How this came into being
When I was a kid I felt closer to animals than to humans. My greatest memory is one when I was about 10, I connected deeply with my grandmother’s dog, Ursu, and sat lying in a field of rye, listening to a radio and looking up to the pure sky and having no worry. This was a prohibited land to sit on, “collectivized” which means it was taken by force from the peasants of the village. Ever since I was a kid I felt closer to animals than to humans – as I felt many, many times, adults were lying, and were not true to their emotions, whilst animals were clearly direct, honest and understandable to my emotions. I could relate completely emotionally to animals in contrast to humans. Humans were many times not available, not open, denying my emotions, and sometimes they were cruel, violent and aggressive when it was needed to express their emotion. I felt confusion so I become an “invisible” child, showing my true emotional nature to a few friends, and to animals. I did not believed I was felt, and listened to emotionally- quite the opposite to what a kid needs!
This need to show my true nature stayed with me, and my work with children sprouted out of a sudden, at the end of my MBA, after a deep creative visualisation where I saw myself playing with kids – which my soul felt would be my deepest rescue of my inner child. And so children proved they were my soul rescue in the end. My passion for animals was eversince as a child I read many books on animals which inspired and created a whole animal realm in my mind where I felt truth, I felt whole – I would mention “Chinuli, the lion cub” by Ciaplina, “The fire Horse” by Viorica Huber, and all the books of encyclopedicgenious of Tudor Opris, and last, but not the least, the Tarzan series of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Interestingly enough, Tudor Opris was my father’s teacher in college and I had the stellar occasion of meeting him in person in one summer camp. I think it made a great impact on my impressionable mind to meet someone so much in love with animals. I would like to think of Tudor Opris as great a scientist and encyclopedist as someone like Carl Sagan, another great scientist and promoter of animal rights.
Over the years Sagan spoke out against anthropocentrism and called on us “to extend our ethical perspectives downward through the taxa (the taxonomic group of organisms), on Earth and upwards to extraterrestrial organisms, if they exist.” We need to open our hearts and understand we are animals, and we deserve to integrate ourselves into the animal world; we are not below nor above any animal, we work together towards learning and evolution of self. Throughout my career in education I have reflected deeply with my team on the fundamental skills of future human societies. For us, resilience, strength of character, the vertically and horizontally integrated brain (#DrDanSiegel) and the authentic personal power of individuals in society (versus consumerism and “instant gratification”) involve the integration / education of primary instincts and basic emotions without which no human personality is in balance (with himself, with others, with the ecosystem).
I think this is how the seed was planted- deeply in the psychic of myself as a child, and then grew through different stages of life, later to bloom.
Just when I was older and about to forget how much animals helped me survive in the world, with my emotions, I got inspired by the works of researchers in science like Carl Safina, Rupert Sheldrake and Frans de Waal who concluded without any doubt that animals think and feel and also, perceive or get information from their energetic field.
I was curious and studied about communicating with animals from authors like Amelia Kinkade, Pea Horsley, and others, and I think the most fabulous is Anna Breytenbach.
So this deck of cards just had to come into existence, because many other people came near me with their passions about animals (like a colleague of mine, Monica Sabau, who inspired me with her facilitated class of learning about animal habitats to develop emotional competence with kids). It also came into existence because of the specialization of my work, which is running a Gifted Education Centre and working with gifted kids.