Spiritual Art Blog - *Ed P

Spiritual Tree

This is a very rough sketch of a concept I'm trying to develop. The idea is that as we live our lives in this outer world (the roots of the tree) our inner side (the trunk and branches of the tree) a developing. The struggle we go though in life has a spiritual benefit within us.

How to love what you do and do what you love

Thought for the week

If we can spend our lives doing what we love and loving what we do we will have a heavenly life. Whether it is cleaning the streets, rearing children, trying to find a job, running a company or working for charity. Whatever we do, if we can do our tasks or work with love we will be happier and so will the people we come in contact with.

Not everything we do is going to be lovable, so how do we do the challenging things in life with love? There is a benefit to doing all kinds of difficult jobs. If we are cleaning drains there is a benefit to the places which use the drain. They will have no problems with waste water or sewage when we clear the drain. We are doing it to be of service to others. Being of service is a way of giving love.

How to love somebody who doesn't like us?
Another challenging situation we often face is dealing with people who we perceive as difficult. How do we love somebody who doesn't like us? One way is to see them as Soul, just like us, struggling to find love. At this time they may be in pain of some sort and are sharing that with those who they think deserve it. We can try to stay clear of them but when we have to deal with them we should try and keep our emotions in check. Be of the attitude that their comments are not aimed at us but a reflection of how they are themselves.

A comment like “You are worthless, useless and of no benefit to anyone”, reflects the person's own inner fears that they are worthless. By accusing others they feel that they are not alone in being worthless. They have brought us into the same space as they are. With this insight we can begin to rise above their accusations and/or abuse. We should try and avoid an emotional reaction and leave them to deal with their own fears. If we work for such an individual, we can just do the work they require of us but ignore the verbal abuse. Our non reactive and practical reactions will help them see that there is no use in being so negative and aggressive in their approach to people.

How to love what we do?
If we are in a difficult situation, how do we move to a position of love? It may seem impossible from our current viewpoint but if we take little steps we can climb out of our darkness into the light. These little steps could be:
Ask friends or colleagues how we can improve things.
Look for the good in a situation or person.
Focus on the positive, beneficial or enjoyable elements.
Find something nice, no matter how small it is and focus on it.
Look around us and see the goodness, the love, the facilities, the beauty, of the people and things around us. Count our blessings.
Ask someone who is happy in a similar position how to love the situation

How to love our lives more
There are a number of questions we can ask ourselves if we want to bring more love into our lives.
What would I love to do?
What would I love to work at?
What would I love to spend my free time doing?
Who would I love to be with?
What would I love to achieve, today, this week, this month, this year, this lifetime?

Take time to answer these questions and write down our thoughts. We can change them later when we come up with better ideas but having them in writing helps bring it out of our mind and into this worldly reality. It gives us a target or goal to focus on. Love is the purpose of our life and that will take shape in the things we do and the way we deal with the other Souls around us. Love what we do provided what we do doesn't interfere with other Souls.

Another way of bring love into our lives is the ask ourselves the question “What would Love do now?” This can be useful when we are not sure of how to love a situation. If we can give love to what we are doing at any given moment, we will benefit from its grace and so will those around us.

Wishing you Love now and for all the nows to come.

*Ed Parkinson

For more ideas on how to love, visit the Spiritual Writings page by clicking here.

How to Love Quotes

“As we give of ourselves, of our patience and love, to someone else who needs it more, something changes inside us. Something flows in, a flow of good feeling. A spiritual upliftment occurs both in us and in the person receiving the love.”
Harold Klemp

“True love doesn't come to you, it has to be inside you.”
Julia Roberts

“I love you not because of who you are, but because of who I am when I am with you.”
Roy Croft

“Love isn't finding a perfect person. It's seeing an imperfect person perfectly.”
Sam Keen

“The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.”
Morrie Schwartz

“I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.”
Mother Teresa

“Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
Robert Heinlein

“Love is when the other person's happiness is more important than your own.”
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

“You never lose by loving. You always lose by holding back.”
Barbara De Angelis

“Love doesn't make the world go 'round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.”
 Franklin P. Jones 

“Love me when I least deserve it, because that's when I really need it.”
Swedish Proverb

“You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”
Dr. Seuss

“The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.”
Jalal ad-Din Rumi

“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”
Thomas Merton

“People love others not for who they are but for how they make them feel.”
Irwin Federman

“Love is shown in your deeds, not in your words.”
Fr. Jerome Cummings

“Love is of all passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart and the senses.”
Lao Tzu

“Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties.”
Jules Renard

“Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.”
James Arthur Baldwin

“Pure love is a willingness to give without a thought of receiving anything in return.”
Peace Pilgrim

“We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.”
Tom Robbins


Would you love more quotes on how to love? Click here to visit the Spiritual Inspirations page.

Sorry for no "Thought for the Week"

Sorry, but there is no Thought for the Week this week. I was busy in the print and web design business and I was involved in the organisation of a spiritual seminar on Sunday last. All this meant the time flowed away into these tasks leaving none for writing the Thought for the Week.

If you'd still like to read something here are links to some older articles which you may enjoy.

Serendipity – how Life connects the dots with happy accidents


The Joy of Living


Spiritual Tools - Past Lives

Thank you for your understanding and patience.

*Ed Parkinson

Mirror

I'm still playing around with this concept and different angles. Here's the latest development.

Let's be brave

Thought for the week

Making a decision to go in a new direction does require bravery. We are stepping towards the unknown and hoping that it will be to a better place. There are times when we need to be brave and stand up for what we believe. We are here now. We have survived everything to get to this point. Whatever we've done up to this moment in our existence has brought us to where we are now. It might be time to look around and see where we are. How do we feel about our lives at the moment?
Are we happy?
What challenges do we have?
Do we feel overwhelmed?
Do we feel at peace with the world?
Do we know the direction we are going in?
What changes would we like to make in our lives?

Making a decision to go in a new direction does require bravery. We are stepping towards the unknown and hoping that it will be to a better place. We have to be brave enough to take the next step. We decide what direction we go in. Our choice may be right, okay or wrong. Whatever the results we will learn something. When we come to make a similar decision again we will have that experience to refer to.

Into a corner
There may come a time when circumstance drive us into a corner. To move in any direction we have to step out of our comfort area and into the unknown. This happens when the pain of staying where we are becomes worse than the pain of taking a step into a new area.
If we can be brave enough to make a decision or choice before we get to this point, we will have a little more control of ourselves and our choices. It will also get us into the position of being able to make similar decisions in other areas of our lives. Making choices can require us to be brave initially but after we have done it a few times it becomes part of the way we deal with life.

Adapt as we learn
Sometimes when we've made a great effort to change, we become attached to the results and want them to stay that way forever. Once we've lived a few decades in this life we realise that “forever” is just an illusion. Everything changes. We have to be brave and accept these changes.
We need to adapt as we learn. We need the humility to change when we discover new information which changes what we thought was true up to that point. Life keeps changing around us and we need to be flexible and brave enough to change with it.

Change it
The next time we come across something in our lives which would benefit from a change we should change it. When we get into the practice of make small changes around us it will make it easier for us to make bigger changes. We can see how the small changes have benefited a situation and this will make it easier to be brave enough to make bigger changes. We learn by doing.

Be brave with your life, be brave with your love.
*Ed Parkinson

Need more brave words? You'll find more on the Spiritual Writings page by clicking here.

Brave Quotes

“Only the brave and adventuresome find God, never the timid.”
Harold Klemp

“He who is brave is free.”
Seneca

“Some have been thought brave because they didn't have the courage to run away.”
Proverb

“Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.”
Erica Jong

“Tell a man he is brave, and you help him to become so.”
Thomas Carlyle

“Take chances, make mistakes. That's how you grow. Pain nourishes your courage. You have to fail in order to practice being brave.”
Mary Tyler Moore

“Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.”
Billy Graham

“I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.”
Aristotle

“I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection.”
Thomas Paine

“Against change of fortune set a brave heart.”
French Proverb

“...perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.”
Rainer Maria Rilke

"We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.”
Helen Keller

Looking for more brave inspirational quotes? You'll find them on the Spiritual Inspirations page by clicking here.

Mirror

Mirror, is the working title for this piece. At this point I'm not sure of the concept behind it but by playing around with different angles and views I hope to stumble upon it. Watch this space to see if it develops any further.

Love is all we need

Thought for the week

No matter what belief system we have, we all believe in love. We yearn for and appreciate the love we receive from our family and friends. Anyone who has fallen in love knows the hight of joy it can bring. We also know that giving love to others has the benefit of bringing joy to us as well.

If we believe in any type of a Higher Power, the Universe, a Divine Creator or whatever name we wish to use, and we ask ourselves the question, Why has It created these worlds with us in it and how does it maintain them? The simple answer is Love. The Higher Power loves us so much that It has given us free will to do as we wish. We are in the University of Life. It is part of the process where we eventually realise who we are and then try to discover what the Higher Power is and begin working with it.

The essence of life
The essence of life is Love, that force which maintains our worlds, keeps the planets spinning and helps run the automatic systems of our body such as our breathing and heart beat. While we are constantly moving in this life-force we are rarely aware of it. We are so lost in living our physical outer lives that we have difficulty seeing the love in our lives. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there.

Love is all we need
Love is all we need but we also need things like air, water, food, security and protection from the elements to survive in this physical world. All these are supplied by love. Air by the love of the plants and nature which absorbs our carbon monoxide and gives us back oxygen. Food comes form animals and plants, another gift from the Life-force. Security initially comes from our family as we develop from children into adults. We also have the police and army to protect society in general. We have our homes to protect us from the elements.

These are all gifts of service by others to us. They are supplied as a service to society. Service is a form of love which we humans practice. We cannot give our warm love to everyone but we can be of service. Whatever we work at we provide a service of some sort. Our work is of benefit to someone and makes their life easier. Giving service is giving love. It's the way we can give love to many without draining ourselves emotionally.

The services of others
Whatever we do or work at provides a service of some sort. Whether we clean the streets, make bread, add numbers, teach, cook, look after children or adults, we are being of service, we are giving love. All we need to survive is supplied by the services of others, by the love of others. We all need the services that others supply to us, we all need their love.

Loving what we do
Doing what we love and loving what we do is one of the ways we can have a constant supply of love in our lives. If we can get ourselves into a positions where we love what we do, we will be giving love to those who are around us. How many times have we noticed and appreciated something that has been done well? There is love in a job well done. It has that beauty added to it by the energy of love which the maker or creator has used in its making. Whether it is a clean street, a well kept garden, a nicely prepared meal, a beautiful building or an inspiring picture, they are all products of love by the person or people who helped create them.

Let's not forget the beauty around us in the flowers, plants and landscapes. The morning sunrise, the white clouds against a blue sky, the sunlight through the trees, the dramatic sunsets and the starry nights. All beautiful loving creations of the Divine for our pleasure and enjoyment. When we look at the beauty in life around us we are seeing Love in action.

To live in this life, love is all we need. The love is there already, we just need to turn up our awareness to see it. Love is in the natural beauty in our environment, it's in the beautiful creations which man makes, it's in the services provided to us by our family, friends, co-workers and suppliers. It's in the things and supplies we use every day in our lives. When we look at living our lives, with this viewpoint, we soon discover that love is all we need.

Wishing you a life of love.

*Ed Parkinson

Love is all we need but a little more inspirational writings may help. Click here to read more.

Inspirational Love Quotes

“Begin with the love you have. Love gratefully. This love expands your heart into a greater vessel which can hold even more love.”
Harold Klemp

“The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.”
Mother Teresa

“There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved. It is God's finger on man's shoulder.”
Charles Morgan

“Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.”
Eric Fromm

“Love has no desire but to fulfill itself. To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.”
Kahlil Gibran

“Let your love be like the misty rains, coming softly, but flooding the river.”
Malagasy Proverb

“Do I love you because you're beautiful,
Or are you beautiful because I love you?”
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II

“The lover is a monotheist who knows that other people worship different gods but cannot himself imagine that there could be other gods.”
Theodor Reik

“Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.”
Peter Ustinov

“Who would give a law to lovers? Love is unto itself a higher law.”
Boethius

“Who, being loved, is poor?”
Oscar Wilde

“Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame.”
Henry David Thoreau

“A baby is born with a need to be loved - and never outgrows it.”
Frank A. Clark

“Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
Robert Heinlein

“Love is, above all, the gift of oneself.”
Jean Anouilh

“Love is like dew that falls on both nettles and lilies.”
Swedish Proverb

“Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.”
Henry Van Dyke

“Only in love are unity and duality not in conflict.”
Rabindranath Tagore

“It is astonishing how little one feels alone when one loves.”
John Bulwer

“'Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark our coming, and look brighter when we come.”
Lord Byron

“Love never reasons but profusely gives; gives, like a thoughtless prodigal, its all, and trembles lest it has done too little.”
Hannah More

 

You'll find more Love quotes in the Spiritual Inspirations page by clicking here. 

 

Sky Harbour

The competition on www.ImagineFX.com has now closed and I've submitted a final picture for the competition. The voting has started and if you'd like to vote for my picture or any of the other entries, you'll find the details in this link:
http://community.imaginefx.com/forums/1/384042/ShowThread.aspx

To vote you will have to register but that is free. Here's the process:
Click on Reply on a forum post and a Log In window will open.
In the top right of this window there is a “Register here” text and link. Click this and fill in your details.
If nothing happens when you click the submit button, go back up the page and you may find some fields may need to be filled in. They will be marked with a small re asterisk.
After registering check your InBox for an email from ImagineFX containing an activation link that you must click to make your new account go live. If you cannot see the email after a few minutes, then please carefully check inside your Junk and Spam email boxes.
Once you have clicked the activation link, you will be able to login and vote.
To vote, just click on the Reply button in a post and a new window will open. Enter your choice as you you see fit and thank you for taking the trouble to vote.

Lots of Love
*Ed

 

Let's be our own hero

Thought for the week

What is a hero? What comes to mind when we think of the word “hero”? Is it a comic book superhero, a star from the cinema or a person we admire? Generally we look at others as heroes, we rarely consider ourselves. When we look at our own lives, if we have lived any number of years, we have probably being through a number of tough times, challenges and near impossible situations. Here we are now, having survived all those battles. If others knew what we have been through, they might think of us as heroes.

The final goal is love
We are born into life like soldiers dropped behind enemy lines and we have to fight our way through numerous battles to get to our homeland again. The battles we face are specific to us. They will test us and develop us in areas we are unfamiliar with. The whole objective of this training is to make us more skilled in dealing with the changes life is constantly going through and to help us deal with the Souls we meet in a loving and compassionate way. While it seems to start off like a battle the final goal is love and peace.
This love and peace is something that happens within ourselves more than in our outer material world. It is one of the paradoxes of life that we are fighting our battles in our outer world so we can have peace within ourselves. Our outer world is the stage where we act out the various scenes of our lives, where we try to find solutions and ways of dealing with challenges and fears. The peace and satisfaction we receive from completing a task happens within ourselves.

Battles we have come through
If we look back on our life, we will have a number of battles we have come through. There will be some we have lost but there will a lot we have won. For example:
Getting through the educational system
Moving from school to work.
Earning a wage
Dealing with a difficult relationship
Finding a good friend
Being able to cook a meal
Overcoming an illness
Dealing with a fear

Once we get into the habit of seeing life as a training ground we then get a more objective and detached view of our challenges. This detached view also helps us appreciate what we have achieved and see the hero within. As our challenges are usually unique and targeted at us in such a way that we will learn the most, they will often be very difficult for us.

Some challenges may seem simple to others but very difficult to us, such as, crossing a road, greeting someone, apologising to someone, telling someone “I love you” or forgiving them. Little things can be huge obstacles to some people. If we overcome these challenges we have earned a medal on the battlefield of life. This achievement is something we are aware of and hardly noticed by others.

Take time to look back 
Let's take time now to look back on our lives and the challenges we have overcome to get us to this point. There will be failures but also a lot successes. Just focus on the successes so that we can appreciate what we have achieved. Looking at the difficulties we have overcome we begin to see that we are a bit of a hero. We have got ourselves to this point in life. We have taken some brave decisions, overcome major obstacles and beaten some of our fears. We still have challenges, fears and battles to fight, but we are have achieved a lot and we will achieve more. We are heroes, we are brave and we will find the love and peace we seek within ourselves.

Wishing you the love and peace of a hero.

*Ed Parkinson


Read more inspiring spiritual writings for the hero within by clicking here.

Hero Quotes

“The hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.”
Henry David Thoreau

“A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.”
Joseph Campbell

“A coward is a hero with a wife, kids, and a mortgage.”
Marvin Kitman

“True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.”
Alfred North Whitehead

“A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“You don't raise heroes, you raise sons. And if you treat them like sons, they'll turn out to be heroes, even if it's just in your own eyes.”
Walter M. Schirra, Sr.

“The hero is the one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by. The saint is the man who walks through the dark paths of the world, himself a light.”
Felix Adler

“A boy doesn't have to go to war to be a hero; he can say he doesn't like pie when he sees there isn't enough to go around.”
E.W. Howe

“Not the glittering weapon fights the fight, but rather the hero's heart.”
Proverb

“A hero is someone who rebels or seems to rebel against the facts of existence and seems to conquer them. Obviously that can only work at moments. It can't be a lasting thing. That's not saying that people shouldn't keep trying to rebel against the facts of existence. Someday, who knows, we might conquer death, disease and war.”
Jim Morrison

“Heroes know that things must happen when it is time for them to happen. A quest may not simply be abandoned; unicorns may go unrescued for a long time, but not forever; a happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story.”
Peter S. Beagle

“Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.”
Henry Miller

“We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story.”
Mary McCarthy

“The world needs heroes and it's better they be harmless men like me than villains like Hitler.”
 Albert Einstein

“I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of”
Helen Keller

“Nurture your minds with great thoughts, to believe in the heroic makes heroes.”
Benjamin Disraeli

“It is surmounting difficulties that makes heroes.”
Louis Pasteur

“Poets and heroes are of the same race, the latter do what the former conceive.”
Alphonse de Lamartine


The Spiritual Inspirations page has more heroic quotes for a hero like you. Just click here.