Spiritual Art Blog - *Ed P

Mountain to Heaven

The Mountain to Heaven continues to develop. Below is the latest rough sketch.

A new friend from a past life

Thought for the week

A couple of months ago I met a person who seemed very familiar. This was the first time I had met her. On this occasion it was just an introduction, a few brief words of chat followed with a quick goodbye. The curious attraction left a desire to get to know her but circumstances didn’t allow it, yet. Was this an old friend from a past life?

A few months later we met again and circumstances were kinder. We got to sit and chat on several occasions to explore each other and reconnect again in this lifetime. 

A past life friend
One of the reasons I know this is a new friend from a past life, is because we got on so well together. Very quickly, we shared with ease the details of our lives. This was key in confirming our friendship was from a previous life. If I meet someone for the first time, I will reveal very little about myself. I’ll ask a lot of questions and let the other person tell their story. Until I’m happy to trust a new friend, I will keep personal details to a minimum.

With this person I felt at ease. There was no threat of being used. No hint of emotional dependence from either side and our intentions regarding the relationship were on the table. This was going to be a brother sister type friendship. We had an interest in each other but no desire to impose or interfere with each others lives. This was old friends catching up with each other.

We told each other our lives to date, this lifetime. There was genuine advice, compassion and love flowing between us as we rediscovered each other.

It has probably happened to you
This wasn’t the first time this has happened to me and it has probably happened to you too. It may have happened to you on many occasions without you realising it. The tell tale signs are things like:
An immediate attraction to the person.
A curiosity about the person.
A knowingness about the person.
The ease with which you talk and chat with them.
The trust you automatically give them.

Just think about your friends for a moment. How did you meet them?
When you met them first, did you want to get to know them more?
Did you feel at ease in their company?
Did you want to spend more time with them?
How long did it take you to get close to them?

The answers to these questions can help you locate, who among your friends are from past lives. Now add in your common interests, likes and dislikes and you’ll begin to build up a picture of your relationship from the past.

Love at first sight

‘Love at first sight’, is a real indication of someone you know from a past life. How can a person randomly decide they are deeply in love with a person, just by looking at them? Logically it doesn’t make sense, if you go along with the theory that we live just one life. However, if you consider past lives as a reality then ‘Love at first sight’ makes a lot of sense. It is a reconnection with someone you loved in a previous life. If you loved them previously, you still love them now. Love has no boundaries. Even time is swept away by Love as it connects two Souls together again.

The next time you see or meet someone who rouses your curiosity, or you find somewhat attracted to, watch how the relationship develops. Does it all seem familiar? Is it easy and comfortable? Do you know them well after just a few hours together? If your answer is Yes, to any of these questions, you could be reconnecting with an old friend from a previous life.

Wishing you Love and friendship.

*Ed Parkinson

Inspirational Friend Quotes

"A friend is someone who understands your past, believes in your future, and accepts you just the way you are."
Anon

“Celebrate the happiness that friends are always giving, 
make every day a holiday and celebrate just living!”
 Amanda Bradley

“Friends are God's apology for relations.”
 Hugh Kingsmill

“When our hearts are open to God’s love, then the divine power can use us as an instrument to pass divine love and blessings along to others.”
Harold Klemp

“A friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself.”
 Jim Morrison

“The only way to have a friend is to be one.”
 Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.”
 Walter Winchell

“True friendship comes when the silence between two people is comfortable.”
 David Tyson Gentry 

“Love is a friendship set to music.”
 Joseph Campbell 

“No love, no friendship can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever.”
 Francois Muriac 

“The greatest sweetener of human life is friendship. To raise this to the highest pitch of enjoyment, is a secret which but few discover.”
 Joseph Addison 

Mountain to Heaven

The Mountain to Heaven is progressing. I’ve used a 3D program to build a mountain with some basic shapes such as cylinders and cones. It’s all part of the search for the correct look, angle, composition and colouring of the picture. I’m still not happy with this yet.

The Lord's Prayer – a spiritual interpretation for today

Thought for the Week

Some say the Lord's Prayer was given by Jesus as an example of how to pray. It was not meant to be learned off by heart but that it is a basic outline of how to pray. The Lord's Prayer is a non directed prayer. That is, we are not asking for anything in particular, we are just recognising the existence of God. We are using it to listen to and connect with God. 

Let’s have a look at the Lord’s Prayer and see if we can express its sentiments in modern language which we can easily relate to and understand.

Our Father who art in heaven,
God. The Life Force, the Higher Power, which is in that heavenly place we search for, 

Hallowed be Thy name.
Thy name is holy and sacred, we utter words to put a concept on God, but nothing of this world can capture it.

Thy kingdom come.
Your kingdom is here, ever present. We just need the awareness to be able to connect with it and become aware of it.

Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
The flow of life demonstrates your will on earth. If we go with this flow it can lead us to heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread;
Ask Life and we’ll receive an answer. Look at how we are in this moment, Now. All that we need is here with us Now. We just need to increase our awareness to see that.

And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Let your Love flow to us. As we love and forgive those around us, that love will grow to brighten our world.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil;
Let us be aware of our thoughts and motives. Let’s not get attached to the things of this temporary world, which will change and crumble if we hold on to them.

For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.
For God is the kingdom we seek to enter. God’s power, Love, will be there for eternity. If we seek that Love we too will enter God’s kingdom of Love.


A tidied up version of the Lord’s Prayer
The above is a bit long winded but a tidied up version of the Lord’s Prayer might look something like this:

Dear Blessed, Sacred One,
My thoughts of you bring me to a sacred place.
Let me be, here and now, with thee in heaven.
Let me connect with the love that flows from thee.
Let this love flow through me to all of life,
And let that love release my ties to things of this world,
So that I can be in heaven with thee, now.


May the Blessings be

*Ed Parkinson

Inspirational Prayer Quotes

“Prayer is nothing else than being on terms of friendship with God.”
 St. Teresa of Avila

“Prayer, Meditation, Contemplation. What’s at the heart of these spiritual practices? Each is a response to the call of Soul. Each represents an individual’s desire to contact the source of all truth. Different paths to reach the same goal.”
Harold Klemp

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is 'thank you', it will be enough.”
 Meister Eckhart

 “Prayer, among sane people, has never superseded practical efforts to secure the desired end.”
 George Santayana

“Do you wish to find out the really sublime? Repeat the Lord's Prayer.”
 Napoleon Bonaparte

“Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.”
 Mahatma Gandhi

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”
 Soren Kierkegaard

“God does not give heed to the ambitiousness of our prayers, because he is always ready to give to us his light, not a visible light but an intellectual and spiritual one; but we are not always ready to receive it when we turn aside and down to others.”
 Saint Augustine

“Prayer is more than meditation. In meditation, the source of strength is one's self. When one prays, he goes to a source of strength greater than his own.”
 Madame de Stael

“Prayer opens the heart to God, and it is the means by which the soul, though empty, is filled by God.”
 John Buchan

“Never forget the three powerful resources you always have available to you: love, prayer, and forgiveness.”
 H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

“It is not by prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws”
 Bertrand Russell

“Shall I not inform you of a better act than fasting, alms, and prayers? Making peace between one another: enmity and malice tear up heavenly rewards by the roots”
 Muhammad

Mountain to Heaven

I’ve changed the title on this as I don’t think we can reach God by climbing up the mountain of our inner worlds. This is where we discover our true selves, Soul. As Soul we are a pure, happy and loving being and this awareness transforms our worlds into heaven. Once we’ve reached this heavenly awareness our next objective is to discover the Creator of our worlds and that area is so subtle and sublime that it cannot be illustrated or painted here in the physical world. We have to experience it ourselves through Soul.
Below is another development in this picture, Mountain to Heaven.

Serendipity – how Life connects the dots with happy accidents

Thought for the Week

I've just come back from an island formally known as Serendip, which gave us the English word serendipity, a synonym for the making of happy accidents by chance. We don't have to be on this island to enjoy serendipity. We can enjoy it as a state of mind or attitude. We just need to recognise the happy accidents around us.

Serendipity brought me to this island to celebrate the wedding of a friend who met his fiancé on the island by a happy accident. While helping some friends do some charity work, he was asked to help a woman move some furniture. One happy accident led to another and within a year they led each other down the aisle to be married.

This serendipity happens all the time in our lives. If we look at any of the people we have an ongoing relationship with and how we met those people, we'll probably find a number of happy accidents or coincidences which led us to meet them. We can find lots of examples of serendipity in our lives. If we look back on events that lead us to meet a significant person in our lives, move to a new location or get a new job, we can see the happy accidents that helped us along the way.

Examples of Serendipity 
Here are just some of the significant events which were caused by serendipity.
Archimedes' famous cry of “Eureka” when he realised that his body displacing water in the bathtub allowed him to measure the volume of any irregular objects, such as a gold crown.
Christopher Columbus was looking for a new way to India in 1492 and wound up landing in The Americas. 
Isaac Newton's famed apple falling from a tree, led to his musings about the nature of gravitation.
Alexander Fleming discovered Penicillin when he failed to disinfect cultures of bacteria when leaving for his vacations, only to find them contaminated with Penicillium moulds, which killed the bacteria. 
Kelloggs brothers discovered Corn flakes in 1898 accidentally, when they left cooked wheat unattended for a day and tried to roll the mass, obtaining a flaky material instead of a sheet.
Percy Spencer while testing a magnetron for radar sets noticed that a peanut candy bar in his pocket had melted when exposed to radar waves. From this accident the microwave oven was invented.

Connecting the dots
If we can spend some quiet time, reflecting on our lives, we can begin to see how Life has used serendipity to bring us to people, places and events in our lives. We can look at any important element and examine what led us to it. What events lead up to finding it? Who played a part in leading us on to our position? With a good overview we can begin connecting the dots.

When we see all the little details, circumstances, people and events which led us to this important part of our life, we have to recognise that there is a higher power working in our lives. It helps lead us to our home in heaven. It uses serendipity to bring us to the important events in our destiny. The force, power or energy which connects the dots in our lives is Holy Spirit or the Life Force or as we’ve called it serendipity. 

Wishing you a life of happy accidents.

*Ed Parkinson

P.S. Where is Serendip?
Serendip was the name, given by early Arab traders, to the island of Sri Lanka.

Inspirational Serendipity Quotes

"All things are ready if our minds be so." 
William Shakespeare 

"In the fields of observation chance favours only the prepared mind."
Louis Pasteur

"I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way." 
Franklin P. Adams

"Serendipity. Look for something, find something else, and realize that what you've found is more suited to your needs than what you thought you were looking for." 
Lawrence Block

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!', but 'That's funny…'"
Isaac Asimov

"In reality, serendipity accounts for one percent of the blessings we receive in life, work and love. The other 99 percent is due to our efforts." 
Peter McWilliams

"Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle and discovering a farmer's daughter." 
Julius Comroe Jr. 

"Serendipity is the faculty of finding things we did not know we were looking for." 
Glauco Ortolano 

“Whether we name divine presence synchronicity, serendipity, or graced moment matters little. What matters is the reality that our hearts have been understood. Nothing is as real as a healthy dose of magic which restores our spirits.”
 Nancy Long 

“Self-sown flowers provide a lot of serendipity, which is one of the reasons people garden. When they come up, it's a delight.”
 Renee Shepherd

“Risk-taking, trust, and serendipity are key ingredients of joy. Without risk, nothing new ever happens. Without trust, fear creeps in. Without serendipity, there are no surprises.”
 Rita Golden Gelman

“If there are no miracles then we need to find another word for the existence of life – the existence of you and me – on earth. Call it a gift from spirit (God or god in whatever form works for you), serendipity, happenstance or plain good fortune. I invite you to look at your life as if it were a miracle. To treat your life in any other way seems to me to be a terrible waste of your unique presence on this planet.”
  Robert White

How to connect with Divine Love

Thought for the Week

Our lives are busy, we have lots to do, lots of things demanding our attention. All these demands on us ensure we are constantly busy; we don't get a chance to think about our lives, why we are here and what life's all about. Some of us keep busy, just to avoid these questions. It is easier to keep distracted than to find answers to these questions.

 

Our distractions can include:

Work,

Caring for the family,

Television,

Sport and games,

Drugs and alcohol,

Constant radio and music,

Reading constantly.

 

These activities are all part of our lives but when they become our sole focus, we suffer from distraction. What are we being distracted from? - searching for the true reason for our existence.

 

The Matrix

The movie the Matrix tells the story of humans being used to supply energy to run a race of machines. The method of keeping the humans content is a complex matrix of illusions fed into the mind of the humans. This Matrix looks just like our modern day world. It works fine for most humans but there are a group of rebels who realise this illusion and fight against the machines. It's a pretty good film or series of films and worth a watch.

 

There is a comparison to be drawn with our world, where the Matrix in the film is similar to the activities and distractions in our lives. A lot of us are so caught up in just trying to survive, that deep thoughts about our existence are not possible. In these circumstances we can use our actions to lead us to love. If we do something, which helps another Soul, we are sharing some love. If we help someone, by giving them some food, assistance or shelter, without looking for profit and we do it with love, we are getting close to the reason we are here. To discover Love. (Note the CAP L on Love = Divine Love)

 

Love is what it is all about

If we can do what we do in life with love, we are getting close to God, the Higher Power, the Life Force or whatever you wish to call it.  Love is what it is all about. Divine Love created our worlds, so we could live freely and discover the reason for our existence. That is quite a tall order, but if we can discover love in any form, it will help. If can then find our way to Divine Love, we begin to earn our way home.

 

Divine Love

Divine Love is the Love which is unconditional, the Love which asks for nothing in return, Love which maintains our world without any help from its occupants. If we can connect with this Love, we can make our world and the worlds of those Souls around us a more loving place.

 

How to contact with Divine Love

There is a peaceful, happy and loving part of ourselves, deep within us. This part of us, Soul, is in constant contact with Divine Love. It is the part of us which strives to be happy, the part which wants us to find Divine Love.

 

A way of connecting to this Divine spiritual part of us can be through using the HU Song. It is an ancient and sacred name for God. If we sing it regularly we begin to reestablish contact with Soul. We begin to get in touch with the happy part of ourselves and bring more happiness into our lives.

 

With this connection established again we begin to allow more Love into our lives. With practice we can allow an increasing amount of Love flow through us and which will help eliminate our distractions. We can then live a more fulfilling, happy and loving life.

 

Wishing you Divine Love in your life.

 

*Ed Parkinson

Inspirational Busy Distraction Quotes

“I think pain is easiest to avoid by filling the days with distractions - I wish to remove everything to search for a truth.”
 David Blaine

“You will encounter many distractions and many temptations to put your goal aside: The security of a job, a wife who wants kids, whatever. But if you hang in there, always following your vision, I have no doubt you will succeed.”
 Larry Flynt


“If you dream of something worth doing and then simply go to work on it and don't think anything of personalities, or emotional conflicts, or of money, or of family distractions; ... it is amazing how quickly you get through those 5,000 steps.”
 Edwin Land


“I think there's always a call for people who are bucking the norm. But I don't expect it to happen now because I think that more than ever the entertainment industry is trying to serve as a distraction, to keep people from thinking too hard.”
 Guy Picciotto


“Too busy with the crowded hour to fear to live or die”
 Ralph Waldo Emerson


“Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans”
 John Lennon


“Before you do anything, think. If you do something to try and impress someone, to be loved, accepted or even to get someone's attention, stop and think. So many people are busy trying to create an image, they die in the process,”
 Salma Hayek