Friday, December 08, 2006

The Creation of Gold Ray Essence


The Gold Ray essence was created preceding a time of profound changes on my spiritual path. I first became aware of the uniqueness of the Eucalyptus "paper" tree in Karen's backyard when Karen remarked to me how much their papertree has grown over the course of only a few years. Unlike any other tree in the vicinity, this tree has taken on a shape and form very symbolic of the ever expanding energy of the Source, which is infinite and limitlessly abundant. Physically speaking, the tree has grown to an enormous size with its branches sprawled out, almost like wrapping themselves around the house behind it in a protective way, such as the arms of a strong and nurturing mother. I then went over to the tree to connect with it, by wrapping my arms around one of its major branches. Within seconds, I could feel an instant flow of love into my heart space which caused me to be in tears of joy! I could feel the tree's happiness and could feel it surrounding me in it as well! Right at that moment, I knew that an essence was to be created from it such that its joy and happiness can be shared with others!

As mentioned earlier, the creation of this essence came during a time that preceded a period of tremendous growth and change on my path. Immediately after this essence was made, I started my backpacking journey in South America where I was finally allowing myself to let go of my psychological backpack which prevented me in all these years from doing what I really want to do with my life; hence, one of the unique trait of this essence is its power to free us of any burdens we may carry in our central column or physical spine that may block us from experiencing deeper levels of freedom and joy. It was also a time in my life where I experienced a very fast expansion in consciousness, through connecting with Mother Earth during my travels, and through cleaning out many levels of repressed emotions in my heart space that were again, blocking me from experiencing greater joy and happiness. Therefore this essence is really about freeing ourselves of burdens and opening our hearts to higher consciousness where we become one with all of creation.

For orders, please write me at ladybugheals@yahoo.com. I look forward to working with Nature in serving you further with future creations of essences.

Monday, October 16, 2006

Working with Our Spirit Guides, the Angels, the Ascended Masters and More... - October 15, 2006


Today I plan to write about a very fun topic, to share my fun experiences of working with a number of my own spirit guides, who have so very lovingly assisted me on my path since the dawn of it all. Everyone of us has Guides from the other realm since our birth, and some Guides join us at different times in our lives depending on our soul evolution and paths. Spirit guides can be an angel, an Archangel, an Ascended Master (referring to beings who were once human but have ascended, such as Jesus Christ, Mother Mary, Mohammed or Serapis Bey), a deceased loved one or any deceased person who has crossed over who may know us as a soul and simply wants to assist you from the other side. Many of you are probably already constantly connecting with them without being aware of it. For example, you may have a particular liking for a certain deity, such as you love going to the temple to pray to Kwan Yin, or you’re Catholic and feel a strong connection to Jesus. Spirit guides like to make their presence known to us in very subtle ways, as they’re always looking to guide or assist us in some way. Specifically, they look to assist us in our evolution, in gaining understanding from our third-dimensional realities, or they simply want to make us feel more loved. Working consciously with our spirit guides can be very fun and healing. I want to share some of my personal stories of how I connected with my spirit guides because they have brought me so much wisdom, so much love and so much understanding. And I hope that through sharing these stories, I can inspire you to also see that you can connect with them at any time and place.

One of my Guide is an Ascended Master, Siddharta Gautama the Buddha, as you may know, he was once an Indian prince who decided to meditate under a bodhi tree and later ascended to become the Buddha. While I was traveling alone for the first time in Peru, I felt extremely lonely for the first few days in Lima. My impression of Lima is that it is a very gloomy, polluted and not very safe city. I felt so lonely being all by myself in this foreign place, that I almost decided to pack my back and head home, scrap my plan of traveling solo in South America. What a pity if I have had done that! But anyway, that’s not the key of the story. So I decided to connect with my guides and understand why this was happening. Siddharta was the first to speak to me for he had much to share about feeling lonely, as he has once followed the lonely path of meditating on his own for many years. He told me to sit in my loneliness, and so I did, I sat in it, meditated on it. Then he told me to understand it. So I kept sitting in the loneliness and after a while, I understood it, I understood why I was feeling lonely, and when I reached this understanding, the loneliness puffed away like it had never truly existed, and for the rest of my trip, I honestly never felt lonely again. So that’s Siddharta, an incredibly wise and loving being, I never forget his teachings from that experience.

Another of my Guide, who I only became consciously aware yesterday that he’s been working with me (so he is a new guide who has just joined my Guidance team), is Ganesh, the half-human and half-elephant Hindu deity. You see a lot of his statues in Thailand, but of course, you don’t need to be physically in Thailand to connect with him, because in the fourth dimension, where all spirit guides exist, there is no time and space. I first worked with Ganesh while channeling for a friend few months ago. Ganesh is one of my friend’s spirit guides and I had a very fun time channeling Ganesh that time. He left quite an impression on me because his energy felt to me, unlike other Guides who I have connected with in the past, more aggressive and forceful. The second time I connected with Ganesh again was when I was climbing Volcan Misti in Peru, my first time climbing a real mountain and that experience was probably one of the most strenuous thing I’ve ever done in my life. He came to me to tell me that I can call on him specifically to help me get up that formidable volcano, for he is a remover of obstacles. The obstacles were really my belief system that I couldn’t make it up that mountain, of which he lovingly dissolved, and despite exerting tremendous physical strength, I completed the climb feeling much stronger afterwards. Then to no coincidence, I channeled him again for another friend two days later, and Ganesh happened to be that friend’s spirit guide as well and had just helped him with a home robbery several weeks ago, and so my friend was extremely excited and intrigued to learn that Ganesh is one of his Guides. My friend has always been drawn to elephants and in fact, he has two big elephant statues in his home. Now I’m aware that Ganesh is also one of my spirit guides, and he is here to help me with my writing and with removing any obstacles in my life, which are really illusions created by my fearful mind.

Anyway, so these our my two more recent and interesting stories of working consciously with my own spirit guides. You can also work with them directly to resolve any issues you may have in any aspect of your life, which may include health, work, career, money, romance, marriage, family and travel issues (even like needing help booking a hotel). I find that people often believe that they need to pray a specific way to higher dimensional beings, or treat them a certain way in order to receive help from them. I know many religious disciples follow strict rituals to connect with higher beings. I don’t disagree with the rituals, as they are powerful ways to focus our intentions when we seek to ask for help from higher beings. But it is not true that if we don’t follow those rituals or pray a certain number of times a day or in a certain way or place, that we cannot get the same help from them. Because first, you need to understand that these beings are energies of pure unconditional love, they resonate at such a high, loving vibrational frequency that in their world, there is no fear, no hate, no anger, no judgment. They love us all so equally and so unconditionally. So rest assured that however you may think you are as a human being, you deserve all the help you can get from them, and that they’re always happy to assist us further on our paths. In a later blog, I'll discuss ways of connecting with them more.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Connecting with Spirit - June 1, 2006


Connecting with spirit is the most beautiful thing. Have you ever heard the wind sing, heard a frog cry, or a rat scream or even a tree laugh? There is consciousness in all things, every particle, every atom, in this universe, has a voice of its own. All things are as alive as we are. Perhaps, not quite the same way, but they are conscious, and they are alive. Feel, with your heart, and let your imagination run wild. The world expands when you allow your perception to go beyond the mundane reality. See, beyond the static. And see, into the unknown, into that vast ocean of spirit, that lies parallel to our everyday reality but is elusive to our limiting perceptions if we are not willing to trust, to trust that, which can only be felt. Smell the wind, and say hello. Walk to a bird and tell her how you feel. Touch the tree next door, and tell him he is missed, that he is beautiful, just like you. The universe awaits us to become aware of that, that which truly is.

Last week, I met a frog on the way to the supermarket. He told me he was angry because of the pollution around the vicinity. Well, I wouldn’t be surprised by that. Ha! On my way out of the supermarket, Mr. Frog leaped ten steps to meet me eye-to-eye, passing me a message that is leading me to an exciting chapter of my life. The Universe always bears gifts, so open your arms to receive. For now, I will keep the message a secret. Until then. I must go.

(Photograph by Michael Chan)

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Choosing Between Love and Fear - April 18, 2006


Have you ever been caught in a situation where you have to make up your mind about something but it’s just so hard to decide? Today I was just caught in a situation where I had to decide in a very short notice whether to lend money to a friend or not. My initial reaction was sure, no problem. However, as soon as I committed myself I felt a huge cloud of fear take over me and I was panicking whether that was the right thing to do. I was prepared to tell my friend that I change my mind about helping her. However, just as I was about to do that, I decided to seek counsel who astutely guided me to see the situation from a place of love to aid me in making a better choice. Instead of allowing my head take over me to judge the act of lending money as right or wrong, good or bad, what consequences it could have if I couldn’t get the money back etc.., I focused on how I felt on lending the money and not lending the money. At that moment I started to see the issue for it really was about. I felt that if I choose to not lend the money, I would be choosing out of my own fear, my fear of financial insecurity because I fear I wouldn’t get my money back; while choosing to lend the money, I felt that it was more coming from a desire to help my friend than from any fears. Consequently, I chose to lend the money, one because it felt it would be an act out of love, and second, because I couldn’t let myself choose otherwise since it would mean letting my fear dominate my reality when I could just embrace it once and for all and not have to live under its shadow again in the future. Luckily, as with my past experiences, fears do go away once you become aware of them and are willing embrace them, while the opposite is true if you choose to become their slaves by constantly acting them out in the choices you make.

I’m not saying here that it is wrong to choose out of fear, we’re bound to do that every now and then. But it’s like every thought pattern we hold and every choice we make have a direct consequence on our future well-being, and to choose out of fear, especially when you are aware of the fear itself, is like an ostrich sticking its head in the sand, pretending that everything’s ok when it’s not. And the snowball keeps rolling, until one day the fear becomes so huge (after having been fed for decades throughout your life) that it bites you from the back, since the law of the universe denotes that whatever you fear you create; or, ten years down the road, you find yourself living in a birdcage, because you become so accustomed to not doing all the things that you’re afraid of, that you become a prisoner of your own fears and beliefs.

So next time, when you have to make a difficult choice, take a deep breath, and see for yourself, whether you’re choosing out of fear, or out of love. The result of choosing out of love is liberating, and I will not dwell on the former any further. You know what I mean.

But if you do catch yourself choosing out of fear, that's alright too, it's just an experience. Give yourself a pat on your back for being able to spot it as is. There is always another chance.

"We need to teach the next generation of children from day one that they are responsible for their lives. Mankind's greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear." - Elisabeth Kubler Ross

(Photograph taken by someone on Flickr. Lovely isn't it? Check out the butterfly it has a long pale blue tail!)

Monday, March 27, 2006

Letting Go, Letting God - March 26, 2006



Ever since I was very little, I’ve suffered from a shoulder pain on the left side. I remember that it would always hurt when I played the piano. The pain was never unbearable, but it would always be there, whenever I’m just about to forget about it, subtlely creeping on me, as if it had a little voice of its own.

One year in college, after several years of regular teen-age partying craze, my shoulder problem took a sharp turn south… One day, after seeing a physical therapist, my shoulder, along with my entire neck and several vertebrae on my upper back, felt like a stack of cubes unwinding in all different directions. I could feel that each vertebrae was dislocated in a different and funny way, and the result was – sharp shooting pain whenever I try to turn my body in any direction! This pain persisted for months and I got really desperate. I tried many different doctors and pillows and massages. Nothing was helping. At moments the pain was so intense I was going hysterical. Several months later I was diagnosed to have rheumatic heart disease, a disease in which some valve in the heart doesn’t close properly because it has hardened. Wow! My heart was hardening! In retrospect, I see the symbolism behind the illness to be that there was a deep lack of love in my life, so deep that the heart has decided to shut off all flow of energy and therefore grew hard!

I don’t remember the exact time now, but about more than six months later, I met my Chinese bone and “gua sha” doctor, who slowly treated my back and heart problems. For several years I had this treatment, which really worked on me and I was slowly healing. The pain diminished. My heart problem got better. I had enough energy to work long hours and do regular activities. I was told by this bone doctor that, because of the way my back was out of alignment, I wasn't supposed to bend my back backwards. And it really was the case, for, whenever I did try to bend it backwards, it would hurt a lot and feel like the bones have gone completely berserk and I would need to get it adjusted again. So for about six years now, I did not allow myself to engage in any risky backbending activities.

About a year ago I met a healer and have since embarked on a journey of tremendous healing and spiritual awakening. There has been many ups and downs throughout the journey, and, although there were moments of seeming darkness, every step was a step closer to more light. My heart and upper back problem (they’re interrelated) surely came up in my healing journey, in fact, it is one of my core issues that needs healing. In short, my heart problem led me to heal my relationship with my mother, which is one of the root causes of my disappointing romantic relationships. The issue with my mother involves my grandmother, for ever since I was a child, I was resentful of the way my mother was treating my grandmother. What I chose to perceive as a child and internalized on an unconscious level, was that my mother was a sinner. And to play “let-me-carry-this-burden-I-am-a-martyr” role, I decided (unconsciously of coz!) to carry her sin on my own back, while carrying loads of resentful feelings towards my mom. When I was a child, I used to stay up all the time at night crying over my grandmother. Looking back, it’s incredible to see how issues can develop into as we grow up!

Recently, I’ve been praying for more healing to my heart. I was becoming impatient with the progress of the recovery of my back pain, as it continued to hurt. At times, I was even losing faith in all this healing work. In retrospect, I understand that there is a divine timing to all progresses in life.

In one of my Rainbow Warrior classes with Eva, this issue came up and I was reminded by Spirit that it is time to set myself free from carrying this psychological burden or "backpack", which does not serve me any longer. The night after that class I had a really vivid dream. In the dream, my mother, grandmother and I traveled together in a train which traversed through a tunnel, and on the train, I was carrying my grandmother on my back. The train came to a stop and my grandmother unloaded from my back. She said to me, “You don’t have to carry me anymore.”

Two days later, I went to a Yoga class. I’ve always had a fear about doing Yoga because of my perceived inability to bend my back, however, my heart’s been telling me to do Yoga for a while, and so I decided to give it one more try. During the class, I asked my spirit guides to give me the courage to do each posture. Then came this simple backbending/stretching posture, and I thought to myself, so if I really screw it up again, I will just go to the bone doctor and get it fixed (and that has been exactly what happened in the past!) As I embraced my fear and performed this posture, I burst into tears of release and relief! The repressed energies in my back were released like a dam broke loose. In my third eye, I saw my spirit guides clapping their hands in the air, they were applauding me for having reached a new milestone of my journey! I walked out of the yoga class with a new body and it’s been feeling like that since.

The journey does not end here. The journey will continue. Sometimes it is fun, sometimes it is not. But again, every step is a step closer to more light. This is my journey, what is yours?

Monday, March 06, 2006

Meditation: Rediscovering Our Eternal Flame - March 7, 2006


Recently I've been reading stuff written by Osho, who greatly advocates meditation. So I thought I'll write a lil' something on my experience with meditation. I first learned to meditate from my Reikidou Naturopathy ("gua sha" as is more commonly called) master who taught us a way to practice Qigong which is basically a meditation that focuses on taking long deep breaths to and from the solar plexus. When I first experienced it, I found it very hard to sit still for more than five minutes. After several uncomfortable attempts, I quickly gave up. It was not until I started to heal myself emotionally and spiritually that I slowly fell in love with the simple act of meditation.

Much has been written on the benefits of meditation. To me, meditation, like my pendulum, helps me reconnect with my true self or inner being. When I find myself feeling a lil' under the weather, I meditate to re-experience that eternal flame of joy within my soul that never sleeps. When I'm under stress or getting emotional or grumpy, I meditate to restore my balance such that I can move forward once again with strength and trust. I like to think of meditation as a way of turning off the mind and turning up the volume of our inner voice. When I find myself unable to make certain decisions in life, I meditate to speak with my inner being for the answer that is most true to myself, myself alone.

Finally, meditation is just great, it doesn't cost any money, it takes up very lil' space (you can sit, lie down or even stand!), it generates great value by making me happier and lighter afterwards, and it doesn't actually take up any time of all - it functions in a space of non-time. Because when we meditate, we become fully conscious of the present moment, we experience pure existence which is only possible in the Now. The present moment isn't actually a function of time, there's no continuum to it. The Now is constantly moving into the future, and moving away from the past. It is not the past or the future, it is all there is. The only way to experience it is to be in it, with it, become it. So next time, when you meditate, let your concept of time fall away, and focus on how you feel in this very precious moment which only you can grasp. And when you start to feel your heart swell with joy, you know you're home.

Looking back, I can hardly conceive that I once found meditation to be difficult. But that is only normal and I'm sure many of you must have felt this way sometime in your experience with it. It's almost like saying that sometimes, everything around us is so distracting and overwhelming (busy schedules, other peoples' needs, media's injection of fear in us, etc..) that it becomes even difficult to just be ourselves. Because meditation is sort of a way to just BE ourselves, completely, 100%, without any distractions whatsoever.

Let me share a quote with you by Osho before I part on this topic - ".. when a person meditates he starts flowering. If he is a painter, he will become a great painter. If he is a poet, then suddenly tremendous poetry will arise out of his soul. If he is a singer, for the first time he will sing a song that is close to his heart's desire. When you are silent, rooted in your being, centered, your talents automatically start functioning... You become spontaneous. You start doing your thing - and now you don't bother whether it pays or not, whether it makes you more respectable or not. It makes you happy, and that's enough. It makes you tremendously joyful, and that is more than enough"

(Painting by Sofan Chan - "Forest of Light")

Friday, March 03, 2006

What is Healing? - February 20, 2006


Since I started healing myself, I have had so many healing experiences, from regular energy healing sessions to all kinds of self-awareness workshops, to meditations (group and self), to getting sick (that’s healing too!) and to sitting through events in life that forced me to face many hidden fears. I am not going to discuss the different healing modalities I’ve tried, there are just too many! It is not my point here to discuss them today, for, as Eva has said, and so it is my belief as well, that literally anything on the planet can be healing, so long as you choose it to be...

Healing is a way of living where we consciously choose to look within ourselves for answers to issues in our lives. Healing is living in the moment, rather than in the past or future. Healing is walking closer to love, and farther away from fear. Healing is sitting in pain and understanding it. Healing is kissing your fears and realizing that they are only your illusions. Healing is seeing beauty in the not beautiful and seeing extraordinary in the ordinary. Healing is letting go of something precious, and then having it back triple-fold, because in the process we realize that nothing is ever lost. Healing is becoming vulnerable so that we can become stronger, happier, more peaceful, which is our natural state of being. Therefore, healing is re-becoming our true self.

I believe that suffering exists in this world only for us to learn to heal ourselves. We fall such that we will one day rise again. Therefore diseases are healing, as they teach us to grow, to live in the moment, and to trust. Dying is also healing, because through dying, we are forced to embrace the fear of death and to recognize that we are not separate but connected, whether in one lifetime or another. I've also read that some people like to use death as a motivator of change. Because if you just remember that we will all die one day anyway, then what excuse do you have to not choose to live your life in joy, but choose to waste time molding over the past, which no longer exists, and planning a future, which may not ever exist?

Healing is not to be sought, healing seeks us, and it is courage that allows us to see it.

(Photograph by Vicky Yeung)

Is this Another Groundhog Day? - February 5, 2006


If you have seen or remember the movie “Groundhog Day”, it talks about a man who had to relive the same day in his life over and over again until he undergoes a transformation of self-discovery. Reality is sorta like that too. Things seem to repeat themselves over and over again. We tend to attract similar situations or people into our lives. We get pissed off or annoyed over similar things, we get cheated in a similar way, we worry about the same things, we injure the same ankle over and over again etc… So why is it that life has chosen to be so ‘predictable’ in some sense? If I were to tell you, that life or our higher self (an unconscious part of our psyche which I identify as the driver of our conscious reality) is always looking out for us, serving us in our best interest, and that therefore these seemingly boring repetitive patterns in our lives are merely their best attempts to keep us in balance, will you believe me or shun me to hell?

Every one of us has chosen to come to this planet to learn some lessons, therefore even though some may seem to be happier, smarter, richer, luckier than others, we all have our fair share of challenges. Unfortunately, life isn’t exactly like a school course where whatever we are supposed to learn are spelled out on a syllabus on the first day of class. But even in school, we may get pop quizzes with test questions that blow us away if we haven’t paid attention during lectures. And life does also sorta function in a similar way here. We have to pay attention to what is going on around us. We have to be aware.

Repetitive patterns are clues to our core challenges. It’s our higher self’s or "fate’s" way of letting us know that something’s out of balance of which the underlying issue wants to come to light. In order to restore balance in our lives such that the pattern can be broken, we gotta first become aware of the issue, understand it, learn the lesson behind it, and finally, let it go. Sometimes the lesson may be to forgive someone or to forgive yourself through releasing self-guilt for something you may have done in the past. Sometimes the lesson maybe to learn to speak out our feelings, for the sake of learning to love ourselves enough that we are willing to speak up despite risking rejection or humiliation by others. For example, injuring our foot has to do with us having fears of moving forward in life because the foot is responsible for moving ahead. Recognizing this fear and then releasing it by learning to trust that everything will be ok in the future will help to restore balance into our lives. The list goes on and it is for you to explore what your challenge is. Awareness, my friend, is the key. Until then, time stands still.

Why Do People Get Angry? – January 30, 2006


People who get angry easily really have a lot of sadness inside, because anger is actually a mask of fear or sadness that hasn’t been expressed or released. Remember the last time you were angry at someone, was that someone you cared about or loved? Or was that someone whose view of you you cared very much about? I get angry at my parents for telling me to do something that I don’t want to, because deep down I feel threatened that if I didn’t do what they wanted me to do, they wouldn’t love me for the way I am. Sometimes lovers get angry at each other easily because when we are in love, we care alot about how much love our partner has for us, so whatever they do that threaten to say that they don’t love us, could make us feel angry. Or if a good friend decides to keep something from us, we get angry because we are scared our friend no longer treasures us as her good friend. Feelings are afterall feelings and cannot be easily explained by the rational mind. Some of us are more sensitive and others are not. There is no right or wrong to how we feel about something, we are the way we are. So next time if someone you care about get angry at you, tell them it’s ok they are angry (even if you really don’t get it!), rather than trying to explain why they shouldn’t be, and watch for the wonderful miracle - their anger will go away much more quickly! Because all we need is a bit more love and acceptance, however way we choose to express ourselves.

(Photograph by Vicky Yeung)

Swinging with the Pendulum - January 8, 2006

Meeting it at a nightclub:

My first encounter with the pendulum was at a night club where someone used it on me to tell when I will get married. I soon fell in love with this supernatural gadget and was swirling it on everyone-I-know’s palm and fortune telling their marriage age. To be honest, my accuracy so far is actually not bad, probably teeing in the seventies. But anyhow, I am not here to boast how accurate I can get with it in telling others’ future. What seemed just a little toy turned out to be much more.


Telling the future or tapping our hearts?

Learning to use the pendulum for me was a journey unto itself. Like many people, I wanted to know what the future holds for me. Why wouldn’t I? The future seems to hold all these wonderful things, finding the perfect mate to settle down with, becoming rich, changing to a better job, having children, moving into our dream home etc… So, in no time after I mastered swinging the pendulum, I was having every major and minor future events read for myself. Very soon I realized that none of what my pendulum ‘predicted’ came true and that all its answers were but projections of my own expectations of how my life should be based on others’ beliefs, past conditioning and more often than not, my fears developed from past events. As reality bit me, I figured that this little tool cannot actually read our future, what it can do however, is something far more wonderful - the ability to tap into our hearts.

What served as a fortune-telling tool, later served to teach me how to co-create our own realities by connecting with our inner voice, or our heart. Our heart is the key to our happiness and ultimately our future or destiny, for whatever we desire we can create, so it is very important to develop a clear communication with it. This may seem to be easy, but many of us have lost our abilities to listen to our hearts because we lead such busy lives and are constantly influenced by the thoughts and projections of people in our environment, society’s conditionings, beliefs acquired from past experiences that may not necessarily serve us at present or the future. So instead of asking my pendulum when something will happen, I ask for guidance on what steps to take that will take me closest to being happy. Oftentimes, what our heart tells us may not initially seem to be the good or right thing for us - I call that the battle between the heart and the mind. But, it is important to learn to trust it, follow through with it and then just let things unfold. With practice and trust, our heart will guide us to many wonderful things. Afterall, it is more important to be happy than right, as all we really have is the now, and who knows what will happen tomorrow.

Learning to follow our hearts in life also calls for letting go of certain fears, because sometimes we sabotage ourselves from even wanting to be happy because we are scared of change, scared of the consequences of doing that which makes us happy. Fear is but a creation of the mind, for whatever we fear will not come into existence until we follow through with the action of which we fear, and see it for ourselves. And if whatever we fear does come true (and this could happen because what we fear we become!), find out what we are really afraid of, acknowledge that it exists and understand why it is there. It may not necessarily go away immediately, but at least we understand it. And in time, step by step, with increased awareness, we will no longer have to live under its shadow. It is only when we try to run away from it by pretending it is not there, that it keeps running after us.

(Painting by Toni Carmine Salerno - "Towards Eternity")