An Apology to Elephants

Lily Tomlin has produced a most amazing documentary. Only 40 minutes in length, I guarantee anyone who watches this film will have a hard time ever attending a circus again. I don’t think I ever went to a circus that displayed elephants, but I’m sure never going to even think about paying to see such a spectacle as long as I live.

Elephants are some of the most sensitive creatures on earth: huge telepathic engines for emotion and love vibrations. Their deep attachment to each other is well-known and when a lover, child or friend of an elephant dies, it’s not unusual for that animal to go into mourning for six months. Looking at an elephant in mourning, you get a real sense of how that vibration shuts down all their chakra centers.

What they don’t tell you is that getting elephants to do stupid tricks is a complicated process. First the animal’s parents and adult tribe are usually all assassinated in front of the children in Africa. That’s done to harvest ivory and meat. Then the elephant kids are rounded up and shipped overseas to a circus or zoo. Once the toddlers arrive at a circus, they have to be “tamed,” which involves six men. First, they put ropes on every leg and pull the baby elephant off its feet while one man holds the trunk and another sticks a bullhook into the animal’s anus. The bullhook is a steel torture device designed to stab or hook the animal’s most sensitive parts, usually a tender spot right about the eye. Baby elephants are beaten and tortured until they lose their spirit. At that point, they’re ready to learn tricks, like standing on their hind legs, a completely unnatural position for an elephant.

Interestingly enough, elephants posses great powers that have never been put to use. Had an orphan elephant been showered with love and adapted willingly to living around people, keep in mind he or she is much more sensitive to smell compared with a bloodhound. And probably more intelligent too. Imagine if that elephant had been honored and treated with respect and dignity, instead of being beaten into submission? Almost all are suffering from PTSD, and you can see that in their unnatural head-rocking behaviors. Instead of being treated like a slave, what if that elephant had just been treated like another person, with feelings, emotions and some basic rights? Elephants may lead the way to ending the worldwide abuse of all animals who are denied all dignity in their existence, pumped up on pills and standing in their own feces for most of their short lives before being harvested for human consumption. You know, animals emit telepathic vibes just like we do, so imagine the signals emanating from those animal factories.

Thankfully, people are starting to wake up to this atrocity, and thank you Lily Tomlin for bringing this to our attention. A couple in California created an elephant sanctuary so old elephants no longer of use to the circuses can come and try to get some healing in their final years. One of the most moving parts of the documentary concerns two baby elephants who were separated after coming to the states, both tortured for years, and much later in life, they reunite at this sanctuary. The deep emotion these creatures feel for each other despite being separated for decades was obvious. In fact, elephants spend a lot of time touching each other, rubbing against each other. If they could hug they would since they are obviously sharing compassionate energies on a regular basis.

So check out this amazing documentary while it’s on HBO. It will make you sad, but it’s something that might actually help turn the tide and help stop the abuse. And never, ever, buy anything made of ivory again.