ANGEL GIFTS

Angel gifts come to us in myriad forms. I've recently found some wonderful Angel Cards that I plan to share with you both here and via my Facebook page. Here is the thought (from Chrissie Astell) for today: 'Humans must be known to be loved, angels must be loved to be known.

When we love and are being loved our souls sing. We are nourished and whole. Loving others is easy, but in order to love unconditionally we must first learn to love ourselves. Loving is an expression of kindness, of communicating from the heart and of compassion. Learn to give the gift of love to yourself.

Think of a quality you deeply admire, one you would attribute to an angel. Visualize that quality in the form of a flower bud and in your imagination carry it to your very core. Now look at the flower and admire it, appreciate its perfection. Remembering those qualities, recognise that you, too, have these attributes. Acknowledge and respect yourself for that.

Recognizing that your soul contains perfection, allow yourself to love it. Your soul has the qualities of an angel. As you begin to know yourself, you will learn how to love yourself.'

REINCARNATED?

I’ve just read a feature in today’s DAILY MAIL that set me wondering whether Mozart (or some other musical maestro) has been reincarnated as a little girl in Devon.

Lavinia, who is three years old today, has apparently ‘astounded experts with her first public performance on piano’.

The feature continues: ‘Lavinia had been learning to play for only six weeks before she stepped out to perform before a 200-strong audience at a local church hall on the outskirts of Plymouth.

By that stage she had been to only eight lessons. Her teacher, Matej Lehocky, who studied at the prestigious Prague Conservatory of Music and learned to play when he was four, agreed to tutor her after realising she was exceptionally bright and clearly keen to learn. She loves listening to classical music and occasionally asks him to play for her. Bizet’s Carmen is her current favourite.

“She is so mature for her age that you forget you’ve got a two-year-old sitting there with you,” he said. “It’s as if she is five or six. What she has is something exceptional. Her hand-eye co-ordination is remarkable. She can play Old MacDonald Had A Farm using both hands at once. I think in about eight months’ time she will be able to sit a Grade One exam. I can’t recall anyone doing that at the age of three.”

Lavinia was nicknamed Little Miss Mozart after performing at the concert (although Mozart is thought to have been nearly four when he first started to play a clavichord keyboard). Neither of her parents plays an instrument but she became interested in music after getting a toy piano for Christmas.

Playing at the age of three is not unique but is extremely rare – as is Lavinia’s progress and confidence. Shown video footage of her playing John Holmes, chief examiner of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, said she showed ‘exciting potential with her piano playing skills and has clearly made excellent progress in her first two months.’’

Well, do you think – as I do – that this is possibly a case of a musical maestro reincarnated?

SOUL TREASURES

Where do you go for your soul treasures? I find mine in all kinds of places - both expected and unexpected. Certainly Nature never fails to deliver wonders that both inspire and awe me.

Find them too in stillness and silence, or in beautiful music, or the written word. I often delve into Dr Wayne W Dyer's Everyday Wisdom, where I discover little gems such as this one: 'Treasure your physical being as a vehicle that houses your soul. Once you have the inner way, the outer way will follow.'

THE POWER OF NOW

How much attention do we pay to the power of now?

I have an acquaintance who is forever talking about her death. Not especially with a sense of dread - more one of relish. It seems to be almost her favorite topic and has been for years. She has her funeral planned down to the last detail and talks about it to anyone who will listen.

This all seems very sad to me, as in constantly looking ahead to her eventual death she is forgetting to live. She certainly isn't living in the now, as Eckhart Tolle so unforgettably recommends in his international bestseller THE POWER OF NOW.

Living in the present is the best way to live, but how many of us achieve this? Eckhart tells us we can free ourselves from our minds by 'watching the thinker' - listening to the voice in our head and being there as the witnessing presence. In this way we gradually separate our deeper self from our thought process. And we can release ourselves from our known past as well as from fears of our unknown future.

We can simply be - finding joy in each moment and knowing that our 'now' is all that truly counts.