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12th Day of Ridvan

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Category: Alison Marshall's Column
Created: Monday, 01 May 2006 15:32
Published: Monday, 01 May 2006 15:32
Written by Alison Marshall
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Here we are on the last day of Ridvan. On this day back in 1863, Baha'u'llah and his family and friends left the Garden of Ridvan for their long trek to the Ottoman capital of Istanbul (Constantinople).

One of the tablets Baha'u'llah wrote at this time was Nightingale of Separation. It is a lament at Baha'u'llah's parting and separation from the believers in Baghdad. Only a selected few could travel with him; the rest were instructed to stay in Baghdad or go elsewhere to teach the Faith.

The tablet begins with a poem of lament, which I've quoted below.

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9th Day of Ridvan celebration podcast

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Category: Alison Marshall's Column
Created: Friday, 28 April 2006 14:06
Published: Friday, 28 April 2006 14:06
Written by Alison Marshall
Hits: 11089

I've done a special podcast to celebrate the 9th Day of Ridvan. It's a 12-minute devotional podcast, with readings and sounds. The theme of the programme is the Spirit.

I have obtained the audios of the sounds from the amazing site, the Freesound Project: http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/index.php. It allows you to download sounds for free so long as you attribute them.

The principal sound I have used is of the nightingale but I have also used electronic sounds of birds. Baha'u'llah often used the image of the nightingale singing in the rose garden to refer to his own voice calling in the spiritual realm. This is the image I have tried to capture.

Download the 12-minute MP3 audio of the 9th Day of Ridvan podcast

Or play it here:
{sstreamtalk}http://whoisbahaullah.com/blog/wp-podcasts/spirit.mp3|250|9th Day of Ridvan|#5192CA{/sstreamtalk}

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Being in love with God

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Category: Alison Marshall's Column
Created: Wednesday, 26 April 2006 14:53
Published: Wednesday, 26 April 2006 14:53
Written by Alison Marshall
Hits: 4910

The conclusion from the last post gives us the following description of detachment: "Detachment is about the soul leaving everything behind and 'journeying' to its Lord. In doing so, it finds a place that is eternal, and in that place it isn't concerned with anything else but God - nothing gets between the soul and God or the Absolute Truth. That soul is busied with mentioning God and isn't in love with anything else or immersed in anything else. In that eternal place, the soul is in the presence of God, sees God and bears witness to God."

I said that I would try to find the essential experience of detachment and, from the above description, I would say that it is about being in love with God. Let's explore what that means. What are the many experiences a person has when they are in love with God?

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Detachment -- what is it?

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Category: Alison Marshall's Column
Created: Monday, 24 April 2006 17:56
Published: Monday, 24 April 2006 17:56
Written by Alison Marshall
Hits: 6559

That's right, here I go again about detachment. But I'm following the example of people in high places—that is, Baha'u'llah—and he tells us to follow his values and not the values of others.

Now I'm going to tackle the difficult task of defining detachment and exploring the experience of detachment. I am sure that most people—Baha'is included—don't have a clue what it means. It is very difficult to pin down. It's like trying to define love; it has many aspects to it and these are experienced at different levels. Two people can make contradictory statements about love while both are speaking the truth. It's the same with detachment—like love, it's a state of being and within that state there are many experiences and expressions. What I will try to do is capture the essential experience of detachment. We think of love as one basic emotion or state of being, and so I will try to capture the central thing about detachment.

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