways this breaks God’s heart.
Rick: Yeah.
Kim: You know? I see that. And I’ve had a very personal relationship with Jesus. He actually showed up at the foot of my bed at a point in my life when I didn’t even believe he existed.
Rick: Mm.
Kim: And that is one compassionate being who really would not stand behind a lot of what’s being said and done in his name.
Rick: Yeah.
Kim: Yeah.
Kim: And yeah, Jesus rocks. And, you know, I think that if people understood his message better, we would have a much more compassionate world.
Rick: Jesus, that reminds me of Jesus saves, Moses invests. I interviewed a wonderful woman named Lorna Byrne. You may have heard of her. She’s Irish and she’s been seeing angels all of her life. And you know, she grew up in Ireland, very Catholic upbringing, and she insisted during the interview that animals don’t have souls. And I didn’t want to get into a big argument with her, but you know, I felt at the time and still do that she probably just picked that up from her Catholicism, which I guess they say, and I’m not an expert on Catholicism, but apparently that’s a Christian misbelief that somehow crept into the doctrine. But anyway, to address that issue, how about if you try to define what a soul is to the best of your understanding and experience?
Kim: The soul is, I believe, the part that animates us and that is still very much here and very much the same. Some people divide it between spirit, soul, and person, or in this case, animal. And yeah, I believe that the soul, like, I believe we have a higher Self that kind of is already living in the heavenly realm in some ways, and then we have the soul. And different people switch the terms. Some people say soul is one and spirit’s the other. Some people say spirit’s one and soul is the other. But just for the purpose of general conversation, the way most people communicate it is that the soul is the part that, like, lifts up out of the body when the body passes. And it’s interesting –
Rick: So, like, the dweller in the body, could you say that?
Kim: Yes, the dweller, I like that, I like that. And back to what you were saying, yes, I have had people come to me in tears after a Catholic priest told them that the animal, that their beloved pet wouldn’t go to heaven. And I thought, oh my, yeah, my goodness, what a horrible thing to say to somebody. I mean, what a horrible, a man of God is, and God is love, a man, and Jesus’ love and compassion for all creatures, the least of these, so to speak, and which in many ways are the greatest of these, in my opinion, it’s mind-boggling that somebody would say that to somebody. And it’s also interesting that one of the most famous Catholics that we all know of is St. Francis. And St. Francis was like the original animal communicator, and he used to go telepathically with animals and he tamed the wolf, and he used to preach the gospel to fish, he’d be out in a boat and the fish would look up above the water, and I have a fish rescue, so I often think of that when I’m communicating with the fish. And he would preach the gospel to them to save their souls. And, you know, a really devout Catholic, like St. Francis, a very evolved soul in many ways, he obviously saw that they had souls that go on or he wouldn’t be preaching the gospel to them. So, I think that, yeah, there’s just been so many misinterpretations by humans. For ego, I don’t know what it is. I really don’t. For whatever their reasons are. But compassion, once compassion is out the door, I think it’s time to find a new church or a new spiritual teacher.
Rick: Yeah.
Kim: Or a new religion.
Rick: Or a new religion, yeah. I suppose one reason people come up with these ideas is that it helps to absolve them of guilt for the way they treat or mistreat animals, you know?
Kim: Thank you! Yes, that’s huge.
Rick: I mean, Descartes, you know, René Descartes, he said animals are like mechanisms. They don’t even feel anything and they would do vivisection on animals and the screaming of the animal, he would say it was like the squeaking of a machine or something that was going on. You know, just crazy. And there are people who say that animals, I just heard a talk the other day where they were debating whether animals are conscious. I don’t even know what they mean by consciousness because obviously a mouse can see things and that necessitates consciousness. So people just have kind of funny ideas about things.
Kim: And you’re right, I believe it is to justify their own behavior. Whether it’s an addiction to meat, or good money they’re making in animal research, or whatever they believe, or looking for a cure for a nutritionally caused disease rather than, you know, saving two animals with one mission by not eating those animals in the first place. But yeah, I do think justifying finding justification is a big part of it. And it’s a shame there really is that disconnect. But I understand it, you know? I mean, I have compassion even for the people who do that because I understand on some level there is some part of them that must feel so, so bad about what they’re doing. Maybe it’s suppressed or maybe they’re a sociopath and they don’t. But for the other 96%, maybe they feel so bad about what they’re doing on some level that they’ve pushed it down and had to build up these justifications to find peace with whatever it is they’re engaging in that on some level they feel does contribute to unnecessary cruelty. And I don’t think cruelty is ever necessary.
Rick: Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do.
Kim: Yes.
Rick: Okay, some more on souls. So, you said something a minute ago that piqued my interest, which is that, and I’ve heard this from various sources, that it’s like we don’t even fully incarnate here. We maybe incarnate 25% or something and the higher self or some greater part of our soul is still in some kind of astral or celestial realm or something and just a small portion of it is being represented or animating our body here. Some have even said that, you know, the soul could actually be, you know, in several bodies, or at least two or something at the same time, and yet some of it’s still in some higher realm. So, that’s interesting. Comment on that, and then we’ll go on to another related point, if you want to comment on that.
Kim: Sure. I’m, again, no expert on that particular avenue, but I will say from what I’ve looked at, that it does feel like, and just from the stories and the information I’ve compiled, it feels like we all still do have a foot in the other realm and I do feel that communicating that is a higher self. The part of us, maybe the wisdom inside of us that helps us, you know, the piece of God within us, I don’t know if I’m wording that right at all, but yeah, or the piece of us that is still with God maybe is a better way to say it. Even though God’s everywhere, God, you know, if you believe in the heavenly throne of God, you know, a of us is there perhaps. I don’t know. Again, I’m not an expert on this, it just feels right because I do know that when I did my work, my experimenting with, you know, intentional out-of-body experience, when I was there, it was me and God, or God and me. That was my experience. It felt like there was a part of me that had already been there with God. Some of these things it’s hard to put into words, so I’m sorry if I’m stumbling right now a bit.
Rick: I think people get the sense of what you’re saying. A related question is, and this actually came up in my last interview, is on the notion of reincarnation, which we’ve been talking about. If all beings have souls and souls reincarnate from one body to another and perhaps move up the evolutionary chain and eventually become humans or something, maybe you don’t agree with that, but it seems to me that there are a lot more of lower life forms than there are higher life forms. For instance, here in our yard, there are probably 10,000 earthworms and a whole bunch of little, you know, trillions of little bacteria and a lot of bugs and a bunch of birds outside, but there’s only two humans here, and the whole earth is like that. So, I wonder how the math works out, or whether perhaps as souls evolve, they conglomerate, just as our body is a collection of trillions of cells, each of which has its own life, and perhaps in some sense has its own soul. Perhaps souls conglomerate in order to form more complex beings. Do you have any thoughts on that?
Kim: You know, that’s not something I’ve looked into a lot. I do plan to, because the subject of insects does actually come up a lot, so it’s something I’ve only just begun looking into a little bit lately or, you know, focusing more of my attention on. But what you’re saying I do think does make a lot of sense and I know a lot of professional animal communicators who they do this full time and very respected ones who I’ve known for many, many years have talked about a group soul, like some species on some level there’s a group soul that they’re all a part of. Maybe in the case of like a colony of ants…
Rick: Or a hive of bees or a swarm of starlings…
Kim: Or a colony of bedbugs. I hate to say it. It’s not something I recommend. Life experience I would have preferred to have done without. So yeah, because their only purpose is to suck blood. That’s what they do.
Rick: It reminds me of a cartoon. There are these two dung beetles at the dung beetle bar and they’re sitting at the bar and the bartender’s also a dung beetle. And one dung beetle says to the bartender, “So, Louie, is this all there is to life? Eat shit and die?”
Kim: That’s awesome.
Rick: Louie says something like, “Yeah, that’s about it.”
Kim: That’s funny. But yeah, you know, I think there’s a lot, that makes a lot of sense. I’m going to just answer this not as an expert, but just as an observer and say that that makes a lot of sense to me.
Rick: Remind us of what makes a lot of sense. What are we referring to here? The conglomeration of souls?
Kim: The conglomeration. Yeah, like let’s say a whole colony of ants decides to do something else next time. I don’t know. I don’t know. Yeah. I mean, that makes sense because there are a lot of them. We are outnumbering spiders, you know, where do they fit in?
Rick: Alright, we’re getting out there a little bit, aren’t we? I mean, a lot of this is very speculative. It reminds me of a quote that I heard recently. I’ve mentioned it in a few interviews. It it was from Aldous Huxley, and he said that the greatest innovation of the scientific revolution was the development of the working hypothesis. And I really like that because, you know, prior to the scientific revolution, people were, I mean, dogmatism dominated society and people could be burned at the stake for disagreeing with the prevailing dogma. And the scientific revolution kind of broke through that. But even now, of course, many scientists aren’t really scientists because they’re dogmatic and they refuse to consider certain possibilities as working hypotheses. They just think they know what the truth is and won’t even look at the evidence for something that contradicts it. But personally, I like to try to live my life that way, so anything that anybody proposes to me, I don’t say, “Absolutely!” or “Absolutely not!” I say, “Interesting, you know, let’s see where the evidence lies. How much justification or support is this for this particular idea?
Kim: I mean, I like to just echo on what you said. I feel the same way, you know, with a lot of things. I’m open to hearing people’s, you know, impression or experience and so forth, and I don’t propose, I don’t pretend to be an expert on all of this. You know, I’m, I guess, considered an expert on just a little piece of it that I have a lot of experience with. And that kind of wraps down to the more, in some ways, mundane, but when we’re here on the earth plane, it’s the most profound thing in the world, and that is just knowing that those we love and we have these deep love bonds with, that that love continues, and that that being we love continues. I know that for me, when I lost, well, I’ve had a number of really bad losses. One of the worst things I found that people could say to me, bless their hearts, out of the goodness of their hearts, was something like, “Oh, you know, his spirit is everywhere now,” or, you know, “He’s like among the stars,” or something about the grieving heart that doesn’t want to hear that. The grieving heart wants to hear that he’s still him, and he’s still around, you know, and he still remembers me. And not only does the grieving heart need to hear that, but from everything I’ve seen in my research that’s absolutely true. I mean, that is so true. They do still care about us. They are still part of our life, and we are still part of their life, and that bond is not broken at death. They haven’t become some, in my opinion, well, I shouldn’t say my opinion, this is my experience, they haven’t become some star or some piece of the universe or whatever. They’re still them.
Rick: Yeah, I don’t have…
Kim: I think we really need to hear that while we’re here.
Rick: Yeah, I don’t really have any experience like you do, but in my bones, I feel like that’s the way it is. There’s a line from Star Wars where Obi-Wan Kenobi said to Darth Vader, “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” Which is to say, you know, I’m still going to be around, dude. You know?
Kim: Yeah, I like it. I love it. And it’s true. And they are still around. I mean, they’re so still around. I mean, yeah, the stories I could tell.
Rick: You want to tell some?
Kim: So, we have this cute little rat named, I do, for those who don’t know, I run the rat refuge, so I’ve rescued a lot of, rescued and sanctuaried a lot of rats in my day. And they’re like little dogs. They’re kind of a combination of cats, for those who don’t know and think, “Ew,” I could show you some really cute pictures, and then the “ew” would quickly turn to “aww.” But they’re, just really quickly to bring those up to speed who don’t know, they’re like a combination of cats and dogs. They’re very clean and very quiet like cats, but they’re super playful and personable like dogs. You know, like, “Pick me up, pick me up, play with me, wrestle,” you know?
Rick: And they’re smart.
Kim: Very smart. I would say if they were as big as us, they’d probably have taken over the world by now. And they’re very clean, and I’ll just real quick, I gotta always put a plug in for the rats because I have gotten some criticism for including rats in my book, but that’s a huge part of my life story, a huge part of, and actually, it was the death of a rat that precipitated all of my research on this, and the fact that this book was even written. That’s all owed to a rat named June. So, acknowledgement to June. And anyway, I lost my train of thought.
Rick: We’re talking about rats and how clean and smart and like cats and dogs. They preen themselves like cats do, right?
Kim: They do all that. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so this was a rat. His name was Mr. William, and um, he was very skittish and shy, he came from a very abusive background and so it took him a while to warm up and um, he was always uh, you know just, I don’t know, kind of skittish but toward the end of his life he finally bonded and he learned to trust and he let me pick him up and he was so sweet and after he passed, uh sometimes they try to find different ways and he knocked something, his spirit knocked something off the wall, a picture, and it actually broke. And my husband, Jameth, he used to always, you know, impersonate the, the, or my late husband, but I will talk about that in the future. He used to impersonate the rats, and he’d say, “I’m sorry, Mom, I didn’t mean to knock the picture off the wall!” And it was really cute.
Rick: And the skeptics listening in are going to say, “How do you know the rat knocked the picture off the wall? The pictures fall off walls, you know.”
Kim: Right. They’ll often find a something that they did in their life. At least that’s been my experience. And do it again. And he was the one who was always like knocking things off and they would accidentally break. So, it was just, I don’t know, it was just a cute little, one of those cute little snippets in life where that’s exactly what happened even after he passed, he knocked something off and it broke. But yeah, the skeptic, stories like those are the ones that you have to have a personal experience with. That’s why in my research, I like to definitely focus on the stories that are more indisputable. For example, I think the most profound stories in that arena would be people who witness the actual ghost of an animal who has passed and they’re not grieving themselves, because a lot of people will say, “Oh, that was a hallucination conjured up by a grieving mind to comfort you.” Okay, valid. That’s a valid… If someone wants to say that, I don’t think it’s true, not in my experience, but that’s a valid excuse or explaining away and I can agree with that if that were it. But there have been many cases where someone’s, there’s one story in particular, I do believe I cover this one in the book, that their dog passed and they hadn’t really told many people yet. And a complete stranger was visiting in the kitchen, saw this beautiful, I believe it was a golden retriever, if I’m not mistaken, if I remember correctly, and was petting the dog and saying, oh my gosh your dog was just you know… The other person was in the shower came out of the shower and the visitor said oh, I was just petting your dog, she’s so beautiful. And why do you have all these, you know, I can’t remember how it came up exactly, but they had all these pictures on the fridge like this memorial. Why do you have this memorial to your dog on the fridge? I’m, sorry. I think i’m mixing up two stories I think the memorial was that was a different story. But anyway, so this the story i’m thinking of the person’s petting the dog, and just going on how beautiful, and then the other person comes out of the shower and says, “What dog? What do you mean?” And the house guest says, “Well, the dog that was just in here,” and describes the dog. And the person who just got out of the shower says, “Well, that was my dog, but he passed.” And so that’s the case where the person seeing it is not grieving, so it can’t have been something that their grieving mind conjured up, because that person didn’t even even though the dog had died, and yet they still saw the ghost. And there have been other cases of this, many other cases of this. And I think when you, for some people like the skeptics, you need to really look at those stories. Skeptics can write a lot of things off, like, “Oh, you felt your cat jump on the bed.” Well, I wasn’t there, I didn’t feel it, how do I know that’s true? Well, personally, I have had that experience, so it’s kind of funny because I was compiling stories for many years, and people would talk about how they’d feel their deceased animal jump on the bed, And so I’m compiling the stories. But then one day, the first time it happened to me, a rat had just passed and then I felt her jump like on the bed and go across my leg. And I actually screamed and flinched like, “Ah! What’s that?” And I had to laugh at myself because I’m like, “Okay, well, I should know what that is by now.” But anyway, yeah, so I believe that for the skeptics, we need to look at them more in-depth. in-depth, the NDE type stories, the third-party witness stories, where a third party is witnessing the spirit of an animal, describing them in depth, and then finding out that that animal has passed. And beyond that, you know, again, there’s going to be some people who just, even if all the evidence in the world is right in front of them of an afterlife for animals or humans, they’re going to put their blinders on because for whatever reason, I don’t know why, I really don’t know why, but it’s some kind of ego, particularly in the scientific community, there’s some kind of ego thing. Perhaps it’s that, you know, if someone’s that attached to this world, this physical world, and their career, what they’ve basically created their whole identity around is being a “scientist” and their career is in explaining everything in this world, then anything that’s outside of their realm that they can’t explain, that they can’t wrap around physically, perhaps on some level is a threat to them. And so it’s easier for them to just dismiss it and dismiss those who have these experiences as nut jobs. And in some way, I feel sorry for them for that, because I think that they’re missing out on a huge, richly rewarding piece in the tapestry of life. And I think they’re completely missing out on that. And it kind of hurts my heart to know that they’re not having that experience. But I also do know that those who have had these experiences, even if they’re a deeply personal experience and they don’t have a third-party witness. When you know, you know, and you know that you know. And anyone who has had these experiences know that they’re real. You feel it, you know it, you see it, you know you’re not crazy. And one, another piece of advice I would like to share is not to let anyone talk you out of it. If you have a profoundly meaningful experience of visitation, I don’t care if it’s from a departed human, a beloved animal, an angel, or whoever, don’t let someone talk you out of it. They weren’t there. You know, maybe on some level they’re jealous, or I don’t know what. They have their story. But those of us who do have these mystical experiences need to never allow others to talk us out of them because it’s a real gift. And many times when someone’s grieving these experiences happen when we need them the most And again, going back to what I said earlier. What a horror. What what kind of a spiritual leader, teacher, counselor, or friend or family member, whoever, what kind of a person would kick someone when they’re down and and tell them what they experienced didn’t happen? That’s that’s not someone, in my opinion, that’s not someone you want to be spending time with.
Rick: Yeah. You know, just cast you not your pearls before swine. I mean you have to be careful who you say things to.
Kim: It’s true. Yeah, it’s true and I and I will say, you know when my book first came out, I started writing it when I was very young. It’s a long time ago. There weren’t… there weren’t mediums on tv or professional. None of this was really known back then and um, and I was very sensitive and you know, and I was picked on in school and it was hard.
Rick: You weren’t writing your book when you were in school. You mean like just picked on because you were sensitive in general.
Kim: Yeah for or other things, for being skinny, or pale, or whatever the thing was at the time, being smart, whatever it was that made people hate me. I don’t know but yeah, so I was already kind of a traumatized person and I will tell you, it was terrifying to put this into a book and to put it out there and then to brace myself for reviews, you know. Someone will flippantly, you know, read a few chapters, see something they don’t like and then write a scathing review. And they never think about the person who spent years of their life researching, staying up all night at the computer, you know, putting this thing together to try to inform and help others and then someone can just so flippantly find something they don’t like and write it off. And so I had to really brace myself for that and that was, it was scary at first. At this point, I’m kind of the point where I think life has beaten me up enough that I’ve had to do the best I can for an HSP, to do the best I can to create kind of a thick skin and to know that I have my God-given purpose and if I can help one person, then all of it will have been worth it. Or if I can help one animal, it will all have been worth it. And I’m just doing my part.
Rick: I met President Obama one time and shook his hand and I said, “We love you, don’t let the turkeys get you down.” And he laughed and he said, “There’s a lot of them out there, they just keep on gobbling.” And there’s a quote from Mark Twain, he said, “Don’t argue with idiots, they’ll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.”
Kim: That’s funny, yeah, yeah. And I always tell the turkeys not to let the people get them down.
Rick: Right, good point. Yeah, I mean, if a person is… I was listening to a discussion one time between Sean Carroll, who’s a very brilliant physicist and has a nice podcast about science, and a guy named B. Allen Wallace, who’s a Buddhist teacher. And at one point, Sean Carroll said to B. Allen Wallace, “When you die, that’s it. End of story. There’s nothing after that. Nothing happens.” And he said it with such adamant certainty that B. Allen Wallace could only kind of like scratch his head and say something like, “Okay, if you say so.” But it’s like, again, this point I made earlier, if a person is so cocksure of their, if they take an opinion and kind of like make it an adamant assertion, they’re not a scientist. At least in that regard or in that instance, because science has to always be open to the possibility that new evidence can change one’s understanding.
Kim: Thank you, thank you. It’s funny, it’s interesting and true that you would say that because scientists, in my experience, are often the most closed-minded among us. And like you’re saying, how can knowledge or true wisdom, how can any of that move forward if someone already has a wall up, an area they’re not even willing to go in, you know? And it’s sad, and I think perhaps that’s a big part of what has held science back, is that closed-mindedness.
Rick: Yeah.
Kim: And that’s something that really in school they should be taught – open-mindedness. And I understand, again because I am a thinker analyzer type personality type and so I understand that needing to see evidence and so forth and um, but you have to be open to it in the first place. For sure. And then not write it write it off or dismiss it when when you do see a little inkling that, oh boy, there’s something there that I don’t believe in, and just put the blinders back on. You know, maybe that’s easier, but it’s not, ultimately it isn’t, I think. I think it’s sad.
Rick: There’s something in the UK called the Science and Medical Network and a branch of it called the Galileo Commission and they named it that because church authorities refused to look through Galileo’s telescope because they said, you know, Jupiter can’t have moons because for some reason that conflicted with church doctrine, don’t ask me why. And so, they said, so, we’re not even I’m going to bother to look. And so, you know, again, we’re just kind of beating up on scientists here, but it’s not a scientific attitude to say something like that. I’m going to interview a guy next week, or two weeks from now, who’s high up in that organization, who is also really into the Theosophical Society, and he was telling a story about how some scientist, I forget the exact example, but had discovered something or other, and It was completely in contrast to his established belief and research, and so, you know, the person said, “Well, what are you going to do with it?” He said, “I’m not going to do anything. I’m going to bury it, because if this got out, it would undermine my whole career.”
Kim: Wow. Wow. Yeah, you know, and I’ve had that kind of experience even with medical doctors with, you know, quote-unquote, I can’t say cure, it’s illegal to cure anything unless you’re a medical doctor, but let’s say having someone’s disease suddenly not be there anymore. And then I’ve had medical doctors say to me, “Okay, well, don’t tell me what you did, but keep doing it.” Because then they’d have to be responsible for, you know, I guess there’s a moral dilemma in some cases, like, okay, well, they’re not legally allowed to tell their other patients these things, so if they don’t know, then they’re kind of off the hook. If they know, then all of a sudden they’re accountable. And, you know, I don’t know. I will say though, you know, just to wrap up on the scientist thing and not to beat up on all of them, I do also have some good friends who are scientists and who are also closet believers and believe in a lot of this stuff. In fact, I remember one of my friends, very, Madeline, she was an amazing woman and very scientific, very esteemed, very brilliant. And I gave her a copy of my book when it first came, or when it had come out recently. And she told me later, she said, “Well, I wasn’t going to tell you this, but I came at it, you know, ’cause I love you. And I thought, Okay, I’ll give this a read because I love her, but I’m going to be able to see through all of this and find holes in the whole thing. But I came through the end of that book, and by the end, I was like, I believe!” And that meant so much to me to hear that from my most stiff, scientific friend I know, you know? And she came away thinking, “Okay, there’s something here.”
Rick: One thing about your book is that there are hundreds of stories, hundreds of examples, and you have them all categorized. I might read some of the categories and have you give us an example or two from each one, but that’s kind of the way science works, too. I mean, one example of something is just a fluke, it’s an anomaly, but once there are dozens and hundreds of them, then you’re building a case that really is hard to dismiss.
Kim: Thank you, and that is why I did that. That’s why, I mean, the original version of my book, believe it or not, was over a thousand pages. So, I spent a year just editing it down to a reasonable size, and that was my reasoning for having that many stories is exactly what you’re saying. That was my exact intention, to build a case, to show that these aren’t just random one-ups. This is a real phenomenon and these are real experiences that people are having.
Rick: Yeah, well, I know you have to drive to Arizona after this and you didn’t get much sleep last night, so I don’t want to keep you too long, but if we could, let’s just take, I’ll read you some chapter titles and maybe you could just give us some highlights of what that chapter is about if you remember. I mean, you wrote this book years ago, but like, for instance, “Asking the Animals”. Asking them what?
Kim: Uh, that’s animal communicators, calling an animal communicator as someone who’s gifted in telepathically communicating and finding out what the animal wants to, has to say. And if you’ve never done that, it’s a really amazing experience. We have, I didn’t just do one, I had to test them so I’d call like a dozen different animal communicators, not tell them that I was calling the others asking the same question, and making sure they’re all giving me the same data. And when they did, time and time again, I’m like, okay, what are the odds that they’re all making the same thing up?
Rick: Yeah, I think the first time we called an animal communicator, it might have been the first time, we had adopted this dog, my wife worked for the local no-kill animal shelter for about eight years doing dog adoptions, and there was a dog that she particularly liked that we named Shanti, and the first time Shanti really spent time with us is we took her on a camping trip and we had this pop-up and there were these little metal steps to the pop-up that she had to climb up to get into it and then we went back home eventually and we were in a duplex that didn’t have any steps, they just walked right in the front door but Irene was talking to this animal communicator and perhaps she can correct me if I’m not getting the story totally right, but Shanti conveyed through the animal communicator that she liked her little home that we had her in where she had to go up these steps. Three steps, which is how many steps there were to the pop-up, right? Did I get that right?
Irene Archer: That she was proud of herself.
Rick: She was proud of herself for having…
Irene Archer: Oh, yeah. She was like, “Thank you.” I took a while to do it. So she said she was proud of herself.
Rick: For going up the steps. Could you hear that?
Kim: I heard that. That’s so beautiful. That’s so sweet. Yeah, they’re just like us, proud and they want mom and dad or whoever to know they did a good thing.
Rick: Yeah, okay. So, that’s, obviously, there’s lots of stories in every chapter, but we’re going to skip through them. So, “Bridging Heaven and Earth,” what’s some aspects of that one?
Kim: Those are stories about professional mediums.
Rick: Okay.
Kim: And I went and saw all the famous mediums in the day and, time and again, they all said the number, you know, there would be at least one, if not a number of animals who would come through with messages for their people during the evening, like during a group reading, For example. And yeah, and that’s across the board. People want to know this and people are always so moved when they get a message from a dog or a cat or whatever kind of animal. And I will say even that I was at a Christian NDE conference and there they said the same thing, the number one thing people want to know is are animals in heaven? And they’re like, “Yeah, absolutely.” So, that’s pretty universal. We all love our pets regardless of what religion somebody is.
Rick: Yeah, great. Okay, let’s see, “There and Back.”
Kim: Those are people who’ve had NDEs.
Rick: People or animals? People?
Kim: People. I had trouble compiling animal stories of NDEs, although in book two, if it ever sees the light of day, which it eventually will, life kind of took me in other directions for a while. But usually these are animals who, when they’re on the other side, blah, sorry. People, humans, when they’re on the other side, who saw either their beloved pets or other animals, like farm animals or whatnot, in the afterlife in the other realm. And you know, so there it’s all of the compelling, you know, really indisputable evidence that that supports an NDE happening to begin with, but then when they have their temporary encounter with the other side, they see animals there. And sometimes it’s their beloved pet who died in the past, just greeting them and letting them know they’re okay. There’s one animal communicator in my book, wonderful lady, Sharon Callahan, and her departed cat was there during her NDE and actually gave her information on creating flower essences and going in a whole new career path when she returned from her NDE. So, they’re wise beings.
Rick: Yeah, that’s interesting. We were talking earlier about how there’s perhaps so much more to our potential than actually gets embodied in this life, you know? And I suppose that may be true of animals also, that there’s, you know, much more wisdom to them than they can easily express through their little animal body, you think?
Kim: Yes, absolutely. That’s my experience for sure. Yeah. Yes, yes, for sure.
Rick: I interviewed this Swedish woman named Emelie Cajsdotter, and she was telling me things about communicating with chickens and trees and all kinds of beings where they were, you know, conveying information to her that was way beyond the scope of what you’d think a chicken could communicate or a tree.
Kim: Yes, yes. I’ve had that experience as well. And there have been animals also on the other side who have saved people’s lives. Like, they’ll come through with a message like, “Change your tire, you know, fix your tire, your tire’s bald,” or whatever. So, they’re actually literally looking out for us.
Rick: Interesting. Cool. Okay, did I do ‘Heavenly Visitors”?
Kim: No.
Rick: That’s the next one.
Kim: That, ‘Heavenly Visitors’, I’m embarrassed to say I don’t remember which stories I put in that chapter.
Rick: Oh, that’s okay. Let’s go on to another one. “A Touch of Heaven”.
Kim: “Touch of Heaven”. That’s when people feel something. All heavenly visitors, that’s probably a sign. I don’t even know. Sorry. But yeah, “A Touch of Heaven”. That’s when people feel like, very common. I’ve had it with people and animals touching me after they’ve passed. Whether touch, if it’s a person, they often touch the back of your head, or you feel a hug. If it’s an animal, many times you’ll feel them walk across your foot, which I have with rats, or that you’ll feel them, people will feel them jump on the bed. And a lot of times people, you know, you’re half asleep, and then you wake up and you feel your dog on your bed and you’re like, “Okay, yeah, there’s Fido or whoever,” and then all of a sudden, ’cause there’s always this moment, and I’ve had this many times when grieving, you have this moment when you first wake up that you forget that you’re grieving and you forget that this love of your life passed, and then you have that moment where you remember, “He’s dead! Well, then who’s on my foot?” You know? So, yeah, there’s a lot of stories like that. It’s very common.
Rick: Yeah, we had a beloved cat that died and we both heard the cat meowing as we were kind of drifting off to sleep. I think in the gap, you know, between waking and sleeping, you’re more receptive or more open and it would wake us up. We were like, “Where is she?” You know, but she had passed and there were no other cats around and we were just in a place no neighbors had cats or anything.
Kim: Yeah, so real, real experience, as you know.
Rick: Yeah. How about “Music to my Ears”?
Kim: That’s hearing them. That’s another like I just said exactly. Yes. You had a premonition we were gonna say that one next. And yeah, and that’s it. That’s a really common one, too. I’ve had that experience back when I was writing the book, I would hear other people’s pets, that started happening later, is I would hear other people’s pets, either, you know, a certain growly noise in the right ear or a certain really distinct meow. And then like immediately their person would call me saying their pet passed. They wanted some comfort and I would describe what I just heard and, like, oh my god that’s how he used to make this little snarly noise or whatever. So yeah, they, and it’s very common to hear it, the meow or bark or whatnot, super common.
Rick: Yeah, and I don’t think it’s just conditioning, like you’ve heard a meow a million times and then you’re kind of recollecting it, like you might have some song running through your head that you’ve heard during the day. It seems to be more substantial than that, not just some conditioned thing that yeah,
Kim: It’s really them. Yeah… Yeah, I agree, and I know that one time when I was, my alarm didn’t go off for whatever reason and I had an important, something to do with the book, and I heard a dog bark in my ear so clearly and it woke me out of a sound sleep. Just exactly when the alarm is supposed to go off like, okay. Well, they’re they’re looking out for, they know I’m trying to be a voice for them with my book, so they’re looking out for me. And I do think maybe me being an intermediary and having people’s pets often meow or bark or whatever to me, right like right before they called me or emailed me, was their pet’s way of letting them know through a third party that this wasn’t just their imagination. They’re really hearing it because I’m hearing it. I didn’t even know the animal so yeah.
Rick: Okay. The “Heaven Scent” was smelling them, right?
Kim: Yes, you got it And that’s pretty common, too, smelling their shampoo or their fur or whatever, like all of a sudden. And I’ve had this experience also, angelic encounters, that usually smells like flowers. But when you have a loved one, and I had that with my grandfather, I smelled his cologne after he passed, and there’s nothing in the house that could have accounted for that. Other people will smell like their cigar, if it’s a human. If it’s an animal, many times it’ll be their shampoo or whatever their fur smelled like. Very common.
Rick: Okay. “When Seeing is Believing”.
Kim: That’s when you actually see a ghost.
Rick: Okay.
Kim: So to speak. The spirit of the departed pet. It’s not scary. It’s really cool. I will say those aren’t as common as the other types. I do think that it’s more difficult for us in this realm. We live in a very physical and usually, unless God forbid somebody’s blind, a very visual world. And so, you know, in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if a blind person would be more likely to see that because they don’t have these so-called blinders that we put on when we’re awake. So it’s less common, but it does happen. And again, the ones that are the most compelling for skeptics are the ones where other people see these animals and then find out they died.
Rick: Yeah, like that story you mentioned.
Kim: Yes.
Rick: Okay, “Visions of the Other Side”.
Kim: These are visions, often they’re waking visions where all of a sudden, I’ve had visions myself, all of a sudden it’s like you’re awake, it’s the middle of the day, you’re not asleep, but it’s almost like a dream kind of takes over your visual field and you will see the other realm. And it’s kind of hard to describe if you haven’t had it, but I’ve compiled stories of others who have had these visions where they will see their cat or whatever, kind of almost going through a portal and then entering this, you know, light realm, which is, you know, they’re heading to the afterlife. So, yeah, those are relatively common as well. Waking dreams might be another way to put it.
Rick: Yeah. “Sweet Dreams”, speaking of dreams, is the name of the next chapter, sweet dreams?
Kim: Those are getting contacts when you’re fully asleep.
Rick: I see.
Kim: And those are common. And somehow, you know, again, you know that you know, they feel different than regular dreams. And in that chapter, I share one experience where I have a profound contact dream from a departed animal. And, so profound, it wakes me up. And in that moment I heard my late husband making a noise. I thought maybe he was having a nightmare or something. So I woke him up and I said, “Are you okay? Did you have a nightmare?” He said, “No, no, Henry. He just appeared to me. It was so clear.” And he started describing it and it was exactly what I had just dreamed. So the chance of that…
Rick: You were both dreaming the same thing.
Kim: We were both contacted by him at the same time or like, right, bam, bam. So, and there’s a lot of experiences like that. So yeah, I don’t want people to, maybe I’m not wording it right, but it’s important to me to let people know that not to just dismiss contacts in dreams because they’re very real and many times that’s the easiest way they can contact us because our waking blinders are all put away, you know, yeah we are more open and more receptive.
Rick: I love dreams, dreams are the most interesting part of my day. I don’t try to remember them but, if ever, if i wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, it’s like I’ll just find myself kind of chuckling and amazed at the whole adventure i’ve just been having. It’s fascinating.
Kim: Yeah it’s awesome, it’s great, and there’s a lot of things we do in dreams. We travel, we, you know, we learn, we work things out. Now, I do want to point this out for those who are agreeing. Sometimes we work things out or we go through our fears and our traumas and so forth in dreams. So, every dream, like if we have a negative dream about a departed loved one or an animal, that doesn’t mean that it’s something we need to, you know, hang our hat on. That’s our mind working through our trauma or whatnot. But when you have one of the contact dreams where you know that you know, those are real. And you know, when you have one, you know. You can tell the difference.
Rick: Yeah. Yeah, some dreams are just kind of hallucinatory and others are more like cognitions or something.
Kim: Yes.
Rick: Okay, “Signs and Messages”.
Kim: So, those are various signs that a lot of people get. You hear about pennies from heaven or people seeing feathers or butterflies. There are a lot of very common signs.
Rick: Suzanne Giesemann, remember? Did you ever hear her story?
Kim: Yes, yes. Yeah, those are very common.
Rick: Yeah.
Kim: And very comforting for people. And probably not that hard to organize from the other side, you know, just making little things happen, making butterflies or feathers or whatever show up in improbable ways.
Kim: Totally, or lights going on and off. Those are all very common.
Rick: Yeah. There’s a guy named Jeffrey Mishlove who does an interview show called New Thinking Allowed. And he recently won a half-million-dollar prize for talking about, for an essay on the existence of consciousness after death, you know, kind of continuation of consciousness or the fundamental nature of consciousness. And he had a whole section of that essay where there were examples of sounds or deceased people showing up on radios or in recordings or something like that. There’s another guy named Mark Pitstick, whom I interviewed, who he’s working with this guy at the University of Arizona, Tucson to create what they call a soul phone, where they can actually communicate. Have you known that guy?
Kim:Yes. I’m on his email list. Yeah, that’s awesome.
Rick: And it’s a little primitive in terms of what you actually hear, but it’s not just static. They’re picking up information that is worth investigating.
Kim: It’s real and I did touch briefly on EVP, electronic voice phenomenon, in my book.
Rick: Yeah.
Kim: With a cat like, actually the cat who warned the woman about the bald tires, that was through an EVP. And a medium, there was an EVP, unbeknownst till they were playing the recording of the medium reading where the cat is telling the woman to change her tires so she doesn’t get an accident. Um, and then when you play it back, you hear her cat meowing on the tape. There’s another time when I was doing a tv interview actually, for a local news station, and they all called me, excited, the news people, you know, the reporter and so forth afterwards saying, “Listen to this! While we were interviewing you, you can hear the dog barking that you’re talking…”, and there’s no dog anywhere, you know, there was no dog on the property and acres and acres, so, yeah, really cool.”
Rick: Interesting. Okay, how about this one, “Sweet Reunions”?
Kim: That is about reincarnation.
Rick: Okay, well, like you mentioned some stories of a rat you had that you were quite sure came back to you as another rat and there was reasons to believe it was the same rat.
Kim: Yes, yes.
Rick: And the same soul reincarnated.
Kim: Yes, the same behaviors and, you know, there’s so many stories of this. I remember one, I’ve had many experiences myself and then there was a woman who had this experience when she was with a dog and all of a sudden she looked at her dog like she just knew that that was her former dog who had passed. She just recognized him and then he would, you know, I don’t remember his particular quirks, but there’s so many stories where that dog will bury that bone in a very, or that toy or whatever, in a very certain spot that no other dog in the household ever does. There’s a story of a cat who used to be a dog, the dog came back as a cat, and he’d hang his head out the window and act like a dog. Yeah, so, yeah, those are very heartwarming stories. Probably, again, that’s the topic I’ve probably gotten the most criticism for, which is kind of funny, because all I’m saying is God loves you so much, he’s sending your loved one back for a little more time. How’s that evil?
Rick: Well, as you were saying that, I was thinking, yeah, I bet you the critics have a field day with this one, you know, because, you know, how could there be anything so distinctive about a rat’s behavior? You know, rats are rats, and it’s, you’re reading a lot into it if you think this rat is the reincarnation of some previous rat, but you know, if you read your book, you get the impression that these animals have extremely distinctive personalities and quirks and habits and whatnot that are very convincing.
Kim: Very convincing, yeah. And again, this is all coming from a person who, myself, who’s inherently a skeptic and needs to. And again, that’s again why there’s so many stories, I was convincing myself just as much as the next person in the early days of my research. And then when it started happening to me more and more, it’s like, “Okay, I can’t dispute that.”
Rick: How about this one? “The Journey Continues”. Remember what that was about?
Kim: You know?
Rick: Yeah, let’s see. Don’t worry about it.
Kim: I’m sorry.
Rick: 299. Here’s a quote from Werner Von Braun in the beginning of it. “Everything science has taught me and continues to teach me strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death. Nothing disappears without a trace.” That’s probably the gist of the chapter that you’re just talking about how we carry on.
Kim: We carry on for sure. Yes.
Rick: Okay. The hard part is, we’re almost done with this, but “The Hard Part is Letting Go”.
Kim: That’s the chapter on grief. And that’s, you know, again, because I’m one of them, just a reminder to all of us not to beat ourselves up. And, you know, I did my best with that chapter. It took a long time to write, because I know that a lot of people who read my book read it because they’ve just lost someone very close to them. And it was either they bought it while they were searching or someone gave it to them as a gift. So, I really did my very best to provide as much comfort as I can in that chapter.
Rick: “Making the Leap”.
Kim: That’s making the leap from the relevance of humans in the world, in, you know, in being treated with compassion and so forth, that’s making the leap to animals. That they too are sentient beings, they’re capable of being compassionate, they’re deserving of compassion, they’re brilliant, they have their own little lives and their own, you know, relationships and so forth. So, that’s really kind of tying it all together. Because I wrote this book for two reasons. I wrote it for, to people who are grieving, people grieving the loss of a beloved animal, and I also wrote this book for the animals themselves so that I could be a voice for them because they are voiceless in our world. They don’t speak our language, you know, they don’t speak, not the way we speak. Well, parakeets do or parrots.
Rick: That’s true.
Kim: You know what I mean? But in general, yeah, so that chapter is just kind of tying it all together.
Rick: Yeah. And I think your book has undoubtedly had an impact in terms of getting people to treat animals more compassionately and regard them as more sentient than they’re often thought to be, you know?
Kim: That was certainly my goal. And over the years, I’ve heard from people who either they went vegan or they started an animal rescue or whatever after reading the book. And I’m like, wonderful, that was what I was hoping would happen, you know? Because if we’ve been through a trauma, and usually a loss, a loss that drives someone to read a book on what happened to their loved one when they pass, that’s a trauma. And one of the ways we can really work through trauma, I believe, is to find a mission, a cause. So many of the most wonderful causes in this world were initially triggered by a trauma that that person went through, and it was in their own healing that they then found something meaningful to put their energy into. And so, if someone reads my book and comes away doing something for the animals, whatever that is, no matter how small or big, I feel like that’s something that they can do in the honor of the loved one they’ve lost.
Rick: Nice. Okay. “Holding Animals in a New Light”.
Kim: That is similar to the “Making the Leap”. I honestly don’t remember at this point.
Rick: Yeah, what was different about it?
Kim: And then after I wrote it, you know, years and I put it in categories and so forth.
Rick: Sure. I’m putting you through quite a test here for someone who hasn’t slept much last night, making you remember these things.
Kim: This is good for my mind. It learns how to think on its toes even without sleep.
Rick: Yeah. Okay, final chapter, “Full Circle’.
Kim: “Full Circle”, and that was my own experience of coming full circle and then, you know, the chapter ends with me going through a loss in my own life. And that’s how the book ends. I won’t tell you how the ending is. But yeah, it kind of wraps it back around to my own personal experience and why I wrote this in the first place.
Rick: Yeah, okay, I guess we didn’t get a lot of questions during the interview, but there’s one that came in the other day from someone named Deborah Thunderchild, and sounds Native American maybe. She said, “I wanted to thank you for your magnificent book. I used to give it to all my clients after they had a beloved animal pass. I love too that you rescue animals, and especially love your description of the ratties that you have loved, and I loved all of your stories about animals.” So, just a nice little comment from her.
Kim: Thank you, and I want to thank her for doing that, for sharing the book and helping others with it. That really means a lot to me.
Rick: Yeah. Okay, so I’ll let you go, but is there anything you want to say in conclusion or any final thoughts or anything that I haven’t thought to ask you that you wanted to comment on?
Kim: Nothing I can think of on the top of my head, you know, I appreciate you, this is very thorough and I appreciate how much you covered and yeah, I will just say that, you know, anything I share that might have seemed like, like you mentioned, a skeptic might think, “Oh, I don’t know.” Well, you know, read the book because and if you can’t afford the book, you know, find it a library or something, because I do think this is, it’s helpful for everyone to know. I think it’s very comforting and I think it also, hopefully, my goal is to awaken some compassion in those who have that part of themselves shut off right now.
Rick: Yeah, and I would say, and you have said during this interview, that there’s nothing wrong with being skeptical. Just don’t dig your heels in too hard. You know, be open to, you know, doubt all you like, but also keep an open mind to at least look at evidence if it presents itself. And, you know, don’t just kind of slam the door and refuse to look at it.
Kim: Well said, and I agree, and that’s true. I’ve always called myself an open-minded skeptic. And I will say that there were some stories that people submitted to my book that I did turn down because I did feel that those were perhaps a stretch, you know a wishful thinking, so I didn’t just include everything, and you know I was gentle about it, of course. But um, yeah, we have to maintain that healthy skepticism, otherwise my research would lose credibility and I wouldn’t be able to continue to grow and learn more and hopefully refine my approach and my beliefs over time. It evolves like we’re all doing, we’re trying to do, or hopefully doing.
Rick: One way I put it is I give everything the benefit of the doubt, but I take everything with a grain of salt, and proportions vary.
Kim: I love it! That’s awesome, great recipe.
Rick: Yeah, all right, well thanks so much Kim, really enjoyed talking to you. Thank you for all the hoops you had to jump through to get this done.
Kim: It was all worth it, thank you for your patience with me in jumping through all these hoops. I really appreciate it, And also I want to acknowledge those who tried to do the live stream the first time and my tech was not, my tech, my computer, and everything else was not cooperating and I apologize for anyone who sat waiting and wondering why I didn’t show up that day. So here we are.
Rick: Yeah, I put a I put a little message on there explaining what happened. Hopefully they came back today. Otherwise, they can see the permanent version when we put it up.
Kim: Wonderful. Yeah. Thanks for what you do, I appreciate it.
Rick: Oh, thank you and um have a safe trip to Arizona. Be careful if you get sleepy, you know, pull over and take a nap or have a coffee or something.
Kim: I’ve got some organic cacao all lined up, so I’ll be good. Thank you.
Rick: Yeah. We’ve had drives that, you know, I was like starting to nod off and I’m pinching my leg, trying to keep myself awake. And next thing I know, I’m hitting the rumble bars at the side of the road. Boy, you just have to be careful.
Kim: Yeah, I learned the hard way in that one. I had a relationship with a fire hydrant once.
Rick: Oof.
Kim: That I don’t recommend. So, yeah, I will not take any chances.
Rick: Good. All right, so thanks so much, Kim.
Kim: Thank you so much.
Rick: And thanks to those who’ve been watching or listening, and we’ll see you for the next one.
Kim: Awesome. Take care.
Rick: Yeah.
Kim: Bye-bye. Thanks.
Rick: Thanks.