GUEST COLUMN: JOANNE EHRICH —I’d always had this thing about Australia’s exotic creatures (when I was a girl, I had a pet cockatiel and parakeet, butterflies with scintillating blue wings and lime-green Aussie beetles in my insect collection).
But it would be a couple of decades before I made my ultimate discovery in the animal kingdom, and was utterly transfixed by yet another creature from Down Under — the koala.
A friend passed on a news story that a baby koala had been born at San Francisco’s metro zoo (Fewer than 10 zoos in the United States have koalas. Even fewer have koala births; so it made the local paper).
I was mesmerized the moment I saw . . . this living and breathing koala mother with her baby at the Zoo. Little did I know how this experience would change my life forever. 
Noticing the little baby Koala nestled in the arms of its mother, I saw how these two animals held each other in their eyes with absolute serenity and unconditional love.
There were all these kids on our side of the fence screeching because they couldn’t believe how cute this sight was. It was like they’d seen Elvis.
The grown-ups, including myself, were stunned in disbelief about how we could be so affected by a small animal, barely two feet tall.
It suddenly struck me: these odd little creatures are happy-makers. People cannot help but smile at them.
They are such content creatures and far more present than the humans around us. Think of walking through a mall. We don’t even really ‘see’ each other. We are distracted by all of the man-made artifacts and sounds around us.
Everyone is so stressed out. If you see koalas, they will take all of that out of you. It’s like being in front of the ocean and listening to the sound of rippling waves.
If Type A personalities forget how to *be*, koalas teach us how go back to that. It’s almost like their gaze and presence can put you into a meditative state.
They are Zenned-out. They have an understanding of consciousness that we do not. We are competitive. They don’t bother with that. They go about eating their eucalyptus leaves all day and look at the world and their peers anew, from one second to the next.
At the zoo, I felt transported from the everyday world into a deep sense of peace, forgetting my material concerns. It felt like a warm blanket of love.
And I had an inspiration: the koalas are giving humans so much joy that we should do something to return the favor — like helping them with their continued survival, for starters.
I wanted to learn everything there was to know about koalas, and discovered that in their Australian-island sanctuary, they essentially had no predators for centuries. Therefore, they didn’t develop the same fight-flight coding in the nervous system that governs humans and the vast majority of mammals. I learned the same to be true about many other Australian animals.
There is a fascinating intersection between Australia’s social history — or you could say, history of consciousness — and the island-continent’s primordial flora and fauna. “The attic of the world,” as Australia is nicknamed, actually started at the bottom of the heap in terms of European settlement.
Founded as a colony for prisoners, run by prison ‘screws’ (two constituencies known for anti-social predispositions), Australians have somehow emerged over the past two centuries as the least defensive and most out-going and friendly people on Earth.
Could it be that their unique natural environment contributed to this enigmatic cultural legacy? I think so. The presence of the koala and other Aussie creatures had previously exerted the same influence on the continent’s indigenous people.
The koala is the subject of many ancient Aboriginal stories involving sacred and spiritual lessons. There is something mystical about koalas stimulating these very deep thoughts in humans.
To my surprise I also found the koala’s legacy showing up in the most popular stuffed toy in western culture — the Teddy Bear. Invented in the early part of the 20th century, the Teddy Bear went through several iterations to take on a more koala-like appearance: rounder face, less-pointy snout, fuzzier ears and lighter fur. Something about those kindly features had a way of invoking a comforting somatic experience in countless children over generations.
Next, I decided to capture all I could about koalas, and over the past four years, have edited and published seven books under the Koala Jo Publishing label, featuring hundreds of images taken of koalas by over 120 photographers from 24 countries. Like the Nike ad espouses, I just did it! Rave reviews started trickling in from around the planet.
Who cares if your business makes money, or if you ever make money? What matters is if it’s close to your heart. I didn’t care how much money I made. I did it because I had a calling. Love can move mountains. Once you experience something like that, you don’t sweat small stuff any longer. Once you find that fire burning, that’s all that matters in life.
Energetically, I turned into a koala. They, like my Aussie pet birds, have a way of recognizing another being. They look at us, and the world from outside of themselves, free of the burden of ego. They have a way of taking time out, just *being* and recognizing you for who you are without judgment or any preconceived notions.
Read full article on soulscode.com.