Category: Spiritual Practice

This category has some anecdotes, stories, muses of everyday life with a spiritual outlook. And also those small yet meaningful practical tools.

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Forget Me Not

“Forget Me Not” is the name of a flower. I don’t know why it’s named into one so easy to remember yet almost poetic, but the moment you hear it, you won’t forget it. Of course, I heard the name in Chinese first: ????

Even though it’s an unforgettable name, I never knew what it looked like until 2005.

I was fresh and new in the country of Canada. I had a boyfriend who I had met back in China. He is a French. My early years of new immigrant life were spent between Canada and China, and France and Switzerland, where he had homes. On top of our mutual interest in travelling which had originally brought us together, in those early years of my new immigrant life when I was supposed to be physically more in Canada (1095 days out of 4 years in Canada to apply for citizenship), we met up in Burma, Vietnam, Nepal, Bhutan, Mexico, and Peru. You may wonder why I had bothered to immigrate to Canada when I was developing a stable relationship with a French person.

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Getting Old as a Child

As I approach the last month of being 55 years old, I have started to ponder many things.

When I was younger, I looked at old people. From my young heart, “oldness” was their identity. Like “young-ness” was my assumed identity. Like, they were born old. And I will be young forever. Yes, we all get old. I could say it back then too; however, I only knew it conceptually. I didn’t feel it, not like the way I could feel living in another country, away from my birth country, while I still lived in China.

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Why do We Worry?

We all live in the here-and-now and we all form ideas about what constitutes reality. Sometimes we confuse our ideas about reality with reality itself. What we think of as reality is based on our upbringing and learning from our experiences. As such, any ideas and opinions about reality can’t help but be subjective and judgmental.

Therefore, the eye reproduces; it does not see. The ear translates; it does not hear. When our ideas about reality are not in alignment with our desires, we think reality is bad and not one that we want to be in, instead of questioning our ideas about it.

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Intending to Let Go of Expectation

Many words in English can be interpreted in many ways.

A client I’ll call Jasmine had been working on her Instagram content for a while. Living nomadically as a chef, Instagram worked perfectly for her lifestyle. Her goal was to attract followers and engagement and then eventually monetize her work with brands to earn a living doing what she was passionate about.

As with any business, at times, Jasmine felt discouraged and lost. When things were not moving, money was not there. She started questioning what she was doing and whether she should continue. But before she quit, she had this idea to talk with a hypnotherapist, to get validation about whether quitting was a good idea.

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The Fountainhead of My Inspiration

On the surface level of the storyline, it is a book about how an artist, an architect, chose to stay true to his art and his work, no matter how hard it could get and how many shortcuts were offered. On a deeper level, it was quite philosophical. The author, Ayn Rand, was considered a philosopher as much as a writer. Yet, there’s even more depth to it. As my soul was resonating with Howard, his calm nature, his matter-of-factness, his sovereignty… He stood for our own perfect and self-sufficient spiritual nature.

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Turn Obstacles into Opportunities

Suppose disappointment without anger is the mark of an old soul, and not being disappointed is the mark of a really old soul. In that case, living your own life purpose and trusting your own life so thoroughly that every step on its path is valued more than where it is “supposed to take you”, must be the mark of an eternal young soul.

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The Dragonfly

This morning, I found this piece I wrote in 2017 and decided to use it for this month’s blog post. I’m currently travelling in the Netherlands. I left the draft of this blog post on my computer screen and headed for Hilversum, today’s agenda. The moment I pulled my phone out to take a picture in the beautiful purple flower field, a dragonfly landed on my phone. I could not take a picture of my phone with a dragonfly on it when I needed it to take a picture. I called my partner. By the time he came, the dragonfly flew away. I sighed, but my partner asked me not to move. The cute dragonfly just flew up and landed on top of my hat. How synchronistic!

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Turn Thoughts to Thinking

“Turn thoughts to thinking.” When this idea first came to me on one of those morning walks, it lit a light bulb in my head. Everything became crystal clear, including many ways I could use it to illustrate and explain how the mind works, or not.

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The Unfinished Life

Who would go to the Big Island of Hawaii to stay in the place they rent for more days than they go about exploring?

Not me. I had my snorkel trips booked, my hiking shoes packed for the cold mountain summit, my 5 swimming suits selected…

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Before You Left

What do you mean, Father left? I stared at the screen, simple words, I couldn’t understand. Did you love me enough? Did you encourage me enough? Did you accept me enough? Have you ever expressed yourself enough?