The unseen and intangible

What is it that causes you to take chances in your life? When you choose to risk losing something that means a lot to you, this requires courage. Your sixth sense may warn you of impending dangers in enough time to avoid them. Then again, you may not heed warnings of your inner voice, or even notice them, and then, taking risks may end up harming you.

What enables you to sense opportunities on the horizon? You may get good vibes after speaking with someone or you may simply develop an attitude that a great career change is around the corner. This kind of positive feeling may motivate you to impulsively attend a casting or submit a resume to a senior manager over an impromptu lunch.

You may reply that unseen and intangible signs enable you to uncover elements of faith.  You may imitate individuals you admire who have taken chances and succeeded along their own paths. Although you may study cause and effect, and gain insight into the spirit of positive thinking, only understanding of your own patterns and characteristics enables you to see the difference between thinking and feeling the nature of a risk. Thinking is grounded in fear. Feeling is guided by love. Notice when you think with the head or feel with the heart.

At some stage, you no longer judge yourself.  So, you come to see everything as experience with the same opportunities to love and accept yourself fully of not.  Now all you do is trust.

Outwit Mother Nature

Blair Hill was born a deaf mute without ears whom physicians didn't expect to hear. Yet, his father Napoleon decided to instill in his son a strong desire to hear. The man refused to accept that his offspring was deaf, and, as the child grew older, it became clear he had a slight degree of hearing. When Blair's parents decided to buy a phonograph, it was like a new beginning for their son. He clenched his teeth on the side of the case and began to learn the power of vibration and the significance of bone conduction. He grew to hear his father's voice when his lips touched the boy's mastoid bone. Napoleon diligently devised stories that aimed to inspire self-reliance, imagination and a desire to speak and hear normally. At a young age, he ventured out into streets to sell papers and revealed himself as an ambitious, resourceful businessman. Late in college, he tried a new hearing device which enabled him to hear properly for the first time. Blair Hill became motivated to create and implement a hugely successful marketing plan that helped deaf people hear. He realized his goal to facilitate the miracle of human hearing.

“To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible. “ - Saint Thomas Aquinas

Endings are really beginnings

Early in The Five People You Meet in Heaven, author Mitch Albom says that "all endings are also beginnings." His protagonist Eddie goes about the last 30 minutes of his life on Earth as a routine.

He is an old, wounded war veteran, who feels he had led an uninspired life. His chosen job is fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, a tragic accident kills him as he tries to save a little girl from a falling cart. He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is a place where your life is explained to you by five people, some of whom you knew, others who may have been strangers. One by one, from childhood to soldier to old age, Eddie's five people identify Earthly connections to him.  They give him reason to rethink his ideas of a  "meaningless" life, and shed new light on timeless question: "Why was I here?"

The five life lessons clarified for Eddy by angels are:

1- There are no random acts. Strangers are like family you have yet to know.

2- Sacrificing precious things, doesn't mean you lose them. You pass them on to someone else.

3- When we're angry, we hurt ourselves more than other people. Learn to forgive.

4- Life has to end, but love doesn't.

5- Your good deeds can help make up for what has been done before you.

How do you feel about these lessons? What kinds of life experiences have influenced your views? Explain how you understand connections among people you meet and your life experiences.

Almost, but not quite

How do we know guardian angels exist? Are they messengers of Higher Forces? Something beyond us seems to guide us to good thoughts and words, and to help preserve us from danger or suffering. 

A divorced mom I know now shared how she had struggled to raise her young son and wondered more than once how she would survive.   Try as she did to take on on odd jobs to support them both, the bills kept piling up.   When her ex-husband refused to pay support, and she had no friends or relatives to help, she ran into greater difficulties.  She spent all her money to feed her son and drank only milk herself.  As the result, she lost a lot of weight and became very weak. The time came when she hadn't paid rent in three months.  She feared she and her son would be evicted.  Her health became precarious and she finally arrived at her wits end. She made every sacrifice she could, though she says that her now adult son doesn't realize her sacrifices. 

Without apparent rhyme or reason, she asked for help aloud and thought nobody heard.  Soon afterwards, her landlord and people around her did a complete change of heart.  The landlord told her she didn't deserve the way she had been treated, and he'd erase her debt and start her bill from that moment. After everyone seemed to have turned their backs to her, she felt this landlord was a saviour. Then, she met a stranger who oriented her to a more stable job opportunity. The divorced mom became as an adminstrative assistant and filer in a radiology department. From that period in her life, things looked up.  She was offered other jobs that enabled her to make ends meat, pay her son's private school, and manage to keep her head above water. Looking back , she admits that she almost lost her bearings, but not quite. 

No matter how great your distress, how prolonged your solitude, how you almost lose faith, you'll always have access to Forces beyond you that are able to help you, as if from nowhere.  Take responsibility for your actions and realize your intentions, reasons and drive, all help you to progress in unexpected ways.

Deja-vu on a bicycle

A friend shared a miraculous story with me that involves her family twice spared from tragedies with children over a period of months.  She believes that a guardian angel twice saved the day.

In the first case, when she was an infant, her mother strapped her into her carseat and placed her brother beside her with a bag of lollies. The mother got into her car, started it and headed off down the road.  Much to the woman's surprise, the back door of her car flew open on the side where her son sat.  As he hadn't been wearing his seatbelt, he fell out onto the road and screamed on impact. The mother screached the car to a halt, jumped out, and ran to her son.  All he could scream was, "I want my lollies!" He didn't notice the bloody cuts.  At that moment, a kind woman arrived on her bicycle. She turned out to be a nurse and knew exactly what to do.  Then, the nurse rode way as quickly as she had appeared.  After that incident, the mother didn't try to find this nurse. She felt the nurse had been in the right place and was silently grateful.

Months later, the same woman and the same car had another close call. This time, her infant  niece locked herself into the car and struck a match. The chold lit herself on fire which led to third degree burns.  The aunt (owner of the car) smashed the back window and reached in to save the girl, and at the same time, got third degree burns herself.  Just then, the same nurse rode over the hill on that familiar bicycle the woman river remembered from the incident with her son.  Again, the nurse conveniently offered very specific health advice about how to deal with the burns.  Then, the nurse rode off again.  This time, the child's aunt tried to find the nurse to thank her, but never found her. To this day, the family believes in guardian angels.