Spiritual Art Blog - *Ed P

Meeting Place

This is the latest development of the picture Meeting Place. It's not quite right yet but it is going in the right direction. I'm not happy with the position of the crystal meeting place, it needs to be higher up above the mountains.

Why Worry?

Thought for the week

Our mind doesn't make sense a lot of the time. We often get into a habit of doing something and we just keep doing it. This is often the case with worrying. It is just a habit we have. If we want to stop the pain and turmoil the worry brings we have to find a way of breaking the habit. Here's a story about a worrier and her daughter.

There was a lady who lived in the country with her family. They had a farm with cattle and some horses. From an outsiders viewpoint it looked like a well run and successful farm. However for the mother living on the farm it was a different story. She was plagued by worry. Here is a list of just some of her worries:
Will they be able to get enough milk from the cows?
Will any of the cows get sick?
Will one of the horses get injured and have to be put down?
Will the weather interrupt their electricity supply?
Will her husband be able to repair the farm buildings?
Will her children living in the city be okay?
The list goes on and on. When she solves one worry another one surfaces to burden her again.

How can we deal with these things?
One day she began to feel worn out by the constant pressure of her worries. She asked one of her daughters “How come you don't worry about anything? How come I'm the one who has to do all the worrying around here?” Her daughter who had lived away from home for a number of years and had some insight into human behaviour said “Why do you feel you have to worry? What does it achieve?” Her mother replied “If I don't do it, who is going to look after all these problems and troubles around here? How can we deal with these things?”

The daughter explained “I know you feel you have to worry about all these things but my attitude to life is different. I've learned that worrying doesn't help the situation at all. I've discovered that worrying just damages me, it gets me upset over things I have no control over. What I do is take care of what I am doing now. I make the best of the situation I am in at this moment. If there is something that concerns me, like having money to do something, I'll do something about it now, like putting away some cash or work out a plan to get the money together. I then see if it works out. If it doesn't I try something else.

What we need rather than what we want
“I believe that life has a way of giving us what we need rather than what we want. If I do the best I can at this moment and then let life do the rest, it usually works out fine. It doesn't always work out the way I had expected but in the end it is usually the best solution. If you think about where we are now and how we got here, you'll see that all the worry did nothing to help. I find that if I do something rather than worry about it, I get a sense of achievement. The little bit of action moves my attention off the worry and onto something more productive and positive.”

The journey out of worry to peace
Her mother looked at her and sighed deeply. “I'd love to be able to do that. How can I get to that point?” The daughter, seeing the earnest plea in her mother's eyes and remembering back to her own journey out of worry to peace, said “It will take time but you can do it.”
“Where do I start?”
“Have you heard of meditation, contemplation or yoga?”
“Heard of them but I don't really know how to do any of them.”
“Okay, here's a simple exercise which I started off with and still use every day. Let's relax here in our chairs. Take a few deep breaths, slowly breathing in and out.” They both breathed deeply. After a few minutes the daughter said.
“Now, when you breath out, say or sing the word Hu, like this” She sang the word Hu in a long drawn-out tone, almost like a song. The sound blended with the soft wind blowing outside. The mother joined in with a little apprehension but after a few breaths she relaxed and sang at her own pace.

After a number of minutes, they came to a natural stop and sat there peacefully. The mother broke the silence. “I feel relaxed and calm. Is that because of the singing?”
“The Hu helps you reach a balanced state. It brings you into your heart, into the place where you are happy, safe and loved. I use it a lot, whenever I an anxious about something, like meeting someone, going to a strange place or when I begin worrying about something. He helps me get to a place where I can see things from a higher view. I seem to get a better overall picture of the situation and I'm less anxious about it.”

Make a habit of it
“Is that it? Do I just sing Hu and relax?” asked the mother. Her daughter continued “To get the most benefit you should spend fifteen or twenty minutes a day singing the Hu in a quiet place where you can relax and contemplate on the sound. Pick a time of the day when you won't be interrupted and then make a habit of doing it.
“I've been doing it a long time now and find it essential for my peace of mind. While doing it I also get insights into things going on in my life and they help me keep on top of things.”
Her mother got up and gave here a loving hug saying “Thank you for sharing such a lovely gift.”

Wishing you peace and love.

*Ed Parkinson

If you need a little more help to eliminate worry, read one or two more articles on the Spiritual Writings page by clicking here.

Inspirational Worry Quotes

“Fear drives away love. Without love, there is no surrender of all our inner cares and worries to the Mahanta (our inner guide).”
Harold Klemp

“Worry is a misuse of imagination.”
Dan Zadra

“Today is the tomorrow we worried about yesterday.”
Anon

“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.”
Leo Buscaglia

“Do not anticipate trouble or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.”
Benjamin Franklin

“If you can't sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It's the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep.”
Dale Carnegie

“I've developed a new philosophy... I only dread one day at a time.”
Charlie Brown (Charles Schulz)

“Troubles are a lot like people - they grow bigger if you nurse them.”
Anon

“If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.”
E. Joseph Cossman

“I keep the telephone of my mind open to peace, harmony, health, love and abundance. Then, whenever doubt, anxiety or fear try to call me, they keep getting a busy signal - and soon they'll forget my number.”
Edith Armstrong

“You can't wring your hands and roll up your sleeves at the same time. “
Pat Schroeder

“Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere.”
Glenn Turner

“Somehow our devils are never quite what we expect when we meet them face to face.”
Nelson DeMille

“Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.”
Swedish Proverb

“Never bear more than one kind of trouble at a time. Some people bear three - all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have.”
Edward Everett Hale

“That the birds of worry and care fly over you head, this you cannot change, but that they build nests in your hair, this you can prevent.”
Chinese Proverb

“Worry is an addiction that interferes with compassion.“
Deng Ming-Dao

“You can never worry your way to enlightenment.”
Terri Guillemets

“There are two days in the week about which and upon which I never worry... Yesterday and Tomorrow.”
Robert Jones Burdette

“A day of worry is more exhausting than a day of work.”
John Lubbock

“As a rule, what is out of sight disturbs men's minds more seriously than what they see.”
Julius Caesar

“I refuse to be burdened by vague worries. If something wants to worry me, it will have to make itself clear.”
Robert Brault,

“Loneliness, insomnia, and change: the fear of these is even worse than the reality.”
 Mignon McLaughlin

“How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.”
Thomas Jefferson

“Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.”
Arthur Somers Roche

“We have to fight them daily, like fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies.”
Etty Hillesum

“There are people who are always anticipating trouble, and in this way they manage to enjoy many sorrows that never really happen to them.”
Josh Billings

“Only man clogs his happiness with care, destroying what is with thoughts of what may be.”
John Dryden

“Blessed is the person who is too busy to worry in the daytime and too sleepy to worry at night.”
Anon

“Real difficulties can be overcome, it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable.”
Theodore N. Vail

“No man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when tomorrow's burden is added to the burden of today that the weight is more than a man can bear.”
George MacDonald

“Rule number one is, don't sweat the small stuff. Rule number two is, it's all small stuff.”
Robert Eliot

If you need more wise quotes to help prevent worry, click here to go to the Spiritual Inspirations page.

Meeting Place

As I was working on this sketch of Meeting Place the colours and image seemed familiar for some reason. Then I remembered that it was similar to a picture on the cover of a book I was reading recently.

Can you see the similarity?
I then got to thinking, did the artist who created the book cover go to the same place where I now was? The more sceptical would say that I was influenced by wht I had see previously on the book cover. I would say I came across this on my explorations to create the picture I have in my mind's eye. The final picture will probably different from where it is now. Let's see how it turns out.
By the way if you are interested in the book Those Wonderful ECK Masters, you can get
it on ECK Books here:
http://www.eckbooks.org/items/Those_Wonderful_ECK_Masters-96-0.html
or on Amazon here:
http://www.amazon.com/Those-Wonderful-Masters-Harold-Klemp/dp/1570432171

Coincidences in our lives

Thought for the week

Have you ever noticed the coincidences in life or how life organises things so you end up in a particular place or meet a certain person? Think about the major people and events in your life? How did you meet your partner, spouse or significant friends? How did you end up in the place where you live now or in the position or job you now hold? What coincidences lead you to them?

There are some people who believe that there is no such thing as coincidences. For them, everything in life is organised by a Higher Power, the Holy Spirit or the Universe. They look at the things that come to them in life as a gift from the Life-force as the next thing they need to learn or to deal with. They look at problems as ways of learning and dealing with karma (issues relating to events which happened in their past). There is a humility in this approach where we recognise that we are the students, we are here to learn and we do not have much control over how the lessons are organised.

Divine Love
The basic reason we are here living our lives is to learn about Divine Love. That is the Love the Divine has for us and how we can use that Love in our lives with the Souls around us. We are learning how to love others like the Divine loves us. We are also learning how to use our freedom of choice in a positive and loving way. The choices we make lead us in particular directions and can have a positive or negative effect on us and others. Love and our freedom of choice are key elements of what we are learning as we go through our lives.
Life will sometimes place a challenge in the way of a goal we were pursuing. The road we were travelling has now been blocked. We may have a few choices of what to do next. We can wait for the block to go away, we can go to the left or right of it or we may need to go back a bit to find another route to our goal. We choose which route we take and we learn how to get past the challenge.

Freedom of choice and our destiny
There are two elements at play in our lives. Our own freedom of choice and our destiny, or the events and circumstances we are born into. We could say that destiny organises the coincidences in our lives. We have to deal with our situation but we have a choice of how we handle it and our attitude towards it. We can decide to be a victim of life and play the 'poor me' role or we can use it as an incentive to progress out of our circumstances and move to a better place.

There are many stories of people who have come from humble beginnings but ending up in with major achievements in their lives.

Oprah Winfrey who gave birth to a son at age 14 who later died. She then went on to become America's most famous talk show host.
J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, was a single mother and living on welfare when she started writing her first book.
Celine Dion, the Canadian singer, was the fourteenth (yes, 14th) child of her parents who's father earned $160 a week to support the family.
Designer Coco Chanel who gave the world the little black dress and Chanel No. 5 perfume was raised in an orphanage, where she learned to sew.

We don't have to be famous to be successful. There are lots of other people who have made a success of their lives and most of them are not famous. If we are happy within ourselves, regardless of our outer situation, then we are successful.

Is life trying to tell me something?
We sometimes stroll through life without noticing the circumstances or coincidences which lead us to the important events and people in our lives. We may not realise how we got to a position until we reflect on it. We may also be of the opinion that we got ourselves to where we are without the help of anyone or anything else.

When we come up with a series of challenges it might be time to reflect on our situation and ask the question “Is life trying to tell me something?” Are we going in the wrong direction or are we taking the wrong approach? The answer may be that we have other things to do before we get to our current goal.

When a series of coincidences points us in a certain direction and we notice them, then it is time to take stock of our situation and make adjustments. These coincidences may be minor or major events in our lives. They can happen doing something as simple as getting food. What we had in mind is not available or out of reach but another food is right in front of us. We go to a different place to find what we are after but it's not available there either but the other food is available there too. Is the Life-force suggesting you try this available food or what we are after isn't what we need now? Is it a coincidence that what we want is out of reach in several areas or is life trying to tell me something? What choice will we make?

Thought for the Week
If we can take time to contemplate on or wonder about these coincidences in our lives, we may get a deeper insight into how our life works. We may get a glimpse of how the Higher Power tries to bring Its Divine Love into our lives. We may see a lot of blessings.
Out thought for the week could be about the coincidences in our lives and how the major events and people who affect us got to that position. Is it a coincidence that you are reading this article now or is it just the way life works? I wonder...

Wishing you insights into your life and your coincidences.

*Ed Parkinson

Click here to see what coincidences will happen next as you browse through the Spiritual Writings.

Coincidence and Destiny Quotes

”When we work from the Soul consciousness, we can shape our own destiny.” 
Harold Klemp

“Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences. All events are blessings given to us to learn from.”
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

“Coincidence is the word we use when we can't see the levers and pulleys.”
Emma Bull

“Coincidences are spiritual puns.”
G. K. Chesterton

“Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will.”
Jawaharlal Nehru

“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”
Auric Goldfinger

“Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous.”
Albert Einstein

“Two babies were born on the same day at the same hospital. They lay there and looked at each other. Their families came and took them away. Eighty years later, by a bizarre coincidence, they lay in the same hospital, on their deathbeds, next to each other. One of them looked at the other and said, so. What did you think?”
Steven Wright

“Sometimes, perhaps, we are allowed to get lost that we may find the right person to ask directions of.”
Robert Brault

“A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.”
Jean de La Fontaine

“Stressed spelled backwards is desserts. Coincidence? I think not!”
Anon

“Every individual decision is nothing but coincidence, every artistic decision is coincidence.”
Alva Noto

“Every single moment is a coincidence.”
Doug Coupland

“Happiness is always a coincidence.”
Jose Bergamin

“Many applications of the coincidence method will therefore be found in the large field of nuclear physics, and we can say without exaggeration that the method is one of the essential tools of the modern nuclear physicist.”
Walther Bothe

“We do not create our destiny; we participate in its unfolding. Synchronicity works as a catalyst toward the working out of that destiny.”
David Richo

“Coincidences mean you're on the right path.”
Simon Van Booy

“The probability of a certain set of circumstances coming together in a meaningful (or tragic) way is so low that it simply cannot be considered mere coincidence.” 
V.C. King

“According to Vedanta, there are only two symptoms of enlightenment, just two indications that a transformation is taking place within you toward a higher consciousness. The first symptom is that you stop worrying. Things don’t bother you anymore. You become light hearted and full of joy. The second symptom is that you encounter more and more meaningful coincidences in your life, more and more synchronicities. And this accelerates to the point where you actually experience the miraculous.”
Deepak Chopra

“Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he does not wish to sign his work.”
Anatole France

“As soon as we notice that certain types of events ‘like’ to cluster together at certain times, we begin to understand the Chinese, whose theories of medicine, philosophy, and even building are based on a ‘science’ of meaningful coincidences.”
Marie Louise von Franz

“There is no such thing as chance; and what seems to us mere accident springs form the deepest source of destiny.”
Friedrich Schiller

What coincidences are in your destiny? Click here to find more quotes on the Spiritual Inspirations page.

Meeting Place

Here's a further development of the Meeting Place picture. A friend who saw last week's sketch, asked me where this place was. “It's a place I go to during my contemplation exercises. If I'm looking for advice or insight into a subject, I ask to meet those with the relevant wisdom in a place such as this. It is like a cloud made of crystals.” I explained.

Making a Friend of our Enemy

Thought for the week

Can we get to the point where we see everyone as our friend, even our enemies who cause us pain and hardship? Our enemies are helping us to learn something, they help us learn how to deal with whatever issue they represent. If a person is giving us hassle they are also giving us the opportunity to learn how to deal with that hassle. We now have the opportunity to learn how to overcome the issue and eliminate it from our lives. It probably won't be easy but then difficult lessons never are. We may be able to stand up for ourselves to a certain degree but this enemy may have a technique which puts us down or makes us vulnerable in a way we haven't come across before. We may need to get help or advice from others in order to deal with the issue. Whatever route we take, we will learn something.

We can also deal with the situation by avoiding the enemy. We can move to a different place, take a different route around them or try to ignore them. This may work for a while but the problem will probably show up in a different situation later. The person may change but we still have a a similar enemy to deal with and the next time it will probably be more difficult to avoid.

When we avoid problems
When we avoid problems and don't deal with them they become bigger in our mind. When the issue shows up in our lives again it brings back all the previous memories and emotions and we put more effort into avoiding it. This greater effort makes the issue bigger in our mind. If we successfully avoid it,when it reappears it requires even more effort to avoid and becomes an even bigger problem for us. By avoiding issues we make them bigger and more difficult to overcome.

Deal with it
On the other hand if we decide to face the problem and deal with it, we discover after we begin to make progress that it wasn't such a big problem after all. It usually turns out to be easier to deal with than the fearful picture our mind had created. We may also realise that had we dealt with the issue when we first met it, it would have been easier to handle. When we confront the issue or the enemy who is the vehicle for the challenge we are facing and we deal with it, the person who we had seen as our enemy can quickly become our friend.

For example, when I was about ten years old going to school, after a play break we had to gather into a line before we returned to class. There was one guy, a strong farmers son, who would punch people on the arm as we stood in line. He may have seen it as fun but to me and others it was a show of strength and he was bullying us. After he had hit me on five or six occasions, I decided it was time to do something about it.

I looked at the situation and realised that I was about the same height or even taller than him. Whatever I did wouldn't cause too much of a fight as there was a teacher standing nearby who would be quick to sort us out. The next time he hit me on the arm, I turned around and hit him hard on his arm. He was surprised but laughed it off as a friendly gesture. After that he realised that I could defend myself and we actually became friends. The person who I had seen as an enemy became a friend.

A refreshing approach
It would be a refreshing approach to our lives if we could look at all challenges and problems as an enemy disguised as a friend. Can we could look at them to see what we are going to learn from this situation? This attitude could change our lives from one of full of problems to one full of opportunities. We may even begin to embrace our enemies like friends. We will certainly develop new friends and probably loose some enemies.

So this week let's try and put this concept to work for us. Let's think of our enemies and see what lesson we have to learn to get to the point to where we are friends. What lessons or skills will be learn in the process of dealing with the problem the push on us? If we can look to the point where we have become friends with an enemy, the way to getting to that point will begin to show itself. It won't happen overnight but in a few weeks, a few months or a year, we will have moved closer to the point where we are now friends with a previous enemy.

Wishing you many valuable friendships in your life.

*Ed Parkinson
 
If you still need more insights into your enemy, have a look through the Spiritual Writings page by clicking here.

Enemy and Friend Inspirational Quotes

“Enemies and friends act like spiritual coaches. They round out the rough spots on Soul's unfoldment. The Mahanta (inner spiritual guide) teaches through others. So pay careful attention when sparks fly, because some important things in you – perhaps courage or forgiveness – needs some polish.”
Harold Klemp

“As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task.”
Diogenes

“Life becomes useless and insipid when we have no longer either friends or enemies.”
Christina of Sweden

“No enemy is so annoying as one who was a friend, or still is a friend, and there are many more of these than one would suspect.”
William Saroyan

“Fear is your best friend or your worst enemy. It's like fire. If you can control it, it can cook for you; it can heat your house. If you can't control it, it will burn everything around you and destroy you. If you can control your fear, it makes you more alert, like a deer coming across the lawn.”
Mike Tyson

“Keep your friends close - hold your enemies closer”
Arabian Proverb

“Tell nothing to thy friend which thy enemy may not know”
Danish Proverb

“Wine is a turncoat; first a friend and then an enemy.”
Henry Fielding

“We should render a service to a friend to bind him closer to us, and to an enemy in order to make a friend of him.”
Cleobulus

“I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don't believe I deserved my friends.”
Walt Whitman

“Our friends show us what we can do; our enemies teach us what we must do.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“WORDS can confer strength; they can drain it off; Words can gain friends; they can turn them into enemies; words can elevate or lower the individual. One must learn the habit of making one's words sweet, soft, and pleasant.”
Atharva Veda

“It pays to know the enemy, not least because at some time you may have the opportunity to turn him into a friend.”
Margaret Thatcher

“Fear not your enemies, for they can only kill you.
Fear not your friends, for they can only betray you.
Fear only the indifferent,
who permit the killers and betrayers to walk safely on the earth.”
Edward Yashinsky

“A war is not won if the defeated enemy has not been turned into a friend.”
Eric Hoffer

“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.

“He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, and he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Never explain -- your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.”
Elbert Hubbard

“Hear not ill of a friend, nor speak any of an enemy.”
Benjamin Franklin

“I would rather have five energetic and competent enemies than one fool friend.”
Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

“Wealth is both an enemy and a friend.”
Nepal Proverb

“We learn our virtues from our friends who love us; our faults from the enemy who hates us. We cannot easily discover our real character from a friend. He is a mirror, on which the warmth of our breath impedes the clearness of the reflection.”
Jean Paul Richter

“Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.”
Oscar Wilde

“It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.”
Buddha

“You never really know your friends from your enemies until the ice breaks”
Eskimo Proverb

“A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have”
Abraham Lincoln

Meeting Place

Here’s a concept sketch for the picture meeting Place. I’m still playing with the composition and various elements within the picture. I’m trying to get a balance between the actual meeting place and its surrounding landscape.

 

 

Have we a life of Problems or Blessings?

Thought for the week

Our answer depends on where we place our attention. If we focus on the problems in our life we are going to have a life of problems. If we focus on our blessings we are going to have a life of blessings. This seems simple enough but at the same time we do all have problems regardless of where our attention is. We just need to have a few ways of getting through life with a happier outlook.

We can get this happier outlook with a few insights and being aware of how life works. Here are some of the things we should be aware of:

Life is about learning
A ninety three year old friend recently said “It’s a bad day when you don’t learn something new.” His active interest in life and learning have helped to keep him healthy and in great shape as he approaches the age of a hundred. There is a lot of wisdom in those few words. He realises that even at his age he still has a lot to learn.

We will always have problems
As part of our learning environment, as soon as we have a problem sorted out, we’ll be presented with something else to learn. We are all in this University of Life doing our own individual courses. This means that not long after we have mastered an issue in life, we will get another riddle to solve or skill to learn.

We have been successful
We have been successful in dealing with numerous problems up to this point in our lives. We are alive and still living. We may have a number of problems now but we have also dealt with and mastered several during our life up to now. We may only be able to see the problems we have currently but if we look beyond them and into the past, we’ll se a lot of things we have overcome and mastered.

Here are a few approaches to dealing with the dilemmas and problems we face in life:

Do the best we can
While dealing with any issue or problem, a good approach is to do the best we can at this moment. It may not be enough to sort out the issue completely but we will learn something about putting it right. If the issue comes back to us again we will at least know how to handle some part of the problem and next time around we will probably find another way of making it a little better.

Find something positive in the problem
If we look beyond the issue we are facing to the point where we have dealt with it, we will be able to see something positive in the problem. From our current viewpoint we may only see the difficulties but if we move to the point in our imagination where we have solved the problem, we will get a feeling that we can deal with this difficulty and we may even get some ideas in how to solve it. We will also boost our confidence in our ability to deal with it.

What can we do now to improve things?
What small thing can we do now to improve things? At this moment there may be a question we can ask, a position we can move it to, something we can learn, which will help us a little. By taking one step towards a solution we have begun to make progress.

All the problems we sort out become skills
One of the big benefits of dealing with our difficulties is that we develop skills in handling the issue. If we sort out the issue often enough we will probably be able to resolve it better than most other people and turn it into a skill or talent. We can then offer our skill as a service to others and possibly create a career for ourselves with it.

With these insights into the problems we have, we can see how there are blessings there for us. We also realise that no matter what challenge is given to us, we will get through it. We may fail a number of times but we will eventually master the challenge and become skilled in dealing with it. We can also have a more relaxed attitude to life with the knowledge that the problems we face are our lessons in this University of Life. We can take them at our own pace, there is no deadline we have to meet. Even if we don’t get it right in this lifetime, we can always deal with it in the next one.

Look for the love
If we look for the love in all the things we have to deal with, challenges, problems, issues and everything else life throws at us, we will be happier. In fact, if we can see love in all these things, we are getting close to graduating with honours from this University of Life. The whole purpose of life is to teach us about love and how to find it in difficult circumstances.

The secret to finding love is to give love. We may see others who are loving people, who have this blessing of love in their lives. We can hang around them, benefit from their love but we won’t truly find love until we begin to give it. By giving love in any small way we begin to see love in life. By giving a little more love we see a little more and so love grows in our lives. We eventually get to the point where we see love everywhere and we also begin to see how our problems are blessings.

Love is the magic spell which turns our problems into blessings. It is a skill we have to learn but it is the key lesson life has to teach us. If we can learn to love al things we will soon be turning our problems to blessings.

Wishing you love and blessings.

*Ed Parkinson

If you would like more insights on turning problems to blessings, visit the Spiritual Writings page by clicking here.

Inspirational Problem quotes

“Remember, earth is a school. Soul (you) is here to learn how to become more like God’s pure qualities of love. We learn most from our troubles, not always from the good times.”
Harold Klemp

“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.”
Henry Ford

“Life's problems wouldn't be called "hurdles" if there wasn't a way to get over them.”
Anon

“The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers. But above all, the world needs dreamers who do.”
Sarah Ban Breathnach

“When solving problems, dig at the roots instead of just hacking at the leaves.”
Anthony J. D'Angelo

“The man who has done his best has done everything.”
Charles M. Schwab

“To the question of your life, you are the only answer. To the problems of your life, you are the only solution.”
Jo Coudert

“It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.”
John Steinbeck

“If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience.”
Robert Fulghum

“The best angle from which to approach any problem is the try-angle.” 
Anon

“The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.”
Theodore Rubin

“Every path hath a puddle.”
 George Herbert

“There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.”
Michel de Montaigne

“It's not easy taking my problems one at a time when they refuse to get in line.”
Ashleigh Brilliant

“Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution. If you don't have any problems, you don't get any seeds.”
Norman Vincent Peale

“The difficulties of life are intended to make us better, not bitter.”
Anon

“A problem is a chance for you to do your best.”
Duke Ellington

“What a pity human beings can't exchange problems. Everyone knows exactly how to solve the other fellow's.”
Olin Miller

“Problems are messages.”
Shakti Gawain

“Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things.”
Henry Ward Beecher

“Problems are only opportunities with thorns on them.”
Hugh Miller

“The darkest hour has only sixty minutes.”
Morris Mandel

“The gem cannot be polished without friction nor man without trials.”
Confucius

“The problem with troubleshooting is that trouble shoots back.”
Anon

“God gave burdens, also shoulders.”
Yiddish Proverb

“Problems are the price you pay for progress.”
Branch Rickey

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”
Bill Gates

“God brings men into deep waters, not to drown them, but to cleanse them.”
John Aughey


Looking for more inspiration on life’s problems? Visit the Spiritual Inspirations page to find more inspiring quotes by clicking here.

Meeting Place

Here’s a sketch for a picture I’ve just started. The working title is Meeting Place but that may change as the picture develops. 
I started this new picture because the Wayshower is turning out to be really slow. Putting cloths on almost 500 people takes a lot more time than I first thought. When I get closer to finishing it, I’ll let you see it.

How to overcome the Fear of Death

Thought for the week

The fear of death is part of life for most people. Death is an unknown aspect of life and because we don’t know how the process works, we fear it. It is something to be avoided and we regularly run away from it, so we never get the opportunity to examine it and understand the process.

Now that we are living in this life it requires a lot of commitment to survive. There is a lot going on, such as keeping ourselves fed, having somewhere safe to sleep and rest, having a way of getting by in life such as a job, getting through relationships, learning a skill, learning how life works, developing friends and family.

Spiritual side of life
It is hard enough to survive in this world without having to think of what happens at the end of it. After we’ve done a bit of research into the spiritual side of life and the reason for our existence, we begin to see that life is there to distract us from our inner side. The objective of the physical life is to occupy us with physical things such as our physical survival, the pursuit of food, money, sex or entertainment. If all our attention is on the outer life, it means we won’t make progress and discover things about our inner or spiritual side. We will remain like animals locked in this physical world with the possibilities of exploring our beautiful inner world neglected.

Getting into our inner world is not hard but it does take discipline. The outer world will conspire to prevent us from going there by throwing stumbling blocks in our way such as:
Impatience in the perceived lack of immediate results
Our mind’s logical criticism of any results that do occur.
Situations arise which need to be attended to immediately
Other people criticise us or mock our efforts

Evidence of life after death
Once we begin to explore our inner side and to examine the process of death we begin to discover some evidence of life after death, such as:
Souls who have left this life and visit us in our dreams.
Our own dreams where we visit wonderful places and people.
The everyday repetition of birth and death of people, animals, plants in the world around us.
Life has a beginning and an end. Death is part of life, we are born so that we can experience life and complete it by dying.
We have lived many lives and died at the end of them all.

What will happen when we die
Let’s try and see what will happen when we die. Here’s an exercise to help us go there.
Picture yourself dead, laid out on a bed or even in a coffin. You are just observing the scene. There may be a doctor or nurse there to confirm your physical death. There may be family and friends by your side. What are reactions of the people around your dead body? How do you feel about your own passing? You realise that all your worldly possessions, such as cloths, house, car, money, food, the things you’ve collected over the years, are all useless to you now. You can do nothing with them. You may try to comfort some of the people who are upset and emotional about your death. Take about five or ten minutes to play with this scene, then come back and continue reading this article.
Close your eyes, picture yourself dead…

The Director
Now that we are back in the physical world reading this article, how do we feel about death? Has the fear subsided a little? As we observed the scene of our death, there were two parts of ourselves in the scene. Us, the observer and our now dead physical body. Our dead body was not us, it was just a prop in the scene we were observing. We were the Soul overseeing the event. We were like the director of the movie we were creating. This is similar to what will actually happen when we do die. We leave our body and move into our inner worlds.

As Soul we may be able to visit our family and friends shortly after we have died but we will then move into our inner world to take up a more permanent residence there. This is the world of our dreams and imagination. When we sleep and drift into our dreams, we venture into our inner worlds. During sleep our body is dead to the physical world but we as Soul are alive in our inner world. We just need to become more aware of our dreams so that we become acquainted with our inner worlds before we actually move there permanently.

Dementia or hallucinations
Many older people who are close to death are often thought to have hallucinations or to suffer from dementia, when they begin to speak about things happening in their inner world. The dementia or hallucinations are part of their preparation to moving on. They are organising their inner world so they can move there. They loose the distinction between their inner and outer world so their conversations can be confusing to us. We who are listening to them in the outer physical world do not know what they are talking about.

Loosing our fear of death is not going to happen just because we have read an article like this. Our upbringing and culture focuses our attention on the physical world, proclaiming it as the only reality. In recent times there have been many enlightened writers leading us towards a realisation that there is more to life than the physical world. Shaking off this fear of death takes time. It is buried deep within us and it takes time to dig it out and let the light of understanding wash it away.

Expose our fear of death
To help us bring this fear into the light, in this article above we have
Evidence of life after death.
The exercise to see what will happen when we die.
Insights into why we may fail in our search.

By examining these concepts and discovering the truth in them for ourselves, we will begin to slowly uncover and expose our fear of death. If we keep one of the concepts in mind for a few days, contemplating on it, researching it and discussing it, we will begin to realise its truth. We then move on to the next concept that appeals to us and investigate it thoroughly. Eventually we will get to the point where we realise that we now understand the process and our fear of death is washed away in the light of our realisation.

Wishing you a release from the fear of death and a life of love and blessings.

*Ed Parkinson

Do you need more help in quietening the fear of death? Check out the ‘Understanding Death’ section on the Spiritual Writings page by clicking here.

Fear of Death Quotes

“Please be assured that your loved ones will meet you on the other side, so there's no reason to hold on to your fear (of death). If you'll keep in mind that love and love alone is the reason for living, it will calm your heart and free you from your worries.”
Harold Klemp

“Let no man fear to die, we love to sleep all, and death is but the sounder sleep.”
Francis Beaumont

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear... And when it is gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear is gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
Frank Herbert

“Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.”
Buddha

“Defeat the fear of death and welcome the death of fear.”
G. Gordon Liddy

“Live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.”
Tecumseh

“It is not the rich man you should properly call happy, but him who knows how to use with wisdom and the blessings of the gods, to endure hard poverty, and who fears dishonor worse than death, and is not afraid to die for cherished friends or fatherland.”
Horace

“Courage leads to heaven; fear to death”
Seneca

“No one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.”
Plato

“When life demands more of people than they demand of life - as is ordinarily the case - what results is a resentment of life almost as deep-seated as the fear of death.”
Tom Robbins

“We cannot banish dangers, but we can banish fears. We must not demean life by standing in awe of death.”
David Sarnoff

“I'm not afraid of death. It's the stake one puts up in order to play the game of life.”
 Jean Giraudoux

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
Mark Twain

“Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live.”
Henry Van Dyke

“He who doesn't fear death dies only once.”
Giovanni Falcone

“People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It is as though they were travelling abroad.”
Marcel Proust

“Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me.
The Carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality”
Emily Dickinson

“The idea is to die young as late as possible.”
Ashley Montagu

“God himself took a day to rest in, and a good man's grave is his Sabbath.”
John Donne

“Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.”
Socrates

“Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.”
Susan Ertz

“Life and death are balanced on the edge of a razor.”
Homer

“After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.”
J.K. Rowling

Looking for more insights into the fear of death? Click here to go to the Spiritual Inspirations page.