Spiritual Art Blog - *Ed P

Are we using Soul’s solutions or minds suggestions to run our lives?

Thought for the Week

Our acceptance of ideas and concepts dictates what is possible in our world. If we have an open mind about how life works and are not too rigid in our thinking, we allow more possibilities to come into our lives. We recognise that we are not in control of those around us. They have freedom to do as they wish, just like us. We do have to be careful not to interfere in others affairs without their permission. Similarly we have to defend ourselves from those who would like to interfere with us and our property.

If we have a very logical mind and we run our lives based on logic and the rules that logic imposes, we are limiting our life experiences. If we have a more open view of life and take guidance from our intuition and inner nudges, we will have a more interesting and exciting life. By using our intuition and going with the flow of life, every day, every hour, every minute, life will continually present new possibilities to us. We begin to live in the moment. We are open to new things, whether they make logical sense or not. 

Watching our thoughts and intuition
We can try this by watching our thoughts and intuition. When we come up against a situation or challenge which requires a new approach, we search for a solution. Usually we get an idea straight away, then we examine the idea and see how it might work. We will often think of other options and ideas as we consider the initial solution. We then make a decision on what makes the most sense or which one we like the best. This is the mental or logical approach to the situation.

To use our intuition we would take the first solution and see how we can implement it, disregarding any other ideas which may seem more logical. This requires a skill in catching the first solution before the mind gets a chance to suggest its logical alternatives. We have to keep control of our mind. 

How it works
Here’s how it works. When we come up against a challenge, Soul, our happy creative self, comes up with a solution immediately. It lives in the moment and answers queries instantly. Soul has a higher viewpoint than mind of our lives. It can see how we are in the world and our interaction with other Sols around us. It has a better understanding of all aspects of our lives and offers Its solution on that basis. We still have a choice of using Its solution or one that our mind and logic come up with.

Making the right choice between Soul’s solutions and minds suggestions requires practice. We can try out some of Soul’s solutions on small issues to see how they work out. Over time we will gain more confidence in Its recommendations. It is a gradual process and initially it can be difficult to distinguish between Soul’s and mind’s advice. It just takes practice to catch Soul’s intuitive nudges and overcome mind’s convincing logical arguments.

This doesn’t make logical sense
If we are of the opinion that this approach doesn’t make logical sense and shouldn’t be attempted, we are under the control of our mind. This technique may not be right for us now but the knowledge that we are under mind’s control can be helpful in our development and growth. There will come a time when we realise our mind doesn’t hold all the answers to life and how it works.

If we can get a little more of Soul’s guidance we will have a lot more happiness in our lives.

Wishing you the blessings of Soul’s wisdom.

*Ed Parkinson

Monastery

The Monastery picture has progressed a little further. I’m struggling a little with what should go in. This can be an interesting phase where happy accidents and new ideas suggest themselves.

Inspirational Mind Control Quotes

“The mind can always think of reasons to separate itself from the Light and Sound of God.”
 Harold Klemp

“As a spiritual being, as Soul, you naturally have the higher viewpoint that you need to create spirituality successful change. But everyday hardships and challenges dampen the enthusiasm and ability to work from this higher viewpoint, so you settle for much less.”
 Mary Carroll Moore

“A fear-filled mind gives a future birth
To accidents or cancer or death.
But love-vibrations blossom our health.
Wing your imagination to fly!
Or leaden it to drown deep and die!
The eagles always look to the sky!”
 Gabriel Ezutah 

“Our intellect is not the most subtle, the most powerful, the most appropriate, instrument for revealing the truth. It is life that, little by little, example by example, permits us to see that what is most important to our heart, or to our mind, is learned not by reasoning but through other agencies. Then it is that the intellect, observing their superiority, abdicates its control to them upon reasoned grounds and agrees to become their collaborator and lackey.”
 Marcel Proust

“The mind is the instrument, the flywheel, and the thickest comrade of man. Through it, one can ruin oneself or save oneself. Regulated and controlled, channelled properly it can liberate; wayward and let loose, it can entangle and bind fast.”
 Atharva Veda

“One who has control over the mind is tranquil in heat and cold, in pleasure and pain, and in honor and dishonour; and is ever steadfast with the Supreme Self.”
 Bhagavad Gita 

“To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one's family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one's own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.”
 Buddha 

“We can tap into a pat of ourselves – an inner reservoir of knowledge, quite subterranean, suite hidden – that holds all our answers.”
 Marsha Sinetar

Monastery

This is a picture I’m working on as part of a presentation. This monastery is hidden deep in the Himalayan Mountains. It is not accessible to us on the physical level but we can go there in the dream state. This is the first render from the 3D programme in which I built the structure. I’ll be adding a few more details in the coming weeks.

Funeral Reading

Thought for the Week

Here’s a note which a friend left as his funeral reading.

The things that I leave behind I hope will be of some use to someone, for a while at least. Where I am now, they are forgotten about and of no concern. They were useful while I was in your world but now they are useless to me. You will discover the truth of this when you join me at the end of your life.

For you who are left to continue your lives with a physical body, enjoy it while you can. Enjoy the good times, the beauty, the sweetness and the happiness. Be sure to savour the hard times, the pain, the challenges, the problems and difficulties. That is where we learn the most. In the tough times we rise to new heights of learning, courage and creativity. We learn by getting over or finding a solution to a problem.

Live today like you will die tomorrow and you will live a good life. Do what you love to do. Do what brings love to others. If we are enjoying our lives and making the most of them, we will spread a little joy around us.

The greatest gift we can give to each other is Love. It is the only gift worth giving. All the physical gifts will crumble to dust at some point but the love we share will bring another Soul the gift of enlightenment. Love is God’s gift to us. If we can share our love with other Souls we are sharing God’s love. 

Be careful of adding conditions to the love we give. By giving love with the expectation of getting something in return we are degrading the Love from God’s Love to human love. God doesn’t put conditions on Its Love for us. It gives us freedom to do as we wish. To be of value to our friends, family, colleagues, neighbours and those in our world, we need to share God’s Love with them. We do this by doing things for the joy of doing them, for the benefit they can be to our world, and to bring a little love into another’s life.

Now that I have left this world, the only thing you have of me are memories. You can easily access these and remember the times we spent and things we have done together. I hope you can find the Love we shared there. 

We will meet again when you too leave this physical world but you don’t have to wait until you die to do that. We can be together in our dreams. When your body is sleeping, your physical world sleeps but your inner world comes alive. This is where we can meet if you wish. We have had fun, shared experiences and met challenges together in our dreams. We can meet there again. I can show you around my new home, my new place of residence and my new world.

Don’t be sad. I have not gone from your life completely. We can meet in our dreams, we can daydream together with our memories and our imaginations. It is time for me to move on and I cannot stay. Now that my body is no longer working I cannot communicate directly with you. Our love is our bond. When we meet again our love will connect us and we will continue our friendship.

Thank you for being part of my life. Thank you for the time we spent together. Thank you for the things you showed me. Thanks you for helping me be a better Soul. Thank you for your Love.

Make the most of your life, your Love and your dreams. I’ll see you soon.

*Ed Parkinson

Festival of World Cultures

This weekend, the 24th and 25th July, 2010, the Festival of World Cultures will take place in Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, Ireland, where I’ll be exhibiting with other artists on the railings around the People’s Park. 

The Festival presents a series of world music concerts that can be experienced by all in a unique and intimate local setting while also offering a ‘passport to the world’ programme of events, many of which are free to all.

Immersed in folk, traditional, eclectic, tribal, digital and the experimental, the DLR Festival of World Cultures presents a kaleidoscopic programme of performances and activities for all ages, including: concerts & club nights, fairs & markets, performances, street events, workshops and so much more. Ireland’s first Global Carnival!!

If you are in the area, call down to the People’s Park and say hello.

Dreamer

The Dreamer continues to evolve bringing different elements into the picture which will tie in with our workshop on dreaming consciously. Here’s the latest update…

Dreaming and Death

Thought for the Week
Dreaming about death can take many different forms. We can dream about someone who has died, we can dream of our own death or we can dream of the funeral of someone else. Dreams of death do not necessarily mean that we or the person we dream of is going to die. It can often mean that our relationship with a person, a place, a group of people or a situation is coming to an end. 

Have you had a dream with someone who has died?
This can be a very reassuring and comforting dream. This person has come back to visit us and say hello or give us a message. A friend told me recently that she had dreamt of her husband who had died about a year and a half ago. She had been mourning him since then and missed him a lot. In the dream he came to her and greeted her like they used to when he was alive. Now he was younger and looked healthy and vibrant. They chatted for a while. At the end of the conversation he said to her “Now it is time to look after yourself”. She understood this to mean that it was time to stop mourning his passing and get on with living her own life.

Being visited in our dreams by someone who has passed on also confirms that there is a life after death. Many people mention that the person in question often looks younger and better than at the time of their passing. When we die we leave our physical body, often because it is worn out and we move back to our dream world, the place we were before we were born. It is a happier and brighter place where we are as young and as healthy as we feel.
 
Have you dreamt of your own funeral?
Dreaming of our own funeral can be a spiritual message for us. It usually means that part of us has completed its lesson and we are ready to move on. We could be at a point where we are graduating from our current position into a new area. This could reflect a move in our career, our home, our friends or our attitudes. We are moving on from our old ways into a new area of life. To complete the change we must allow the old part of ourselves to die so we can move into the new life that awaits us.

While this type of dream can cause fear in a person, we should really embrace the occasion as a new beginning. We are progressing on to explore a new area. This could be a new job, a new place to live, new friends or a new way of thinking and seeing the world. One part of us is dying but we are being born into a new exciting area of our lives.

Have you dreamt of someone’s funeral? 
This usually doesn’t mean that they are about to die. It means that our relationship is about to change. Part of the person we know or the way we look at them is about to change. In our dream worlds, Soul sees things as eternal. It sees how we are going to be affected by changes coming soon and It uses our dreams to tell us.

I dreamt of my father dying long before he actually did. Around this time I had moved away from home to work in Dublin, Ireland’s capital city. As I matured and began to take care of myself, the relationship with my father changed. My attitudes to him and his attitudes to me changed. The old way I had of looking to my father was dying. We were changing and moving on to the next stage of our relationship together.
  
Death and dreaming
When we are asleep our bodies are slowed down, put into a state of rest. Our bodies are almost dead. In this state we leave our bodies and go off into our dream worlds. These worlds are as real as our physical world. We are now on the same level as those who are dead. We are now in their world. We are where we will go when we die, into our dream worlds. 

If we can get our head around the idea that we are more than just our physical body, that we have an inner and spiritual side to our lives, we can begin to allow ourselves more happiness. With the awareness that we have an inner side to ourselves which we use to explore our dream worlds, we begin to realise that we will continue living when our body dies. We just move into our inner dream worlds.

Dreaming and death are not something to be feared. They usually bring a positive message of progress and the promise of a new beginning and adventure into our lives.

Sweet dreams

*Ed Parkinson

Festival of World Cultures

The weekend after next, the 24th and 25th July, 2010, the Festival of World Cultures will take place in Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, Ireland, where I’ll be exhibiting with other artists on the railings around the People’s Park. 

The Festival presents a series of world music concerts that can be experienced by all in a unique and intimate local setting while also offering a ‘passport to the world’ programme of events, many of which are free to all.

Immersed in folk, traditional, eclectic, tribal, digital and the experimental, the DLR Festival of World Cultures presents a kaleidoscopic programme of performances and activities for all ages, including: concerts & club nights, fairs & markets, performances, street events, workshops and so much more. Ireland’s first Global Carnival!!

If you are in the area, call down to the People’s Park and say hello.

Inspirational Dream & Death Quotes

“Realism, whether it be socialist or not, falls short of reality. It shrinks it, attenuates it, falsifies it; it does not take into account our basic truths and our fundamental obsessions: love, death, astonishment. It presents man in a reduced and estranged perspective. Truth is in our dreams, in the imagination.”
 Eugene Ionesco 

“We cast away priceless time in dreams, born of imagination, fed upon illusion, and put to death by reality.”
 Judy Garland 

“We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death.”
 Nathaniel Hawthorne 

“The whole world is a dream, and death the interpreter.”
 Yiddish Proverb 

“Sleep, Death's twin-brother, knows not Death,/ Nor can I dream of thee as dead.”
 Alfred, Lord Tennyson 

“Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today.”
 James Dean

“Hold fast to dreams, For if dreams die, Life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly, Hold fast to dreams, For if dreams go, Life is a barren field, Frozen with snow.”
 Langston Hughes

“To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub.”
 William Shakespeare

“When we can't dream any longer we die.”
 Emma Goldman 

“We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter's evening. Some of us let our dreams die, but others nourish and protect them, nurse them through bad days till they bring them to sunshine and light.”
 Woodrow T. Wilson

“Above all, dreams are of priceless spiritual worth, because they open our personal road to heaven.”
 Harold Klemp

Let's embrace change

Thought for the Week
When a day is sunny we think the good weather will last for weeks. When we have money in the bank we think we can buy whatever we wish. For some reason our mind thinks things won't change but if we have lived for any length of time we know better. Our experience tells us things change. Some things change slowly, some quickly, some suddenly.

Changeable as the weather
With the weather here in Ireland we can have the four seasons in any one day. It doesn’t matter what time of the year it is, it can often seem like winter, spring, summer and autumn all in the same day. It can be frosty, cold and grey in the morning. Around midday it be could be brighter with some rain. Later on the sun could come out and we’d have to remove some clothing to cope with the heat. Within minutes we could have a cold wind with rain giving us an Autumn feeling. To live in a place with such changeable weather requires us to be flexible.

Are our lives any different than the weather in Ireland? Our lives keep changing. Each day is different. With every event, meeting, challenge, pleasure, conversation, meeting, we learn something. What we learn informs our attitude and thinking and we change. If we can get the idea that we are changing all the time, we will not be so upset when things around us change. Just being aware that life changes constantly will help get this concept into our mind.

Hints of change
If we can watch for hints of change that pop up here and there in our lives, we will be more prepared when the change arrives. These hints can come from little things we notice. The photo of a friend gets damaged or we see someone like our friend being hurt in a TV show or we see a headline or text that conveys a similar message. These could be life’s ways of telling us there is going to a change in our relationship with this person. She may be moving out our life or she may need us to help her. 

We need to watch for these hints, observe them and see if our thinking was correct. This way we begin to build up a trust in the hints and messages life is giving us. 

Living in the moment
Living in the moment is a skill worth learning as it helps to eliminate a lot of stress and deal with changes in our lives. Here are a few of the basic ideas behind it:
We focus on the here and now, 
We put our attention on what we are doing, 
We do whatever we are doing to the best of our ability,
We don’t look to the past other than to learn from it,
We plan for the future but are not attached to the goals.

When we get to the point where we are living in the moment most of the time, we have a lot less stress, we are more flexible and happier. We can now adjust to changes easily. When something comes along and changes our world, we adjust to the change, here and now, because we are living in the moment. We don’t live in fear of what may happen, we are not bound by the past, we deal with things as the happen, here and now.

Be careful of our attachments
We also need to be careful of our attachments. If we have ideas that we can hold onto something without it changing, we are going to make it difficult for ourselves to accept the changes when they occur. We can get attached to people, places, things, our job, our position in society or in the family, our property and money. There are lots of things we can become attached to and get the idea that they won’t change or our relationship with them won’t change. These attachments can bring pain when they change. Living in the moment, being grateful for them when we are with them and accepting them as they are, can help us to easily deal with any changes that happens around them.

Let’s embrace change
With these few ideas let’s embrace change. Let’s be aware that life is constantly changing. Let’s be flexible. Let’s watch for hints of change from life around us. Let’s live in the moment. Let’s be careful of our attachments. Let’s enjoy life here and now. Let’s enjoy and embrace change.

Wishing you blessings in all the changes in your life.

*Ed Parkinson

Other articles which may be of interest:
Can we be Happy?
Living in the Now
HU Song
Millionaire Happiness

Inspirational Change Quotes

“When we meet crisis and change in our lives we have an opportunity. We can look for the blessings and personal growth the change brings. We can move forward in awareness of ourselves, our life’s purpose and the interweaving events. In this way change can be a starting point for a new and better passage through life.”
 Mary Carroll Moore

“If you can change the way people think, the way they see themselves, the way they see the world. If you can do that, you can change the way people live their lives. And that's the only lasting thing you can create.”
 Chuck Palahniuk

“I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.”
 Anna Quindlen

“If you don't change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?”
 William Somerset Maugham

“Life is a bridge over the sea of changes. Do not build a house on it.”
 Sri Sathya Sai Baba 

“Someday change will be accepted as life itself.”
 Shirley MacLaine 

“Your journey never ends. Life has a way of changing things in incredible ways.”
 Alexander Volkov

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.”
 Helen Keller

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure , the process is its own reward.”
 Amelia Earhart

“Try to realize it's all within yourself no one else can make you change, and to see you're only very small and life flows on within you and without you.”
 George Harrison

“My whole artistic life has always been about change, change, change, move on, move on. It's the only thing I find interesting.”
 Paul Simon 

“Life is acknowledged to be a stormy sea. Yet so often when the boat rocks, we fly into a panic, as if a boat shouldn’t rock in a storm.
“The storms of life separate the cosmic sailors from the meek landlubbers. Look always to the Light and Sound of God within you, and you will always sail the cosmic sea.”
 Harold Klemp