The largest website for English phrases and quotes

The largest website for English phrases and quotes

Category: Linda Bender

The inner encounters I have with animals—and will be teaching you to have— are exchanges of meaning.

animals, communication, meaning, spirituality

The animals feel that this urgency is mutual. Their own suffering has made them aware of human suffering. More frequent contact with us has sensitized them to what troubles us. They feel our anxiety and our confusion and, most of all, our loneliness. The pain of being disconnected from the Earth, from each other, from our fellow creatures, and from the Source of all life is the worst pain they can imagine, and they are concerned about us. They understand even better than we do that the suffering we inflict on them is an expression of our own suffering, and that their physical situation cannot get better unless the human spiritual condition gets better. They want to help.

animals, loneliness, spirituality, suffering, wisdom

I believe the happiness we feel in relation to animals is immensely significant. I believe it is absolutely central to our physical, psychological, and spiritual well-being.

animals, spirituality

I believe we have this idea that bad things ought to be prevented from happening.

animals, spirituality

It is commonplace, and true, to point out that animals are happier than people because they live entirely in the present.

animals, spirituality

Animals suffer both emotionally and physically, but they don’t suffer metaphysically. That is, they don’t suffer about suffering, don’t get thrown into spiritual confusion by it, or fall out of connection with the divine because of it.

animals, spirituality

Because we tend to equate intelligence with language–particularly the ability to use language to think and communicate abstractions–it is natural to conclude that animals are, on the whole, a lot less intelligent than we are.

animals, spirituality

Animals don’t know exactly what will happen when they die any more than we do. In the absence of specific knowledge, they simply trust. They trust death the way they trust life: as participation in the Source. What will happen when they die must be okay because what is happening now is okay.

animals, spirituality

The belief that every living thing has an individual soul is called animism. (Anima, which means ‘soul,’ is also the root of the word ‘animal.’) Anthropologists have found this belief to be universal in children, though the children themselves don’t think of it as a belief. It is, to them, one of the most obvious features of the world around them, and the most obvious way of interpreting what goes on in that world.

animals, spirituality

Has it ever struck you as odd that humans are the only creatures on the planet who wear clothes? Everything else, from aardvarks to zebras, is running around in its birthday suit, blissfully unclear of the concept of underpants. Why don’t people do the same?

animals, spirituality

I take it hard when an animal in my care suffers or dies. I take it even harder when the animal’s suffering is the result of human exploitation or carelessness.

animals, spirituality

Great teachers often come to us in humble packaging. That little dog held the wisdom of a sage in his heart. I learned from him that healing is not about the success or failure of the physical body, that physical survival is secondary. All creatures wish to live and thrive, but bodies do wear out. The number of days we walk the earth (or fly or swim or crawl on it) is not the point. Animals live in the present moment. If kindness, caring, and respect fill that moment, life is fill, no matter what came before or what might come in the future. A soul that feels loved is joyous and healed.

animals, spirituality