Beyond Obedience And Abandonment

A sensitive and challenging look at accommodating difference in religious education.

Beyond Obedience is a revolutionary new training program for you and your dog from one of our country's foremost animal advocates and holistic practitioners. The idea that your canine companion is a fully emotional being and acutely sensitive to your changing feelings and moods is the foundation of April Frost's original and highly effective training program. One of the most difficult aspects of training your dog is communicating your intentions clearly. Beyond Obedience is the first book that works on the way you communicate with your dog, providing you with the necessary tools to truly understand how your dog's mind works and, therefore, how you can create an effective and mutually satisfying relationship. Drawing on her extensive experiences as an animal behaviorist, Frost teaches you that training your dog should not be a tedious chore limited to exerting physical and psychological control over an animal's drives, but instead an enriching and spiritually fulfilling experience--gratifying for both human and animal. Frost discusses such essential concepts as mutual respect, unconditional love, mental and emotional discipline, and your expectations and priorities. She shows you how the insights gained from working with your dog can have positive, far-ranging effects on many areas of your life. Beyond Obedience revolutionizes dog training by addressing the spiritual, physical, and psychological needs of dogs and people, teaching them to communicate effectively through powerful techniques, including visualization and energy work, and offering them valuable insight into the emotional bonds that enrich the lives of animals and their companions. Guidelines Dogs are born knowing how to bark, bite, dig, chew, chase, jump up on one another, eliminate when they need to, and snarl when they feel threatened. It is a challenge to get a dog to suppress or modify his instincts in order to make human existence more pleasant. If the dog reverts, you need to remember that these acts are not malicious; the dog is simply doing the best he can with information he has been given about living with and behaving in a socially acceptable way toward a totally different species. Dogs can learn whatever you can find a way to teach them, so long as it is within their physical capability to perform. Dogs, like humans, take the path of least resistance; they do only what works well and easily to satisfy their needs and desires. If it is a self-rewarding move, they will repeat and escalate the behavior, whether that behavior is in harmony or conflict with your wishes. Every dog has its own point of motivation, a trigger that will evoke a response and awaken its desire to respond to its human.

Written to help those who despair of ever becoming holy, Fr. de Caussade explains in Self-Abandonment to Divine Providence how surrendering our will to God is key to attaining peace and holiness in this life, and that it is readily available to all people-- from beginners to those well advanced in the spiritual life. This edition contains over 150 letters from Fr. de Caussade to his spiritual children on the practice of self-abandonment. These exchagnes provide insights and practical tips for applying the timeless lessons found in this classic guide to achieving holiness.

The sixties were a time of restlessness, inner turmoil, and exuberance for Merton during which he closely followed the careening development of political and social activism – Martin Luther King, Jr., and the March on Selma, the Catholic Worker Movement, the Vietnam war, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Volume 5 chronicles the approach of Merton’s fiftieth birthday and marks his move to Mount Olivet, his hermitage at the Abbey of Gethsemani, where he was finally able to fully embrace the joys and challenges of solitary life: ‘In the hermitage, one must pray of go to seed. The pretense of prayer will not suffice. Just sitting will not suffice . . . Solitude puts you with your back to the wall (or your face to it!), and this is good’ (13 October, 1964).

All three novels in the devotional author’s Christian fantasy saga inspired by the works of George MacDonald and C.S. Lewis. The Garden at the Edge of Beyond When a middle-aged man embarks on an enlightening and dreamlike theological journey, he awakens to a new reality—with a profound new outlook on life. Heaven and Beyond When a tragedy ends a man’s mortal life, his journey through eternity begins. Traveling across the realms of heaven and earth, his notions of each are turned upside down. Hell and Beyond A prominent atheist dies unexpectedly and goes to hell. Or so it appears . . . but nothing is what it seems in this engrossing allegorical novel about the afterlife.

Explores how a Christian notion of freedom incurring responsibility was a component of identity, examining secular writings, liturgy, canon and civil law, chronicle, dialogue, and hagiography to analyze the practice of obedience in the monastic context.

Welcome to an entirely new school of thought: Not only are certain individuals designed at birth to be slaves, but many undergo a spiritual process that literally transforms their essence into a "Bornslave." SlaveMaster and slave 7 are two men living in alignment with this belief. Their wisdom and insights are thought-provoking, as well as worthy of daily study and contemplation. Topics are arranged alphabetically and are presented from two distinct perspectives. "Beyond Obedience" is not written only for Masters and slaves. SlaveMaster instructs all who are authentically called to Mastery, Ownership, slavery, surrender and service to know that the universe requires obedience to its guidance and instruction. Acknowledge your unique design, and begin to live authentically by obeying the Spirit that created you.