Animal Telepathy versus Animal Communication How It All Works

After decades of being sidelined as too woo, a sleeper hit podcast by Ky Dickens called The Telepathy Tapes has brought telepathy into mainstream conversation.

Our human consciousness is shifting and evolving at last. What does that mean for our own evolution as human animals and our efforts to give everyone a voice, regardless of species? 

Animal intuitive and animal communication teacher Shannon Cutts of Animal Love Languages unpacks this tangled topic in this episode of Let's Talk to Animals podcast. 

Tune into the discussion and learn....
🌟 Why we all have subtle senses and how to find them
🌟 What happens if we are unable to use words to communicate
🌟 How telepathy has been hiding in plain sight all along
🌟 What non-human animals can teach us about our own hidden abilities
🌟 What is needed to make telepathy a truly life-changing gift
🌟 And so much more

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Animal Telepathy
• 3:12 Parallels Between Human and Animal Communication
• 8:42 The Science Behind Intuitive Pathways
• 12:09 Telepathy, Empathy, and Compassion Connected
• 17:57 Rediscovering Our Forgotten Abilities
• 26:22 Breaking Through Skepticism and Fear
• 31:56 Closing Thoughts and Contact Information

Transcript

Shannon Cutts: 0:00

Welcome back to Let's Talk to Animals. My name is Shannon Cutts, I'm an animal intuitive and sensitive, a Reiki master practitioner and an animal communication teacher for pets and their people. And I'm also your friendly neighborhood hostess for the Let's Talk to Animal podcast, now in its sixth season, and in this episode I am tackling a topic that has become all the rage of late. After many, many years of feeling sidelined by what I call the woo factor, suddenly telepathy conversations are everywhere. And yes, of course I am referring to the runaway, smash success of the podcast, the Telepathy Tapes. I too am an avid lister and if you haven't listened yet, I'll just give you a little synopsis of the focus of that podcast, which is really bringing to light hidden gifts of non-speakers, individuals who have been diagnosed with autism and particularly those who have limited or no verbal or spoken word ability.

Shannon Cutts: 1:08

And I first became aware of the telepathy tapes when an animal communication colleague and friend of mine forwarded the link and said have you listened to this yet? You need to check it out. And the moment I started to listen, of course at first I was like oh, I'll just listen to one episode and then I'll be good, I've got a laundry list of podcasts a mile long that I need to listen to, and it was just. It hooked me because there are so many parallels. When we think about the idea of non-speakers, we think about beings who are sentient, conscious, intelligent, have the full spectrum of feelings, life experiences, and yet are not able to verbalize those in the format that our species seems to prefer, which is spoken language. Well, there are a whole lot of parallels between non-speaking human animals and non-speaking non-human animals, and for those of you who may have found this podcast let's Talk to Animals and you are familiar with or caring for someone who is a non-speaker please do know that the focus here on this podcast is helping human animals like you and me awaken to and unfold our own intuitive pathways, what I call that which makes us more alike than different.

Shannon Cutts: 2:32

So there is never any intention to disrespect in any way the uniqueness of the struggles that, let's say, non-verbal human animals must go through, with the structures that are set up both to support and to actively withhold support from us as human animals, and the struggles that our non-human animal companions, what we call our pets, or our partners, empathic friends and teachers, as they've told me, and the feral animals, the working animals, the wild animals whose paths still do cross here and there with our own. So there are some important differences, and so there's never any disrespect meant when I am drawing important parallels that might be helpful to those of us who are interested, even obsessed, with the field of interspecies communication. So just know that, going forward, that I hold all of these different experiences that we come into these bodies to have with so much humility and respect, and consider myself a student, a lifetime student. I am always learning and I sit at the feet of those, anyone of any species, who can teach me and help me to be of better service to the animals that I speak with and their loving, caring human companions. So that, out of the way, what I want to share going forward is that, as I'm listening to the telepathy tapes, I'm listening and I'm listening and I'm listening more and more and more, and this is long before I even got to the episode that specifically deals with animal telepathy. I'm listening and I'm thinking.

Shannon Cutts: 4:11

There are so many parallels and I'm feeling like in my evolutionary memory, once upon a time I'm remembering that we homo sapiens went through a pre-verbal period in our own evolution, and we can see some evidence of this, at least anecdotally, in cave paintings and the making of tools and different iterations, different cultures, if you will, as we grew towards the species that we are today. And we can also look into our shared history of just being born and growing up, homo sapien, and recognize that up until the age of two or so, most of us have limited, if any, verbal capacity. We just haven't really grasped the concept of words yet. We're still developing, and so maybe we pop out our first word and the human animals all around us, our parents, our carers, our teachers. They get so excited that we get so excited that it becomes words, words, words. From there on out, which is really a lot of what I unpack in my animal communication adventure student learning programs is let's rewind and remember that not so many years or decades ago in my case, we too went through a pre-verbal or what we might call a non-verbal period.

Shannon Cutts: 5:33

That didn't mean that we lost all ability to communicate. It meant we had to rely on those other pathways. It's like if we can't see, we learn to rely on hearing. If we can't hear, we learn to rely on seeing. If we can't hear, we learn to rely on seeing. If we can't see or hear, maybe we're relying on smell or taste, to the point where we begin to develop the ability to hear through our eyes and see through our ears and smell through our tongue and taste through our nose and we begin to develop a very multi-dimensional experience of our world. And this forms the foundation for telepathy, because these are the same pathways that we need to have open and activated, that we need to be conscious of if we want to share ideas, experiences, emotions, energy in motion, if we want to send and receive messages. Well, we need to be aware of many more pathways beyond simply our left brain mind. Our left brain mind is not intuitive. Our left brain mind doesn't have that job description. That's not its job. Our left brain mind is there as a decoder to decode, translate and share sensory impressions in the form of words.

Shannon Cutts: 6:56

And when I think about this, I think about what my college speech professor talked about as he was coaching us through our final exam of giving a 10 minute speech in front of people, and he said 10% of conversation, of public speaking, is words, is speaking, the other 90% is nonverbal. And then he went on to describe it as like, basically, facial expressions and how you hold your body and where you make eye contact and didn't say much more about it. I thought, well geez, if speech is 90% nonverbal, then where do I sign up to learn about that? Because that sounds like it's a lot more important than just learning how to master stringing a noun and a verb and an adjective together. But it just hasn't been a focus of our culture in the times that we're living in Now, thanks to what I consider heroism of the non-speakers and their caregivers and their parents and their teachers and beautiful Kai Dickens, who is the creator of that podcast, well, suddenly there's a lot more interest in what we woo folks have been kind of quietly doing behind the scenes and in fact I just got my first request the other day from the mom of a nine-year-old non-speaker who wanted to see if perhaps I'd be open to tuning in with her.

Shannon Cutts: 8:19

So there is a shift in our consciousness. In fact, I've had several animal communication pet parent clients recently reach out to me, one in particular who said I don't really believe in this stuff but I've been listening to the telepathy tapes and I'm hooked and so I just wanted to see. And that is a great place to be. It's a fabulous place to be. Why do I say that? Because it's an honest place to be. I love what Kai Dickens says on her podcast.

Shannon Cutts: 8:48

Remember, a true skeptic requires an open mind. So when we're truly skeptical, I always refer back to Don Miguel Ruiz, one of my longtime mentors, who's the author of the Four Agreements and co-author of the Fifth agreement. The fifth agreement is be skeptical but learn to listen. So basically he's saying keep an open mind, don't just shut down because the left brain mind doesn't get it. That's not the left brain mind's job description. That's where we need to turn to the much maligned and frequently overlooked right brain hemisphere, which has executive function in the brain. That means it's connected to every part of the brain, means it overrides the left brain mind. That means we can use the right brain mind to tune in with all the rest the 90%, the sensory, the intuitive, the emotional, the magnetic quality of the heart, the electrical energy that the brain produces. The right brain hemisphere is in charge of all of that. And if you're interested in the magnetic quality of the heart, the electrical energy that the brain produces, the right brain hemisphere is in charge of all of that. And if you're interested in learning more about that.

Shannon Cutts: 9:51

I often point my students to a book called my Stroke of Insight by Dr Jill Bolte-Taylor. She is a brain researcher who suffered an early midlife stroke and she also has a wonderful TED Talk on that topic, and you can hear her talk about the differences between the left brain hemisphere and the right brain hemisphere. So all of this is science supported. This is so important to understand. We have so much capability within us that we're just not making use of and we almost it's like we haven't been interested until somebody we love whether they're a human animal or a non-human animal experiences something and we don't know how to help them.

Shannon Cutts: 10:38

And that's when we start to become true skeptics, saying I don't know if I really believe in all of this stuff or any of it, but nothing else that I have tried so far has worked and I know there's got to be something out there and I can't give up, because I love this person and they're suffering and I can feel it, even if I can't put it into words. I know there's something there, I know there's something going on and here I am. So I will never stop searching and I will open myself to new ideas, to new experiences. When someone comes to me and says, well, I don't believe in animal communication, I say, well, have you ever experienced it? Because that's the way of the true skeptic.

Shannon Cutts: 11:22

I didn't have an opinion one way or another when I first encountered a book by a longtime animal communicator that I then went on to hire, and everything that she was sharing in this book so resonated with me that I booked a session and, lo and behold, she went on to help me and my interspecies family for many, many years. I opened myself to having an experience and then I didn't need belief anymore because I knew for me this works. So that's really what we're talking about. It's like, well, do you value your beliefs more or do you value positive change more? And so you can try it out for yourself and see. And that's really where we're headed, I believe, as a collective consciousness is we've evolved to the point where we're either going to kill ourselves or we're headed. I believe, as a collective consciousness is, we've evolved to the point where we're either going to kill ourselves or we're going to keep growing in a new direction. And that's the push towards remembering all of the rest.

Shannon Cutts: 12:19

Back in the day, before, we human animals had all of this cognitive stuff going on and all of the intellectual focus. How did we operate? How did we communicate with one another? How did we survive the first two years of our life? Well, we survived using all the rest, the non-verbal. So let's take a moment and unpack. Where is the intersection of telepathy and specifically animal telepathy? And when I say animal, I probably need to say non-human animal, because we also tend to forget that we are all animals.

Shannon Cutts: 12:57

We're all more alike than different, and a fantastic book on that topic that I recommend to my students so frequently is your Inner Fish by Dr Neil Shubin. He is an evolutionary anthropologist who's been at the forefront of some of those pivotal missing link excavations where we've literally discovered the animal. That helps us make sense of how the species evolved or how different species evolved, and he talks about and really breaks down, both in his books and in his university classes. He breaks down how we are much more similar than different. For instance, we all have the same basic suite of bones all the way down to our fingers, but how they show up and exactly where they show up in different species looks different depending on functionality, what they need to succeed in their environment. We all have a basic, almost all of us anyway, have a basic spinal structure. In some very primitive beings it's called a notochord, but we all have one.

Shannon Cutts: 14:01

We all have some form of cognitive function and some form of left brain cognitive function, some form of right brain cognitive function. We all, regardless of species, have sensory inputs, sensory pathways, some form of sensing the world around us, adapted to our unique environment. So we may not see through eyes. We may see through whiskers. If we're a blind mole, rat, we're not seeing through eyes that look like yours or mine, but we are seeing. So, recognizing these differences. Well, for me it's an invitation to reconnect, to recognize that even though a tree or a parrot or a ladybug looks very different from me on the outside, on the inside, not only do we have kind of all the same basic materials that allow us to get around and get along in this 3D world that we call planet earth, we also have all of the same basic motivations, all the way down to the primitive fight, flight, freeze, tend and be friend versus rest, digest, restore and reconnect. So sympathetic versus parasympathetic nervous system.

Shannon Cutts: 15:15

So when we look at telepathy and we look at, well, how woo is it really and where's the intersection of animal communication and animal telepathy? Well, let's take a look at telepathy first. So telepathy comes from a pair of Greek words that basically translates to mean perceives from afar, perceives from a distance. So tele is basically the Greek word for far off or at a distance. Pathia is basically the Greek word for feeling, perceiving, suffering, passion, experience. So we've got perceiving from afar Not too fancy, right. So in my world, teaching animal communication as well as practicing it, this sounds quite a bit like empathy, which is a word that translates to mean to feel as if or to suffer with.

Shannon Cutts: 16:05

Empathy is actually probably the only well-documented psi ability or intuitive pathway. Empathy is that ability that we can refine, hone and enhance, based on nature and nurture. So there can be biology involved, there can also be environment involved, there are genetics and there are epigenetics behind how much empathy one individual may express and how little another individual may express. And so, for me, telepathy shares quite a few similarities with the definition for empathy. So the setup is all there. Then we come to the definition for compassion.

Shannon Cutts: 16:53

In my world, conversing across species boundaries, empathy is great. It's very useful to be able to feel as if, perhaps to suffer with, if an animal I'm speaking with is going through something. But empathy on its own is fairly powerless. It's just an ability, it's just a pathway, it's just a way that we can harness all that is more alike than different within us, so we can share experiences even if we don't share the same species. But empathy on its own, just like telepathy on its own, well, it's not going to be able to do too much.

Shannon Cutts: 17:27

What we really need is some energy in motion, some action, and that comes through compassion. Compassion is the word that translates to mean to act with passion on behalf of, and this is where animal telepathy intersects with animal communication, because the communication, the conversational part, is where we spring into action. We are able to receive, translate and share another's feelings, sensations, thoughts. Sensations, thoughts, ideas, wants, needs, emotions, desires, intentions, goals in the form of words. And that act of compassion, that brave act of compassion, to tune in with another being using the telepathy pathway, or the empathy channel, as I like to call it. Well, that allows us to be a force for good, to be an agent of change in that other being's life. And so, without the act of conversation, of communication, telepathy on its own is a nice to have. It's not a need to have. And that's where I find so much excitement and value and courage in what kai is doing with the telepathy tapes and with what my colleagues and I, frankly, are doing in the field of interspecies communication to help our own species reconnect with all the pathways.

Shannon Cutts: 19:13

We've forgotten about that we still have access to. It's just we're kind of rusty. We probably most of us haven't used these pathways of subtle seeing, subtle hearing, subtle smelling and tasting, subtle sensing. The skin is the largest organ on our body, so sensation is a huge, huge way we can receive and send information. Clear empathy, which is that emotion, that energy in motion. And clear cognizance, which is that clear knowing and I describe that as you know something you didn't know a moment ago. You don't know how or why you know it and you can't unknow it and nothing that your left brain mind says or does can talk you out of knowing what you know.

Shannon Cutts: 21:00

We typically call these the clairs, and we've really wooed these too, but really the word clair just means clear. So if we can see clearly with our outer sight, if you close your eyes you can still most of us, we can see an impression of what we were just staring at with our outer eyes. That's your subtle sense. If I say the word pizza right now, you can get a full on sensory impression, complete with sight, sound, smell, taste, sensation, feeling and knowing, all in one neat little package, just by me saying a word. So all of that is the 90%. All of that is the rest of what comes along with a message, and that is why none of this stuff is woo, it's just forgotten. None of this stuff is woo, it's just forgotten. We haven't created a world where these pathways are prized and developed.

Shannon Cutts: 21:52

Most of my animal communication students struggle to some degree with one or more of the pathways. This is something that's very normal. I struggled as well. I came in with very strong clairsentience, which is clear feeling, and claircognizance, which is clear knowing. I didn't really have much faculty with the rest of the clairs when I first started my intuitive journey and learning experiences.

Shannon Cutts: 22:17

But just like we remember how to ride a bike or maneuver our way around a Frisbee, even if we haven't done it in a while, we can also rekindle our facility with these subtle senses and the more we do, the more they will activate, the more use they will be to us, and that's how we start to add this back into our vocabulary, to our way of communicating, to our language, and that's where I see again, in the work that myself and my colleagues are doing with animal communication, is analogous in a way to the work that Kai Dickens and all of the amazing humans that she interviews who are working with non-speakers, and the non-speakers themselves in the beautiful way they express how they're holding space for the rest of us to evolve. And a lot of them are suffering deeply from while they are waiting for us to catch up. And that is the service that we are providing is to lend our voice to those who are not able to use their voices in the way that our culture has decided is acceptable. Until you can speak for yourself fully, allow me to share your words, and this really is the highest service that we can offer. Another right, by showing up and listening fully, listening on every channel, listening on every level, listening in every dimension, and then doing our absolute best, as Don Miguel Ruiz says always do your best. As Don Miguel Ruiz says, always do your best. So we do our absolute best to translate that individual's message into shareable words, and that, in a nutshell, is telepathy.

Shannon Cutts: 24:08

And I want to just make one more point for those of you who maybe you're still listening and maybe you're even thinking to yourself I don't know why I'm still listening to this, because I kind of want to turn it off. I'm not really sure what's going on here, but somehow, for some reason, you're even thinking to yourself. I don't know why I'm still listening to this, because I kind of want to turn it off. I'm not really sure what's going on here, but somehow, for some reason, you're still listening. I want to just offer one extra little tidbit of insight that has so fascinated me In so many ways all of the modern conveniences that we so take for granted today, for instance the simple, humble telephone.

Shannon Cutts: 24:41

Well, at one point in time and my mom, who's in her 80s, still remembers this At one time it was a really, really big deal when private homes got their own telephones and at that time there were still party lines, they were shared phone lines. You would pop on and you never knew who would be on. I remember that, even through college, that you'd get on the phone and somebody else would be talking and you'd be listening in on someone else's conversation. And so, once upon a time, on someone else's conversation. And so, once upon a time, telephones, which basically means to talk at a distance, were so woo. People didn't even believe in them. People thought they would destroy our lives. The outcry against the simple telephone because of this disruption it was causing in people's ordinary daily routines, their accustomed ways of communicating, was so great.

Shannon Cutts: 25:41

And let's be honest, we human animals, just like most other species, we don't like change. Even if our routine is comfortably uncomfortable or uncomfortably comfortable, we'd still prefer that to something new. And so, even though telepathy is not new it's just the subtler iteration of the telephone, and it's been around forever and we all have access to it it can feel more comfortably uncomfortable or uncomfortably comfortable to continue to hold out doubt, to continue to disbelieve, to continue to think well, that's just too woo for me, and that's fine if that's where you find yourself today, but I'm suspecting, if you are still listening to this podcast episode and you still haven't turned it off, that there's something more there. And here's the other challenge that I want to just bring to the forefront as food for thought. In our fast-paced, more information than we can ever process yesterday culture, we often tend to think well, if it's true, if it's really true that I can do this, if it's really true that I too can be telepathic, then why am I not already doing it? Well, it's the same reason you're not already composing symphonies or cooking up five star Michelin chef recipes?

Shannon Cutts: 27:09

We need practice, and especially for those of us adult humans who have gotten into their fourth or fifth decade or more of life, as I have and we do have our attachment to what's comfortably uncomfortable in our lives, including our beliefs, our way of looking at the world. Well, this is going to shake that up. Students of mine know, going in, that this is a change in worldview as well as a change in your daily habits and your daily communications, and that's going to shake some stuff loose inside. And it can be more of a struggle for some students than others, because we come with this encrusted worldview that we then have to chip away. We come with our fears, we come with our doubts. We come with the naysayers in our lives who've gathered around us to tell us how woo we are and how crazy we are to believe in something like this, let alone invest our time and our money and our energy into this type of path. And yet, for those of us who do it's life-changing. A whole new world opens up and we remember all the rest of us, we reconnect with all the rest of us, and it doesn't mean that it all flows like in a two-hour movie where you see the hero or the heroine go on their journey and two hours later they're happy and healthy and pulling in seven figures.

Shannon Cutts: 28:29

That's typically not how it works. We have to examine old beliefs, we have to go through a whole new level of self-individuation where we try on old us for size and see, does that costume, does that space suit, does that set of ideas and beliefs and associations still fit? And if it doesn't, we have to be brave enough to set it aside and to kind of go naked for a while until we can create a new way of being that feels integrated, that feels authentic, that feels lightweight, pliable, that feels natural and freeing. So that's where I perceive the intersection of animal telepathy and animal communication. There's always more to learn. I look forward to hearing your insights and your experiences and your questions, because this is like breaking news in the evolutionary consciousness of our planet and it is fast evolving. There's so much more to learn and so, coming with an empty cup with that student mentality, giving ourselves permission to know nothing, to believe nothing and to simply try everything on for size and see how it feels, and see how it fits, and give ourselves the gift of having an experience, a direct experience, before we make up our minds. Well, if that isn't freedom, I don't know what is.

Shannon Cutts: 30:03

So I have so enjoyed sharing this episode with you. I so appreciate your energy, your intention, your heart for animals of all species, including our own. I look forward to your thoughts and insights and if you're new to the let's Talk to Animals community and you've enjoyed this episode, please do consider leaving a review on your favorite streaming service. It really does help me feel inspired and encouraged to continue making these episodes for you. And again, if you're new, we release a new episode every two weeks here on let's Talk to Animals, so hopefully you will join us for the next episode as well.

Shannon Cutts: 30:41

If you're interested in learning more about me, the work I do communicating with animals, offering energy balancing and Reiki for pets and their people, and teaching animal communication, you can head over to animallovelanguagescom or find me over on Instagram at loveandfeathersandshells or at animallovelanguagescom, or find me over on Instagram at love and feathers and shells or at animal love languages. So I send you all my love, all my appreciation, all my gratitude and look forward to welcoming you back to let's talk to animals very soon. Okay, all my love. Bye for now.