Bambi: A Life in the Woods by Felix Salten

This is certainly not the story you remember from the walt disney movie.  This is the original, written to awaken our compassion towards animals, written for a new race of men.  

"Do you see, Bambi," the old stag went on, "do you see how He's (the hunter) lying dead, like one of us? Listen, Bambi. He isn't all-powerful as they say. Everything that lives and grows doesn't come from Him. He isn't above us. He's just the same as we are. He has the same fears, the same needs, and suffers in the same way. He can be killed like us, and then He lies helpless on the ground like all the rest of us, as you see Him now."
    There was a silence. 

    "Do you understand me, Bambi?" asked the old stag. 

    "I think so," Bambi said in a whisper. 

    "Then speak," the old stag commanded.

Bambi was inspired, and said trembling, "There is Another who is over us all, over us and over Him."

O My Brother!

Hearken to the delightsome words of My honeyed tongue, and quaff the stream of mystic holiness from My sugar-shedding lips. Sow the seeds of My divine wisdom in the pure soil of thy heart, and water them with the water of certitude, that the hyacinths of My knowledge and wisdom may spring up fresh and green in the sacred city of thy heart.
                    -The Hidden Words

TED TALKS

I would love to meet some Gansta Gardeners!

"Just write down what you're thinking"

March 2nd - March 20th is known to Baha'i's as the month of the Fast, where we abstain from eating and drinking from sun up to sun down.  It's a whole month (Baha'i months are 19 days) dedicated to spiritual rejuvenation.  The Fast acts like a mechanic working to align your spiritual orientation towards prayer, teaching, and service to others day by day.  The hope is this alignment will last a full year.  Each year is different for me.  I'm continuing my adventure within the realm of love.  It's not like we ever leave this realm but we can choose to take a closer look if we want to.



So there's this book.  Love: Jewels from the words of Abdu'l-Baha.  It's short but literally filled with jewels.  Each small quote is only a few lines long but holds such beauty and profoundness that I had to share one with you.  It goes.

Love is the light that guideth in darkness, the living link that uniteth God with man, that assureth the progress of every illumined soul.

If you look back to an earlier post I wrote called "Love - the Adam Lanza part" and in that post I wrote about this theme of love as a light.  That's why I so enjoy reading spiritual Words because they hold Truths we already know, but something else also happens when we read them and connect with them.  Hard to explain it.

So this quote strikes me as particularly beautiful because of the analogy of love being a link between us and God, and not just any link, a living link!  Plugging in a USB cable to a computer uploads or downloads information to and from a computer and happens at a consistent rate, I'd call this an electrical link.  But a living link, what would that be?  Maybe like some form of a symbiotic relationship?  A link made from love.  I remember someone talking about this like if God was the generator then all man had to do was plug in.  Love is the link, the plug, the cable.  If man has no love then he can't receive God's love.  Like sitting next to a generator without plugging in, all that power and potential waiting for us to reach out.  That's God, always loving, always the powerful generator, waiting for us to reach for Him and plug in.

Dreams

I tend to dream a lot.  And my moods will be heavily influenced by them.  I've spoken to people through dreams, I've spoken different languages, flew, confronted my challenges in various forms, and so many things.  I enjoy going to sleep wondering what the next dream might be.  They constantly surprise me.  Or perhaps I am surprising myself?  Where do they all come from? And why do some people dream and remember them and some people believe they don't dream because they can't remember anything? It's strange.

Anyway, I had a dream last night, a symbolic dream, so I'll share it with you.  Of course you really have to be in the dream to understand but I'll try.

(the picture has very little to do with the dream)
I was floating in a clear lake with a fishing pole in my hand.  My dad was floating beside me.  My brothers were floating near by too.  We were all floating and fishing with worms.  We weren't catching anything or rather there were no fish to catch because we could see down to the bottom and there were just rocks down there.  All of a sudden a huge fish breaks the surface, it must have weighed over 20lbs,  and looked like some kind of large mouth bass.  We all were super excited and started casting our lines next to it.  The fish wasn't scared at all from our excitement and just lazily swam around along the bottom passing our fishing lines as if they were of little consequence.  I finally put my hook right near its mouth and the huge fish chomped down and I pulled to try to snag it with the hook.  Unfortunately the fish just spat out my hook.  My dad and brothers were really excited when it swallowed my hook and then really disappointed when it spat it out.  They were like, "aww man, come on, why did you pull so hard", etc etc, but I was busy trying to catch it again so paid them little attention.  Then the next thing happened in an instant and left all of us with our mouths open, stunned in awe.

What happened was, the big fish continued to lazily swim on the bottom after I missed it when a guy with snorkel gear quickly dived down, grabbed the big fish, wrapped it in a roped, strapped it on his back, and swam off.  I think just before he did that I had a similar thought like, "this fish is so slow I could just grab him." But in an instant the fish was gone.

And I woke up.

So, what do you think?