Category Archives for "Spiritual Awareness"
Spiritual awareness and spirituality articles.
Chinese Tale of the Hidden Treasure Chest
The enveloping air held a hint of ancient chinese mystique. A woman was sitting alone in a rickety wooden boat on a lake. While she would not be considered as beautiful by standards in those times, her features were pleasant enough. Fairly young, she was wearing simple grey robes. Her dressing indicated that she was a novice nun.
(The page from my art journal depicting the Chinese Woman at the Lake).
All was quiet. She had stopped rowing.
Goenka Vipassana Meditation: Your Body As An Laboratory
It was difficult to keep still. At times, the pain on my back intensified to an excruciating level. It was as if someone had stuck a dagger into a single blade on the lower right. It would have take a physical movement to help ease the pain. Yet, I was not supposed to move. I had to keep my back straight for at least one hour.
(The campsite on St John’s Island lies beyond the hill)
Any major physical movement would disrupt the practice of focus and concentration acquired through anapana. Breathing in, breathing out, I sat on the meditation cushion. I was only required to observe any physical sensation. So this was how it was like for most of my sittings for a continuous 10 days. I was in confinement for the most part, cut away from almost all forms of external communication with others. I was on a Noble Silence Goenka Vipassana Meditation Retreat from Dec 1 to 12, 2009.
Nature Tapestry November Notes
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(My MacBook Pro in the surrounding Nature Tapestry, Singapore Botanic Gardens)
Nature Tapestry Notes started with a bang in November! The month is now drawing to a close. Here is a brief recap of blog posts:
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Awakening Into Awareness
When I am able to strip away all the false notions of self, I gain access to an underlying space of awareness. It is the silent witness, the observer to all there-is, that I find myself tuning into. Indeed, nature invited me to learn from observing the terrapin (see picture below) at the start of my blogging break last month.
“Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.” — Henry David Thoreau
Make Peace with Time
Time has been my enemy for as long as I can remember. I was always in a rush for time. More so after my kids came. There were never-ending chores to do and tasks to run. On top of that, I was at odds with myself often for hoping to work in-between and choosing an arrangement that puts my kids’ needs high in priority.
(No time to sit still?)
Time was a precious commodity that I longed for but never quite got a fix on. I tried to accomplish as much as I could within my waking hours. Over four months, prior to my blogging break, I became a slave to time with increasing demands from work. Amazingly, my first lesson was about time when I started my blogging break.
Oracle Card Reading For Divine Guidance
Do you use divination cards to receive guided messages sometimes? I have been enjoying the use of my Goddess Guidance Oracle Cards
The cards are from Doreen Virtue and feature beautiful artwork of cross-cultural goddesses from Celtic, Mayan, Egyptian, Greek, Tibetan, Buddhist and others. Some examples include Isis, Athena, Kuan Yin, Green Tara and Mother Mary. I don’t use to take card readings seriously for years but it has been amazing what has come up recently.
Creation, Intention, Consciousness
Nature provides us with several wise insights about creation, if we only bother to stop and contemplate. The problem is that we have become so busy in our individual lives that we have failed to interact with nature.
(Water Lily Lake)
We overlook or disregard how connected we are as One not just amongst the human species but including all of nature (the realm of various types of living plants and animals). We take little care about our environment even while it provides resources that sustain us.
Align with Abundance
To align with abundance is to realise first and foremost: We are all Energy.
We come from the same Source. Our physical BEing is an expression of Source Energy wishing to know itself. Source Energy can only know itself experientially. It cannot know its essential nature without the benefit of experience. For instance, it cannot truly know that it is Divine Love without an experience of love or its polar-opposite, fear.
The essential nature of Source/God/Universe is love, peace, compassion. It is of pure intelligence and infinite abundance. It is ever-present, eternal, expansive and never-changing. Since we are Source expressed in a physical form, our basic nature is one and the same.
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The School of Life
(Photo collage of life lessons presented by my kids, nature, temptations, sports, spirituality and relationships.)
When life is demanding, it can be difficult to adopt a perspective that is wise. Your life situation takes center stage. You are more likely to be preoccupied with thoughts on how to deal with the ongoing drama. You are identified with your ego-centered self. You cannot help but blame everything and everyone for the situation that you are in. Yet, it is in the trials big and small – that life presents you with the greatest opportunity to evolve.
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Life Lessons by Warrior of the Light
(photo by kaibara87)
The Warrior of Light views life with tenderness and determination.
He stands before a mystery, whose solution he will one day find. Every so often, he says to himself: “This life is absolutely insane.”
He is right. In surrendering to the miracle of everyday, he notices that he cannot always foresee the consequences of his actions. Sometimes he acts without even knowing that he is doing so, he saves someone without even knowing he is saving them, he suffers without even knowing why he is sad.