My Animal Nature

My Animal Nature


I will not resist my animal nature today. If I am truly a part of a divine plan, then all of me is meant to be here, both my animal and spirit sides have soul potential encoded into them. I will not sever myself from my own humanity in order to become something beyond myself-my becoming is in my being, my soul and my person are of the same stuff.
I balance my physical and soul nature.
I don’t think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particular – shall I suck warm blood, hold my tail high, walk with my footprints precisely over the prints of my hands?-but I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical senses and the dignity of living without bias or motive. The weasel lives in necessity and we live in choice, hating necessity and dying at the last ignobly in its talons. I would like to live as I should, as the weasel lives as he should. And I suspect that for me the way is like the weasel’s: open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will.
Annie Dillard
@ Tian Dayton PhD
From Forgiving and Moving On, The Soul’s Companion, One Foot in Front of the Other, Health Communications