Garth Stein

He died that day because his body had served its purpose. His soul had done what it came to do, learned what it came to learn, and then was free to leave.

I__e always felt almost human. I__e always known that there__ something about me that__ different than other dogs. Sure, I__ stuffed into a dog__ body, but that__ just the shell. It__ what__ inside that__ important. The soul. And my soul is very human.

Growing old is a pathetic thing. It is full of limitations and reduction. It happens to us all, I know; but I think that it might not have to. I think it happens to those of us who request it. And in our current mind-set, our collective ennui, it is what we have chosen to do. But one day a mutant child will be born who refuses to age, who refuses to acknowledge the limitations of these bodies of ours, who lives in health until he is done with life, not until his body no longer supports him. He will live for hundreds of years, like Noah. Like Moses. This child's genes will be passed to his offspring, and more like him will follow. And their genetic makeup will supplant the genes of those of us who need to grow old and decay before we die. I believe that one day it will come to pass; however, such a world is beyond my purview.

We are all connected -- I believed it then and believe it still now -- at least in an energetic sense. And who__ to say this energy is not real? We can__ see gravity, either, yet we don__ deny it. We can__ see magnetism, yet we don__ question its forcefulness. So, why, then, when people -- spiritual people -- talk about a force of substance that binds us all, that unites us all -- when these people talk about souls -- why do we dismiss them as charlatans?

She died that night. Her last breath took her soul, I saw it in my dream. I saw her soul leave her body as she exhaled, and then she had no more needs, no more reason; she was released from her body, and being released, she continued her journey elsewhere, high in the firmament where soul material gathers and plays out all the dreams and joys of which we temporal beings can barely conceive, all the things that are beyond our comprehension, but even so, are not beyond our attainment if we choose to attain them, and believe that we truly can.

I know the truth, and I will tell you now: He was admired, loved, cheered, honored, respected. In life as well as in death. A great man, he is. A great man, he was. A great man he will be. He died that day because his body had served its purpose. His soul had done what it came to do, learned what it came to learn, and then was free to leave. And I knew, as Denny sped me toward the doctor who would fix me, that if I had already accomplished what I set out to accomplish here on earth, if I had already learned what I was meant to learn, I would have left the curb one second later than I had, and I would have been killed instantly by that car. But I was not killed. Because I was not finished. I still had work to do.

I have made mistakes and I have hurt people, I do not deny that fact. But I have corrected those mistakes vigorously once I understood the error of my ways.

Rain amplifies your mistakes, and water on the track can make your car handle unpredictably. When something unpredictable happens you have to react to it; if you__e reacting at speed, you__e reacting too late. And so you should be afraid.

In Mongolia, when a dog dies, he is buried high in the hills so people cannot walk on his grave. The dog__ master whispers in the dog__ ear his wishes that the dog will return as a man in his next life. Then his tail is cut off and put beneath his head, and a piece of meat of fat is cut off and placed in his mouth to sustain his soul for its journey; before he is reincarnated, the dog__ soul is freed to travel the land, to run across the high desert plains for as long as it would like.I learned that from a program on the National Geographic Channel, so I believe it is true. Not all dogs return as men, they say; only those who are ready.I am ready.

That which you manifest is before you

Gestures are all that I have; sometimes they must be grand in nature. And while I occasionally step over the line and into the world of the melodramatic, it is what I must do in order to communicate clearly and effectively. In order to make my point understood without question.

It__ so hard to communicate because there are so many moving parts. There__ presentation and there__ interpretationand they__e so dependent on each other it makes things very difficult.

We are all connected. The living to the nonliving, as the nonliving to the living. All things in all directions in all times. It is only in the physical dimension that we have limitations. (The membrane between us is thinner than you think.)

I__l give you a theory: Man__ closest relative is not the chimpanzee, as the TV people believe, but is, in fact, the dog.

Such a simple concept, yet so true. That which we manifest is before us, we are the creators of our own destiny.

I missed Eve so much I couldn't be a human anymore and feel the pain that humans feel. I had to be an animal again.

Terriers are problem solvers. They'll do what you tell them, but only if it happens to be in line with what they wanted to do anyway.

...that which we manifest is before us; we are the creators of our own destiny. Be it through intention or ignoranve, our successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves