Spiritual Art Blog - *Ed P

What would love do?

Thought for the week

What would love do? This is a great question to ask when we are unsure of what to do in a particular situation. For example, a friend was recently flummoxed by a repeating pattern in her life. Here's her story.

'Una' had recently been shopping with her two daughters of four and eight. She had forty Euro with her but within an hour she had spent it on cloths and some unnecessary items. She had forgotten that she needed the money to pay a bill later that week. When she remembered the bill and realised that she had over spent, she asked her inner guide “What am I going to do about that bill now that my money is gone?”

Shortly after that, she bought a snack for herself and her daughters in a café. She handed in a ten Euro note and the cashier handed her back the change of a fifty Euro note. She now had in her hand the money she needed to pay the bill later on in the week.

She now faced the question, Is this my inner guide's answer to my problem with the bill or is it a test? Has life given me what I need because I asked for it? Is this money coming to me because at some point in our lives the cashier or the owner of the café owed me the money? Is it karma I am being repaid or is it karma I am about to create?

Her mind was becoming overloaded with the questions and the many possible answers. How could she find the right answer to this puzzle. If she choose to keep the money would she be creating new karma for herself or would she be receiving payment for karma she was owed from another time? Was she just accepting a gift from the Life-force or was she taking someone else's money?

What would love do?
As she sat there enjoying her snack, her children were happily playing together She closed her eyes and though about how life was good to her. Her children were happy, she had a delicious snack in pleasant surroundings and she had been given a gift to help her resolve the bill which was due later in the week. The Holy Spirit and her inner master had given her these gifts because they loved her. She was indeed fortunate to have this love in her life.

Her thoughts then drifted to the cashier who had given her the extra money. Did the Holy Spirit love her too? How will she feel when the missing money is discovered? Una then wondered, what would Love do in this situation? If she was Love what would she do? It then became apparent that the missing money would cause a problem for the cashier and Una would just have to find another way of dealing with her bill, later in the week. She had overspent and needed to take responsibility for her error.
As Una left the café she handed back the money that wasn't hers. The cashier was very appreciative and Una felt a sense of achievement because she had worked out how to deal with the situation. She was also uplifted by the love she had just shown the cashier. She had found the way out of the maze of mental questions by asking the simple question, What would Love do?

Is it true, is it necessary, is it kind?
Another way of asking this question is to ask ourselves, is it true, is it necessary, is it kind? For Una's situation her answers could have been as follows:
Is it true? Yes, it is true that I need this money?
Is it necessary? Yes, the money is necessary to pay the bill later in the week.
Is it kind? Yes, it is kind of life to give me this money, or No, it is not kind to the cashier who may have it deducted from her salary.

The fact that it is not kind gets to the answer but the question, What would Love do?, arrives at the answer a lot quicker. If you were Love, that energy which brightens everything it comes in contact with, what would you do? Your intentions would be for the best of everyone in the situation. You would do what is best for all in the long term which means it may be uncomfortable for some people for a while.

Una, did what was best for her in the long term. She would have be responsible for her actions such as overspending but she also received the gift of working closer with the Life-force by asking the question, What would love do?

Wishing you Love's guidance in your life.

*Ed Parkinson

For a few more ideas of what would love do, visit the Spiritual Writings page by clicking here.

Do our busy lives disconnect us from our true selves?

Thought for the week

There are many of us who spend busy lives going from one task to the next. Sometimes the tasks are regular jobs we do every day, some are urgent or even panic jobs. When the jobs are done we look for other distractions such as television, alcohol, sport or some social events. We rarely take time to be with ourselves, to reconnect with our happy peaceful self. Our jobs and tasks in the physical world keep us distracted from our true inner self, Soul.

Our lives are a rush. For some people there is no way of avoiding the amount of things they have to do every day but allowing these tasks to be the sole focus of our lives can damage us, mentally and spiritually. When they become too much, we can develop resentment towards the tasks and those involved with them or towards the people who benefit from our work, such as our family or friends. We can also get the ingrained attitude that the way we do these tasks is the only way, thereby loosing the chance to learn something new or explore new ways of doing things.

Just what our mind can see
This is one of life's lessons, to discover that all these tasks are part of a test to distract us from finding peace within ourselves. Our mind sees these tasks as something we have to do. It is logical as far as the mind is concerned. There is no other way of getting these things done. We have to cram them all into the few hours in the day that we have in our busy lives.

What's happening here is, the mind is stuck in a grove and cannot get out of it. All our tasks have to be done, this is obvious and logical. But this is just what our mind can see. We often feel overwhelmed by our busy lives. At this point we can go into a panic, get sick or collapse with some kind of a breakdown. These are ways our body reacts to the stress and pressure and instigates an end of operations so that it can have time to revive itself.

Need to balance
Some of us are scared to be by ourselves. We are afraid to meet the fears we keep running away from. If we are alone with our thoughts we may be drawn to an unpleasant memory or event from our past which we haven't been able to deal with. It could be something horrid we did or was done to us.

We do have a higher self, Soul, which can see that we need to balance ourselves if we are to survive this onslaught of tasks. We have to take time to allow peace and love into our busy lives. There is no need to allow ourselves to get to the point of collapse.

Two techniques
Here are a few techniques we can use to ease this pressure out of our busy lives.

Ho’oponopono
I love you. I'm Sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.
The Ho’oponopono technique is an act of accepting responsibility. Using this technique, we bring our awareness to a person or issue with whom we have a difficult, painful or troubled relationship. Wrong or right doesn’t matter here. It doesn’t matter which one of us was the abuser or the aggressor. We bring this person or situation to mind and simply say
“I love you. I'm Sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.”

Here's how Wikipedia defines Ho’oponopono: “Hoʻoponopono (ho-o-pono-pono) is an ancient Hawaiian practice of reconciliation and forgiveness. Similar forgiveness practices were performed on islands throughout the South Pacific, including Samoa, Tahiti and New Zealand. Traditionally hoʻoponopono is practised by healing priests or kahuna lapaʻau among family members of a person who is physically ill. Modern versions are performed within the family by a family elder, or by the individual alone.”

HU Song
Another ancient technique is the HU Song. This can ease us into a way of getting in touch with ourselves. Take about ten to twenty minutes to do this. Firstly take a few deep breaths and on your outgoing breath sing the word HU, pronounced like 'hue'. With your eyes closed, watch for lights on your inner screen and listen for sounds or music from within yourself. This can often lead us into a relaxed contemplative state where we may get insights into the stresses in our lives. Click here for more details on the Hu Song technique. 

We can get stressed by our busy lives because our mind dictates it. We need to find out what our heart wants so that we have purpose in our lives. Both of these exercises will help us move closer to our true selves, Soul, which has our best interests at heart. Soul can rise above the mind's mechanical logic allowing us to get a better view of the situations we are in and the people we are involved with. Soul looks at all these with love and kindness and shows us insights while we are in a calm contemplative state.

Hoping you can find the time in your busy life to discover the love and peace of Soul.

*Ed Parkinson

You'll find more insightful thoughts away from our busy lives on the Spiritual Writings page by clicking here.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Our Gift of Life

Thought for the week

Most of us, who have the gift of life, can expect to live past the age of fifty and possibly until we are a hundred years old. When we are young fifty seems a long way off. After we have lived a number of decades time appears to move quickly and we can see the end approaching. For most of us our younger years last the longest. As children we live and play in the moment. We were happier then. We didn’t spend much time dwelling on the past or being concerned about the future. We enjoyed our gift of life there and then. We were more closely connected to our happy playful selves, Soul.

An aspect of this time span of fifty to a hundred years is that there is an end to it. There will come a time when we have to leave this life. It may happen suddenly or gradually but our body eventually gets worn out or gets a disease or fault which causes health complications and our body dies. This event in Soul’s journey is like a graduation where we move on from our lessons here in this physical world into our inner worlds to continue our self discovery. At a later stage in our existence we will probably be given the gift of life back here on the physical world again.

Graduation of a Soul
This graduation of a Soul is often feared by many people simply because we do not have a clear understanding of the fact that we are Soul and we are not just our physical body. We have lessons to learn from the Souls we live, work and play with and they too have lessons to learn from us, no matter how long or short our time together is. This physical world is real while we are living in it, we also have our inner aspects such as our emotions, our memories, our mind and our intuition, which also have their own worlds too. When our physical body is old and worn out we move our consciousness to one of these inner worlds and continue our lives there.

Why are we here?
We often begin to appreciate our gift of life when we are doing something we love or when we are with a Soul who we love. The flow of love through us brightens everything and everyone around us. Love is the essence of life. It is the power which the Divine uses to maintain our worlds and allow them to exist. Love helps us realise that we too are part of this Divine Higher Power. The reason we have been given the gift of life here in this world is to help us discover ourselves as Soul and the love that sustains us.

The many struggles of life will help us learn that the best approach to our situations, challenges, problems and difficulties is through love. When we do things with love and love the things we do, we naturally connect with the happy loving part of ourselves, Soul. With love flowing through our lives we begin to appreciate our gift of life.

Bring back our youth
We can bring back our youthful enjoyment of life by reclaiming our ability to live in the moment. While as adults we may not have our parents available to tend to our needs and we may have a lot more responsibilities, we can still achieve the goal of living in the here and now and thereby gaining more from this gift of life which we are living. When we live in the moment we focus on the here and now, become aware of the reality around us, become less concerned about the past and the future and connect with our true happy selves, Soul.

Take a few moments
Now that we’re at the end of this article, hopefully there will be some realisation within us that life is a gift. Let’s take a few moments just to contemplate on that. Let’s think of our friends, our family, our surroundings, our feelings at this moment. We are blessed to have them in our lives. Take some time and daydream about the loving Souls and blessings we have around us.

May the blessings be

*Ed Parkinson

Click here to go to the Spiritual Writings page where you can read more about our blessings and our gift of life.

Why live in the moment?

Thought for the week

To live in the moment is easier said than done. This becomes apparent when we are confronted with things like bills due next week. How do we remain calm and focused on the moment when someone says they will withdraw their service if we don't pay or we get to the point where we don't have money to buy food? When we get to this point we have a choice of either going into a panic or else releasing it to the Universe, the Lord, the Eck or the Holy Spirit, depending on our beliefs.

If we go into a panic we run around like a headless chicken making rash decisions and mistakes until we stumble across a way out of our current difficulty or at least put off the problem for the moment. If we let the Universe provide us with a solution, we have to be patient. We have to be patient with our mind, which will throw up worries and concerns, and we have to be patient with the Universe to trust that It knows what is best for us. Sometimes the solutions we are presented with may seem more like challenges but if we have the view that the Holy Spirit knows what is best for us and we can learn and grow from the situation, we see the positive side of it all.

Dealing with bills
At this moment in time, there may be a few items which are demanding our attention. One of the ways of dealing with bills is to look at your history of paying them. In the past we have always found a way to pay them. If we can look into the future we can see that these will have been dealt with. This current situation will be resolved and probably forgotten about because when we get to that point in the future we'll have a pile of other items demanding our attention. These attention demanding items continue to spiral into our lives on a constant stream. We are going from one panic, pain or problem to another as we live our lives. Surely there is more to life than this?

When we are dealing with these demanding items we are looking to the future of what may happen if we don’t take care of them or we may be looking to the past where an issue started with regret for the way things happened. The only thing we can deal with is our current reality, now. What is here now is real to us. What is in the past we cannot deal with as we are not there. What is in the future is also out of reach. We may have plans and hopes for how things will be in the future but we are not there now. Now is our only reality. We can only do something now, not in the past and not in the future. Focusing our attention on this moment helps us to move on from the past and diminishes our fear of the future.

Why live in the moment?
Why would we want to live in the moment? There are a number of advantages to living in the here and now.
We become focused on what we are doing and where we are.
This focused attention removes us from the concerns of the future or the past.
We gain a little detachment from our concerns.

By doing things now we can change what happened in the past and what will happen in the future. If we do the best we can with what we have here and now, the Universe will help us towards our goals.

Purpose of life
The whole purpose of life is to distract us from our spiritual side and it does an excellent job. When we get tired of the never ending spiral of panic, pain and problems we then begin a search for some insight and explanation for this whole process we call life. The issues we come across are part of our training to become enlightened and loving Souls. They are all part of a process to get us to realise who and what we are, spiritually. These lessons will eventually teach us that we are part of the Divine, who loves us so much It has given us the freedom to do as we wish in these worlds of time and space. When we eventually get to the point where we begin to let love flow through us, we then begin to get a feel for our own divinity. We can see that love is the power which sustains and maintains our world.

Reasons to live in the moment
Here are a few reasons to live in the moment. When we live in the moment we can:
Focus on the here and now
Grasp the true reality around us
Move on from the past
Be less apprehensive of the future
Connect with our inner spiritual side

HU Song
The HU Song is an easy technique to help us connect with the here and now. It helps us connect with our true happy, loving selves, Soul, which constantly lives in the moment. Using the HU Song we can re-establish our connection with our spiritual side and begin to live in the moment. Click here for instructions on how to use the HU Song.

Wishing you love, joy and insights as you live in the moment.

*Ed Parkinson

If you’d like more information and insights to help you live n the moment, you’ll find more articles on the Spiritual Writings page by clicking here.

Give Love, it’s the next step in our lives

Thought for the week

Can we give love that allows people to be as they are? Can we put away our opinions about how they should be dressed or how they act? Can we accept them as they are and look for the love, insights or lessons they bring us?

While our upbringing may have taught us to expect people to dress, behave and interact in certain ways, we need to recognise that these expectations are required by our society so that we conform to the rules of the place where we live. Others have been brought up in different families and regions and have a different approach to how they live their lives.

Blessings in our life
If we can see these Souls in our lives as a blessing whether they are friends, family, work mates, people on the street, difficult people, etc. we will have a happier outlook on our lives. Life, the Universe, God or whatever you like to call It, has placed all these Souls in our life so we can learn from them. They are the blessings in our life. Some of them may not seem like blessings now but after we have come through our experiences with them, we should be able to look back and see how we have learned something through our involvement with them.

Compassion, understanding and sympathy for a person’s position is another way of giving love. Looking at people with kindness and the understanding that they have a number of challenges and difficulties in their lives, whether they are rich or poor, employed or not, from a foreign region or our home. If we are here on this Earth plane, we are going to have difficulties. This is the University of Life and we are all here to learn something and whatever that is will bring difficulties and pain into our lives until we learn it. Then we move on to something else to learn.

We travel our individual path
Why are we on this merry go round of lessons, difficulties and pain? The simple answer is Love. The Life force, Allah, the Holy Spirit or whatever name you give the Divine, has given us the liberty of making as many mistakes as we wish while we travel our individual path to discovering this Love. It has given us this freedom so we can discover for ourselves that giving love is the best way of treating and interacting with the many Souls in our lives. Many of us get lost in the many passions of the mind in our pursuit for this Divine Love. We have been on many twisted roads but we do find our way eventually when we start to give love.

How to give love
Here are a few suggestions on how to give love:
Look with Love – look at others with a compassionate heart. Let’s try to see the difficulties others have in their lives. We don’t have to say anything but our loving understanding will help them a little.

Be kind - can we help someone? The person stretching for something out of reach. Can we help them get it?
The driver trying to move into the lane of traffic in front of us. Can we let them in?

Say ‘Thank You’ – there are many people in our lives who have helped us. It is nice to be thanked. They will value our appreciation. It helps acknowledge their input and adds value to their lives.

Listening – take the time to listen to someone and their plight, the issue they have at the moment or their joy and celebration of an event. Let’s take time to try and understand a person and their point of view. Listening with love brings us closer to people and brings us friends.

Forgiveness – holding a grudge is like holding on to a hot coal. We burn ourselves and we get dirty. We all make mistakes as we go through life. That’s how we learn. We have to allow others room to make their mistakes. We may have suffered as a result of the mistakes of others but let’s move on. Let’s focus on improving ourselves and not on the errors of others. There are many people we can forgive especially in our family. We may be nurturing long term wounds which may have been there for so long we have forgotten their origin. We can detect these by our attitude. If we dislike or fear a person in anyway, there is probably an issue between us. If we give love by understanding their circumstances and the reason for their behaviour we will be able to move on. We clean the lump of dirty coal out of our life and continue on our path a little lighter.

Give a compliment – recognising a job well done, the effort a person makes, the beauty of a thing, place or person and saying it to those responsible is a way to give love. A compliment lifts their spirits and shows them an appreciation for their efforts.

Leave it better – another way we can give love is to leave a place better than the way we found it. Can we leave a place cleaner? Can we add a little detail to make it better? Can we fix something? Doing little acts of kindness all help to give love to those around us. We may not know who will be affected by our efforts but by leaving a place better than we found it, is a way to make life a little easier for others.

Be the best we can be – we can give love to everything we do. If we do it to the best of our abilities there will be love in it. While people may not seem to appreciate all our efforts outwardly, on a subconscious or inner level they can feel the positive effects of our work.

So let’s give Love. It’s the way we become happier and give happiness to others. Love is what life is all about. It’s the next step in our lives.

Wishing you love in your life.


*Ed Parkinson

If you’d like to discover other ways to give love be sure to visit the Spiritual Writings page by clicking here.

Let’s Love Ourselves

Thought for the week

“Let’s love ourselves” may sound like a silly remark but it is something we need to do in order to live a happier life. 
If we don’t love the one we know intimately, the one we are closest to, how can we really love anyone else?

In order to have love in our lives we must first learn to love ourselves. Many of us have been taught that we are unworthy, we are sinners, we are an inconvenience to others or we are unwanted and undeserving of attention and love. These kinds of background feelings have a serious effect on our lives. Any of these feelings will stop the flow of love in our lives. We need to check the reality of this thinking and adjust it to a more positive attitude to ourselves and our life.

Unworthy becomes worthy
We are an individual Soul, created by the Divine. If the Higher Power sees us as worthy of existence, there must be something worthwhile within us. If the Divine can love us enough to give us life, how can other people’s opinions which say the opposite be true? Surely Its divine plan is perfect and anything we or anyone else can come up with is going to be incomplete and faulty. If the Divine thinks we are worthy enough to exist, then there must be something worthwhile we can do and be. We just need to find that purpose.

Sinners to saints
Some religions teach that we are sinners, born with a flaw, an original sin. We are really born into ignorance and we have to educate ourselves out of the darkness and into the light. We do this by learning from others but mainly we learn by living our lives. We make mistakes and we learn to correct them. We are constantly improving our awareness of our selves and how we work. We are moving from the dark into the light. We may have been considered sinners by others but we have the potential to be saints.

An inconvenience to a blessing
How often have we considered something or someone in our lives as an inconvenience or an intrusion? They upset the way things are, so we now have to adjust ourselves to accommodate them. After a while, it could be weeks, months or years, we begin to see the benefit of having them in our lives. The same can be true of ourselves. We too can change from what others consider an inconvenience to a blessing. For us to achieve that we must be able to give something, be a benefit or be of some use to them. The easiest way of being a blessing is to give love to them or do things with love for them.

Unwanted to cherished
We may feel unwanted and unloved in many areas of life. It may have been as a child, in school, in work, in our family, or in our community. This is not because of a problem with us but more likely a problem with the behaviour or attitude of others. We know that deep down within ourselves we are good, decent and lovable. Love is the key to changing peoples attitudes, including our own.

Respecting our body
Respecting our body is another part of loving ourselves. Looking after it so we can use it efficiently and get the most from it does require care and attention. If we eat stuff or do things that don’t help our health, our body can get ill. We now have to find a way of getting better. Sometimes we do that by taking some medicines which will clear up the symptoms but if we are able to find the source of the illness and deal with it, we will then have a better and a long term solution.

Forgive ourselves
We may need to forgive ourselves for the things we have done. We may have made mistakes in the past but that is part of life. It is the way we learn things. We try something, we do it a particular way and we later discover it is the wrong way. Our mistakes can vary from making a mess of a meal to wrecking a whole family’s relationship. Recognising our error is the first step. The next step is to correct it. This may take a small adjustment or years of work, depending on the damage created by the mistake. By attempting to undo our error we have good reason to forgive ourselves and love ourselves. We made a mistake but we are doing our best to correct it.

Be good to ourselves
We must be good to ourselves. We must look after ourselves both physically and mentally. We are the one in charge of and responsible for our body, our mental attitude and our inner state of peace and contentment.

The purpose of our life
To find the purpose of our life we need to find what we love to do. When we do what we love, the results are lovely. We pay attention to the details, we do the best we can and we give it a positive feeling. Others see this aura of love usually on a subconscious level. The things which are done with love look nice, taste better, feel good, sound pleasant, smell great and give a feeling of kindness and love. We come across these every day but rarely see them as gifts of love. We see them as something nice or good. The love in them is noticed by our intuitive or subconscious level.

Giving love to others and doing things with love will naturally lead to seeing ourselves with more love. As we put love into the things we do and give love to the Souls in our lives, we discover that there is more love in our lives and more reasons to love ourselves.

Love is the key, love is our purpose, love is the reason we are here. Let’s use this love in our lives and discover more love for ourselves.

Wishing you love in your life.

*Ed Parkinson

Looking for more articles on love and ways to love ourselves? Click here to go to the Spiritual Writings page.

Our Journey through Life

Thought for the week

Our journey through life is our education. We are learning how to live, how to survive and be responsible for ourselves. We are learning how to work with the other Souls we come across throughout the course of our lives. These Souls are in our family, at school, at work, in our neighbourhood, and interacting with us on a regular basis. These Souls are also on their journey to discover themselves.

When we go on a journey it is usually to a particular destination but as far our true happy selves, Soul, is concerned we are here now, at our destination. Where we are now is the destination we aimed towards a few hours, days, weeks, months or years ago. We are here now. When we connect with our higher selves, Soul, we are in the moment. From Soul’s viewpoint we are at our destination.

How do we make our journey easier?
We need to be aware that this life is temporary, our physical body will die at some time. We are more than our physical body. We have our thoughts, emotions, memories, intuitive selves and Soul, our everlasting happy selves.

Saying or reading these things is fine but how do we actually get them to be part of us so that they can help us deal with life? These concepts or truths take time to be realised and accepted by our consciousness. While reading them we may agree with them and go along with the logic but living life with these principles does take time. We have to engage with life with these ideas in mind.

For example, the next time we hear of someone dying our thoughts around them could be:
Where are they now?
As Soul they still live and have now moved into the heavenly worlds within.
Will I see them in my dreams?
If we are close to a person who has died, they will often come to us in a dream to say goodbye or reassure us that they are in a happier place.
Have they met their friends who have died before them?
Life does continue within. The places we go to in our dreams and imagination are part of our new reality when we die.

As another example, when we get into a disagreement with another person, our thinking could be:
While this is a problem now, it will be forgotten in a week, a month or a year’s time.
This problem is a way of connecting with this Soul and we both can learn something.
What can this difficulty teach me?
How can I learn form this? Life presents us with challenges so we can learn from them. Our difficulties are not punishment, they are education.

Soul only sees this moment, now. It, or us, is happy now, with the position we are in regardless of whether that position is pleasant or difficult. Our physical world is just for us to gain experiences and learn about being Soul. The main reason we are here in the physical world is to realise that we are Soul. We are a higher being, a lot more than just our physical or mental abilities.

Soul has its being in an environment of love. It sees things with love. One of the ways of making life easier for ourselves is to let love flow through our lives. By looking for love in our lives we begin to see the benefits of the challenges we face.

Contemplation
As Soul we are wise and insightful. As a physical being we are lost and confused. By making a connection with Soul on a regular basis through contemplation we begin to tap into Souls wisdom. It has the map of our journey and can help us find our way through life. If we can spend some time each day in contemplation we will begin to gain insights into the situations and circumstances of our lives. Contemplation gives us the chance to connect with our inner self Soul. After a while we begin to catch glimpses of Soul’s view of our lives. From Its view it can see the whole picture of our lives and our journey. Making this connection with Soul will help make our lives a little easier.

Wishing you a journey of insight and love.

*Ed Parkinson

If you’d like to explore more articles about your journey through life, visit the Spiritual Writings page by clicking here.

What is inner peace and how do we get it?

Thought for the week

Inner peace is something we are constantly searching for whether we know it or not. We have an inbuilt desire to seek happiness or peace within ourselves. Many of us go to great lengths to achieve this state. There are lots of us who have gone into the mountains, back to nature or into religious orders. More of us seek it in drink or drugs where we can get an escape into the seemingly happier world they promise, even if it is only for a few hours. We can also find a little peace by involving ourselves completely in eating, sex or work. All of these activities can bring a measure of inner peace for a while but there is generally a major price to pay such as isolation, hangovers, depression, health problems and relationship issues.

Our inner make up
Let’s look at our inner make up to see if we can get a better understanding of our dilemma. We are complex creatures with the following elements:
A physical body
A complete range of emotions
A memory of events from this life and beyond
A mind which helps us survive with its logical reasoning
A subtle intuition or subconscious
Soul, the soft, loving voice deep within us.

Our physical Body is all about action. It is doing something all the time except when we are asleep or resting. The body is a tool we use to get things done, have experiences with it and interact with our world and the other Souls by using it.

Our mind is all about thinking, analysis and making choices. It acts on our emotions and memories. It takes the information it remembers about a situation along with the emotions attached to it, analyses it all and makes a choice as to what action we should take. It is the driver of the physical body. The body responds to whatever choices the mind makes.

Soul, our true self, is being here and now, is knowing and seeing. Soul lives in the now, in this moment. It is not available in the past or the future. We can only be Soul now. Soul knows things now. When It is presented with a situation the solutions necessary become available. We as Soul know the right course of action for us. As Soul we are observers of our experiences and lives in the worlds of time and space. While it offers its abundant knowledge and Its higher vision to us, it is often defeated by the mind as illogical and impossible.

The challenge
The mind has difficulty grasping the subtle presence of Soul and involving it in its logical analysis and decision making. Because Soul’s wisdom is presented in the moment, unless it is accepted by our mind in that moment, we loose it. It usually happens like this: We come across a situation in our lives which needs a solution. Soul presents us with Its wisdom. This usually arrives as an intuition, a vision or a feeling to do something. The mind takes this idea, analyses it, compares it to previous solutions, looks at the options, makes its choice and puts the body into action.

The challenge for us, the whole being, including Soul, the mind and the body, is that the mind generally controls most of our decisions. It takes the wisdom from Soul and if it doesn’t make logical sense, discards it. By allowing our mind to run our lives like this we are loosing the wisdom of Soul. It is automatically eliminated by the mind.

Three challenges
We have three challenges to overcome in our search for inner peace.
1 - Soul’s messages and wisdom are presented to us in a soft loving voice which is easily drowned out by the noisy logical decisions of the mind.
2 - We need to educate the mind about Soul and its wisdom and how to avail of it.
3- We also have the challenge that the mind can perceive that it will loose its power to some extent if it has to take into consideration the illogical ideas coming from Soul.

A loving inner peace
If Soul can take control of the mind and the body It will bring a loving inner peace and understanding to our lives. Using this statement we can see logically how our life will be improved by Soul’s wisdom. But how do we uncover the enlightenment from Soul? It is quite simple but it does take time…

We need to spend time in contemplation on a regular basis so we can make contact with Soul and find ways of getting the mind to listen to Soul and accept its ideas and wisdom. Soul is happy and at peace with itself and if we can connect to Soul we will naturally gain some of that peace. Over time, by contemplating on a regular basis we build our connection between Soul and mind. Then our understanding, insights and wisdom will develop with the result of bringing inner peace into our world.

A simple way to contemplate
Here’s a simple way to contemplate. Sit or lie down in a comfortable position. With your eyes closed take a few deep breaths and relax. After three or four breaths begin singing the word HU on your outgoing breath. It’s pronounced like the word ‘hue’ meaning colour. As you are breathing and singing with your eyes closed, watch for lights on your inner screen. The may appear as glows, stars, sparkles, and sometimes as flashes. Just observe them.

At the same time we can listen to the sounds around us. They may be local or distant, but lets just listen to them individually and then move on to listening to the next. When we’ve listened to all the outer sounds we can turn our attention to any inner sounds we can hear. We may hear sounds which resemble running water, jet engines, electronic sounds, a flute, an orchestra or bees buzzing. Depending on where our attention is these sounds can change. We can all hear these inner sounds but it does take a little effort to listen for them.

As we listen to these sounds and watch the inner lights and sing HU, a scene may develop in our minds eye. If it is of interest and of a positive nature, go with it and observe it. If it is negative, return your focus to singing, watching the inner lights and listening to the inner sounds. This is how we begin to reconnect with our true self, Soul. The HU song is from the Soul level and will help us link up to it. The inner light and inner sound is how the Holy Spirit or Higher Power communicates with us. Using this combination during our contemplation exercises we will begin to open a connection with Soul and link into its natural inner peace.

It just takes time and our own discipline. A regular contemplation will help us find the inner peace we seek every day.

Wishing you love and inner peace.

*Ed Parkinson

For more wisdom on inner peace visit the Spiritual Writings page by clicking here.

Positive Difficulties

Thought for the week

Seeing difficulties in a positive light can be a challenge, especially when we are in the middle of them. Being able to see the positive side of a problem can take time and the ability to be able to look at it from a distance, where we are not so emotionally involved.

Two opposite views
When we look at an event one way, it can seem positive but from another viewpoint it can seem negative. Let’s take going to school as an example. As a teenage child, school can seem to be an annoyance or intrusion into our lives. We have more important things to do, like trying things out with our friends, developing relationships and exploring our world. As a more mature person in our twenties, we can see how our basic education taught us the skills we now use in our work. This allows us to earn a reasonable wage so we can pay for the things we need and want in our lives. There we have two opposite views of a period in the life of the same person.

Is it possible that we have something similar going on in our lives at the moment where we consider our current circumstances as negative or difficult? Will we look back on this in a few years and see the positive side of the situation and the benefits we have received from it? What benefits or skills can we gain from our present difficulties? It might be worthwhile to stop reading this for a moment and think about that. “What positive outcomes can come from my present difficulties?” Let’s think about that.

Difficulties or growth
If we look back on our lives, what do we see? Is it a life of difficulties or a life of growth from one situation to another? The answer depends on our attitude and how we are feeling at the moment. If we are going through difficulties we may only see that our life has been difficult. If we are in a positive frame of mind, we may see the benefits of all the events in our life and how they have helped us.

How can we get to see our lives from a balanced or neutral point of view, a view where we can see our life and situation from an objective, unbiased viewpoint? When we look at our life from a neutral point of view, how does it look? The key to achieving this point of view is our attitude. If we look at the events of our lives as problems and challenges, that is all we will be able to see. However, if we look at our lives as a process of learning with the understanding that our difficulties will teach us something, we have a better chance of turning the problems into positives.

Difficulties as development
Here’s a simple exercise we can try and over time it can help change our attitude about our lives to the point where we can see the difficulties as a development of a positive aspect in our lives. Let’s get into a comfortable position. Take a few deep breaths. Within ourselves, ask the question “Please show me the reason or lessons in the difficulties in my life.” Ask this of whatever or whoever you feel can provide your answer. It could be the Universe, the Higher Power, your inner guide, an angel, the Holy Spirit, Jesus, Mohammad, Krishna, Buddha, etc. On your outgoing breath sing Hu as a long drawn out word.

Do this for about fifteen to twenty minutes. This will probably take practice to work. It may produce results the first time but if we do it on a daily basis it will help us get a better understanding of the events in our life. This can help make life a little easier as we gains insights from our inner vision about our outer problems.

Wishing you the skill of seeing your difficulties as a positive part of your life.

*Ed Parkinson

If you’d like to read more about turning you difficulties into positives, click here to go to the Spiritual Writings page.

The Mind Boggles

Thought for the week

"The mind boggles to think about the billions of Souls in the world and how God can keep track of them. People who commit crimes, murder, steal and the likes of dictators, how are they dealt with? I'd like to think they faced some justice or went to hell." said a ninety year old to me recently.

My understanding, I suggested to him, was that all of us Souls are here to learn about life and how to live it. If we are ignorant of the laws of life, we will break them without considering the consequences because we do not realise that we have to pay for everything we take or do. It is only by going through the process that we learn. When we return in another life we are often subjected to the crimes we committed in a previous life. This is what is known as karma. We reap what we sow and we learn by our mistakes.

Soul has lessons to learn
The fact of reincarnation and karma helps to explain the different circumstances we are all born into. Some Souls have very tough lives while others seem to have an easy existence. However each Soul has lessons to learn. The Soul with the comfortable lifestyle may have major emotional issues to deal with. The Soul with the tough physical life may have a positive outlook on his circumstances and be content to be where he is. We are all learning something. If we are in living in this physical world, we have something to learn.

Boggled by a billion
The mind boggles easily at the thought of maintaining the karmic records of billions of Souls. Most of us have trouble grasping what a hundred people looks like. Let's see if we can put it into perspective.
100 people = 2 bus loads
1,000 = a small town or 20 bus loads.
10,000 = a medium size town.
100,000 = A large sports stadium filled to capacity.
1,000,000 (million) = a small city- Dublin, Ireland; Birmingham, UK; Dallas or San Diego, USA; Adelaide, Australia.
10,000,000 = a large city- New York, USA; Istanbul, Turkey; São Paulo, Brazil; Moscow, Russia.
100,000,000 = the population of Mexico; the Philippines; the combined populations of California, Texas, New York and Florida in the USA.
1,000,000,000 (billion) = the population of China (1.3b); India (1.2b).

Now we have some idea of what a billion looks like. Would we be able to remember the names of a billion people if we were given a list of them? I doubt it. I’m not sure where your mind begins to get boggled but after 100,000 my mind boggles and it is well boggled by a billion. The world population is currently (2011) 7 billion.

The point here is that our mind isn't up to the task of handling these numbers. So how does the Universe or the Higher Power do it? We must remember the Higher Power works above the Soul plane where we as Soul have our being. On the Soul plane the time is now. There is no past and no future. We access the experience we need by being there. We perceive an idea and we are there. We as Soul can access any event, deed, skill, wisdom or insight from any part of our existence in the worlds of time and space.

Asking ourselves questions
To get to this point of awareness we need to be asking ourselves questions like, what is life about, why am I here, where are we all going? These questions lead us to an increased awareness of our inner selves and to explore the spiritual purpose of our lives. When we get to this point we are above the mind boggles and confusions. We realise that we are the ones who retain the complete record of our lives. We as Soul can access any element of ourselves and the many experiences we have had in our lives.

The key to happiness
If your mind boggles at the though of this stuff, don’t worry. It’s not something we need to know about to make progress towards a happier life. The key to happiness is love. Divine love, the love with no strings attached, which is given without expectation of reward or return.

Whether you are nine, nineteen or ninety here’s an exercise which will help unboggle your mind and bring a little peace to your life. It is a simple way of connecting with our true happy self, Soul, and bringing some of Its peaceful, loving and happy nature into our lives.

Take a few deep breaths, relax and think of something or someone you love. On your outgoing breath sing Hu (pronounce like the word “hue” as in colour). Sing it about six times, rest for a few breaths and sing it again. Do this for ten to twenty minutes each day and you’ll find a little more love and happiness slowly coming into your life. You may also find answers coming to mind more easily as your mind boggles less and less.

Wishing you love in your life, your mind and Soul.

*Ed Parkinson

If the mind boggles at this article, have look over the Spiritual Writings page for some simpler thoughts by clicking here.

Switch on to your Dream Channel

Thought for the week

Our attitude to our night dreams can often be dismissive. We view them like a random bit of television we happened to come across as we flicked between channels. It is like our dreams are a bit of TV watched in between our daily lives. Looking at dreams like this means we loose a lot of the value in the messages they are presenting us with.

We have to make an effort to understand our dreams to get value from them. Here’s a basic overview of the dream process.
We go through our daily lives interacting with our family, friends, work mates, colleagues, environment, daily tasks, emotions, thoughts and everything else we come across every day. At night we take time to rest our body so it can regain its strength. This sleeping time also gives us the opportunity to reconnect with our inner selves as we move the focus of our attention from our outer lives to our inner.

The world of our imagination
As we drift into our inner selves our body shuts down to the point where the minimum of functions are maintained. Our outer memory also closes down as we know what we are about to go through and witness doesn’t operate to the same rules as our physical world, so we suspend our physical memory. However our hopes, fears, anxieties, activities, situations, issues, problems, challenges and projects from our outer world continue to cling to us. They all influence what happens next as we drift away from our physical world.

We are now in the world of our imagination where everything is possible. Our direction will be influenced by the dominant thoughts, emotions and concerns of our physical world. If we are anxious about something in life we will generally spend time focused on that subject. This usually results in an uncomfortable night’s sleep where we are tossing and turning during the night.

Our dream channel
If we are not focused on the issues of life as we drift into our dream channel, we have a greater choice of destinations to explore. We are now like the producer of our own television station with lots of programmes to explore and enjoy. These programmes contain things like emotions, memories, thoughts, challenges, friends, family, insights, inventions, poetry, writings, images, and the great expanse of our imagination. Anything is possible in our dream channel.

Each of these programmes or aspects of ourselves can take on a form we can interact with. Our emotions may become people or objects which we now have to negotiate with in order to progress on to where we want to go. Our thoughts can become a reality where we can explore the possibilities of dealing with them as if they were physical objects such as balloons, blocks or modelling clay. Our memories can come alive and we can return to an event to replay it and possibly change it so that we can correct an error or move on in a different direction.

Look at things from a different angle
When all these elements of ourselves take on a different form to the reality we are used to dealing with in our outer lives our mind becomes confused. It is not logical that our emotions take on the form of a person, it is impossible to be able to interact with our thoughts like a jigsaw or a set of building blocks. Our dream channel is not logical as far as our physical mind is concerned. We tend to dismiss the events we have been through in our dreams as irrelevant or illogical. We ignore them just like we do a TV program we cannot understand. As we wake in the morning and switch on our physical life, we tend to dismiss where we have been as of no consequence to our outer life. We switch on our physical life and switch off our dream channel.

While we dream we are interacting with many aspects of our lives by using different techniques. For example, an emotion of anger may flare up in our lives on a regular basis. In our dreams we may be able to look at this emotion from a different angle. We could see it as a red and black ball of burning coal. As we look at it, something pokes it and it flares up. It may burn us or others nearby. We can see what causes the flare up and try and deal with it. If we manage to solve an issue in our dreams we may find that when we are confronted with that issue in our outer life, it can seem easy to deal with and we easily work our way around it by instinctively using the technique we learned in our dreams.

Make better use of our dreams
So how can we make better use of our dreams? How do we tap into the wisdom in our dreams and use it in a conscious manner in our outer lives? How do we switch on our dream channel?

With a little practice we can begin accessing the insights and benefits from our inner world. Keeping a dream journal is a great help. By writing our dreams down we are making the first step of bringing them into our outer life. While they may not make sense in the beginning after a number of months we will begin to see some patterns in them and be able to relate them to events in our outer lives.

Half asleep and half awake
Remembering dreams can be a challenge. When we wake up we can very quickly switch into our physical world and switch off our dream channel. One way of overcoming this is to spend some time half asleep and half awake as we begin to wake up. We don’t jump out of bed immediately. Let’s take some time to ease back into the physical world. While we are drifting between the outer and inner, we can revisit some of our dreams and then commit them to our outer memory. We drift back and forth until we have a reasonable grasp of the dreams and have placed them into our memory. Then, still staying in bed, we write down the dream in our journal. By staying in bed we are maintaining the connection with the inner as much as possible. If we forget a detail we can drift back to sleep or begin wondering about it and possible recall it.

In our dreams we can find insights into the situations and challenges in our lives. We can ask for guidance and be shown the reasons some things are the way they are. We can solve problems, learn things and explore areas of interest. With practice we can select programmes of particular interest to us on our dream channel. Keeping a journal of our dreams and a note of how they may relate to something in our outer life, can help us

Switch on your dream channel, it can help you switch on your life.

*Ed Parkinson

If you want to explore more about your dream channel, click here to go to the Spiritual Writings page.

How to get love in life

Thought for the week

How to get love in life is one of our deepest desires. There are millions of ads in thousands of papers and dating websites of people looking for love. Most are looking for the perfect partner who will love them for what they are, no questions asked. How do we bring love into our lives, what’s the secret?

Give a little service
We can help ourselves a great deal by being of service to others. When we give a little service, we are giving a little love. Love is an energy or force which works when it flows through us. If we can add an attitude of positive or good intentions to what we do, we will add a little love to the deed and get more love in life.

Whatever we do, if we can do it with a little love we will benefit ourselves and those around us. How does this work? Have you ever noticed how nice it is to be served by someone in a shop or restaurant that enjoys their work? They may have an interest in the product they sell, they may just enjoy chatting to people, and they may have an enthusiasm for their service or a willingness to help. Their positive attitude makes our experience with them a pleasant one. We enjoy the interaction with them. We are touched by the love they have for what they are doing.

Between one Soul and another
Life often places us in positions where we have the opportunity of being of service to others and to get love in life. This could be with family, friends or strangers. For example:
When shopping in a supermarket, I’ve often been asked, by people who are not as tall as I am, to reach for a package on a top shelf, which is out of their reach. When I hand them the package, they thank me and smile and wish me well. I feel grateful for their kind words and thanks. I feel a little loved by them, even if it is only for a few moments. They feel a similar degree of love from the tall stranger who helped them get what they needed. There is a glow of love in both the person being of service and the person receiving the service. Both get the benefit of the love flowing between them.

This is how our simple interactions with each other, between one Soul and another, bring love into our lives. It is like a song. We hear it we sing along, someone else hears it, they sing along and so it spreads or flows from one to another.

Start a little tune
It all starts with us. If we can put a little love in life by sharing our interests, our enthusiasm, our positive comments, our actions and enjoy whatever we do, we’ll let a little love flow into our lives and the lives of those around us. We start a little tune which others pick up and add their own melody to it. The little song of love finds its way from person to person.

While being of service to people we may not get the partner we dream of but it will help bring love into our life. With this glow of love coming from us, we will be more attractive. People want and need love, they are attracted to people who have love in their lives. We do become more attractive by doing things with love. Becoming more loveable is a natural by-product of giving service with love.

Wishing you love in life.

*Ed Parkinson

To read more about love in life be sure to browse through the articles on the Spiritual Writings page by clicking here.

We’re Not Alone

Thought for the week

We’re not alone but there are times in our lives where we can feel like we are completely alone. Times when it seems no one can help us. These periods are often referred to as the dark night of Soul, when it appears we are lost in a valley of complete darkness and it requires a massive struggle to get out of it.

At these times it is hard to see that we’re not alone. However when we do get through this valley of darkness we can see how we were being helped as we went through our difficulties. These periods of darkness are part of our development.

We are constantly striving to be happy and content. We are searching for our place in life, an understanding of our purpose and where we are going. To break this down to our most basic need - we are looking for love and being in a loving place. We have several elements within ourselves which need to operate in a positive and loving manner. Our goal is love, so we need to use love as the basis of all our actions, thoughts and reactions.

Take Responsibility
To get to this loving place requires us to take responsibility for everything in our lives. We should to be able to survive physically, we have to be able to control our emotions, we need to be careful of the memories we choose to dwell on, we have to develop a positive loving attitude and we should become more aware of our intuition and what it is telling us.

That Is a lot of things we have to develop and trying to achieve them all at once can be difficult. We can continue our life as ‘normal’, whatever ‘normal’ means to us, and we will eventually stumble across each of these skills and develop them. However if we are unaware of our purpose and the goal of reaching that happy and loving place we can get diverted along the way. This means that living our lives as ‘normal’ could mean it will take a long time for us to develop these skills.

State of Love
However, if we have the goal of reaching this state of love, we have a much better chance of getting there than if our goal is having a ‘normal’ life. It now depends on the path we take, the teacher we learn from, and the quality of their guidance.

We have many aspects of ourselves which need to be developed. We have spent many lifetimes trying out ways of doing things or getting what we wanted. The use of force, power, anger, greed and attachment got some results and probably got us to the goal we are aiming for. But when we arrived there the joy of the achievement soon wore off and the uncomfortable unhappiness returned. We had achieved a goal in our physical world in the belief that by doing so it would satisfy the inner unhappiness we felt all along.

Love is the light
When we begin to realise that our inner happiness is not linked to what we have physically but what we posses within ourselves, then we will begin to make progress to finding our way to the loving place we seek. When we decide to go along the path of love, we discover that we are down deep in a dark valley which our former actions, attitudes and beliefs have lead us into. We now have to find our way out. Love is the light which helps us find our way.

One of the reasons we stumble on our way out of the valley of darkness, is because we come across the methods we used to use in the past and are often tempted to try them again. We now know our goal is love but the methods we are using belong to our previous physically focused goals. We now have to use the loving techniques, suggested to us by our intuition and our inner guide or angel.

We have to be brave enough to go through the pain of moving out of our familiar ways into something new and brighter. It is always a struggle to get up a mountain. It is not something that happens quickly. We have to take one step after another so that we climb out of the valley into the light.

We’re Not Alone
During this period we’re not alone but we are often looking in the wrong direction. The challenge for us is being able to change from the methods of power, our old ways, to our new method of using love as the reason for all that we do. We will get guidance from our inner guide or our intuition via such things as:
Coincidences or a series of happy accidents,
A few words or a headline in the media which seems special to us,
Insights and messages from our Dreams
A feeling or knowing about the right way to do something,
Being lead to a person, specialist, doctor or friend who can assist us,

These are all the ways the Life-force, our inner guide or the Holy Spirit, uses to communicate with us. There messages are there all the time, we’re not alone. We just need to heighten our awareness to see them and when we see them we need the wisdom to be able to act on the advice given. If we don’t get the message correctly this can often extend our time in the darkness.

The good news is we will get out of the valley of darkness at some point. Each day we live, each action we perform, each challenge we overcome helps us move a step higher up the mountain. We are progressing all the time. The big change comes when we realise that the whole reason for our existence is love, to realise it, to use and to be in it. Then we begin to make major progress up the mountain. We can now see the light at the top of the mountain and we know where we are going.

One of the easy to use techniques to help us get closer to understanding this love from the Life-force is the HU Song. Click here to visit an explanation of it and how to use.

Wishing you love in all aspects of your life.

*Ed Parkinson

If you like this article, We’re Not Alone, click here to read more on the Spiritual Writings page.

Are we lost in life?

Thought for the week

Many of us are lost in life and are trying to get through it. We have very busy lives, working, travelling, looking after our families and trying to survive. Our attention is constantly focused on our outer physical life. We rarely take time to focus on our inner or spiritual life. By not making this connection at some point in our day, we miss linking up with the source of our happiness.

This imbalance of our attention causes us to believe that the only true really is the outer world. We can no longer see our inner selves. We have lost touch with our inner world and we’re lost in life, in the outer physical life.

A typical day may go like this:
Coming out of sleep, we review a dream we just had and then move our consciousness towards the time of the day to see if we can sleep a little longer or get up.
Getting out of bed, dressing, washing, eating breakfast, tending to children, pets and spouses.
Moving or travelling towards our chores, situations, work, school or activities.
For the rest of the morning we are focused on our regular work or activity, doing what we need to do to maintain ourselves, our family and / or our household.
We may take a break for food at lunch time, get to talk to people and interact with them.
Then we’re back to our afternoon work or activities.
We then move to or get transport to our home for an evening meal.
We arrange our food, cook it and eat it.
We then spend time resting, watching TV, reading, talking, doing chores.
We eventually get back to sleep to rest and dream and leave our body to rest.

When we look at our lives like this, it seems to come down to:
Wake, eat, work, eat, work, eat, rest and sleep.

What our lives are all about
Is that what our lives are all about? Sleeping, working and eating? Are we working so we can eat and sleep? Are we on a treadmill repeating our days, our weeks, our months and our years? Where are we going? What is life all about? If we don’t have good answers to these questions, we are probably lost in life.

These questions can lead us to examine what we do and why we do it. Depending on our answers we may believe that we seem to be living a pointless life. Not a pleasant idea but if that idea helps us move to a more fulfilled life, a life of value and worth to us and those around us, then we have moved into a better place. We needed to go through this unpleasant area of doubts and questions to move into the happier place.

This realisation requires us to spend some time considering the questions of what life is all about. We have begun to move our focus to within ourselves. While we may get some insights into our inner selves through these questions, if we don’t continue to reflect within ourselves regularly, we quickly lose the gems of wisdom we uncover as we get lost in life again.

There are a number of ways we can find these valuable jewels and insights from our inner worlds. By paying attention to our dreams, nudges, intuition, feelings and insightful thoughts we begin to uncover the treasures within, which we have been walking past every day as we focus on our outer physical life.

We can value our inner lives by spending time focused on our inner selves through contemplation, meditation, daydreaming, wondering about things and exploring our thoughts.

What is the purpose of life? 
If we have been lost in life for a while we can consider some of the basic human questions to help us put some attention on our inner selves. Here is a list of questions you can consider:
Why are we here?
What is the meaning of life?
What's it all about?
Who are we?
What is the nature of reality?
What is the reason to live?
What is the purpose of life?

Why has the Higher Power given us life?
For some of us these questions can send us into a confused daze. We may get a bit of an answer to one but that raises other questions or contradicts a previous answer. The easy way of getting through these questions is to look for the love in them. If we think about any of the questions with the preface “If someone, (the Holy Spirit, the Higher Power, God, Sugmad, Allah, the Creator or whatever name you wish to use) loved me and put me in this position in my life, why am I here?” Here’s how we could rephrase some of the questions above:
“If I am loved why am I here?”
“Why would someone who loved me put me here?”
“Why has the Creator who loves us all put us in this life?”
“Why has the Higher Power given us life?”

The answers to these questions compared to the original list above will give us more positive and loving answers. The answers will also be closer to the real reason for our existence because the Higher Power is love, and It created us and our lives out of love. So when we are looking at something with love, we are getting closer to the Creator and Its way of looking at things. By using love as a basis for our questions we are using the same approach as the Creator and our answers will be coming from closer to the source.

After we’ve asked these questions with love and contemplated on the answers we receive within ourselves, we’ll discover that the answer is Love, Divine Love and Its Love for us. We’ll no longer be lost in life but living in life with love.

Wishing you Love, always Love.

*Ed Parkinson

If you are still a little lost in life, you may find some answers on the Spiritual Writings page by clicking here.

Happy thoughts

Thought for the week

10 ways to happy thoughts

There are times when we need a few happy thoughts in our lives. Too often we spend our time thinking about what we have to do next, how to solve a problem or how to avoid it. How do get from where we are now to where we want to go? What food will I have to eat today? How will I deal with this person? These thoughts go on and on.

Enough of that dull stuff. Let’s work on some happy thoughts. Below are a number of different happy thoughts. Some will be more appealing to you than others. If there is one that you connect with, take your time over it. Don’t rush to finish the article. Take your time to consider the though and contemplate on it. If it appeals to you, re-read it and read one sentence at a time. Let each idea which comes, develop within you. Savour these happy thoughts, these moments of joy. Take time to enjoy each thought. Here they are:

First Love
Your first romantic love as a teenager or the first time you met your loved one. How did it feel? What was the first touch like, the first time you held hands, the first time you held each other, the first kiss?

Time with a friend
The time you spent with a good friend. In conversation discussing a favourite topic or a new one which opened up new potential to you. The connection you had together. The unity of purpose. A companion on this part of your journey through life. The fun you had together.

When you were loved
Think of a time when you were loved, when someone did something nice for you. Think of the joy you felt, the appreciation for the person and how their gift to you made you feel.

An Achievement
The feeling you got when you achieved something in school, work, in sport or within your family. It was something you were striving for, a goal, an achievement. It may have been as simple as cooking a meal, getting over a barrier you had, learning a new skill or moving to a new position.

A Heavenly Place
Take a ramble in your imagination into a heavenly place. Think of a peaceful, calm, inviting place where you can rest, enjoy the soft sunlight, view the beautiful landscape around you. There may be someone who you would like to meet. Someone to bring you wisdom, kindness, sustenance and love.

Do something nice
Think of doing some deed or favour for someone. How will they fell and how will you feel? Firstly think of doing something loving for some you like, a friend, a family member, a pet or a plant. What will you do, how will the fell, how will they react? How will you react?

…for someone you don’t like
Now think about doing something nice for someone you don’t like or don’t get one with. What would they like or enjoy that you could do for them? Bring them a cup of tea or coffee. Help them out with their job. Do a task which they have to do regularly and save their effort. Now, having done this deed, in your mind, how do they feel and how do they react to you? How do you feel and what are your reactions? Interesting, isn’t it. :-)

Contemplation
Take time to be at peace. Close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths and hold each for a while. Listen to the sounds within. Eliminate the sounds around your environment and listen for a sound coming from deep within yourself. At the same time, with your eyes closed, watch for lights within. There may be glows, sparkles, stars, flashes or colour changes. Let the lights and sounds combine to form a relaxing contemplation exercise.

The job you love
Imagine being in the position or job you’d love. How does it feel? You are now where you have aimed or dream of being for a long time. Look around you and see how it feels. Take time to see how you feel about being in this position and how the people around you feel about it too. What are their reactions? Are you happy here? Is it like you thought it would be?

A fountain of light
Be a fountain of light. Think of yourself as a candle, then add another candle, and another, and another. Now you are brighter. You are lighting up the place around you. You can add a rag soaked in oil. It flares up and there is now a fire there. Look around and see the light brighten everything around you. Now add some firewood to this flame. Watch it grow and the flames rise up into the dark night sky. Now the whole area is brightened. Add more fire wood and timber until you have a bonfire. The light reflects into the unseen areas beyond. The world around you is bright and warm.

So there we have ten different sets of happy thoughts. Did any of them bring a smile to your face? Keep them in mind, they may help you out of a dark spot and bring some light into your world.

Wishing that all your thoughts are happy thoughts

*Ed Parkinson

If you are looking for more positive and happy thoughts, click here to go to the Spiritual Writings page.

May the Blessings be

Thought for the week

There are many blessings in our lives which we fail to see. Most of these are hidden in the challenges or problems we face. It can take a long time to see them as they often need time to develop, grow and blossom into a blessing we can see. Here are a few stories to illustrate some of the blessings in life.

Bless the situation
Will was recently driving through the city with his teenage daughter. As they stopped at a red light, a drunk or drugged man fell on the street near them. Will’s daughter was upset to see an other human being in such a condition and wanted to help him. Then his friend came over to help get him back on his feet. Will could see the compassion and emotion his daughter was feeling and explained how to bless the scene.

He said “When you see a situation where you would like to help another Soul but it is not easy for you to do so, then the best thing to do is bless the situation. Ask the Holy Spirit, your Inner Guide or the Higher Power to bless the Souls involved. Let them be blessed and let them be. We do not know the situation behind the scene we see in front of us but the Higher Power knows what is right for them. Let the Holy SPirit bless them with a gift that will help them move to a happier and better place. Then forget about it. You have done what you can. The Holy Spirit will do the rest.”

Blessings arrived after a long time
Another friend told me about his childhood and how his mother gave him very little love and attention because his older brother was seriously sick and needed her constant care. He grew up longing for approval from her but rarely got it. It was hard for me to see where the blessings were in that scenario but he explained, they arrived after a long time.

Later in life when he was in his fifties, a skilled counsellor brought this part of his childhood into focus and helped him see how his mother had suffered similar neglect in her childhood. She was doing the best she could based on her own childhood. With this awareness he was able to heal himself and also partially heal his mother's neglect by showing her love and affection at the times when she needed it most. He counted the opportunity to be able to give this love to his mother as a real blessing. While he had to go through a childhood of partial neglect he saw that as necessary in order to reach the point where he could give love to both himself and his mother. This was a real blessing to him.

Blessing water
Dr. Masaru Emoto from Japan researched the effects of blessing water. He says “Molecules of water are affected by our thoughts, words, and feelings”. In his experiments he tried many techniques to test this and found that if he played beautiful classical music in the presence of tap water, it would then make beautiful frozen crystal formations. He also learned that the written word changed the water. Dr. Emoto stuck paper strips on bottles of tap water and then photographed the frozen water. He found that words such as "Thank you," and "I love you," caused the tap water to form beautiful crystals. Words such as "You make me sick," or "You are a fool," caused distorted crystals or no crystals at all. Dr. Emoto then found that we can cause tap water to form beautiful frozen water crystals simply by praying for the water, by sending it loving thoughts, and by blessing it.

There we have three different aspects of life and a way of seeing the blessings in different situations.

The difficulties in life are blessings waiting to be learned. When we learn how to deal with them, they give us strength and help us progress a bit further in our understanding. They then changed from problems into blessings. We have overcome the challenge and can see the positive side of the situation.

May the blessings be
The simple way of bringing blessings into our lives is to make a statement such as “May the Blessings be”. This is an acceptance of our situation at this moment and an attempt to realise that there is a blessing in everything in life. The blessings are not just in the pleasant things we experience but also in the challenges and problems we face. We need to remember that it can take time for challenges to become blessings.

Wishing you a life of blessings.
May the blessings be.

*Ed Parkinson

Have a look through the Spiritual Writings page for more insights and blessings by clicking here.