happy new year – 明けましておめでとうございます (Akemashite omedetōgozaimasu)

   

(Hong Kong celebrating 2011)

Today, besides being the start of the New Year in the
US, is Japanese New Year? Also known as Gantan-sai, Shogatsu,
or Oshogatsu, this Shinto holiday celebrates the New Year with
prayers for renewal, good health, and prosperity. Happy New
Year, everyone! And don’t just watch the fireworks, get out there and live the fireworks!

You exist in someone’s heart.

You exist in someone’s life.

You are someone’s friend.

You are someone’s lover.

Give all.

Love too much.

Laugh out loud.

Remember we cry so we can appreciate the happy times.

Be that shoulder.

Shine,

from the inside out.

 

~Open yourself to love, to share, and your heart and soul will grow with all the world you encounter, and the love you freely share will be returned to you 10 fold….(proverb)

~To find peace within whilst amongst the chaos is to harness life, not life you….(proverb)

“Itsumo egao de itsumo sunao ni”
Always smiling, always honest and gentle. 
Love to you!

Man in the Mirror

“Men are alike in their promises. It is only in their deeds that they are different.” — Jean Baptiste Moliere

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus delves into questioning the motives of the soul.

We do this every night in our dreams, question reality, who we really are, what we can really do, what we really think and feel.

Upon waking we do this every time we stand in front of the mirror and dress ourselves for the day… knot the tie, don the make-up, spritz the perfume and cologne.

We question it in every daily choice we make, from the smallest to the the ones of greatest importance,even in deciding which are to win the favor of being a choice of greatest importance. Whether conscious or not, each of our decisions is a moving hand of being in the motive of soul.

Who are we really?

Are we our job?

Our titles given us? Mr. so-and-so, Professor, Doctor, Judge…..husband, wife, father, mother, friend….

All are questionable.

Are we our futures laid out for us in nice neat print and signed on the dotted line?

Are we our obligations and responsibilites?

Actually the answer is NO.

Strip away each of these in the same manner of the STORY of God and Satan, in their chess game of who wins the soul of Job. What do you have left?

You are a pawn,…just a shell.

A shell in which encompasses a force of life.

A life force which encompasses the ability to attain.

What most call a soul.

Stripped of everything, what is the motive of the soul?

And think on this,…

removing the factors of religion,

remove the fear instilled by doctrine,

(i.e. going to heaven vs. going to hell)

which then erases the guidelines of “morality”,

and what motives have the soul?

To love?

To hate?

To give?

To take?

Who is the man in the mirror?

SOUL Agreements?

Many spiritual teachers of re-incarnation say that every person’s soul purpose is nothing more–and nothing less–than to experience joy, expansion and the growth of wisdom and compassion, lifetime after lifetime. Exactly how that joyful expansion and growth are accomplished, however, is up to each individual, evolving soul. But what if you do not believe in re-incarnation?

What is the purpose of the “Soul”?

(weighing the soul)

I myself cannot say, nor can I even begin to tell you what you should or shouldn’t believe. Every interpretation is made by mankind with egotistical thoughts that  his way of belief is the right way.  The only thing best said is you all have to find the answer you feel to be true within yourselves, through struggle and searching. Is your answer the right answer? Who can say? We are like sands shifted by winds of new information of research and science and experience.  We never know what things within our lives may have an impact on our ways of thinking.

But what if re-incarnation were a fact and not myth? Do you suppose we would live differently?

The Jewish believe in preparing the soul for a better life in the next world, is that not re-incarnation?

 (to get a better view of of their belief, visit:  http://www.jewishmag.com/28mag/soul/soul.htm )

The Christians believe that the soul is raised from death to life again into a new body, heaven and earth. Is that not also a re-incarnation?

The same with the Native American peoples, many believed you were reborn as an animal and became a spirit guide.

( Kicking Bird)

For those who are interested in or follow the karmic-driven life, you will find this excerpt on actualizing the soul’s purpose interesting, if nothing else.

SOUL Agreements:

” it’s important to remember that there’s a big difference between soul purpose and life purpose. Your soul purpose is conceived of and directed by your eternal self, your Soul, and usually unfolds in stages that can last several lifetimes. You could call each stage the Soul’s “current mission.” Your life purpose, on the other hand, is basically a set of goals and objectives which were developed by your Soul specifically for this present incarnation, with the intent of furthering your Soul’s current mission.

And when you, as your Soul, sit down at the Big Conference Table in the Sky to plot out your next lifetime’s goals and objectives, you’re not alone. With you are usually many members of your soul family, individuals who have traveled with you through several lifetimes, or a few, and who join you in plotting an intricate web of interconnecting life threads, encounters that will assist or challenge you, and them, to make the most of your coming incarnation.

Together you plan when and where you’ll meet. You cheerfully build in obstacle courses and synchronicities to keep things interesting. You decide on gifts and difficulties for your individual personalities, and whether you will take the role of friend, lover, family, Spirit Guide–or even enemy–this time around. And just to keep things suspenseful, you give each Soul’s incarnated personality the free will privilege of “opting out” of any Agreement, at any time, perhaps with karmic consequences, perhaps not, depending on how you make your choices, and why.

Your Soul Agreements are the result of all this creative brainstorming among Eternal Beings. And, while it is not true for everyone, many people discover that nearly every one of their important relationships has a Soul Agreement.

There are a number of ways to recognize the existence of a Soul Agreement in a relationship, although the specific parameters of the agreement aren’t always so easy to pinpoint. Always, the relationships are intense and full of meaning. Usually, when you meet there’s a sense of recognition that’s irresistible, and that can be misinterpreted by your personality or ego, especially when the possibility for romance exists. Often the relationship has built-in challenges or obstacles that require effort and commitment to overcome. Conversely, it can be so easy in the beginning that when obstacles do appear, it’s shocking, and can cause the relationship to collapse.

What if the parent or sibling who caused the most difficulty and heartache in your youth is actually a friend from prior lifetimes, one who agreed to take on the unpleasant task of helping you build your emotional and spiritual strength through challenge? Or to help you to balance karma by learning to treat them, in all their awfulness, with forgiveness and unconditional love?

Or perhaps you and another member of your soul clan will decide to spend a few lifetimes meeting and loving, but unable to find your way to happily ever after. Perhaps this choice will help you each develop your capacity for faith, your trust in the long-term, many-lifetime promise of consummated love, or your ability to give and receive wholehearted, unconditional love in spite of conditions. Or so that at least one of you will be forced to develop self-reliance or understand that change at any time in life can be better and not always worse than what you hoped.

It’s not always easy to divine the intent behind Soul Agreements, especially the ones that are painful, usually because when you’re focused on the personality level, you lack the necessary perspective. But your Angels and Spirit Guides can often help you at least understand what your Soul wants you to learn from the experience.
When you look at each of your relationships as though they contain a Soul Agreement, you get a whole new perspective about the purpose and meaning of what’s happening between you. When you look at it from a Soul perspective, even when you haven’t figured out the details of a particular Agreement, suddenly things become less personal, the drama that accompanies personality conflicts dissipates magically, and you are freed to learn the things that your Soul had in mind when it created the Agreement before you were ever born.”

Where are your thoughts on all of this?

Would you?

What is in your heart today that you would fight for, give your life for?
Have you ever felt a passion for someone or something within you that was so great you would fight for it?
Think about it. Who or what lights the fire in your soul.
For what or for whom, would you be willing to embrace that battle?

Today is Bannockburn Day? On this day, the
people of Scotland celebrate their victory under the
command of Robert Bruce over the English in the Battle
of Bannockburn in 1314. Each year the Scottish National
Party commemorates the battle with a march to
Bannockburn field from Stirling town centre. There then
follows a laying of a wreath at the statue of Robert
Bruce and then a rally.
For the whole story on the sequence of the battle please visit below:

http://www.braveheart.co.uk/macbrave/history/bruce/banseq.htm

~~~

“Don’t be afraid to go out on a limb. That’s where the
fruit is.”

— H. Jackson Browne