Cover Artist: Jeanette Sellwood
Title: Frangipanni Fairy
Medium: Acrylic Mixed Media
Contact: www.freespiritartist.com.au
FEATURE ARTICLE
What We Believe Runs Our Life
Beliefs are powerful. They ‘control’ our ‘successes’ and our ‘failures’ in all areas of our life. Let’s take relationships as an example, and I’ll start with a few questions. You may want to get out a pen and paper (or your ‘iPad’) and make two columns.
Column 1: What is your relationship like with …
1) Your family, including partner, children, pets?
2) Your workmates or business associates?
3) Your friends and neighbours?
4) Others?
I’d like you to describe how you honestly feel about each of those relationships. Don’t worry; no one is going to see this but you.
1) What do you truly feel about each of them? E.g. do you just want to complain about what they don’t do, or what they should have done?
2) Do you love all the things they do for you, seen and unseen?
3) Are they a joy to be around?
Column 2: How would you like it to be with each of these groups? Use your imagination. Can you imagine what it would be like if everything was perfect? What does that mean to you?
Great! Now, how do your Beliefs affect your relationships? Some people believe …
‘You can never be truly happy’. (There always seems to be something missing.)
‘You can never have what you want’. (You never get the relationship you want.)
‘You have to struggle for it to be worthwhile’. (It’s always got to be hard!)
And these are just a few of them. Some of them we are aware of and others are totally unconscious, which isn’t surprising as around 95% of our thoughts are unconscious. So my next questions to you are:
What are your beliefs? (Not sure? Just look at your life.)
Where did your beliefs come from? (Parents? Grandparents? teachers?) How do you change them?
Let’s go back to when you were a child. Did you know that in the first five to seven years of your life you are a ‘sponge’ for everything that is around you? That includes everything you heard, felt, sensed … you took it all on. You didn’t really have a choice at that time.
That’s where the majority of our beliefs come from. After those first five to seven years of our life, we then make conscious choices about what we believe is true. Of course we are taught at a very early age that our parents (and adults in general) are right! We are taught to ‘obey’ or else! So, even though we really do have a choice, we often don’t think we do.
Our ‘job’ as an adult, is to see the gift in everything we have been ‘given’ and to move on. Often …
‘Our greatest ‘Gift’ is our greatest Challenge.
This is what we are here for … to understand the ‘gift’, accept it, be grateful for it, and teach it to others.
‘Our Mess is our Message’.
Are you ready to accept yours? Take a moment right now, right where you are and s..l..o..w..l..y turn around in a 360º circle and observe everything you see. You are a magician … You have created everything you see in your life right here, right now. Can you be grateful for it? Can you realise the ‘Gift’ this is providing for you? Are you ready to share it with the world?
Love Your Life or Change It :-)
Julie Ramige. ‘Your Guide To Coming Out Easy’ Email: julie.ramige@me.com
REGULAR FEATURE
SIDDHA STORIES
The Horrid Dib – Dib
One night a thief, intending to rob an old woman, crept to the open window of her home and listened. She was lying on the bed and the thief heard her talking with powerful emotion, in a most strange manner.
She was saying, “Aah… the Dib-Dib, the horrid Dib-Dib! This abominable Dib-Dib will be the end of me.”The thief thought, “This unfortunate woman is suffering from some terrible disease – the malignant Dib-Dib, of which I had not even heard before!” Then, as her wails increased in volume, he began to say to himself, “Have I, I wonder, been infected? After all, I almost took her breath as I leant through the window…”
The more he thought about it, the more he began to fear that he had, indeed, contracted the injurious Dib-Dib. Within a few moments he was shaking in every limb. He only just managed to totter home to his wife, moaning and groaning, “The sinister Dib-Dib, how can there be any doubt that the accursed Dib-Dib has got me in its grip?”
His wife put him to bed at once, greatly fearful. What dreadful thing had attacked her husband? She imagined at first that he must have been pounced upon by some wild animal called a Dib-Dib. But, as he became less and less coherent and she could still find no mark upon him, she began to fear that it was a matter of supernatural intervention.
The person whom she knew to be best qualified to deal with such a problem was, of course, the local holy man. He was something approaching a priest, learned in the Law, known as the Sage Faqih. The woman immediately went to the house of the sage and begged him to come to see her husband. The Faqih, thinking that this might indeed be a field in which his especial sanctity could be put to use, hurried to the thief’s bedside.
The thief, when he saw the man of faith beside him, thought that his end must be even closer than he had feared. Mustering all his strength, he muttered, “The old woman at the end of the road, she has the accursed Dib-Dib, and it has flown upon me from her. Help me, if you can, Reverend Faqih!”
“My son,” said the Faqih, although he was himself perplexed, “bethink yourself of repentance and pray for mercy, for your remaining hours may now indeed be few.”
He left the thief and made his way to the old woman’s cottage. Peering through the window, he distinctly heard her whimpering voice as she writhed and shuddered. “Fool Dib-Dib, you are killing me… Stop, stop, evil Dib-Dib, for you are sapping my very life’s blood away.” And she continued for some time in this vein, occasionally sobbing and sometimes remaining silent. The Faqih himself now began to feel as if an eerie chill passed through him. He started to shake, and his hands clutching the window frame caused it to rattle like the chattering of teeth.
At this sound the crone leapt from her bed and seized the now terrified Faqih by the hands. “What are you, a man of respectability and learning, doing at this time of night, looking through decent people’s windows?” she shrilled.
“Good but unfortunate woman,” faltered the learned one, “I heard you speak of the awful Dib-Dib, and now I fear that it has its clutches upon my heart as well as upon your own, and that I am, physically and spiritually lost.”
“You incredible fool,” screeched the hag, “to think that for all these years I have looked up to you as a man of books and wisdom! You hear someone say ‘Dib-Dib’, and you imagine that it is going to kill you! Look then in yonder corner, and see what the appalling Dib-Dib really is!” And she pointed to the dripping tap, which the Faqih suddenly realised was leaking with thud of dib-dib-dib…
But divines have resilience. In next to no time he felt himself marvellously restored by the relief from his troubles and hurried back to the house of the thief, for he had work to do.
“Go away,” groaned the thief, “for you deserted me in my necessity, and the sight of so depressing a face offers little reassurance as to my future state.”
The elder interrupted him, “Ungrateful wretch! Do you think that a man of my piety and learning would have a matter such as this unsolved? Attend, then, closely to my words and acts, and I shall show you how I have worked untiringly, in accordance with my celestial mandate, towards your safety and recovery.”
The word ‘recovery’ immediately focussed the attention of both the thief and his wife upon the imposing dignity of the reputed sage. He took some water and said certain words over it. Then he made the thief promise never to steal again. Finally, he sprinkled the prepared water over the thief with many a polysyllable word and gesture, ending with, “Flee, unclean and infernal Dib-Dib, whence thou comest, never returning to plague this unhappy man!” The thief sat up cured.
From that day to this the thief has never stolen again. Neither has he told anyone about the miraculous cure, because in spite of everything he still does not much like the sage and his ideas. And the old woman, normally a gossip, has not spread the word of the idiocy of the Faqih. She plans eventually to turn it to good account; some occasion will arise for a bartering of good turns, perhaps.
And, of course, the Faqih… well, the Faqih is not of a mind to have the details bruited about, and he will not recite the tale either.
But, as is the way of men, each of the people involved has told his or her own version in strict confidence of course, to one other person. And that is why you have been able to know the whole story of the woman, the thief, the priest, and the terrible Dib-Dib.
Universal Storyteller.