Breadcrumbs a collection of spiritual and philosophical Essays

It is not on our side to keep us from what we are here to experience, learn and achieve, but to remind us of the spiritual breadcrumbs that show us the way – down yellow brick roads and on winding paths in the forest. The millions who left Europe for the shores of America faced a similar problem: the desire to belong. It is the same horror one encounters when seeing young children forced to join groups like al-Zarqawi and ISIL.

Benjamin Franklin said, “The game of chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, must thereby be acquired and strengthened, in order to do so. The crusades raged - for the Christians there were those of the true faith and dark ones, separated from the heavenly light. For chess players and seekers of life purpose or a heavenly kingdom, one eye is always on the most important piece—the king.

Something in the history and genes of the Jewish people makes them expert chess players - so what could it be.

THREE

Our teachers hope it is knowledge and we are thoroughly prepared for the next phase of our lives, but are we. If there's one code word that sums up our increased brain activity and heightened worries, it's confusion. As if it's a last chance, we're drawn to anything that makes us feel young again, perhaps in the hope that we can return to who we once were.

We are destined to lose ourselves because it is the only way to hear the voice calling us to connect with ourselves in our own story. Although much of life revolves around work, it is not our purpose to be here, regardless of what it brings. It's no coincidence that as we get older, we worry less about what people think of us, because it only gets in the way.

It's the real blur of letting go of what we thought we knew and understood.

FOUR

The war showcased some technological firsts - the role of the telegraph, the use of the railways and one of the first conflicts recorded with the relatively new media of photography. When all the medical officers had retired for the night and silence and darkness had laid those miles of sick on their knees, she could be observed alone, with a lamp in her hand, making her lonely rounds.'12 It was this reported in The Times which gave her the name, all the school children remember how they learned—'The Lady with the Lamp.'. Pause... The light of the lamp was not the solution - Timothy returned to the high seas and within a few short years the worst kind of war broke out, when civil war broke out in the Americas.

Students launched mass demonstrations around the world and The Guardian newspaper in England called 1968, 'The Year That Changed History'. The pedestrians stick to the sidewalk and there are no children kicking a ball around in the street. This was a close match to what I saw in the decline in the use of written progressions.

The affected area is the hippocampus – the same part of the brain that processes spatial memory. As connectivity, the heart of the online world, has strengthened, connections to specific areas of the brain have weakened. The very tools we are so quick to adopt have side effects – reliance on spell checkers and calculators undermines our ability to trust our own learning.

Perhaps it's no surprise that research is beginning to show that overreliance on GPS causes problems—where?—in the hippocampus. The advent of the First World War was the 'war to end all wars', but not in the way we imagined. We have entered a new era of competing political philosophies, all offering freedom from the bonds of the royal past - an end to the Royal Progress - the battle of the 'isms' has begun.

Perhaps the problem of progress is a spiritual disconnection, for God and spirituality do not exist in the 'isms.' Memory..hippocampus..can it be that simple, the reason for much of the discomfort was that we went too far away from our spiritual home and the connection that was once strong had become weak. There is comfort, care and peace in the tones of the heart when shared with love. We assume that it is men's hands that illuminate our darkness, how many handprints have always belonged to women - we continue to develop terrible weapons, but not to draw animals in motion correctly.

Of all the discoveries, it is the workers who toiled at Stonehenge for 1,500 years that I think about most.

FIVE

Unlike words, which primarily create certainty, images require interpretation, and within this space we encounter the possibility that solutions have more than one answer. We are members of the masses, ready to mete out justice, as we interpret it, to those we accuse. It is possible that the mythical Sandman will pour magical sand into our eyes at night, giving us dreams to show us the way, but it is more likely that we will find our path by first 'shaking the dust from our feet', 19 to rid ourselves of the illusion that we are innocent bystanders.

This was forgotten by the stone throwers when they approached Jesus with the snare of the law, and although it is not recorded what was said as the crowd slowly dispersed, we can imagine, for we were all there. When that fails, we turn to the next most logical location until it turns into a massive search, and finally, when all else fails and frustration sets in…please. We know that woven into what happens is the depth of the characters and how their choices, emotions and dreams connect them to each other, and if it's a great story - the relativity we see in our own lives.

It is no coincidence that we experience all these storylines in one form or another on our travels: overcoming fears, growth, searching, humor, loss and becoming are all present. It's more than our struggle with change..it's the lies and deceptions we speak in whispers because we feel it's the safe way, which of course is another lie we discover later. Being in the world doesn't mean we have to be of the world, and just because there are powerful messages in the shadows doesn't make them right or true.

Before creativity is doing, there is being, and when we create space, we open the door to greater creations—love, forgiveness, kindness, and compassion. There is something you need that you don't have and your story, your purpose, is to find it – at every turn; every breath. This is why our answers cannot be found in the ego and must lie elsewhere.

Whatever is right for you, name it and go there every day to shake the fear out of your story because it's never been "us vs. them." We are against ourselves. Go to the most important room you live in - it's the one where a bookshelf awaits.

SEVEN

This is not because I don't have much of a scientific brain, which I don't, but because unlike Einstein, I spent many years trusting the authority of experts, whom he constantly questioned and long sought concrete answers to. , on the contrary. rather than trusting my intuition. It's a very emotionally charged few minutes and it's important that it conveys all the pain, fear and despair you feel. Somehow, my brain had instantly constructed all that…in detail—what the cemetery looked like; fruits; bridge; the river.

We put so much between ourselves and our God, no wonder it's a struggle to feel the full light of love that is offered. The more time we spend arguing over who is the correct version; the more time we spend in judgment and rejection; the more time we spend deciding what is sin and what is not - it is all wasted time. It is this introspection that opens a creaking door to a dormant mystery, bringing the desire to be alone in a place, without voices or teaching rules, imposed.

I can't play the violin; I don't have a boat to sail, but riding a bike, it's not Einstein's words, but Mark Twain's that come to mind - "You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. " Leaving the house, I wonder if this is the key. I wonder if it occurred to him that much of his ability to find a new path was because he was so skeptical of authority – after all his success, he was the authority now. Einstein found the key to the problem of relativity using time, and as I consider my time travel, it's just possible that I believed too much of what others told me…and the story I told myself…because I was taught to follow the rules and listen to the experts.

There it is, in those early years, I remember... no one taught me how to walk or eat. There it is, at a young age, I remember ... no one taught me how to smile and laugh. There it is, in my growing up years, I remember... no one taught me how to cry and dream.

It is here... now... and while we sometimes seek the counsel of others, it is not to get their answer, but to help us discover our own answer, which resides within us. Like Einstein, our answers are found in time, and the journey truly begins when the outward focus no longer satisfies and we take the path inward, because it is our relativity that we seek.

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