Life is like choosing the latest gadget. Look for the real value—a brand name isn’t as important as knowing that the product delivers on its promises. Knowing what’s really important to us, we can always attract the people and circumstances into our lives that really enrich our experience.
Read my DailyOM article, Technology as Distraction--Choosing True Connections for more.
Written by Malayna Dawn for SymbolicThemes.com
This book was given to me as a gift by a friend who knows me very well. (Thanks, Meghana!) It’s the personal and true story of a British guy who decides that Sri Lanka is the place to build his ecological dream.
I related to this book on so many levels—from the part of me who is an expat and understands the culture clashes to the part of me who sees Sri Lanka as a paradise that must be preserved, to the part of me that loves the connection between spirituality and ecology. It’s all here!
With chapters like “Lanka or La-La-Land?” about his decision about whether to live in Sri Lanka or Los Angeles (to which I would answer “both!”) and passages like, “I found myself on a spiritual quest. I began to believe that the world was engaged in a transition, shifting our values from competition and greed to cooperation and synthesis, giving birth to a new vision, the ‘divine marriage’ of inner and outer, male and female, reason and intuition, Matter and Spirit,” Rory Spowers continued to strike very personal chords.
The beauty is, he’s done it. He has taken 60 acres in the South of Sri Lanka and dedicated it to organic produce, green tea, natural ecosystems, sustainable living, and marrying the best of nature and innovation. I can’t wait to visit! And I love the book, so I’ll be sharing more soon.
Written by Malayna Dawn for Symbolic Themes.com
Life is like an electrical charge. Energy itself is neutral. It will work whether we plug it into a TV or a tablesaw.
We make it feel good or bad with our choices, but we can always make new choices that feel better.
It's like our thoughts, or our prayers. If we focus our energy and attention on what we don't like or want instead of what we do like and want in our lives, we are giving those things our energy.
We are the socket and we give our energy to whatever we allow to be plugged in to us. Does that make sense?
Even if we pray for something bad NOT to happen, we are investing more thought into the negative than the positive. Keep your energy and attention focused on the positive!
Life is like changing clothes. You have the power to change your life by changing your thoughts.
It doesn’t mean the outside world or other people change, it is our approach and our point of view that changes, and that makes all the difference.
Actually, there's a lot more to clothes. "Clothes make the man," they say and popular shows like "What Not to Wear" show the power between how we feel about ourselves, and how we show ourselves to the world.
Check out www.GarmentsWithoutGuilt.com/blogSelect.cfm for even more info about fell-good, guilt-free clothing that is organic, ethically made, and sustainable!
You’re just hanging out in your body for a limited time. You are perfect just the way you are. You are exactly where you are meant to be. Enjoy the experience.
Oh that icon of pop culture, the bean bag. I chose it because no uptight person would ever choose to sit in one. It's a symbol of hanging out & relaxing. And I thought the image of a body suit on a hanger was a little disturbing.
I recently experienced one of those moments when it seems that a glimpse of the grand design is revealed, even if only for a second, in seemingly insignificant ways. It happens to me every now and then, and yet it still surprises and excites me, and inspires me to believe that there is a purpose and a synchronicity in operation beyond what I am able to see and understand.
I was at the doctor’s office, and since I expected to wait for over an hour if not two, I brought some books to read that can be expected to have a fair amount of overlap. “Man and His Symbols”—an exploration of Carl Jung’s work with the subconscious, and “The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers”—which is based on Joseph Campbell’s study of the Hero's Journey in “Hero with a Thousand Faces”.
Jung’s colleague, ML von Franz, explained that the Self is often symbolized by stone—perhaps because they are complete, unchanging and lasting. “Many people cannot refrain from picking up stones of a slightly unusual color or shape and keeping them, without knowing why they do this. It is as if the stones held a living mystery that fascinates them. Men have collected stones since the beginning of time….”
She says that this is why practically all civilizations have the urge to erect stone monuments to local saints or heroes, on the site of important or religious events, or to express an otherwise inexpressible experience. From the alchemist’s Philosopher’s Stone to the Ka’aba in Mecca, from huge stone Buddhas to Mount Rushmore, people are moved to create and identify with stone monuments.
Then I read in The Writer’s Journey: “the Statue of Liberty is a recurring symbol of the immigrant dream, a lighthouse beckoning the newcomer… The Statue of Liberty, a gift from the people of France to the people of America , is a colossal example of the ancient practice of sending statues of gods and goddesses from a founding city to its colonies to connect them by a psychic thread, a religious tie. …”
More giant stone people!
This particular passage I was reading was a mythical analysis of the film “Titanic” and the ideas of the time in which it was set. Moments later, as I pondered the synchronicity of the ideas, I could hear Celine Dion singing the theme from Titanic over the waiting room TV. Weird!
Or is it just that I was in that moment, at the right place, at the right time, and I was open to all that it could bring? I think perhaps I was.
Written exclusively for symbolicthemes.com
Life is like riding around town. Because there are no wrong choices, there is nothing wrong with any of us. We are just taking different turns, experiencing different roads and different scenery.
We can always choose to turn another direction. And we can always choose to enjoy the ride.
I chose a bicycle because of the sense of ease I had from childhood memories. Also because these were originally written for a 14-year-old boy. Bicycles offer the ability to really get a sense of the things you're passing, but it can work for a car, horse, whatever. See?
We’re life-sculptors squishing and shaping the raw energy to make our lives into works of art.
The material is there, we only have to do our part to shape it into a form we like.
<--- Check it out! Plato out of Play-Doh!
Life is like making a movie. When you make a mistake, it’s a miss-take, and you just take it again.
Re-shoot the scene. Take 2!
If you've ever noticed that life seems to keep bringing you the same situations in different disguises, it's because the Universe is giving you another chance to try again. Try a different approach this time!
What? Video Games? Why not? Everything in the outer world was created from the inner world, and everything we see outside reflects our inside back to us. It's all in how we choose to look at it.
We’re on a journey, a spiritual adventure, and there is no wrong choice.
Like in a video game, we can either make it to the next level of challenges, or we can stay on the same level. It’s up to us what we want to experience.
<--- Going old school with Donkey Kong!
