A Year Has Passed: Ruby, Our Little Precious Angel Written by : Reiki Sanctuary Date : Saturday, March 20, 2010

Song From A Secret Garden

Secret Garden

Ruby

One year ago, on this day, you walked over to the Rainbow Bridge.  Not a day goes by, dearest darling Ruby, that we do not think of you.  We think of you everyday.  How you could make us laugh.  How you could light our days.

It has been a year today.  We miss you just as much now as we did the day you went.  We miss your sweet little face and all your loving dispositions.  We miss hearing you give us whines and your happy bark.
Our heart still aches and words just cannot describe the pain.  As we sit here and writing this, our tears are present.  We still miss you so very very much.

Ruby

We still remember that last loving look in your face when we left you at the clinic.  You, somewhat, in your ever gentle eyes told us that everything would be alright.  That you would be at a better place.  That all your pains would no longer inflict sufferings on your earthly body.  That you will be healthy once again.  That you shall never suffer again.

There is just no explaining our failures to understand your problem and to give you the comfort when you needed it so desperately.  Our heart learns, as we remember this day, that God gives us the only perfect gift, the pure and innocent perfect little angel that is incapable of hate and only full of unconditional love.  We learn what the sanctity of life is about and what love means to be.

You, dearest darling Ruby, are our baby.  Our little loving girl, our best friend and our heart  You are our soulmate forever.  You came into our life as a gift from God for a reason.  That is, you are to teach us how to love.

You will always be precious to us.  We are blessed to have spent nine years of our life with you.  Today, as you are dearly remembered, we know that you are in the arms of God.  In his light, you are home.

Our prayers, for you, will never stop.  Our love, for you, will never perish.  You were truly so unique and special.

Our heart is still so broken without you.  We miss you so bad.  You left with a part of us.  In return, we will always have a part of you, forever and a day.

We love you dearly, Ruby.  We pray that you are running through the fields of flowers and basking in the heavenly sunshine, free of pain.

Ruby at 9 Years Old

"May You Rest In Peace"

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In Good Faith Written by : Reiki Sanctuary Date : Tuesday, March 09, 2010

This is for a friend, Dan.

Hope and Reality - I am often awed and bemused between these two words.  Between its ultimate unity and meaning and the co-relation of the words, it involves a maze of confusing pathways.  Very often, there are questions that challenge our faith. Does having hope necessarily bring about purpose in real life?  Will it make acceptance any easier for that so-called the easy life?  Is hope a driving force for a greater accomplishment?

I have always thought that life should be meaningful.  Life is so much easier when we stop resisting it.  True, it is not exactly to be for every moment every day but to get on the path of a meaningful life, we just need to live our life with intentions.  We need to embrace and honour what shows up.  Life itself, with all what it carries of good and bad, bitter and sweet is worth living for.  Every moment, there is always something to experience, to learn and to give.

Mostly, we live to find answers to refine our ideas about God, about heaven, about love, about the world in which we find ourselves, about our own hidden ambitions, and other profound matters.  There are myriads of thought processes in a single minute.  The countless number of questions can seem a struggle, a battle and a tough road until we discover the peace resulting from its total acceptance.  Often, we are asked to open our hearts, to use the mind to search for meaning and purpose in this world we are in and to seek self awareness.

At the end of the day, we may ask what is it all for?  One of the hardest thing we have to do is to find acceptance.  Until we are able to accept a person, a situation, a place or a thing as being exactly the way it is supposed to be that we, truly, will find serenity.  We yearn and actively strive to be happy and to live a fulfilled life.  Yet, we often find it hard to accept that nothing, absolutely nothing happens in our life is by mistake.  When we sooner realize every life experience has a purpose - that it has to happen for a reason, even if it is beyond our knowing, helps pave the way to peaceful acceptance.  We arrive at some form of purpose.

It is said that when we do nothing, we feel overwhelmed and powerless.  But, when we get involved, we feel the sense of hope and accomplishment.  Yes, once we choose to hope for something, anything is possible.  With hope, the unverse always win so long there is love.

Everything has it's time.  We just have to learn the rules of the universe first.  Love comes to those who still believe in hope even though they have been disappointed, to those who still believe even though they have been betrayed, to those who still love even though they have been hurt before.

Everyday, we wake up to look forward to something, to wish for something, all in confidence in the possibility of its fulfilment.  This optimistic feeling of hopefulness hinges everything to what life is all about.  To which, life should prevail.  Whatever we think, or say or do, on purpose stay with us; it may be good or bad.

Hope can be, as in the proverb, a good breakfast but can turn out to be a bad supper.  When hope is lost, nothing remains.  Nonetheless, there must be a higher purpose than this, for a real reason to our existence.  A good breakfast is when we create the reality from beginning to the end, with faith that it provides nourishment and an integration for the soul and mind.  This includes the single unit coherent to purpose and for a reality to be what it is that we had hoped for.  We will find that a life of love and usefulness gives us a deep sense of purpose that result in further fulfilment.

It is always an easy thing to say, 'Let's hope for ...' but why do it, sometimes, got to end with a bad reality?  How can we reconcile such occurence with our everyday experience in which we live?  In our human relationships, we know how wonderful to hope for our love for someone is freely returned - not because they have to love us but because they want to love us.

Bad things happen.  We just hope that they don't.  To love someone and leaving him the freedom to respond, or not, is a risk and can be a potentially painful reality.  This is why hope and reality need to have an image and likeness in the same purpose - all in good faith.

To begin the journey toward peaceful reality, try letting go of analyzing or attempting to 'figure out' the 'why's' of the situation.  We should continue to hope and cannot force for all realities to accord to our life's terms.  Our lesson in life usually begins with a door closing to let us enter into an uncomfortable period.  This is the hard period.

Reality may, at times, confuse our senses.  What if reality is not quite so real?  Worse, what is real can be a different matter than the actual circumstances we perceive.  Perhaps, reality is just a concept because we want to know whether we should take life seriously.

The only reason we often ask ourselves, "Is this all real?" is because we want to know.  We want to be kind to ourselves to build the foundation of a life well-lived and build bridges to a meditated future.  It is the natural thing as we are always so afraid to get disappointed, to be hurt.  Endeavoring to accept everything in our life as it is now, does not mean we ignore our hope for a future factual and symbolic reality.

Dan, I believe only when you are able to identify your needs that you will be able to take delight in your hope for happiness.  In your hope to have a freely returned relationship.  You partner, though not perfect too, is somewhat living in his reality.  Acceptance is the beginning, the starting point for creating a different outcome.  Acceptance of what is will allow you to take responsibility for your circumstances.

My question to you is, has everything that you hoped for, you believed to be true, created the reality?  You are indeed wise to take your time now to evaluate what you believe and to make some changes.  I can only hope that, every night before going to sleep, call to mind all the things in your life which bring a feeling that is true to your heart.  When you still love your partner, accept it.  Then move to other blessings in your life.  Allow yourself to bring a feeling of gratitude.

Shorten the misery - this feeling of helplessness or hopelessness will not shift your energy into feeling comfort and peace when you keep fighting against your heart's desire.

Think about what you want to think, feel, have and be, Dan.  It is a hope for greater things, for your hope to match the reality.  I can only pray for the divine spark to knock on the door of your heart, for your hope to discover the real fulfillment.  Real life is a life filled with fulfillment, acceptance and purpose.  I am sure you can find it in your relationship with your partner but only when you can find it within yourself first.  You cannot give away what you don't hold in the first place.

Hehe, it is not, as though, that your partner has found someone new.  And that, my dear friend, is a totally different thing.  Totally a different pain, a different hurt.

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Walking On Thin Line Written by : Reiki Sanctuary Date : Saturday, March 06, 2010

At the time of this writing, at the time when there are just so much thoughts drum in my head and so many mixed emotions surfacing, the phrase 'But talk comes so easy when life's at its best' [from the song God Of The Mountain By Lynda Randle] echoes tumultuously into my conscience.  I am allowing the inclination to take place, allowing the drift, for I am not sure where this writing is going to take me.  I know this concept may seem a bit weird.  What holds in my mind to write and encourage two friends, who are facing with some difficulties in their lives now, I am stuck in my own personal emotional conflict.

Perhaps, the song that is being played in my mind has such a strong positive influence.  It refrains me from commenting anything negative.  I am having such a strange heart palpitations.  I am finding it hard to say what is in my heart.  It is hard to be writing about the harsh reality of trials and temptations we face in life.  All that I know, this writing wraps itself with an emotional turmoil in which the entire universe shines.  That which, by itself, shines everywhere the sparkling light of prayers and empathy.

My tears flow at where you both are, my dear ones.  My steps are, probably, as shaken as yours.  For the two of you - Sam and Jana, you are in my prayers.

The phrase from the song challenges my conviction to life.  I wonder will I be reacting differently when life is not at its best?  Will talk come just as easy?  How would I react should I be at the far end of doubts?  Should I be in your situation now, should we swap places, and that each one of you comes to shine the sparkling light to me, would the talk come easy?

It is not about where I am today.  Nor it is about a regained act freeing the self from my mundane portrayal of my ordinary life.  I have always been a thinker rather than a fighter.  I have been taught that faith would always win over strength.  I often feel, though it can fail at times, that it is always good to be a thinker as it has served me well.  Perhaps, the reason why it paves the way for my mind to be hearing those phrase is to transcend time and space and, thereby, merging into consciousness.

There is always an ultimate unity of word and meaning.  Consciousness leads to awareness only when we can master our thinking to master our life.  Words are charged with energy and it is just a matter of understanding what we put in to determine what comes out.  Napoleon Hill, in his book 'Think and Grow Rich' said, "whatever the mind can conceive and believe; the mind can achieve".

Since the beginning of this year, I have been having fleeting glimpse of emotions that is primarily outside my being.  I am not able to offer a more refined and complete account of this emotional experience but, somehow, it entails an unstructured and unfiltered awareness of the true nature of reality.  These emotions and feelings are usually evoked by someone or by accompanying situations.

Earlier this year, I shared with some friends of an uncontrolled and non-related sorrow inside me.  It affected me in some strange ways.  Flashes of disasters, of great pains, of sorrows, of a big earthquake - all that is beyond me, all that is outside me, taunted in my head. 

My mind is like a humming beehive assailed by a multitude of diverse thoughts.  It is buzzing and repeating, over and over again, resounding the cries for an absolute truth to life.  No, it is not about universal truth for the existence of God but for a true reality to comfort the period of uncertainties in everyone's life.  For those, facing an issue or in between a multiple precarious life solutions, to hold a view to believe that everything is relative to something else - for deciding an action that is positive or negative, right or wrong - measure up to determine a safe and secured sustainability.

Everything, is said, to happen for a [good] reason.  But, what might be 'right' for me does not mean it is 'right' for you.  What on the surface that this relativism seems to be appealing, everybody sets his own rules to live by and does what he thinks is right.  Inevitably, a person's sense of right will soon clash with another.  Perhaps, it is because we have different set of goals in life, changeable at any given point in time.  Our basic needs and need levels are never constant.  This is exactly why sociology and psychology have always been such a hard topic.  We react differently to various situations, to different things.  Even to the very same situation, there are different reactions. 

We are all brought up differently with vast arrays of colourful past experiences.  Our thought patterns, coupled with personal principles of life, can't never make how we view subjective matters alike.  Unlike  in the mathematical truth for things.  The consciousness of the mind is a trickery one.  We are often trapped in mass consciousness without owning an understanding that one's life is being directly controlled by his own perception that regulates and guides the evolution.  With all the presence of illusory appearances to all thought processes which give rise to doubts, and limited sense perceptions, the ultimate reality can only lead to misery and discontent.

Somehow, I always believe that the only mindful quality that we need to have within us is our will.  When I have a will, it provides the foundation to shape my mind to drive towards something - the goal.  Some may say it is about setting a goal that having it gives a focus to drive our journey to where we hope to achieve.  In our will, we must have the desire to want it.  Next, we just have to make a conscious decision to be responsible for all of the actions as well as the outcomes of that actions.

Even if we are to believe in any karmic laws, a will is about re-setting a samsaric life cycle back to a new lease.  We are to create experiences, and connections, to provide opportunities to develop new qualities and characteristics.  We just need to acknowledge the part of us that has those emotions and deal with it in our own appropriate way, by fully accepting the emotional self and choosing not to be held captive by these emotions.

Life should be easy and it is.  It is often our thought process that makes it a little complicated.  We allow our life to waste time over unwarranted speculations.  We often fail just to enjoy what life has to offer because we are not fully convinced of wanting that something.  Even when we think that we want that something, it is very common for us to take, probably, two steps back rather than to move with the flow [of opportunities].  We have been so conditioned to prioritize doubts, and involuntarily engaged a convincing skepticism, rather than soaking in faith with new events that are being presented.

I read a story about a group of friends that goes out to a mango plantation.  Their objective is set - that they want to go to enjoy to eat mangoes.  Arriving at the plantation, and instead to just eat them and enjoy, they wasted precious time counting the number and branches.  They paused in uncertainty of eating too much and how it could later harm their health.

Our circumstances often lead us to beat ourselves up.  We lack the determination when we arrive at the will.  When I was growing up, I could be easily contented just doing my things around the house.  Once, when my dad told me that I was grounded, I just wanted to go anywhere and everywhere.  His punishment opened a can of worms to all my anxieties, to all possibilities outside the house.

It reminds me of another incident.  Just last month, over the Lunar New Year celebration, a group of my friends gathered to have Yu Sheng.  Everyone gathered round the dish, each armed with a pair of chopsticks and began to toss the dish together.  The act symbolized abundance of wealth and long life and the higher the toss was to imply for good fortune.  While we were all doing that, a friend passed a remark to her daughter, "You are either in or out" to urge the little girl to participate in the ceremony.  Her intention was good.  It was about commitment.  It was about taking a stand.

The success in life is when we put our mind and soul in one commitment.  We can't never fulfill an objective effectively when there is half will.  My friend was right to pass that judgement.  Naturally, when we start from a standpoint of half-hearted interest, the result is often mediocre.  Abundance can only be achieved if we rid ourselves of the tendency to perform at a mediocre level in all areas of our lives.  Only when we push ourselves, and give the best, that we can appreciate our achievements and enjoy the benefits they bring.

It is said that a will is the driving force for love.  Love is such a strong motivation to cause for a reason, for our heart to be open.  When we have the heart, we will be able to just do it.  The truth is, when our heart is not in it, in anything that we need or want to do, we just won't be able to do it.  It does not matter the amount of reasons we may have that are valid and necessary.

Simply, when there is no love, there is no will. 

When there is love, nothing is too much trouble and there is always time.  The intensity in the statement truly dissipates the torment of any hardship.  It brings forth proximity to everything about life that is splendidly invigorating   To experience that, and to go through life, it just makes anything to be possible.  Until we can internalize, and fully comprehend, the true meaning of this statement that our human weaknesses and societal conflicts simply slide off and could not drown us.

Granted that the intensity of the statement may come and go.  That, our human weaknesses and societal conflicts may blind and distract us but how could it be any other way, when the only way we can appreciate life at its best is experiencing the lack thereof.  In the immortal words from Martin Luther King Jr, "darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.  Hate cannot drive out hate; only love and do that'.

I feel the pains of Sam and Jana.  Of fear crimping into their uncertain future.  Of what hope could lay, for them, a better life ahead.  These two lovely souls, who are just another victim of circumstances, deserve far better things.  There should not be a limit to how much they can have.

What's left to say, as you had asked me to do, Jana is just to pray for all things well.
And the same prayer goes to you, Sam.

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