Dreaming of Butterfly Wings

“When I sound the fairy call,
Gather here in silent meeting,
Chin to knee on the orchard wall,
Cooled with dew and cherries eating.
Merry, merry, Take a cherry
Mine are sounder, Mine are rounder
Mine are sweeter, for the eater
When the dews fall. And you'll be fairies all.” ~ Emily Dickinson


Few things are as disarming as the innocent and wondrous eyes of a small child asking for the impossible. I saw those eyes yesterday, when my daughter marched down to the kitchen and asked me how she could get wings and a tail.

A quick glance at my puzzled face told her I was lost, so she proceeded to explain to me that she had decided to be a real fairy. And not a regular fairy, thank you very much – she wanted to be a fairy mermaid, and be able to fly and swim at the same time.

On first instinct – probably out of frustration because she was stepping over my wet floor – I was tempted to tell her that only birds and planes can fly, and only fish can live under the sea. Then I made a fatal mistake – I looked at her eyes. Two huge pools of blue crystal set into a cherub face, staring at me in hope and profound awe.

All I could say was “You’re still a little young, Honey. You need to wait a bit longer, until the queen of fairies decides you are ready.”

Satisfied with my reply she smiled, turned on her heels, and went back to watch the rest of the movie, as I finally released the breath I had been holding in. I went back to my floor – now smeared by little fairy footprints – and thought about my daughter’s wish. A tail and wings. Maybe that wasn’t such an unreasonable request after all.

A tail is used to swim and move gracefully through something fluid and ever changing in form. Like water, emotions can be nurturing or drowning, and as a parent, I strive to teach my children how to deal with feelings in general. By guiding them toward being able to handle a varied range of emotions, I’m indeed giving them the gift of a tail.

Similarly, we teach our children how to spread their own wings and learn how to fly; we give them tools to catch the winds of change under their wings and use those opportunities to lift themselves high above the storms of life.

For once I hadn’t just fallen for the depth of my daughter’s eyes, but I had happily realized that I can make a huge difference in her world. With or without pixie dust I can be the queen of fairies.

All I Know I Learned in Bible Class

“Whatever the conscious mind thinks and believes the subconscious identically creates.” ~ Brian Adams

When I was a young girl and was attending Bible classes, I often sat in the room, bored to pieces, and listened to Don Battaglini explain how much we should guard our thoughts. “If a man thinks of having an affair with his brother’s wife”, he used to say, “He’s as sinful as the man who does”. As every know-it-all teenager in the room probably did, I also believed it was just bogus. By then, I had pretty much concluded that thoughts and facts were very different things. My ideas in that regard would change in the future.

Since even then I loved to write, but couldn’t really come up with a specific character, I became the protagonist of my own stories. On days when I had the time, I would write short stories, and then I would put them away. When I wrote them I became so attached to the situations – most of them rosy wishes of a teenage girl – that I often envisioned myself living the stories. Strangely, within a short period of time, most of them became reality. One of them, particularly, took the cake. After a trip to London when I was sixteen, I often fantasized about living there. In my daydream I imagined I had married an English guy I had met while he was vacationing in Italy, we had three children and lived on one of the streets near Victoria Station.

Then I grew up, I forgot my fantasies of London, and focused more on real happenings. I met my husband, moved to the States and settled into the life I’m currently living. It was a few years ago, on my way home, that I absent-mindedly glimpsed at the sign outside my subdivision while I waited to turn at the light…the name on it was the same as the street in London I had envisioned living on as a kid! It took my breath away. Suddenly, the events that had played a huge role in my life flashed in front of my eyes – I have, after all, married an English man, and we have three children; we don’t live in London on the street of my fantasy, but live in an area called by the same name.

Once I started paying attention, I realized that thoughts do indeed affect reality. Not all thoughts do, but only those we fuel with emotions and passions. We manifest that which we deeply fear, wish and expect, if we feel strongly enough about it. Without emotional charge, thoughts are just that – fleeting ideas streaming through.

That is why it is so important to watch our thoughts. If we train our conscious minds to accept only positive images, those are what we send to our subconscious mind for production. One important thing to note is that things do not instantaneously change the moment we alter the way we address our thoughts. First we must live through the residue of what we thought yesterday. However, if once we decide we are going to change our thinking we stick to our guns - regardless of the left-over trash we are still experiencing - eventually those thoughts will run their course, and all that will be left to manifest will be positive images.

So many years later, I finally understand what the good old priest was trying to explain. And that brings a smile to my face.

Does Wealth Lead to Happiness?

“Life in abundance comes only through great love” ~ Elbert Hubbard

Does wealth create happiness? Although a life free of financial worries sounds like the answer to all problems, I personally believe that it is not wealth that makes happiness but happiness that makes wealth.

In my opinion, there is no difference between types of energy, aside from the division between positive and negative. Both of them exist in the Universe, and everything we are, see, hear, feel or touch is made of both. Money and material things are no different – they are a manifestation of energy.

When we feel good about ourselves, and feel we deserve to receive good things, the positive energy we send out is a clear signal to the Universe that we are ready and willing to receive the many blessings that are available. When, on the other hand, we feel trapped into a dark tunnel of fear and doubt, we also feel that we have failed ourselves and others, and the signal we send out is that we don’t deserve the blessings that are available to us.

Very often, the prison we are in is an invisible one only we can see. Its walls are built with bricks made of guilt and unresolved issues. In the unfortunate event that we have done anything wrong and have gotten away with it, we fall prey of an even worse internal conflict – while our ego rejoices that we have won one, our inner spirit knows the scale isn’t balanced; justice is not done, the deed has not received adequate punishment, and we subconsciously take it upon ourselves to ensure that we get our just deserved.

Regardless of what we have done, we can’t go back and change things. Our inner spirit knows that, and does not expect any such thing. What we can do, is honor our ability to feel remorse and guilt, because it is a sure sign that our conscience is working, but once we have done so, we must also allow ourselves to let those feelings go and start afresh.

Beating ourselves over something we cannot change will not right the wrongs of the past, but will rather cause us to stumble again in the future. Instead, a complete reshuffling of our life cards needs to take place. First of all, we need to differentiate the things we feel bad about that are really wrong from those that are deemed wrong from a cultural point of view. In the latter case, what we have done may not even be wrong per se, but it is considered so because it goes against the grain of our established societal rules.

And if we can’t forgive ourselves entirely, let’s begin by forgiving others, knowing that, like us, they are held captive within the confines of a similar prison. Forgiving others allows us to heal those parts of ourselves that we can’t directly reach, and gives us a head start on a journey of true love.

On the map of abundance, selfless love is the main highway to get to destination; no toll payments are required and the sun is always shining bright at the end of the horizon.