Tag Archive | souls

I’ve Written a Book!

Oh yes it’s been a while since I’ve dropped by this blog. It’s been so long, I almost feel like it’s someone else’s blog hehe.

Most of the things I’ve been up to are things of no transcendence and that aren’t worth mentioning, like working long hours at dead-end jobs that don’t lead anywhere.

So I thought I’d write a book. Unlike a dead-end job, a book doesn’t have an end date or a best-before date.

A book is eternal, evergreen, always relevant to the human condition and to what it’s like to be human (as long as there are still human beings around, of course!).

And unlike in a dead-end job where you have to please your boss or, you know, get the sack, in a book you can be whoever and whatever you choose to be.

In a book you can be yourself. You don’t have to please anyone. You can say what you want to say. You can proclaim to the world what you really BELIEVE IN.

So without further ado, here is the book:

“The Power of Loving Yourself: 10 Simple (But Effective) Tips to Help You Raise Your Self-Esteem, Self-Confidence and Self-Worth”.

(And don’t worry, you don’t have to memorize the subtitle!)

People do ask me what this book is about and you know, it’s like, ooogghh, how do you summarize a book? How do you condense 120 pages into a single paragraph (or blog post)?

It’s about…… when you’re at peace and in love with yourself, there’s no room in your heart for hatred, rancour, vengeance……

If all people were at peace with themselves WE COULD ERADICATE WAR in the world! But it’s not easy to find ways to feel peaceful……

So I’ve put together a set of PRACTICAL exercises to help people feel more at peace with themselves and in love with themselves.

To help people learn to LOVE, and RESPECT, and to be TOLERANT, of themselves and with other people.

If we ALL LOVED, and RESPECTED OURSELVES and other people there would be NO MORE WAR on earth! We would no longer need weapons.

There would be no more bombs. No more children orphaned to bombs and guns. No more mothers crying for children killed by bombs.

But first we must LOVE OURSELVES. So in my book I teach PRACTICAL exercises to help people learn to do that.

Because, you know, people do say, “It’s all fine and well and all to say that we should all be full of peace and joy and love and all that s**t, but the last thing I feel right now is joy! Or love! The only thing I feel like doing is griping! I can’t even stand to look at myself in the mirror! So what can I DO???”

Well, you can read my book.

Of course it’s got some chatter to help you change your mindset too. I mean, after all, hating yourself, or believing you’re NO GOOD, or believing in yourself, or not, are mindsets.

But it’s also got PRACTICAL exercises too.

Because sometimes it’s not enough to just, you know, “think you’re great” or something.

Sometimes you do need to PROVE IT to yourself, first, before you can believe it.

So. Try out the exercises in my book, and soon you’ll see how you, too, will find that you just CAN’T HELP but start to feel better about yourself, and to see yourself in a NEW LIGHT.

Even if you’ve always hated yourself. Or, like me, you’ve always been shy.

Once again here is the URL for more info: The Power of Loving Yourself.

Oh and by the way, I know it’s not a subject very much related to the subject of this blog, but if you Subscribe to the newsletter on the website, you’ll get a couple of gifts from me, with no strings of any sort attached, including two excerpts from the book.

So you can check it out a bit first, you know, see if it’s something you could be interested in, before you commit yourself and actually press the “Buy Now” button.

You don’t usually get a chance to read parts of a book before you buy it.

But I’m offering you the chance to do just that! All you have to do is Subscribe to the site newsletter at www.seasofmintaka.com. There’s a Sign-Up Box in the right-hand corner of any page on the site.

Enjoy!

I’ll end this post with a link to the page where you can read all about my new book and download it immediately, if you feel like it: www.seasofmintaka.com/the-power-of-loving-yourself.html

P.S. Did you check out the really horrid video from the last blog post? I saw TWENTY-SIX enlightened and lovely souls actually sat with their gaze TRANSFIXED on the screen staring at it since we put it up! The last time I’d checked (which was in April) only 10 people had looked at it haha. So…… it’s an interesting video, isn’t it, haha? Well trying to mix up some more horrid videos so when (if) we ever get them out, you’ll all be the first to know!

P.P.S. Oops gotta add, I meant, when you subscribe to my website, www.seasofmintaka.com, I’ll give you all these oodles of wonderful gifts. Here’s the link again: www.seasofmintaka.com.

But I’m sure chuffed all the same that so many of you are subscribing to my blog too!

If you’ve recently subscribed to this blog and you’d like to get my gifts, hop on over to my website and sign up over there, and you’ll automatically get taken to the page where you can download your gifts IMMEDIATELY.

Cheers! And thanks again for your interest!

Our Visit to Hare Krishna

Sep12

Now, I’m not too crazy about religions of any sort, and I’ve got tons of friends who are friends of sundry and diverse sects, and each one considers his or her religion and god the one and true religion and god in the world. So it’s not a theme that attracts me all that much. But one day I saw a report on the news (not that I ever watch the news, must’ve been zapping that day) and it was about a girl who had grown up on a Hare Krishna commune here in Spain.

She explained that when she grew up, she moved out, got a job, rented an apartment, tried to live a normal life and do the usual thing, but she couldn’t. She found spirituality sorely lacking in the society that surrounded her, and young people her age only lived for the next alcohol orgy or the next drug-induced high, or for a roll in the hay with the first guy that they could pick up at the disco. How depressing and meaningless, no? That didn’t seem like real living to her!

She missed the warmth and friendliness of the members of her Hare Krishna community. She missed the daily prayers and chanting and most of all, she missed dressing up the Hindu gods in the morning.

She explained that every morning they dressed the statues of the gods and adorned them with different sets of jewellery. It was the highlight of her day to be surprised by the ever-new and creative manners in which the gods could be bedecked each morning. (I guess it’s a bit like a little girl dressing up her dolls, but with some religious nuances thrown in there.) So she left her apartment in the city and returned to the commune.

I thought that sounded really neat, and the truth is, I also agreed that there was a sore and noticeable lack of spirituality in general in the world that surrounded us. So I discovered that we were fortunate enough to enjoy a Hare Krishna commune right here in my own city. There aren’t too many in Spain, so I considered that a real lucky finding.

One rainy afternoon I packed the kids up and we set off in search of this elusive community. I knew which neighbourhood it was in, but not the address, since it wasn’t listed. Once we arrived in that neighbourhood, I found it harder than I expected to hunt down the commune. I had imagined that everyone in the district must know where it was, since this group is quite vocal in other cities. However, in my city, it just happened that they maintained a low profile, almost hiding away, as it was. In the end we located the commune out in the middle of a field, which on that particular afternoon was filled with mud, since it had been raining the whole day.

We went in for the Sunday chanting ceremony, which is open to the general public and which, I suppose, is intended to show lay people what they are like and what they do, in case someone is interested in joining them. True to Spanish custom, however, the ceremony actually began only about two or three hours after the time announced on their website. So we sat around in an empty hall just getting bored and twiddling our thumbs for a long time.

At last, people finally started arriving. I don’t know whether it was the weather, and everyone was feeling under the clouds, or if it was the damp and chill, but seemed that no one had much energy. People drifted about looking bored (like us). A few instruments, mostly drums and guitars, were spirited out. The statues of the gods (which, on that dreary afternoon, even they appeared out of sorts and drably arrayed) were lit up and the ceremony began.

There was some half-hearted singing, of chants I had never heard before and which I didn’t find particularly beautiful – so no lovely, ecstatic, melodic intonations by George Harrison over there – and then people formed a circle and twirled around a little bit. There didn’t seem to be very much sense to it, however, actually. No one went into bliss and no one received a divine revelation. No one even seemed to be enjoying it very much. Maybe they were just hungry, or cold?

After the chanting and twirling someone regaled us with a fairly lengthy, boring sermon. Now, as I mentioned earlier, I am not too interested in religious themes, so I didn’t find the sermon particularly transcendental or life-changing. A few members, with long, depressing expressions on their faces, asked some questions full of angst about their life challenges, but no one seemed to receive a satisfactory reply since in general the answers seemed to consist of a plethora of platitudes like: “I’m sorry but I can’t help you there, only you know what is the right decision to make.” “If you trust in Krishna he will light the way for you.”

At last the best moment arrived: the food! And if truth be told, the food was indeed delicious. There was spicy dhal soup and yellow rice, some Indian flatbreads with butter and a few vegetarian dishes, followed by sweet lassi. All right, the truth is, we didn’t go there for the food. I, at least, had personally hoped to discover that delight and ecstasy that the girl had described in the news report. But, well, if we couldn’t revel in spiritual delights, at least we got the opportunity to enjoy some more earthly delicacies!

All in all, I would have to say that the people are certainly very friendly and hospitable. But if you are hungering for some spiritual fulfilment, I, at least, didn’t find that this group in particular filled my plate very much in that respect. I suppose, like they say, in the end you must still search for your spirituality and spiritual meaning within, rather than without in the things of this world.

If you liked this post (I really hope you do!), maybe you will also like:

Dreams

How Much Do YOU Value Your Friends?

Flowers For The Dead on the Day of the Dead

Dreams

Jun22

Well so it’s obviously been a while since I posted anything here. I was always real inconstant at keeping a diary anyways, and I suppose a blog is not all that much different.

We have been quite busy these past few months but I suppose, like most people, just living a fairly ordinary and mundane, routinary life like most people do. The kids have gone to school every day, I’ve been going to work…… In other words, a very normal life.

I am often surprised when I look at people, just surviving from day to day, and I wonder, what happened to their passion? Where did their dreams and their spark go? What did they dream of doing or being when they were teenagers, and what happened to all those dreams?

Your dreams can be of any sort, there are as many dreams out there as there are things to be and do out there. Did you dream of sky diving when you were young? Or maybe you wanted to travel around the world. Or have your own house with a garden that you could tend and cultivate.

Maybe you’ve always wanted to visit Jamaica.

Whatever it is that you’ve always dreamt of doing, why aren’t you doing it, or working towards it? Why don’t you start saving up for that holiday in Jamaica, or that house with a garden?

Why don’t you get onto the internet and google “sky diving” and see if there is someone who occasionally offers sky diving trips for complete beginners in your area? We all have to begin somewhere, after all.

My children don’t have any dreams. They are small, they live life from day to day. The only thing they want to do is play with their Nintendo. A good day is when they get to spend most of it playing on their Nintendo. A bad day is when they have to go to school, or someplace else which takes them away from their Nintendo.

I often wonder how children can live like that. Isn’t there something that they wish to do in the future? Don’t they have dreams?

But I suppose dreams are something that comes up in our lives when we reach an age where we are aware that we HAVE a future at all to begin with, usually when we reach our teenage years.

In reality, I suppose the best way to live life is like my kids do, spending every minute of your day just doing what you most love to do, just as they are happiest when they get to spend the whole day playing on the Nintendo. I don’t know what they will be when they grow up, and I do agree that some discipline is necessary in life. However, no one forces them to play on their Nintendo, they do it just because they love it.

What is it that you do just because you love it? That no one has to force you to do?

Of course, maybe we can’t make a living at whatever it is that we love to do. Maybe we love to sew, or play golf, but you don’t see yourself as a golf champion earning your bread from playing golf. Well, that’s okay. You can still play golf. You can spend all your spare time playing golf. Or you can save up and open your own golf course or a golf-related company of your own.

You could become a golf teacher or a caddy, or get a job on a golf course that allows its employees to use its facilities for free.

Of course, in every life we have to eat and fill out our income tax forms (yes, fellows, it’s that time of the year again!). But when we aren’t involved in these necessary evils (well, all right, eating isn’t evil, actually I LOOOVE eating very much!!), we can be doing what we love to do.

So, getting back to the question I was asking myself at the beginning of this post, I do wonder, how do people manage to get ahead every day, if they are not doing what they love to do, what they have always dreamt of doing, at some point in their lives? If you want to be a film-maker, you can make videos on the weekend, as a now-famous Spanish film director used to do (I don’t remember his name, however I can assure you it was not the archi-reputable Almodovar, however the film director in question is also well known).

Where can your joie de vivre come from, if you aren’t trying to fulfil a dream, doing something that you love, at some moment? I really don’t know what can fuel people on to continue living, when they are not doing what they love to do or working towards a dream. Where do they find the incentive to keep going? How can they possibly survive? We all know that there is more to life than just paying the bills and putting food on the table.

Maybe what you enjoy most is blogging and sharing your points of view and your life with the rest of the world. If that is the case, I would love it if you would like to carry out a blog exchange with me. Just click on this link to read more about exchanging blogs with me. (Or more accurately, exchanging blog avatars.)

So, what was all this all about, anyways, you might be wondering?

Well, for a while now I’ve been working at a job that I’m not too fond of, and I’ve been wondering, what is the point of this anyways? Why do we work at jobs that we don’t like? In my case, of course, I’m a single mother and I have to pay the bills and feed my kids some way or another, and in these times of crisis, well, it’s not like we have too much choice as to what we can do to pay these bills and feed our kids, do we?

However, paying bills and feeding kids doesn’t give us LIFE. It keeps you alive but it isn’t LIVING.

I have always wondered how people could go on without SOMETHING to propel them forward, something to look forward to, something that they have always wanted to do, and CAN do.

But you can only live on dreams for so long. At some point in your life, it’s time to bring them into reality.

And that is the point where I am right now. Which, however, leaves me with very little time for blogging. Argh!

So, I don’t know when I will post again, but you can rest assured, at least, that if I don’t post for a while, it will be because I am finally at last starting to LIVE my dreams (and therefore I’m too busy living my dreams to write blog posts!), instead of just DREAMING them!

Of course, I will, however, let you know every once in a while, with a new post here, about how I’m doing and how it is all going. It may be a while, but then, as they say, the fun lies in the journey.

Flowers for the Dead on The Day of the Dead

Nov1

The day after Halloween is the Day of the Dead.

In the US people don’t usually think too much about that. For Americans, Halloween means trick or treatin’, jack o’ lanterns and maybe some good, homemade pumpkin pie with cider. And that’s about it. A fun time for kids. A good excuse to get together with the neighbours.

But in other parts of the world, November 1 is the Day of the Dead. It’s when you remember your dead, your loved ones on the other side.

People take flowers to cemeteries. They meet up with relatives to remember and reminisce.

Well, everyone has their own theory as to what happens when people die. I have friends who suffer, because they believe that the soul does not exist or that if it does, it is not immortal. They believe that their loved ones were just simply extinguished out of being, like a candle flame, upon their death.

Now, I am not a psychic medium. But I think it must be a most joyous gift, to be able to share such a faculty with the world, to be able to help relieve the pain of the bereaved with messages from loved ones who have passed on.

Not who have died. Just simply, who have passed on. To a new life. To “the West” as Tolkien liked to refer to it in his symbolic and unique manner.

I realize that probably a lot of people will not agree with me, or WANT to agree with me. They probably have their own theories as to what happens when we die.

Maybe they fear plunging helplessly like puppets into purgatory. Or worse, perhaps, like my friends, they expect to just become snuffed out and cease to exist, forever.

Well, for those who don’t like what I have to say or object to it, I can only remind them of what Shakespeare said:

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Carlos Castaneda’s mythic Don Juan put it pretty nicely too, when he exclaimed: “The world around us is a great mystery.”

No, no one can claim to know it all.

But we’re all free to espouse our own beliefs. And I suppose it must have become quite clear, from this post so far, that I DO believe in an “afterlife”. I do believe in souls and that these souls live on, and just simply move into a different dimension, another world.

I believe that, as you can read about here in this article about unhappy earthbound spirits, ghosts and the happily fulfilled people who DO make it painlessly and effortlessly into the “afterlife”, souls reside temporarily in a spirit world between incarnation and incarnation – until, of course, they finally reach that happy, blissful moment where reincarnation is no longer a requirement in their spiritual evolution.

Life on earth, with its unpredictable and anguish-filled ups and downs, its passion and great joys, is a school. A place to learn what you need to know to become a better being, a greater soul.

And where do students go when school is out?

They go home, of course!

And that is what the spirit world is.

But you keep coming back to earth because, well, quite simply, you haven’t graduated yet.

But don’t worry. One day you will.

And so will your loved ones.

And then, at that point, you and your loved ones may remain together forever in the grand and mysterious spirit world, carrying out your work, enjoying “spirit” life, taking more classes up in those lighter realms. You can do this in the company of your loved ones, or not.

Or you may have different interests from your loved ones, and in that case, you can simply meet up together after “work”, or when “school” is out, up there in the etheric dimension. Pretty much the same way as you do with your friends here on earth.

But until that day arrives, you can still meet up with them and spend your time together, up there in the spirit world, between lifetime after lifetime.

And when you are temporarily separated, because they are dead and YOU are not, you can remember them on All Saints’ Day. On the Day of the Dead.