Animal Kingdom of Heaven: Woman Invites Pet Lovers to Send Energy to Hurting Critters

By Lawn Griffiths, The Tribune, Mesa, Ariz.

Apr. 1–Marla Steele wants prayers, love, happy thoughts and “white light” sent Tuesday to all the planet’s animals.

She urges people to imagine en masse that all animal shelters would be emptied and critters would go to loving, lifelong homes, that lost and missing pets find their way back to owners and that hurting creatures are healed.

Steele has initiated a global effort she calls the 444 Animals Campaign. A pet psychic and master Reiki instructor, Steele wants people to spend four minutes, starting at 4 p.m. in each time zone, on the fourth day of the fourth month, thus April 4, for the “comforting and welling of our planet’s animals.”

“I know people have done this for peace, and people have done it for other things, but I don’t know if anyone has done anything like this yet for animals,” said Steele, who makes a living doing pet psychic readings.

The 40-year-old “horse body worker,” a 1987 broadcasting graduate of Arizona State University, says it was April 4, 2004, when she became a Reiki master, trained in the “the art of channeling healing energy from the universe to balance body, mind and spirit.” It was at 4:44 p.m. that day that strange things took place: Her cell phone made bizarre, random sounds; her vehicle’s odometer registered 14,444.4; and she felt a force pushing her head to read auto license plates with multiples of fours.

Steele has posted on her Web site (www.healingwithenergy.com) a prayer she urges people to say on Tuesday.

“I would like them all to read the healing vision,” said Steele, who says she will gather her Reiki students in a healing circle to read the prayer aloud. Her goal is to have 4,000 people participate globally this first year, 40,000 next year and 400,000 by 2008.

In January, she said, she pondered how she could better serve animals. Now living in Petaluma, Calif., she said she grew up in Paradise Valley and Scottsdale surrounded by pets.

“I grew up ‘dog,’ and I matured into a ‘cat woman,’ ” she quipped. “I had English sheep dogs, a cockapoo, a cat, a guinea pig and a cockatiel. Now I have two horses and three cats.”

“Ever since I can remember, my love and sensitivity for animals has been the focal point of my life,” she says on her Web site. She believes her first dog is “back with me in a cat body.”

She credits her horse, Steele, for nudging her to the realm of a pet psychic. When she was away from him, “he would just give me an image like ‘I fell down and I cut my knee,’ and I would go and see him, and, sure enough, he would have a scrape on his knee.” There were images that the horse was sick, and she would check him out and verify it. She said she would be out of town and feel a communication from him that he was not being fed or that he was not getting good care.

“He would also visit me in dreams and let me know things through my dreams,” Steele said.

“As a child, I would dream about events before they happened, or I would have dreams that would come in symbolic messages or repetitive dreams,” she said. They have included plane crashes, even separate dreams about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“In the last dream, I was on the ground in New York, and I was running away from a cloud of smoke, so, in my dream, I didn’t see the buildings go, but I knew planes were involved, that New York was involved, and I knew it wasn’t safe,” she said.

Steele said her psychic powers went into high gear in 2000 when her father, now deceased, was ill with cancer and she dreamed of the illness before his diagnosis. As she looked after her father in Arizona, she also continued to get new messages from her horse that he was suffering from an intestinal blockage. She returned home to northern California and confirmed that, and the horse had successful surgery.

She then vowed to devote herself to helping animals. Today, Steele has more than 1,000 subscribers to a monthly pet prayer list. Besides the pet psychic readings, she assists with lost animal cases, but admits she can’t keep up with that demand. The 444 Campaign, she said, provides an alternative to help wayward pets.

“Marla believes, as I do, that animals are not purely instinctual creatures, but rather beings who have thoughts, feelings and a desire to help their human companions,” said Ann Albers of Phoenix, one of Steele’s Reiki mentors, an author and psychic.

“What stands out about Marla’s work is her recognition and respect for animals as healers and teachers,” she said.

Steele, who has worked with giraffes, cheetahs, lemurs and many birds, believes animals have souls, and some have a “more spiritual life than others and are more connected spiritually,” especially cats.

“Marla believes that every living being is part of God’s creation and that we are meant to assist in uplifting our spirits,” Albers said. “To her the animals are very much like earth angels that offer unconditional love as both healing and example to us.”

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Tribune, Mesa, Ariz.

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