Tarot Card Reading

My First Tarot Card Reading

"What do you want to read?" my friend and Tarot card mystic asked.

"Everything", I replied.

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"You cannot have everything!", she said.

"Ok, can I have readings on my health, business and love life?" I reiterated cheekily.

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"No, that's too much, you got to be specific!" she said, now showing some impatience.

"Ok, love life then", since I am a very healthy person and talking about business after hours will be boring.

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"Even that is too broad, what about your love life?" she snapped, now showing more impatience.

"Ok, will I get a girlfriend soon?" I replied, now happy that I have something very specific and intriguing for her to work on.

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"Ok, let's start, shuffle your card with feelings for what you want read", she instructed.

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I did that, and further, more instructions to pull out individual cards and place them on the table.

She took the cards one by one and relating to me about my 'forthcoming' girlfriend while concentrating on the card.

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Well, I can't say what she said was untrue, but they kind of are very general and cannot go wrong! I wasn't accusing her for being a fraud, but it wasn't what I had expected from a card reading.

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After the reading was done, she looked perturbed and told me that I had no intention of wanting to know if I will have a steady girlfriend. She even suspected that I was not serious at all about her psychic abilities. She said that it was very hard to read me and I was placing a barrier to protect myself.

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While the reading itself was unimpressive, I was stunned by this last part. She hit the nail on the head! Truely, I was not serious about what I asked to be read. She has got my vibes right and found that I was not thinking about the subject at all! All this despite my keeping a straight face!

Also many psychics have found me very difficult to read. There is a famous palmist that could read others very accurately, but was disastrous with my readings!

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Anyway, if you want your Tarot Card reading done. I would recommend her. I think she is a great lady!

Second Chance

Goshen Restaurant

"Brother, it is God who is doing the work. We just surrender and God can do the rest for us"

Goshen is a restaurant entirely run by ex-offenders. I chanced upon this restaurant in the heart of Singapore's redlight district, Geylang, by Lorong 23, whilst bringing my English friend around town during the evening on the 29th July 2005. I brought my friend there for the streetside durain stalls to test his endurance and tolerance for all things local, as he had said he wanted to experience 'local things'. Well in this case, it goes beyond seeing those street walkers, durain stalls and seedy coffeeshops. We had unwittingly walked to a wonderful experience of a restaurant run by people who are now living their 'second chance' in life and giving their best.

Rev Don Wong, the founder of the Social Enterprise Ark, that houses Goshen explained to us that he always tell everyone there that they must give their best to provide quality to their customers. It is through quality that customers will return. Otherwise, they will end up relying on public sympathy and charity, which will not be sustainable. I applaud Rev Don, who is an ex-offender himself, for his perseverence in helping the community to give this people a second chance.

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By the way, the food was delicious and charged at very reasonable price. After the meal, I met one of the waiters who had served us, in the restroom and he told me that he was a drug addict before and spent five years in Changi Prison. He feels that he is very lucky to have met the Christian Halfway House at the Social Enterprise Ark and re-established his relationship with God.

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"Brother, it is God who is doing the work. We just surrender and God can do the rest for us", he said. It was beautiful to hear words like this from someone who has gone through very rough patches in their life and have now rediscover his path to God. I was touched!

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Note: The Social Enterprise Ark houses several self-sustaining businesses for ex-offenders. It comprises: a restaurant, a furniture shop, a air-conditioner servicing company, a house removal company, a counselling service, a halfway house for ex-drug addicts, a hostel for exchange students (run by the YMCA), a electrician service centre, etc.

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Address: No 1, Lorong 23, Geylang, Singapore 388352

tel 67470935

email goshen@highpoint.com.sg

Graduating above the Clouds

"...when the student is ready, the master will appear. "

The title is a tongue-in-cheek reference to my earlier posting "Soar above the Clouds" (about meditation).

It was Sunday evening, 24th July 2005. Yet another class graduated from the Seven Day Transformation Journey, conducted by the Self Awareness Society, at Tan Boon Liat Building, Outram Road, Singapore.

I could feel how elated the graduates of the class were. Many of them in tears. It was an emotional high. I know how it felt, as I too have undergone the course that has transformed me. That was three years ago! How well has this served me all these three years! A few of them stood up to give testimony of their experiences in the course and how they have benefited from it. Among them were Ben and Alfred, my friends from the Mind Mastery course. I could see that they feel uplifted in spirits.

What's more important here on for the graduates is to remember to meditate regularly for otherwise the spiritual high will gradually erode and it is possible for some to revert to where they started from. However, I believe that one has to be 'ready' to meditate regularly. Somehow, the time must be right, before one will adopt it as part of their regular life. As for myself, I actually started meditation 15 years ago as stress relief. However, once my stress was gone so was my practice. So, I believe that when the student is ready, the master will appear. Hastening such processes are often futile. In fact, I would extend this to other things we do in general.

Doris, another Seven Day Transformation Journey graduate voiced the same opinion and that for her case, her self-realisation arising from the course came much later on when she encountered problems in her daily life.

Trading Options

"...when we have made the money, to remember to thank our spiritual masters for making it all possible."

Started my first day of the Options Trading course on the 22nd Oct 2005 at Furuma Riverfront Hotel, by Miriam MacWilliams, an amazing lady and options trader who started off with US$10k and made US$2.2 million after two years. I am totally new to options. I told everyone in class that I'm so new to options, I can't even spell the word! ;)

At the start of the course, Miriam encouraged all of us to get up and make lots of money and then when we have made the money, to remember to thank our spiritual masters for making it all possible. She also encouraged us to give some money away to worthy courses once we are successful. Good start I think.

As the lecture progressed, I could relate to the investment strategies well and am delighted that much of them correspond very closely to business in general. What was more amazing was the resemblence to energy fields and physics from the perspectives of plotting the line of support and resistance and how the stock curve will repeatedly test the line, before crashing through and changing its behaviour from bullish to bearish and vice-versa.

In all, the course lasted for four days. I felt a little exhausted at the end, but all ready and eager to go... and make some money. :)

Alpha-Teta

Attended the free "The Silva Method" workshop by Nancy Ho at the Renaissance Hotel in Singapore on 19th july 2005. About 40 people turned up to listen to how we can think positively in Alpha frequency to optimise our mindpower. Nancy brought us through a some exercises including a short meditation to let us experience how it feels like being in Alpha state.

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The Silva Method was invented by Mr Jose Silva, born Aug 11, 1914 in Laredo, Texas, USA, into quite a poor family and at a very young age, he became the sole breadwinner of the family. He later became a radio repair technician and was fascinated with frequencies and how the human too think in different frequencies of Beta, Alpha, Teta and Delta, of which he discovered that we all can perform at peak levels if we keep ourselves at Alpha level.

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Looking further into the Silva Method, I was surprised that it is very similar to meditation and reiki. At the later modules of the training course, the student will be thought how to send loving or healing thoughts to others just like in Reiki and also develop ESP abilities. What amazes me equally, is that the method uses mostly psychology to achieve what gurus thought us spiritually. Much the same as Kong's workshop on Mind Mastery.

Vedanta

"It is our intellect that can guide us to a better life."

Realised it is tough keeping up with my blogs. Still several days behind what I want to write. My policy is now to write first and clean up the grammar later. I trust that you are tolerant enough to put up with the rough edges. For starters you are reading writings by an engineer - a profession not known for elegant literary works! Already a struggle in itself writing in plain English devoid of acronyms (we engineers (or Singaporeans) love them. :)

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I attended the talk on Vedanta, by the disciple of Swami Parasarathy on Monday 8th July 2005 at one of the Mastermind's apartment at Tanjong Katong, Singapore. I was told that Swami Parasarathy has an ashram in the outskirts of Mumbai and comes to Singapore only once in a while, as he is already 78 years old.

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The talk is based on a book Swami has written, after 25 years of research - to help people understand why they're so miserable and crack under calamity or adversity! The book refers to ancient scriptures of Vedas, the foundation / principles of the Bhagvad Gita/ ancient Hindu knowledge channeled by the Rishis and yogis in advanced trance state - sort of Universal truths to show you how to face your challenges in your life by giving you the" tools " / or better still, the manual for living.

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The talk was informal and interactive, and we were all sat on the floor while the speaker explained to us what Vedanta is. The speaker said that despite the progress in the material world through a more integrated world economy and advances in technology, people in general are not happier because most of us have not mastered the art of living.

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That means the art of managing ourselves, our minds and therefore our lives. We have to learn to manage ourselves and we can do that by enriching our experiences and learning from them. Knowledge acquired from objective learning improves our intelligence, wherelse knowledge acquired through subjective learning improves our intellect. It is our intellect that can guide us to a better life.

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It was an interesting talk and it was a pity that I had to leave midway for a business opportunity somewhere in the West side of the island. I was notified of the meeting only hours before. I have been getting more and more these opportunities of late - perhaps testimony to the Jewel Visualisation working! :)

Masterminds

"Don't you think some people are easily distracted? "

The lot of us, students of Mr Kong's "Mind Power Mastery" workshop have called ourselves "Masterminds". Emails have flown around amongst us amid the post-seminar high. Some of us (myself included) have experienced the 'coincidents' that Kong has warned us about. This include picking up coins in public, getting new sales orders which I have been pursuing for months, one had experienced a hostile colleagues turned friendly, and one of us got his cashcard stored value topped up instead of deducted at a car park.

I had a bizarre morning encountering dressed up women (who are not delivery persons) driving three different kangoo vans within 1.5 hours. Is that mere coincidence? Don't know what to make out of that bizarre observation, but one classmate was quick to accuse me of 'bird-watching' already. *sigh* Don't you think some people are easily distracted?

I've taken the opportunity to invite them to browse my blog. The curious ones have asked about the "7 Day Transformation Journey" and attended the previews. One of them have now decided to attend the workshop. I'm sure he will enjoy the workshop thoroughly and benefit from it. Yet others have asked me about Reiki and I've invited them to attend the Monthly Share Workshop at Master Parag's Reiki Hut.

Another classmate has invited us to her place for a talk by a swami about the Bhagavad Gita - the song of praise in the Book of the Upanishad. What a spiritual extravanganza!!

I had bought the Bhavagad Gita book from the Theosophical Society and guess this is a sign that I should start reading it. :) The talk will be on Monday 18th July 2005, so I was compelled to read the book enroute to Kuala Lumpur on the midnight bus there. Very 'chim' book indeed!

Karma

"I do good to others, but others are nasty to me! Why?"

Attended the talk on "Karma" by one of the sisters from the Brahma Kumaris organisation on Monday 11th July 2005 at Le Meridien Hotel in Singapore. Three great seminars over three consecutive days! Learned a great deal...

Karma is a concept that explains the common term "what goes around comes around". In its simplest form, it means, "if I do good, goodness will come to me". However, we often hear of people complaining that despite having done good to others, they are still in the unfavorable receiving end of human relationships. That means, "I do good to others, but others are nasty to me! Why?"

In the seminar, the sister explained that this is because the other person has a negative karma that needs to be exhausted. It has hardly any connection with your karma causing his adverse reactions to you. So, in such situations, we should allow the person to gradually exhaust her negative karma. To protect ourselves, we just have to refuse to receive their negative/nasty reactions. If not received, the negativities remains with the other person.

Very enlightening. It almost made me feel better already!

Mind Power Master

"...telling oneself that one is a millionaire every morning isn't going to make one a millionaire if one does not believe in it when the affirmations are uttered."

Two workshop over two consecutive days! What a weekend! This one "Mind Power Mastery" is conducted by Mr Kong Keen Yung on Sunday 10th July 2005.

In a nutshell, Kong's workshop is about creating a belief system in ourselves and once established, we can achieve anything (we believe). In other words, believe in ourselves. We can achieve anything as long as we believe in it! Much similar to the Godliness in us and the Oneness in All taught in Dr Aaron Lim's lecture. It is interesting to find how similar the principles of the two workshops are, despite coming from two facilitators that are so different from each other. Equally amazing was how similar his methods correlate with the Reiki healing visualisations and 'attitude of gratitude' that practitioners adopt; and the power of thought forms as I learned in the Theosophical Society.

There are a few things that are different in Kong's workshops compared to the others I've known. Kong modified some traditional techniques of visualisation to make them effective. For instance, the notion of telling oneself that one is a millionaire every morning isn't going to make one a millionaire if one does not believe in it when the affirmations are uttered. That is because, deep down the person knows for a fact that he/she does not have a million dollars! So, whatever we cannot believe, it is unlikely that we will achieve. Thus Kong's techniques takes the student through careful steps to avoid the pitfalls found in the traditional methods. He takes the students through the steps of building a belief system that is true!

In one of the exercises, we were supposed to guess the time lapse without looking at a watch. The exercise works like this: first I decide to guess how long is (say) 70 seconds. So I close my eyes, say "START", wait for my perceived 70seconds to lapse and then say "STOP". Meanwhile my partner timed me with a clock. Before the technique was taught, my perception of 70 seconds was 80 seconds - an error of a 10 second gap. After the technique was taught, my perception gap went down from 10 seconds to 5 seconds. I was amazed!

Basically, I created an entity "sub-genius", drew an icon for the sub-genius, gave it a easy to remember name, say "EVOL" then gave him a job function of being an alarm clock. I then visualise holding him in my hands and virtually putting him in my head. Once installed in my head, I trust and imagined him to be my servant alarm clock that will 'wake' me up when my 70 seconds are up. After that give your gratitude to your sub-genious. Simple as that!

The other methods he taught was similar to this one. The most important of it all is to 'install' or 'launch' your visualisation when your conscious mind is least active. Perhaps a time when one is driving or arguing some petty matters with the mother-in-law.

It was a delightful Sunday going through these techniques with Kong and also with the rest of the course mates, now undoubtedly feeling more confident equipped with these tools to bring ourselves to greater heights.

Interesting isn't it?

Loving Me Loving You




























"...we cannot change the shadow by focusing on Darkness, but by focusing on Light."

I attended a very illuminating seminar entitled "31 Planes of Existence" by Dr Aaron Lim from Malacca last Saturday 29th July 2005. The pix above are some notes I scribbled during the one-day seminar. I was fascinated by Dr Lim's profound knowledge on the subject, speaking without referring to script and spicing his speech with witty humour.

The seminar was about the planes of existence that our consciousness can preside. The world we live in is what we make out to be and we are all living in ONENESS - in the Oneness of Love and Light. Not an easy concept to grasp given that in the physical world, we see each of us as separate beings, seemingly unconnected to one another. So whatever we do, even if it appears to be directed to other people or the environment, is going to affect us.

The Bible says "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you..." and that "My Father and I are one". We observe others and are at the same time observing ourselves. Thus the observer (our conscience) and observed are One. Sometimes our conscience is also referred to as our God Nature.

We create the world we live in. We can choose to create the world of love and experience or live in the world of fear and experience fear. To overcome fear, hatred, anger,...etc, we must focus on love. In other words, we cannot change the shadow by focusing on Darkness, but by focusing on Light.

The world of Love will attract like-minded loving people because attributes of love like compassion, joy and happiness recognises itself. So by loving you, I'm loving me, in the Oneness of Life.

More about Dr Aaron Lim and his charity work can be found at http://www.bodhifellowship.org

Environment - Pollution

I have been reading a report about the pollution levels in the Liao Ning province, North East China - their heavy industry belt. The figures are staggering.

In 2001, the gross provincial industrial exhaust amount was 1045.2 billion cubic metres. Each day, thousands of tons of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, particles from industry, smoke and dust are emitted in the air.

Liao Ning is also seriously lacking in water resources. The average water reserve is 877 cubic metre per capita, only 42% of the national average, and only 9.9% of the world's average. Makes me feel how lucky Singaporeans are to have enough water for domestic, industrial and even recreational use. I mean, just look at the number of swimming pools in Singapore next time you are traveling by air from a plane. Well, that is also thanks to the Malaysian Government for continuing the water supply. That is no wonder that Singapore is now into reclaiming water from waste wate calling it Newater.

Perhaps implementing some of these water reclaiming systems will be useful in a place like Liao Ning. It will clean the surface water and ground water at the same time providing sufficient water to the residents and industry. Obviously, the issue here is cost. Given China's accent in the economic barometer, it is time money is set aside to protect its environment before it come to such a dire state that business cannot continue. The industries and residents need to pay for their sanitation services and water supply closer to market prices in order to help solve the problems.

The demand for water is so great that it is straining the water sources. For instance, river waters do get salinated if too much fresh water is drawn for their industry. We have one customer that require 6,000,000 litres of water for their dye processing. Just to give you an idea, a person in a developed country uses 132 litres a day. Then we have pollutants indiscrimately discharged into their rivers.

I trust that it is not easy being in the government in China. For every one problem we need to solve here in Singapore, they probably have one hundred. That is probably because of one hundred years of mismanagement turning the Great Chinese culture on its head. However amid all these tribulations I believe the Chinese will truimph as it will build strong characters amongst its leaders and citizens. That probably explains why we keep getting our Singapore sportsmen and scholars from China.

A hundred years of mismanagement and neglect has brought them to where they are today, but I trust they will sort their problems, particularly environmental problems out in due course.

Reiki

"The satisfaction of helping people to get healed is immense. "

Reiki is a safe and non-intrusive healing technique that taps energy from the universe to treat physical ailments without using pressure, manipulation or massage. It is a holistic system for balancing, healing and harmonizing all aspects of the person – body, mind, emotions and spirit.

Reiki is non-religious and no meditation is required. It is re-discovered by a Japanese Buddhist priest, Dr Mikao Usui (1865 – 1926), who after many years of study, discovered a way of accessing and using this healing energy, and of passing this ability on to other people.

“Rei” can be translated as ‘atmosphere of the Divine’ and ‘Ki’ is life-force energy which flows through every living thing: plants, animals and people; and also present in rocks and inanimate objects.

Reiki as a healing system has been used and taught in the West since the late 1930s. In many Western countries it has immersed into the mainstream medical practice, with doctors and nurses using it as a complementary healing method.

Over the last few years in Singapore, Reiki has also gained acceptance. The unfounded fear is mostly removed.

Personally, I have been a practitioner for about three years. I first encountered my Reiki Master Parag Pattani at a holistic fair in Singapore. Then, I had a fifteen minute healing session and felt so light and relaxed after that for the next two days. I was amazed. Before that, I was a hard-nosed engineer who did not think a lot about people feeling vibrations over their palms when they move their hands across the air.

That was how I got started to become a Reiki practitioner and I have not looked back since.

Every day, I heal many of my loved ones, family members and friends. I also get emails and phone calls from people I have not met before who wants healing. The satisfaction of helping people to get healed is immense.

Basically, Reiki works by channeling the healing energies through the crown, down vertically to the heart center and then back upwards to the throat, shoulders and out through the palms to the person to be healed. To channel these energies, you need to be attuned to the vibrating frequencies of the Reiki energy. A Reiki Master will perform the attunement in a procedure that is secret and sacred. Once attuned, one is able to channel Reiki and heal.

Reiki has three degrees, namely:
Reiki 1, which is touch healing
Reiki 2, which is distance healing (without need for direct contact).
Reiki 3a, which is Master healing and Reiki 3b, which the attunement process is taught.

As it happens, Reiki changes my life, my temperament and perceptions in general. It has to be to all practitioners, for Reiki can only heal through the heart. Some say, it is love that is doing the healing. Let say, it is impossible to heal someone with hate or anger.

When I finished Reiki 2, I experimented with someone with a sinus pain sitting near me (but without physical contact). The moment I sent the energies, the person felt a change in the pulsation near her nose and the pain faded away gradually within twenty minutes. I was just as amazed as she was!

Another case involved my friend in Hong Kong. She had fallen from a horse and was having back pains and had requested me for healing. I sent the energies out, but felt that she only had a very faint pain on the lower back and was feeling extremely relaxed on the head. I documented that and emailed them to her. The next day, she said that it was true there wasn't much pain that day because she felt so relaxed after her Sunday Bible Studies.

Somehow, Reiki works less effectively on myself, so I use crystals together with Reiki. The other day I healed myself from flu instantly and felt brand new after that!

Reiki (regular) practitioners rarely get ill. This is may be because we act as channels for the healing energies ourselves and therefore ‘cleanse’ ourselves constantly.

There are also limitations of Reiki. It cannot recover physical injuries, like a broken bone, but it can reduce the pain. Same as when in the advanced state of cancer, it cannot cure cancer, but will reduce the vomitting and pain from chemeotherapy.

Ultimately, we believe there are certain illnesses that are ailments and some others that are destined karma. Daily ailments like flu, fever, stomach pains, etc can be healed by Reiki. However, when it is destined and it is time for us to 'go', it is time for us to 'go'. There is no way to stop God from taking us away.

For those of you interested to find out more, you may like to browse Master Parag's website http://web.singnet.com.sg/~parag/. It has several testimonials written by his students and people that he has helped.

Soar Above the Clouds

"Over the years, most of us accumulated much emotional fatigue in our subconscious as we become adults. It slows us down, clouds our child-like qualities…”

Too often we hear people complain about not having the time to do the things they always wanted to do. In reality, time is often not the major concern, but rather it is the lack of motivation and most of all the lack of energy, especially after the end of a hard day’s work. At the end of each day after work and dinner, the remaining hours are spent vegetating in front of the television or some other mindless activities. Even the most disciplined amongst us have experienced the level of fatigue such that we cannot do the things we want to do.

In contrast, children seem to have the abundance of energy. How is it that we do not have the same level of energies that children have? Professional basketball players are known to be unable to play with the same rigour and length of time that children do everyday. Yet, all of us have been children once upon a time. How did we lose the boundless energies we all used to have?

To most children, energies flow freely in their bodies. They are free of worries, hatred and sustained anger. Over the years, most of us accumulated much emotional fatigue in our sub-conscious as we become adults. It slows us down, clouds our child-like qualities, our shining divine virtues, our bubbly personalities, our enthusiasm, our ability to enjoy the simple things in life, and blunt our compassion and love for others. Bringing down these worries, hatred, anger and other disowned aspects would be key to bringing us back to the child-like happiness that we once experienced.

Meditation is a journey within. A journey to rediscover ourself – our shiny divine virtues mentioned above. Indeed, we have to re-discover ourself. Meditation is likened to polishing our divine virtues so that our worries, anger, hatred,…etc that you have built up over the years will leave us.

Meditation is a peaceful wonderful experience of calm. It recharges our batteries, so that our energy levels during your first hour in the morning will be the same as your last hour of the day. So now it is akin to being fed with high-octane fuel every hour. You will have more energy to do the things you always wanted to do, since you always had the time anyway.

I had the good fortune to be introduced to a course at the Self Awareness Society in Singapore that had transformed me. The course is called "The 7 Day Transformational Journey (7DTJ)". It is a powerful self-awareness programme of approximately 60 hours. It has helped me to realise my true being, recognise and deal with the blocks that were hindering my personal growth and happiness, and to use meditation to sustain inner peace.

I would strongly recommend this course to anyone who wants to learn how to meditate. It prepares the participants' minds for meditation and cleanse them of any anger, hatred, worries, etc. Your divine virtues will thus surface and you will feel and look shiny like polished diamonds - a ‘temporary high’, to be sustained with regular meditation.

Realising the true human nature, the very attributes we were naturally endowed with when we came into being, such as Compassion, Innate Harmony, Healing Presence and Unconditional Love is a wonderful experience. Once having gone through the 7DTJ, you will experience improvements to your self-esteem, confidence, creativity, leadership qualities. Many participants in the past have also given up smoking, drinking, gambling and other indulgences.

This is my first blog. I intend to use this to generate interests in spiritual healing and environmental issues.