Have you ever been to a spiritual retreat?

Have you ever been to a spiritual retreat?

If you havent you may wonder what happens there, if you have you may think "I know what that's all about!:

However, every tradition is different. I studied with Shri Sathya Sai Baba for over 30 years and went to India a number of times to sit in the heat, the sand, the heart of India. It was a blessed time.

Now I follow my next teacher, Master Zhi Gang Sha and have for the last 7 years.  This week his principal disciple, Master Maya Mackie is coming to Australia.

What to expect at this kind of retreat?  You can expect to be purified, to have y our heart opened further, to be given profound teachings about the Path - the spiritual journey.

This is going to be a very sacred time. You are welcome to join. Everyone is welcome to join. There are some complimentary events and some for a few dollars as well as the main Retreat : Celebration of Love. Below is a flyer for you to peruse. These teachings and practices are more powerful than anything else I have ever done (over quite a long period of time - 42 years to be exact!!!!)... please feel free to email me if you would like to chat: juliamary3396815@gmail.com.

For more information about these events please see phone number at the bottom of this flyer.

Much love to you all.
I will be at these events and will not post here again until my return from Sydney

Julia Smaistrla
Soul Teacher
Soul Communicator
Tao Calligraphy practitioner
Quan Yin Lineage Holder.

Hello again. welcome to Living a Soulful Life with Julia.

Have you ever woken up in the morning and felt negative thoughts coming in straight away?

I certainly have. What to do? It doesn't feel good, right?

Well this is what I received today....

Hopefully you have some book in your house that is spiritual, written by a high level Master? 

It could be you dont have such a book. You could go to the internet and look up Great Quotes, or famous quotes, or something like that. 
Personally i have always had spiritual books on my book shelf since I was about 25, that's not counting the Bible when I was a child.

Anyway if you can ... grab a book... open to any page and start reading. Find one or two sentences that really strike home. Write them out. Think : how can i use this to transform my thinking now? How can I use this in my daily life today?

Today I picked up a book by my spiritual teacher, Master Zhi Gang Sha, and opened it to a page that was talking about blockages in our lives, where things dont flow smoothly, this could be anywhere in your life, it could be finances, relationships, health, business, career, your spiritual journey and more. Master Sha says that everything has a soul, even your business or finances. 

So we can clear blockages. How? Through asking for forgiveness for the mistakes we've made that are now causing these blockages in our lives.

So say you wake up feeling cranky with your partner? Why does he sleep so long, why doesnt he do the dishes, etc etc. You know how the mind is, it likes to grab at the negative. So we can do this:

Lets do this practice together - this is a practical approach to daily life, im not just interested in the theory... we need to DO something.
Here we go:

Say Dear Soul of my relationship with my partner (friend, family member, business colleague etc.)
I love you, Please forgive me, I forgive you. Let us bring Love Peace and Harmony between us. thank you.

Then we can sing: I love you, you love me
I forgive you, you forgive me
Bring love peace and harmony
Bring love peace and harmony.

Sing or say this over and over (any melody you like)
Until you feel more peaceful, more loving towards the person.

It sounds too simple? Want to do years of therapy?  Feel free. For me this practice

works every time and slowly I am transforming myself, my thinking... which is all we can do... we cant transform other people (although they will feel better because you are having positive thoughts about them and that has an effect on them)

Try it, see for yourself. Have a wonderful day.

HULLO EVERYONE! 
Welcome again to my blog... living a soul ful life.....
Yesterday I just couldnt get into living a soulful life.... i was up in my head, thinking thinking...

Do you ever experience that? Do you ever find yourself off with the fairies thinking about nothing - not know what you need to be doing - drifting along? Or maybe you experience thinking thinking as in trying to figure out what to do? What to do today? What to do with your life? Shall I learn this, shall i do that, shall i leave school, shall i get a different job?

Our minds can be very busy. And in these times they are more active than ever before..Imagine you were working in the fields, planting rice... would you be thinking thinking? I dont think so.... You know what you have to do and you just do it. You might briefly think about the weather or how much rice you might yield from your crops... this doesnt take hours to think about!!!

So what to do with this busy mind? Well we can practice Mindfulness which is very popular at this time and that's great if it works for you.

for me I need something more powerful actually. What is that?

Soulfulness.... this is making a connection with the soul of our mind, asking it to rest, like in meditation when the instructor says, take your mind to the Bahamas and rest on the beach.(I will speak more about soulfulness as we continue on in future)  Well how to do that all the time??

Well it takes practice! but here is a little practice to help us:

To start with we can practice a meditation:

Sit up straight with your feet on the floor to connect to Mother Earth.

Take a deep breath into the lower abdomen - an area of the body with powerful energy centres to boost our energy. When we connect here our mind calms,, our emotions become balanced.

Keep the mind in the lower abdomen. Say to your mind: Dear my beloved mind, I love you honour you and appreciate you. You are doing a great job at thinking. Im so grateful. Could you please have a rest now and sit in my lower abdomen. Thank you.

Now we will sing or say these words: Zhong Zhong Zhong (this is the sacred space in our lower abdomen... 

Put your hands on your lower abdomen palms facing inwards. 

This is an amazing practice, practice as long as you can and keep bringing your mind back to your lower abdomen.

Do at least 5 m ins to experience the peace, the calming of emotions, the centredness.

Let me know how you go. I will do this practice too and report back to you how it helps me.

Enjoy your day. Love you. Julia

Stopping the blame game

HULLO EVERYONE welcome to my blog. Today i would like to write about Blame - one of the most unhelpful exercises humans use to protect themselves.

Sometimes we can thing, and I did, I dont do that, I dont blame others for anything. Well.... actually I did!! Our minds are so good at hiding the truth from us. We do not blame others 90% of the time, and there hidden in the back, behind the shoes in the wardrobe, is 10% still remaining that hides from our conscious mind until suddenly one day, if we're being really honest with ourselves that day...BOOM! there it is! in all its glory shining its unpleasantness out to the person we blame for our feelings.

You make me feel! .... is a favourite of most of us. And even when we KNOW that no one can MAKE us feel anything, we still blame them for feeling miserable, depressed, sad, upset etc.

So how to change that % we still blame others. It might be more or less depending on whether we have been aware of this not so helpful strategy that our egos use to protect us.

It doesnt matter what % you have, its just about changing our mindsets about it. So next time someone speaks unkindly to you, instead of blaming them for making you feel bad, lets do another really WILD crazy OUT THERE thing and FORGIVE THEM!!

Shock,horror, no not that! Yes, that! Actually Jesus learnt to forgive everyone way before he was on the cross. Why did he do that? What was the point?

The point is, ... well there are a few actually:

One point is that blaming others doesnt make us feel better, it actually makes us feel worse.
It keeps the misery going, because what we focus on is what grows stronger in our lives.

For example if I notice the good things about that person then I will feel happy and they will pick up on my Vibe and feel happy then they will be kind to me and then I will be kind to them and then we will both be happy!

I will talk more about this in my next blog.

Love you all. Thank you for reading.

Julia

WELCOME EVERYONE! to my Blog - with name change. I hope you like it. I do.

What does it mean to live a soulful life?

This will be the subject of my blog.

There are many understandings of the words soul and soulful.

My meaning here is How to live a life connected to the Soul - my soul, other souls, high level souls like the Buddha, Jesus, Archangels, Ascended Masters, the Tao, even the Divine. And through having this connection living a very different life than most people experience on Mother Earth.

We will have fun exploring this, with practical techniques, meditations, and more.

I look forward to connecting with you. Please leave your comments.

LIVING A SOULFUL LIFE