Do you also have a buzzy little mixer for a brain? Or a mind like a big dog that takes its master for a walk (another description given to mine by a different reiki lady)? Here’s good news – there is a very simple way to start changing that scenario and getting you and me back in the master’s role. It’s in the story, ‘A step from inner peace’, in this issue – so refreshingly simple and yet quite profound.

Another simple step, and yet so often overlooked, is described in another wonderful story by Chip Richards who writes about the metaphors that pop up in his life so that we can all learn the lessons, or at least be reminded of them – and golly, don’t we need reminding again and again.

Sometimes I wonder just how much ‘damage’ I have done to my kids over the years and whether I should have or could have done things differently. If you are a parent you may have had such thoughts too. If you are a kid (and who isn’t?) you’ve no doubt wondered that from time to time as well. Over the years, and many healing sessions of different sorts, I’ve come to realise that we really do need the woundings we get from our lives, often via our parents, so that we have ‘grist for the mill’, something to push against, to hone our characters, to make us better souls eventually. There is a fine story in this issue – from Tibet to Italy – to show that the parent-child struggle works out well in the end – and what tradition might dictate, or what society may judge as correct, is not necessarily the way to go.

Speaking of Tibet, one of our authors in this issue, Jhana Bowen, though born in Sydney, spent six years (from age four) attending the primary school in the Himalayas run by the Dalai Lama’s sister while his mother was a Buddhist nun. I wonder how many people judged his mother for not giving her four year-old a ‘normal’ home life? Now look at the work he does by helping socially disadvantaged people expand their horizons through art and then reconsider the judgement.

Golly this is turning into an editorial about judgement – but I bet we all find it one of the harder things to let go – judgement of not only others but of our own faces, bodies, abilities. Natalie Carey (who wrote the article about saying ‘yes’ a few issues ago) tells us how she had judged her appearance all her life and submitted to plastic surgery a couple of years ago. Wouldn’t you know it – things went wrong. She had to finally drop her resistance and her judgement of herself and her appearance. A great story, but not in print. Due to the changing times, this article is to be found in our June ebooks, along with other wonderful articles. It’s easy to access them on www.livingnow.com.au – and they are totally free.

When I started writing this editorial, I had no idea we had an issue covering judgement – it’s so interesting the way these coincidences happen in all our lives – and writing is a powerful way to discover them for many people. Why not give it a go yourself and see what surprises your higher self has hidden away in your psyche?

With love