Ben Ralston

When you find an animal dying slowly and painfully, what do you do?

I killed a puppy with my bare hands.
The single toughest thing I’ve ever done – physically and emotionally. I don’t think that I regret it, but at the same time, I’m not sure I did the right thing (is there ever a right thing to do?). Nor am I sure quite what I learnt from the experience.


I think the truth is: I’m still learning from it…


When I was 9 or 10 years old we went on holiday. I don’t remember how old I was exactly, but I can’t have been more than 10, because my brother wasn’t born yet.
While we were out walking one day our dog, Rocky, caught a rabbit. He held it in his jaws, shook it from side to side, and then dropped it. It fell like a rag doll, and Rocky went on his way again: job done.
My parents also started off again, but I couldn’t leave the rabbit like that: its neck was broken, but it was alive. It was still breathing (very fast) and was clearly conscious.
So I took a large rock, and killed it, as fast as I could. 
I remember my parents being very impressed. But the truth is, I just couldn’t leave it like that. I didn’t feel I had a choice.
Fastforward almost 20 years.
I’m on a very quiet beach in Goa. It’s 0ne month after my yoga teachers training course (when I learnt to live), and I’ve been practicing intensely as well as teaching a private student in the local resort. 


Today though I don’t feel well. The illness that plagued me the previous month is recurring slightly – I’m weak and feverish.

As I pass a shop I hear a faint but terrible sound. A mewling / squeeling / high-pitched wailing sound.
It’s not the kind of sound you can ignore, so I investigate. Round the side of the shop, at the edge of a pile of garbage, is a tiny black puppy.
His fur is crawling with insects. His eyes are full of puss and parasites.
He’s barely alive. But he is alive.

What would you do?
I went into the shop and asked the people in there about it: does the dog belong to them? It was a stupid question really. Stray dogs in India are a dime a dozen, and people there have more important things to worry about – like feeding their children. The shop owner barely even acknowledged me. She didn’t want to know…
So I went and bought some milk. I tried to feed the little dog some milk, and then I killed it.
First, I tried to strangle it. But it didn’t work. I just caused that little dog plenty more suffering for a while. His squeeling became almost unbearable. I was shaking and sweating.
Then I found a tile, and I broke it’s neck. It wasn’t easy – I had no idea how hard it can be to extinguish a life. But eventually I did it.
That’s what I did. I’ll never forget that little dog.

The next day I came across a small, weather-stained poster pinned to a tree. A tree I’d been walking past, every day, for a month.


It was an advertisement for an animal rescue center.


What would you have done? Did I do the right thing? Please leave a comment, and spread the love by sharing this with your friends / social media (using the green ShareThis button below)

Get out feeling good. (The wise grieve neither for the living, nor for the dead.)

Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Marat, oil on canvas, 1793 (Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Brussels)

You probably think you are “(insert your name)”. You’re not – you can legally change your name, but you won’t have changed what you are – your name is just a handle with which the world is able to pick you up and examine you.
You probably think of yourself as either a man or a woman. You’re not. That is just a gender association that you make based upon the genetic choices that your cells made when your body was being formed biologically. You are only an association as long as you are not being the genuine article.
You probably think of yourself primarily as your body. Most people do…
You’re not your body anymore than you are your car!
When you sit in your car, you don’t say: “I am a Ford / Honda / Daewoo”! (At least, I hope you don’t). You probably say: “I’m driving my Daewoo”.
Your car is just a vehicle that transports you from A to B.
Your body is just a vehicle that transports you from A to B. A very beautiful, wonderful, miraculous vehicle, but a vehicle nonetheless.
You are not your body. This may sound strange to you until you consider the following: if you have an accident one day and the doctor has to amputate a leg or two, (let’s say for the sake of argument – all your limbs)… will you be any less you? No, you’ll be the same you, just without arms and legs.
You probably think of yourself as American (or Slovene, English… whatever nationality passport you carry). You are not. That is just a label that you were given. Labels limit you  – you are much more than a label.
You are not American any more than you are Christian, or Buddhist, or Jewish, or Muslim, or … insert any other religious / spiritual belief system. These are just labels that you identify with. The real you is beyond labels, beyond identification.
You are pure light (bear with me here if you’re allergic to new-age-isms – I am too! But this is truth…) You are all colors and no color. You are pure light.
You are pure light. You are pure consciousness. You are pure love.
What is pure light, consciousness, love? Are these just nice words; nice new-age concepts that are devoid of real meaning?
No! They seem that way sometimes because their meaning is so subtle… but love, light, and consciousness are the fundamental properties of existence!
‘In the beginning was the word’: Consciousness.
And God said, ‘let there be light’: Consciousness.
Pure consciousness is what you really are.
Pure consciousness is your essence.
Your body, emotions, and thoughts are simply waves of consciousness. All that you think you are – just waves of consciousness.
What you really are is pure consciousness.
Swami Vishnu Devananda used to say something every morning when he taught the Sivananda Yoga teacher training course. He used to ask the question:
“What is today?”
When I was asked this same question (by his disciple Swami Mahadevananda), I replied ‘Monday’.
He said ‘No’. And waited.
‘5th February?’
‘No’. Long pause.
‘Your birthday?!’
Smile. ‘No. It’s another day closer to death’.
Today is another day closer to death.
Death is coming. Sooner or later it will catch up with you… how will you feel in that moment?
Will you be afraid? Sad? Regretful?
Will you be joyful? Excited? Will you celebrate?!
What dies is only the body. We do not die. Just as it is written in the Bhagavad Gita:
“The wise grieve neither for the living nor for the dead.
Nor at any time indeed was I not, nor these rulers of men, nor verily shall we ever cease to be hereafter.
Just as in this body the embodied (soul) passes into childhood, youth and old age, so also does he pass into another body; the firm man does not grieve thereat…
…The unreal hath no being; there is no non-being of the Real; the truth about both has been seen by the knowers of the Truth.
Know That to be indestructible, by whom all this is pervaded. None can cause the destruction of That, the Imperishable.
Weapons cut It not, fire burns It not, water wets It not, wind dries It not.
This Self cannot be cut, burnt, wetted nor dried up. It is eternal, all-pervading, stable, ancient and immovable.”
So, the job, the house, the ‘stuff’. All the places we direct our attention: how important are they? You can’t take any of it with you.
At that final moment, when you are about to leave this body, the only thing that will matter is how you feel. That is important. You won’t be thinking about your bank balance, or your mortgage, or the news, or any of the other things that take up so much of our time these days.
You will be aware only of how you feel.
My advice: get out feeling good (without regret; without sadness; without fear).
Because perhaps death is just the first step of the next part of your journey, and the first step of any journey is a big one.
Get out feeling good.
‘Like ‘ it, share it, spread the love!

A TRIBUTE to my Father

2 years ago today, my Father died.
I don’t like looking back – I too much enjoy being present to this momentary NOW, and it took me a long time to get here!
But sometimes it’s necessary to acknowledge (to recognize and to accept) that part of the present is our connection with the past. Sometimes it’s necessary to look back and reflect upon where we came from. Today feels like one of those times…
My Old Man died of a rare neurological disease called Motor Neurone Disease (or ALS if you’re American, or sometimes it’s known as Lou Gehrig’s disease – that’s how rare it is: no one can agree what to call it!)
It’s a particularly bad disease to get (in case you’re planning on getting a disease) because it’s basically a slow burning death sentence. Bit by bit, the body stops working. And the medical establishments have no idea what causes it, and less idea what to do about it.
My Dad’s disease first showed up in his throat – one day his speech started slurring. He told me about a phone call he’d had from an old work colleague – who asked him if he’d been drinking. He wasn’t a big drinker – actually, he was one of the most sober people you could ever meet. So this old work colleague was surprised! But he hadn’t been drinking. It’s just that his vocal chords were wasting away.
In the end, his body packed in completely. I had a phone call one day from my Mother – if I wanted to see him again while he was still alive I should come home soon. So I got on a plane the next day, and spent the weekend with him. It was one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen in my life – the man who when I was a child, seemed super-human; my hero, reduced to a skeletal ‘bag of bones’.
I’ve seen footage of the American G.I.’s who liberated the Nazi concentration camps, and they were crying like babies: those men who’d fought their way through the second world war, openly crying their eyes out at the sight of the camp prisoners. That’s how I felt. But this was a man I knew. My Father.
I spent the weekend with him. He couldn’t speak, so there wasn’t much communication. He couldn’t even hold eye contact, because his neck muscles couldn’t support the weight of his head. He was very weak. But when the time came for me to leave, he made a huge effort to sit up, and we hugged. I whispered in his ear,
“I love you Pops”.
He looked at me for a long moment, and gave me a ‘gesture’, like a nod, that I’ll never forget. That simple gesture expressed all at once encouragement, love, and respect. And in his eyes I saw that he was at peace.
We both knew, He and I, that we would never see each other again.
Seeing the peace in his eyes that day was one of the most beautiful moments of my life!
The saddest and most beautiful moments of my life, in one weekend. What a rollercoaster ride!
Why was that moment beautiful? Because for years he’d been fighting with life. He was quite a fighter too – he would fight on and on until the bitter end (which is exactly what he did then), and never admit defeat. There were only two choices for him – victory or defeat, success or failure.
In life, he couldn’t see another way – it was only in the manner of his death that he knew peace and acceptance.
I’d been trying for years to get him to see that sometimes we have to accept life on it’s own terms. Sometimes we have to bow down to a higher power: god; destiny; spirit; a deeper wisdom – call it what you will. Sometimes, LIFE has plans for us, and the only way to be happy and healthy is to YIELD to those plans. To ‘go with the flow’.
I’d been trying for years, and of course my trying mirrored his fighting! My Father’s son! So the more I tried, the more he fought, and the more frustrated I became. And we grew apart a little…
But in that moment, when he looked into my eyes and I saw that serenity, peace, acceptance… in that moment he taught me what I had been trying all along, in my vanity and ego, to teach him!
It’s not easy – to surrender control. To surrender. But it’s so important. I believe that the disease my Father had (Motor Neurone / ALS / Lou Gehrig’s disease) is caused by that refusal to surrender. I believe that it probably happens mostly to people who want to CONTROL life, and can’t stand to admit defeat.
(I would love to have the opportunity to work with someone who has MND – I’m a healer – to see if I’m right: to see if I can heal them. If you know anyone who has it, and has the courage to fight it in an alternative way, to try something new, point them in my direction please.)
Nothing is incurable if you know the cause.
So here’s my tribute to my Father: my first hero, and a wonderful man. He taught me in life the importance of honesty and integrity; and in his death he taught me the importance of surrender and acceptance. What a great teacher!
He died two years ago today, but he lives on in my heart.
If you enjoyed this post, you might particularly like this – the story of what happened after I hugged him goodbye, got in a taxi, and went to the airport. The story of the longest, hardest day of my life, and probably also the single biggest lesson I ever learnt.
Before you go, please spread the love – share via FB, Tweet, Stumbleupon, etc… and leave a comment.