“Some people like to think of us as superheroes. The truth is, we are super animal lovers (and protectors). Through the years, and through many caseloads, obstacles, and downright challenges, we remain strong and dedicated to our mission.”
Most of the time, abusers are people that have similar features: they’re insecure, impulsive and ruthless because of problems at home or in their relationships.
The organization believes that animal abuse is only the first step for such people. Later, because they feel like they cannot be punished, they become more secure, and they can abuse someone else like a kid, a woman, or an older adult. This is why it is so essential to prevent all cases of animal abuse.
There’s a book about every accomplishment that Rescue Ink has made. It is called Rescue Ink: How Ten Guys Saved Countless Dogs and Cats, Twelve Horses, Five Pigs, One Duck, and a Few Turtles.
Last night as I was in a state between sleep and waking, I started asking where my peace was. Agitated, I asked the wind where it had carried it off to.
I started walking, stomping through the wilderness on a trail, flailing my arms, demanding the wind show me where it had taken my peace.
I came upon a small creek. And I discovered the wind had dropped my peace into the waters. I saw the salamander there, and the tad poles and the water skippers.
They were swimming in the waters that the wind had blessed with the peace generated by my being.
I relaxed.
I watched them there in the creek. I thought of the two legged tad pole and how it would morph into a frog. Not unlike the caterpillars transformation … the tad pole must transform fully exposed to the elements… which is why the waters needed my peace, and all other life within it.
I looked at the moist soil along the banks and noted they were absorbing the waters. My peace was in the soil.
The trees and plant life, they absorbed this water from the moist earth, also being blessed by the peace I had generated and then lost. But in losing, realize it is truly a significant gain.
I discovered that my Love lives within my Soul. And that like a well in the forested home of a dwelling, it replenishes itself, and the more that is shared from the well, the purer the waters become, the more pure becomes the peace which is generated.
Interconnected we are. Every crawling and flying thing that drinks of the waters, drinks of the peace we have gifted to them on the wind. And they carry it further into life, adding their own abundance to it.
Let us recognize our self in all things, partners of the wind, growers of a beautiful love garden which all living things participate in nurturing, bringing to fruition to benefit all connectedness.
Excerpts from Kabbalah and the practice of mystical Judaism ~ by rabbi David A. Cooper
Imagine you have a pure light shining within. If you close your eyes, you get a hint of this light glowing deep inside your being. Then say to yourself, “No matter what I may feel about myself, I know that I have a pure soul.”
The next step in this practice is to gently acknowledge that every person we encounter has a pure soul. Every time we see someone, we say quietly to ourselves, “There is a pure soul; there is another pure soul.” Notice that the person could be sweet and amenable, or could have an abrasive personality. It does not matter. The soul of every being is pure. If we continue this practice for everyone we meet, including those in whose presence we have negative feelings, the ways we relate to ourselves and to others will be dramatically affected. As simple as it seems, this exercise opens our hearts.
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According to Isaac Lucia, there are fundamental divisions of soul types, such as between Cain and Abel. Whereas the simple reading of the story in Genesis is that Cain murders Abel, the esoteric reading is that each represents primordial Force. Abel represents chesed, the force of expansion; Cain represents gevorah, the force of contraction.
The unfolding of creation is the process of a continuous struggle between opposite poles; light and dark, give and take, up and down, right and left, life and death. The contention between Cain and Abel is the first of many descriptions in the Bible of the ongoing strain between opposing forces.
The Kabbalah of Luria says clearly that the goal for all of creation continues to be the fulfillment of Adam and Eves original task. First we must reinstate the awareness of the Garden of Eden, and then our charge is to redeem fallen sparks so that the universe rises to the next level: messianic consciousness.
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The soul in Jewish mysticism is one of the more essential aspects of creation itself. Just as the physical universe could not exist without energy, the spiritual dimension is based upon “soul-matter”. The kabbalistic viewpoint, of course, is that we could not have an inverse without the spiritual realm, and thus we could say that one of the pillars upon which creation rests is the soul.
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When we think about the soul, we have a tendency to embody it in some way. We give it an identity: my soul, your soul. We view it as an entity that is somehow connected to the body. Some say it arrives at birth; others say it arrives during gestation or at the moment of conception. Everyone agrees that the soul departs at death. During life it is with us; but perhaps sometimes it is other places as well. We are not sure where it goes after we die, but some say they know.
Linking the soul to an identity is a mistake because it requires a sense of separation. This is like saying that the electricity needed to power a home is distinct from its source at the generator plant. When we see an electrical appliance working, should we assume that the electricity belongs to it? Is the electricity in one toaster distinct from the electricity in the toaster in the adjacent home? Obviously, the electricity does not belong to any of the homes in question, for when the power at the main plant shuts down, every home in the neighborhood turns off.
So too with souls. There is a soul principle, a “great soul”, that embodies all souls.
A survey of religious and philosophical literature in Judaism shows that there are widely divergent points of view concerning the soul. The soul cannot be explored without delving into the mysteries of the purpose of life, reward, punishment, death, heaven, and hell. This may be why the soul is a subject that seems to cause an intellectual rash. One has the sense that a great deal of itching is going on when a philosopher or theologian discusses the soul.
Mystics, however, discuss the soul with disregard for logic, consistency, or concern about agreement with any accepted system. This is because a mystic “experiences” other realities and therefore has no doubt regarding their existence. Moreover, because these realities are not completely disconnected from material reality we see in front of our eyes, the conclusion is clear: some aspect of our material world mediates between realities. Thus, we could say that the soul is a medium that dissolves boundaries of consciousness.
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Love is the Souls Sister
We can appreciate the soul better when we get to know her sister. Just as the soul transcends the limits of time and space, so does her sister: love. Does love have time boundaries? Can we give love shape? Sometimes it may seem to have qualities when we put limits on it. In fact, in some situations, we are able to feel the symptoms of love. But this is transient, and love remains intermediate, unbounded, timeless, and completely beyond our comprehension.
Love can be viewed as a unity, a ubiquitous oneness. Yet we experience love in its multiplicity: paternal love, maternal love, romantic love, passionate love, divine love, familial love, brotherly love, and so forth. Each of these expressions of love has a different quality. Each is its own reality.
Would you like to explain love to someone? How does it work? Why doesn’t it always work that way? How do we measure it? You mean we can never determine what pulls people together or what drives them apart? Of course, Love is a mystical experience. That is why it is called the soul’s sister.
Does the fact that we cannot explain love mean that it does not exist? Of course not. We all experience love. Soul is exactly like this. It transcends all limits of consciousness.
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The Language of the Soul
Here are a few exercises that help us uncover the way the soul can be experienced. Each exercise can be done in less than five minutes. Pick any one of them.
1) Imagine yourself holding a newborn infant in your arms. Its eyes are open. You know that these eyes cannot focus, but they are looking straight into your own. Close your eyes and take two or three minutes to imagine this look and discover what it feels like.
2) Imagine you are holding an egg that has a live chick in it. Your hands are under a heat lamp, and you can feel the tap-tap of the chick trying to get out. Allow yourself to cradle this egg, feel the movement within, and imagine that as you hold the egg, the chick slowly breaks through the shell to freedom. Close your eyes and feel what this is like.
3) Try to remember the first time you felt that you were falling in love. Do you remember the physical experience? Did it affect your sense, the way you saw things, the way things tasted? What about falling in love was different from your normal, daily life? Let yourself dwell in this memory for a few minutes.
4) Imagine that you have finally met the wisest being that ever lived, whoever that may be. It may have been someone known, or someone completely hidden. In your imagination, notice what it would feel like to be this person. What question would you like to ask this person? Imagine what answer the person might give to your question.
To attune ourselves, we need to broaden our range and let go of preconceived notions. We must learn to hear, see, feel every nuance of our moment-to-moment experience. The language of the soul lives at the edges of thought, or behind it. It is symbolic, metaphoric, poetic. There is always hidden meaning just a little out of reach. It does not matter that we are unable to grasp it with our minds because another part of us is touched, and this is sufficient.
Despite the limitations of our subjective truth, Kabbalist’s believe that via the soul, we get information from other realities. The way we attune to other realities is by using contemplative methods to pierce the veils that obscure our degree of awareness.
Seek deeper sources of wisdom. Life is an art, and your partner in this project is Earth. How can you make your business together something that produces resources for future generations? Grow and expand, to see that as you work, the Earth works through you.
It is a time of victory and peace. Those aspects of yourself that you were courageous enough to bring through by accepting them yourself have been accepted by the world. You have captured the dream. You are in a stage of equilibrium. Relax and enjoy.
“Divine Justice works within me, eliminating all that is unnecessary from my thoughts and granting to me all that is good. I walk in balance, knowing Earths care.”
Balance, as a Universal Force, considers many aspects … time, the affect present actions will have on future generations, etcetera. Balance never works in the form of guilt, although it can sometimes be mistaken as such. Temper Enthusiasm with Hesitation, depending on the situation at hand, and whether the action you contemplate would benefit or harm the whole. Take action … it is only through you that balance can occur. You must test your theories, you must see if they are valid, to know if your inner convictions are truly for the best good of the whole.
Your inner sense will tell you in the moment if you are creating balance … harmony … equilibrium. Justice will prevail. True balance will begin. Remember, what is allowed in your life must balance out through time and for all life forms. Everything affects the whole. As you work with this, creating balance, a great peace will overcome your life.
“All of my desires have aligned with my highest ideals, thus my presence heals. I look forward with confidence to the eternal splendor of my love-filled life.
“Strength is the quality present in me when my mind and my heart are working in the same direction. I have learned how to place my desires, like a chain of roses, one intertwined with another, in a mutually compatible arrangement. I have rejected those desires that interfere with my main purpose in life, and I have seen how my talents and abilities, my deep felt longings and soul needs can all work together for my highest good. I have learned to use my creative imagination, trying out different arrangements until I see how I can transform what appears to be an obstacle into a benefactor.
“I have tamed the beast. What were once threatening forces I now control through the power of my thought. Not by creating walls, but by making of the enemy a friend, do I gain dominion. My power is the power of the caring ways. I possess the power of my inner convictions. My sexual/life/creative energy is channeled, through the thoughts which I dwell upon, toward the upliftment of others in service to the One.
“Healing energies are infinite. Only the mind interferes by its limiting thoughts. As they are changed, the door to unbounded love and healing force opens.”
You reap what you have sown in the immediate past. In other words, this current reward has not so much to do with lifetime karma as it does the choices immediately preceding a situation. Look back at what you’ve done right and do it again. Let yourself feel the pleasure you deserve right now. Take time to enjoy.
“I surrender to the greater good. The Great Spirit and I are one. The beauty I see, I will bring through me.”
I no longer care so much whether I am understood by others, but whether I understand them. My wants are in harmony with the human longing for perfection. Creating my own small spot of paradise on Earth adds to the Great Creation. There is no longer a conflict. I serve myself and others at the same time.
My face is without pain, though others would have thought that to sacrifice the ego (consciousness of separateness) would be to suffer. Instead, my aura glows. There is no strain in this reversal of thinking. I hang from the Tree of Life, still growing. I now look at life from a different perspective than ever before. I am able to see things from another’s point of view. I am able to look with the eyes of God. My individuality is simply a tool, a point of focus for the universal Will-to-Good. Life, as I once knew it, has been turned upside down. The Good of the Whole is my highest goal. I have looked deep within the waters of consciousness and have been transformed.
Truth is the underlying goodness within creation, and anything less than wonderful is false. I dismiss all thoughts of “I can’t” and feelings that I am not responsible. I throw off whatever limits my good and the good of those around me. I see beauty and I speak beauty. Where I cannot see these, I supply them. Bravely I go forth and change the words that cause harm, grief or hunger. I change the laws. I change limits. I review concepts; I re-mind myself. I re-create a better place to play. With the words you give me, Great Spirit, the young shall be liberated, the world transformed.
Your words live forever in the hearts and minds of people. Speak in such a way that their minds can develop images of better ways. When guiding anyone, particularly youth, make sure your words assist in their becoming self-responsible, capable and caring. Encourage the expression of the Highest Self in all beings. Give them skills to create a better world, give them hope. Give them faith in themselves. Inspire courage. Share the wisdom that has helped you on your own path and the wisdom you have developed. Point the way. Encourage harmonious action.
“The present is my point of power. All light, all love, all energy, pass through me now creating ongoing beauty, balance, and awakening on the path toward infinite bliss. From death, the pause for perfect peace, I am born to dance on top of the world.”
“My tools are now within. I am master of my mind, and I give my knowledge that others may Master their lives. I live by creed of words within me. No battle inside or conflict outside will frighten me. I can do what I believe I must. I give what it takes to restore and renew. I have been called and I will answer. From perfect peace, I take my call. My will and the will of the Father are one. In Mother, the world of matter, my gifts are offered.”
“If I am sick, you heal me. If I am lonely, you send me a friend. If I need to grow, you challenge me. If I am tired, you grant me rest. Great Spirit, I trust you. I see now that I, too, can be a messenger of hope for others. I can tell them what I have learned and how you have helped me. I will bring your love to the bodies, minds and hearts of those who need you. I will be a comforter. Your spiritual messengers my Guides.”
All of your time is devoted to love. It does not matter what you are loving, for you have surrounded yourself with things of value and meaning. You appreciate your relationships and spend time improving your ability to communicate the love you feel for each person in your life.
You are learning to be completely immersed in your High Self. Prayers flow as naturally as random thought once did. You have formed a personal relationship with an aspect of divinity, perhaps a Guide from inner planes, a saint, or a guru in the outer world. At the least, you have someone within whom you see God and whom you like to emulate.
Your intuition is strong and you want to use it. Go ahead. You are an apprentice, and this is a learning stage. You learn by doing and reviewing. You would not be this far if you had not developed qualities in yourself that you can trust.
There is magnetism in your life right now. Use it always for the greater good. Power is at your command, and you are entrusted, by your spiritual progress thus far, to use it wisely. Your goal is God-realization, not success in worldly terms.
opensenseme 