Walk In The Rain

As we embrace the gentle rain and the small sprinklings of life, we prepare ourselves by learning the lessons the heavens give us at the perfect time, and place, says Marlene Buffa

The rain in our life brings opportunities for growth. Be still sad heart and cease repining; Behind the clouds the sun is shining, Thy fate is the common fate of all, Into each life a little rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary. — Longfellow
Whenever it rains, i am reminded of what my father always said. “You won’t get wet. Just run in between the raindrops, and you will be just fine.” I also think of that saying when life rains down hard on me and i wonder how to dodge the drops, then, too. Daddy’s gentle and humorous confidence that life always worked out for the best instilled in me the same optimism and joyful outlook on life.
When we realise that the inevitable rain showers come and go in our lives no matter how much we try to avoid the dampness of the moment, we find comfort and a sense of content understanding when we look behind the clouds of circumstance and know the sunshine of possibility never left our world.
Life lessons, like the rain in our lives, offer us both pleasant and unpleasant experiences. We recognise that life’s challenges, much like precipitation, bring opportunities for growth, but only when the soil of our consciousness absorbs the lesson.
If we put up umbrellas of protection from the majesty of life falling down on us, we negate the possibility of receiving new information and therefore, deny progression towards our greater good. Yet, if we look up to the sky and willingly allow the inevitable rain to reach us, we may indeed get wet in the torrent of blessings disguised as a dark cloud teaching us valuable lessons.
Only when we walk in the rain, with its glorious thunder and lighting and life-sustaining water, do we embrace the possibility of moving through it and accepting the blessings it brings. When it rains, it pours. I live in the desert southwest of the United States. When i first arrived, over 13 years ago, and the sunshine welcomed me over 300 days each year, i felt cheated if overcast skies darkened my mood. It took a while, but now i welcome the cloud cover, with anticipation that it may provide life-giving rain to our arid landscape. Many times, the high clouds, filled with water, unleash their cache of moisture into the atmosphere, and we still don’t get rainfall.
At times in our lives, we experience drought or downpour. We complacently go from day to day, enjoying our bliss. All the while, somewhere, the rain builds, but it avoids hitting us directly. We see the accumulation of problems and feel the residual effects of the gathering storm, but we don’t experience the outburst directly. And then, when the skies open up and problems pour down on us, we use different methods, like prayer or coping mechanisms, to assist us in redirecting the conflict away from us, for a better use. Like weather, does God give us an all or nothing presentation of life's challenges? Sometimes, it seems that way.
Unlike a waterfall, rain falls to earth in droplets. One little lesson at a time, we feel soaked in life’s education, yet we must remember what’s in between the drops themselves. My father’s gentle advice to run in between the drops meant that while we experience the downpour of life, the way to cross the street to a sunny side of positive outcome, is to take advantage of those brief moments and spaces in time — between the drops — and take a breath of air to assess what’s happening, then move on to the next challenge. He never claimed it wouldn’t rain, he just pointed out to mitigate the effects of the harshness of life, move deliberately and quickly from one challenge to the next.
The power lies between the drops. Eventually, the rain stops, and the sun peeks out again from behind the clouds of ordeal. Put away your umbrella. Whenever i tell my woes to my friend Ann, she gently reminds me that the situation i’m describing exists to teach me a lesson.
I can’t learn the lesson if i avoid it, i must walk through it. If we repeatedly put up umbrellas to block the lessons from touching our lives, we never experience the purpose of the education and we must suffer repeated exposure to the challenge.
Like the weather, we control very little of what rains down on us. When we divert or ignore the problems in our lives, they return with fervor, like the microburst, and flood our consciousness with such powerful lessons, we can’t turn deny the issues swirling at our feet, threatening our demise.
As we embrace the gentle rain and the small sprinklings of life happening from time to time, we prepare ourselves by learning slowly and completely the lessons the heavens give us at the perfect time and place, and in the perfect order. Rain, like life's ordeals, gives us nourishment, and is necessary for growth. Without the existence of the dark clouds and humidity, the sunshine in our lives may be taken for granted.
Celebrate your life between the dark clouds and wet air, and know if you move with speed and deliberation and learn from the storms in your life, the clouds eventually move on. Everything in life is temporary. Difficulties really do evaporate with time. Your true power is found between the trickles of misfortune, in the awareness of your ability to move from one challenge to the next.

Mirror your soul......

If your reality is unsuitable, maybe what you feel and do is not suitable for your soul, says Alyssa A

Ireally tend to believe that people are creating their own reality. I’m sure that it’s what they do when they make their dreams come true. It’s not about bringing your whims to do the action, but to express yourself through your surrounding world, so it mirrors who you are, and the way you choose to be.
It’s not new that different people have different beliefs. Some people think they can direct their fate, and some believe that fate directs them. Some people receive inner guidance, feeling that it was given from above, and some are sure that it’s their own soul guiding them. So how do you think, is there anyone who’s in control of your life, or are you the only one who claims the right to be its master?
I really tend to believe that people are creating their own reality. I’m sure that it’s what they do when they make their dreams come true.
I still believe though that the Creator does the creating as well, but i just can’t see God and us as being something separate. I think if God was observing us, then the only thing s/he’d see would be the reflection of oneself.
But if you’re trying to see yourself being as great and loving as if you were no longer just a body and emotions, and to look at everything from the soul’s point of view, or from your Higher-Self’s perspective, you suddenly understand that you feel so tied up in your old and comfy perception of the world, that you can’t break free from your fears and worries whispered by your ego day by day. Your whole life you were doing things by the force of habit, and now, you woke up, but it’s not like you can change yourself in a wisp of light. Now it will be hard.
I, myself, as if i’ve never checked what’s going on in my head, once just realised that all my worries are about money, health, family problems, about who might die in my family and what pages of my life could be torn away. I felt that i don’t even understand who i truly am. I was just unable to realise myself, and that could make a person feel desperate, because if there’s no hint of self-realisation, there is no grasp for the life itself.
You know, it’s like there’s just no personal freedom. Like you’ve lost your right to be yourself. As if you suddenly realise that most of your thoughts are limited and not of your true nature at all; as if you’re thinking and speaking from your ego all the time, but don’t even comprehend where your soul is hiding.
If you’re trying to find the way back to your soul, and finally do something good, or start helping someone, you still don’t, because all your inner strives are devoted to fight away your ego, or to stop hurting others and not be driven by the anger if somebody plays with your emotions. I think that, if any sense of wisdom is present, nobody actually wants to hurt anyone, or feel guilty afterward. And nobody wants to be what people say or think about them.
How could anyone know your soul so well, and tell you everything about it? How could anyone steal your freedom of being yourself, and how could it be good to bring up the whole show of being such a remarkable personality, about which people will gossip, if the thing that makes you mad and broken is that you don’t really understand who you are, and that the things like burden of guilt, age, illness, or other pains may swipe away everything that you’ve ever been, and there would be nothing left; nothing remarkable.
So mostly all my struggles have been turned into a dream to be free and forget the limitations. Like when you see a plane in the sky, and your longing and desire for liberty is so strong, that you not just desperately want to be in there, but you wish to be the very moment of self-determination, the moment of choice. But dreams are dreams, and you don’t gain anything but sadness if they stay unfulfilled. The weird thing is that even if they don’t come true, you still can’t stop yourself from hoping that they will. As if the hope is a secret knowledge that everything is going to be all right.
And if your life is similar to lives of many, you might not even realise that there is something that is keeping you from giving up, even if your entire reality is based on irritation and frustration.
You know, many people actually hate their lives, because they do not see what they want to see around, and do not feel the way they might, if only everything was different. But if the only thing you see around is the kingdom of depression, it is not about the world, and not about the life, definitely. When somebody dies, life doesn’t stop.
It must be realised that if you have devoted your life to lies or pretence, if you’re choosing to stay bound when you are free, this is not about the life. You might think that you hate it, or that nothing good will ever happen to you because it’s just not worth happening, but it is you choosing what to feel at this moment of your life, and if it’s worth of being felt at all.
You can choose to fill your day with such things like necktie colour picking, considering the size of staples you need for your work, or just spending all the time in the kitchen. But you also may choose to wake up once in the morning with strong intention to start everything anew, as if there were no regrets in your life, as if nobody ever broke you before… You are choosing your words; you’re choosing your thoughts and moods. You’re choosing the life through which you will express yourself, and your entire reality is your own reflection. If your reality is unsuitable, maybe what you feel and do is not suitable for your soul, and to change it you got to see the world as if it was the part of your entire being.
You know, there is a mantrum that was said to be one of the most powerful, which is probably not surprising because it puts you facing the truth about yourself. The one that many choose not to recognise.
The mantrum is: “i love”
Strange, but even if you feel that you don’t love anything about your life, the world, or the people around you, you instantly understand what is it exactly that you love.
The places where you’ve never been, the things you always dreamed to do, the feelings you so wished to experience, the people you could’ve love, or the children you didn’t have. Even if you never had such things in your life, you still can’t keep yourself from loving th em, because they’re your dreams.

The Past Is Gone.......

If you feel remorseful about something you have said or done, you should learn to forgive yourself, says Jeff Maziarek

Stop for a moment right now and think of something that happened in your past that you still carry some regrets about. Perhaps it’s a botched relationship, a job that you lost, a business that failed or a business you failed to start, an accident you either caused or one that affected you. You can also complete this exercise by thinking back to something pleasant that you experienced, such as falling in love, getting a promotion, or having a wonderful time on vacation.
Whether what you experienced was positive or negative, as you get in touch with that event or set of circumstances, realise that what you are doing in effect, is timetravelling within your own mind as you search through your bank of memories.
The truth is that the past is merely an illusion, as it is only what your mind is able to selectively remember. Moreover, the longer something remains in the mind, the more it changes and the less it reflects what may have actually occurred. The bottom line is that all you really have is your perception of what happened, and it is not necessarily clear, since the lens you are looking through may actually be clouded by the emotions associated with that memory.
In addition, as referenced above, your memories tend to change over time, and therefore may not accurately reflect your original perception. Despite this, the average person spends a great deal of time in this illusionary world of the past, either feeling guilty, regretful or angry, or reminiscing about the socalled “good old days.”
If you find yourself feeling remorseful about something you have said or done, or regretting something you feel you should have done, what you must do is learn to forgive yourself. By this i mean that you literally need to look at yourself in the mirror and say with conviction, “I forgive you for the mistake(s) you made, since i now know that you were simply doing the best that you were capable of doing at that time.” It is likewise important for you to acknowledge that everything that ultimately did occur was a necessary part of your soul’s growth.
What you also need to do when you are feeling guilty isn’t necessarily to apologise to whoever you hurt or disappointed, but instead to acknowledge your commitment to never repeating the behaviour again. You shouldn’t make an apology for something if you feel compelled, rather, it is more important to feel that you have actually learned from your mistake. If you feel angry about something
that occurred to you in the past, stop and internally remind yourself that according to the principle of cause and effect it was you who initiated the cause, either consciously or unconsciously, that led to the effect that incited your anger. By adhering to this view you effectively prevent yourself from becoming a powerless victim of circumstances.
While it can be very challenging to adopt this perspective, once you do it becomes nearly impossible to get angry at anyone for more than just a brief moment. Instead, you learn to look for the deeper meaning or a lesson behind each of the troublesome situations that you encounter, and learn to silently honour those individuals who can ‘pull your strings’, for they are serving as valuable teachers. Moreover, make an effort to remember that these annoying individuals are providing you with valuable opportunities to practice remaining centred in the midst of turmoil.
If you tend to reminisce about good times or relationships you have experienced in the past, you must understand that these types of thoughts also keep you from fully experiencing the present moment. Ideally, what you need to do is to develop the ability to completely experience whatever it is you’re experiencing at any given time, and then leave it behind.
In fact, don't carry over good experiences from the past either. Learn what it means to experience something fully, then drop it and move on to the next moment, uninfluenced by the previous one. You’d be travelling with such little baggage that you could pass through the eye of a needle. You’d know what eternal life is, because eternal life is now, in the timeless now.
Although this may seem like novel advice, it is quite practical, because many of us have a tendency to, as Henry David Thoreau once said, “loiter in winter when it is already spring.” If you are a person that is inclined to focus on good times in the past, please understand that all you are doing by 'time-travelling' in this way is wasting thought and feeling energy that could be used in far more constructive ways.
The past only has an impact on the present when you continue to waste your powerful thought and feeling energies on something that no longer exists at all, other than in your own mind. Whatever it was that happened is finished now, and no matter how uncomfortable it was for you, you need to come to the understanding that at some level you chose it, and that it helped to build your character and make you a stronger individual.
Whenever you do find yourself wondering why something turned out the way it did, i suggest calling to mind the old adage: ‘God does work in mysterious ways’. The truth is, you really don’t know the big picture. So, even though you might be inclined to feel sad about a certain event in your past, make the decision to accept the realisation that there is a higher order to things, and that something good will eventually come of it.
Before closing this article, i want to share with you a thought-provoking analogy i have heard Wayne Dyer uses often. The analogy is this: when you believe that the past has a significant, if not irreversible effect on your life today, it is just like saying that when a boat moves across the water, it is being propelled by the wake behind it.
Naturally this is ridiculous, because everyone knows that the wake is the result of the boat’s forward movement through the water and nothing else. The reality is, your past doesn’t drive your boat in the present moment, you do!

TIME TO MOVE ON.........

It was the perfect thing to do at the perfect time when it was inspired to be done. When it has finished serving its purpose, it is the perfect time for it to end, says Enoch Tan

There are times when what used to be a thriving business, environment or relationship is no longer as alive as before. You find that the people that are involved are starting to drift away as they lose interest in keeping it going.
Even you yourself find that your heart is no longer in it. Yet you still put energy into it because it will soon be gone if nobody tries to preserve it. But what makes you think that God wants you to preserve it? Maybe he wants it to be destroyed, so that he can create something new.
You know what God wants you to do by the things he inspires you to create. There was something great that you were once inspired into creating. You have a lot of joy and fulfilment creating and experiencing it. But now you no longer feel the same way as before.
Try as you might, you just no longer feel the inspiration that was there. You think that since God had led you to create it in the first place, he must want you to continue doing it. You try to revive the passion but that seems to take a lot of energy.
The truth is that it was good for that moment, but a new moment has come and so it is time for a new thing. Something may have been great when it started and continued to be so for a certain period of time, but when the time comes where it seems to die out, it doesn’t mean that it wasn’t worth undertaking in the first place since it didn’t last forever.
It was the perfect thing to do at the perfect time when it was inspired to be done. When it has finished serving its purpose, it is the perfect time for it to end.
Nothing really goes away completely, it merely changes form. The effect of a previous work or experience will continue to be part of a new work or experience. Had it not been done in the first place, it would not existed to impact the new work in profound and significant ways.
There is nothing that is wasted or in vain. Any work that was done at a time when it was inspired to be created would have its place in influencing the universal scheme of things in eternity and everything else that is connected to it.
Since you know that God leads you by your heart’s desire, why are you hanging on to the relationship or the work that your heart is no longer in? It is because you are afraid to lose what you have. The truth is you are not losing anything at all.
God wants you to move on to the next experience that will be even better than the one before. Let go of the relationship or business that you no longer desire to be a part of. Let go of the old to make way for the new. Learn to let go and you will always be abundant.
In every moment you are in, always allow yourself to be naturally driven in your actions. When you choose to be inspired or inspirit, you will always be guided as to when to do what. If you find yourself trying to keep something going when you are no longer inspired to do so, then you are trying to drive the process, rather than letting yourself be driven.
Whenever that happens, you know it’s not going to work because it’s not what God wants. Let things happen ‘through you’ rather than making things happen.
When you act according to what you are most inspired to do in every moment, you are also allowing things to happen in divine order. The ordinary order of things that the world has in mind is to follow through from one step to what is logically the next until completion.
But when you follow spirit instead of ordinary logic, people may think you are disorderly and not doing things properly. When you follow spirit, you are following a higher logic where things are done not in the usual form of order but in divine order.
Spirit may give you an idea to create a product and so you act on the inspired idea and finish creating the product. According to ordinary order of things, the next logical step is to market it and sell it to the world.
But if you are not inspired to do the next step because you feel like creating something else instead, then that’s what spirit is guiding you towards. Spirit has guided you to create it for the moment and then to put it aside and do something else. It is probably not the right timing to release it yet.
Therefore by obeying spirit, you leave it on a shelf and go work on something else. To the world, it may seem that you are leaving something half done which is not exactly the characteristic of someone who is successful.
But let some time go by, maybe even years later and then you are inspired to take the product you previously created and release it to the world. That is when it becomes a mega success because it was the right timing. That is how acting in divine order and timing produces the best results.
You could also have chosen to force yourself to follow through on the ordinary order of things even though you are not inspired to do so just because you think that is the way it has to be done.
But when you do it that way, you end up wondering why it turns out to be a flop and start to wonder whether you were really inspired to create it in the first place. Even when you are guided to release it at that time, the results may come much later in divine order and timing.
So trust and obey spirit in every moment. It will show you the path to happiness.