Today was Halloween day. And it was new moon. I had a calm and nice day, all day today. Energy was so calm, loving, and embracing. I enjoyed it so much.

This year, the year of 2016, was full of hardships for my family. We had gone through a lot of uncomfortable experiences and challenges. Too much troubles and hardships for one year. It was so tough that we didn’t enjoy it at all.

However, spiritually speaking, the toughest years are the one that we will miss in the future. The reason is that we can learn a lot from tough experiences, so, we as in souls love them and enjoy them.

After 10 years from now on, after 20 years from now on, when we will turn back to our previous years, and we will definitely embrace this year of 2016 for our spiritual growth. We have gone so far this year.

Thank god… I feel our tough cycle has finally ended today, and the energy has shifted upward for us. Maybe that is why I feel so peaceful today.

I like autumn. It is harvest season. When I see lots of fresh produce in the fields and stores, I feel abundance. It is now for us to relax and enjoy the harvest season for the time being.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪　

Many American people have told me that they cannot understand what I say because of my strong English accent. When I was young, I used to take it personal. I use to get hurt by their wording.

I majored in English language in the university and the graduate school. At my university, I learned English Phonetics. The professor taught us how to pronounce English words theoretically. With the knowledge of Phonetic symbols, the professor trained us to pronounce each symbols. So, I know English pronunciation “theoretically”. However, knowing and doing are two different things.

During my struggling days living in America, one day when I was having a meal with many Americans, somebody made fun of my English accent. So I told him in front of everybody that “please do not expect me to speak natural English accent. I can speak slightly better grammar than Yoda”. People busted to laugh. They nodded and agreed with me. I felt comfortable. Since then, I have started feeling comfortable with who I am and stay being me.

I finally have noticed the important thing. I am Japanese and I speak proper Japanese. That is what I have, and I should be proud of that.  

I was not born here in America. English is not my mother tongue. I learned English as my foreign language. Considering that, I think I am doing pretty well. I am a Japanese living in a foreign country. In this country, I am registered as an “alien” anyway. An alien is supposed to be something that people have hard time to understand, right?

So, the same thing can be applied to everybody. We don’t need to force ourselves to become somebody else. Instead of trying to become somebody else, it might be easier to accept what we have and make the best use of what we have.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪　

Today we were invited to a birthday party. The birthday girl was my friend’s mom, and we celebrated her 94th birthday together.

The mom looked really calm with a gentle smile. I could not talk much wih her because she speaks only Spanish, and I don’t know Spanish language. All we could was just to exchange our smile. But her gentle smile eloquently told that she has powerfully lived through her life. I felt her strength in her soul.

They introduced her life as in a presentation to celebrate her life. According to the information, she had a tough life from the beginning. She lost both of her parents and became an orphan at the age of three, and was adopted by her foster parents. She went through the World War II and the World depression. In her personal life, she got married and had children. Now she has grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

I was happy for her to have a big number of her family members to gather up and celebrate her life together. This is one of the rewards that she has lived through a tough life. When she became an orphan, she would have never imagined of future family members. She would have felt lonely without her immediate family members. Now she has a lot. I thought it is an amazing story to give us hopes about our future.

I like to listen to elders’ life stories. Especially the elders who had gone through a lot in their youth years. They will make themselves to be the best counselors. Because they know the pains and sorrows as well as the techniques how to overcome them.

It is my sincere hope that we all have opportunities to communicate with wise elders so that we can learn from them. And they have opportunities to pass down their wisdom to younger generation people.

Life is supposed to be full of ups and downs. If our life is only full of happiness, it will be boring. Let’s enjoy colorful life. And, when the time has come, it will be our turn to pass down our wisdom to younger generation people.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪　

Thanks to the modern technology, I could reconnect with some people whom I had known in my previous years. In those days when we were close to one another, close to 20 years ago, we all were struggling to find our own way. Since we were struggling and we were not happy with ourselves, we often hurt one another. Due to that, we separated and cut off our relationships.

Now that I reconnected with them, I was astonished how well we all have been evolving. We all have found our own way. Everybody’s way is unique. We are now in the stage where we don’t feel envy to others. Because we all are satisfied with our own ways.

I feel they are totally different people from the one whom I knew. They are now shining. And powerfully taking their steps on the right path to their life mission. I am too. I am on the right path to my life mission. I am now fully satisfied with myself so that I don’t feel envy others.

I feel it is happening to everybody and everything. We all are evolving. Facing and proceeding to the right direction on the right path. I feel happy for that. Now we all can share what we have and contribute to establishing the better world.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪ 　

When I was at the junior high school, I wrote down in my graduation essay about my dream to become a professional comedian. I used to watch a variety of comedian shows in the television and studied the quality of laughter. I even joined the comedian club in my university days. That’s how I have been interested in laughter, and its quality, and such, all my life.

I think there are two different types of laughter. One is pure and decent laugher, and other is impure and indecent laughter. The pure and decent laughter raises our vibration while the impure and indecent laughter lowers our vibration. Simply put, the former one is good for our soul, but the latter one is bad for our soul.

Here is one example of pure laughter. We can see them often in babies and animals. Their instinctive reactions make us laugh. Their funny reactions are pure and innocent, not coming with their intention to make us laugh.

Another example of decent laughter. Today when I attended the business class, the instructor gave us a cute laughter. When she introduced herself, she said “I’ve been doing this job for 33 years, and I started this job when I was 5 years old. Now you can calculate my age.” We all laughed because she probably is in her late 60s or even in her 70s. This was a good laughter as a beginning of the class.

These two examples make us laugh without hurting anybody’s feeling.

Other types of laughter, impure and indecent laughter, is intentionally said or done to make people laugh, by making fun of ourselves or others. It might be funny at that time, but we should not forget that somebody might get hurt by that.  

Nowadays the vibration on the planet Earth gets higher than ever. In this situation, nobody can lie or hide their true emotion anymore. People used to hide their true emotion by certain jokes or actions, now they will start revealing their true feelings to public. I like the current situation. It is a blessing. We are entering to the world where nobody gets hurt and nobody needs to hide their true emotion.

When we make others laugh, let’s focus on only pure and decent laughter. We don’t need to make fun of anybody to make others laugh. We don’t need to hit anybody or make ourselves look miserable to make others laugh. Let’s respect ourselves and others. Let’s be honest with ourselves and others. Pure laughter can be found everywhere. Let’s enjoy laughing with pure laughter.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪ 　

Human’s life is like a climbing a mountain. In my image, the top of the mountain is set around the age of 40. That being said, this is only when we set our life span for around 80 years long. Everybody sets their life span differently, so that everybody’s age at the top of the mountain varies.

When we are baby, we start from an easy and gradual slope. We take it easy, taking one step at one time. Baby steps. In this stage, we should fully enjoy every step and every scenery. From the baby’s perspective, everything looks beautiful. Babies see the life as full of adventures and wonders.

As we go by more years, the slope starts getting steeper and steeper. As we become independent, we get free from parents’ supervisions. However, freedom comes with responsibilities. The responsibilities get heavier and heavier on us. Gradually, we start feeling that the life is tough. In this stage, we still don’t see wider visions. Therefore, we sometimes proceed blindly and reach to the dead-end. Then, we need to go back and take another route. Since our physical body is still young and strong, we tend to abuse our body. We tend to take our youth and good health for granted.

Around the age of 40, most of us reach at the top of the mountain. We can take a break here for a while. We can congratulate ourselves for our progress so far. When we look back our former years, we can analyze our pattern and habit. Based on the analysis, we can correct our bad pattern and habits. And, get ready for the later life. 

From there, we still have half to go. It is a downhill. We start noticing we cannot abuse our body anymore. Our body start giving us any kinds of sign for that. We need to slow down our daily life pace. When climbing up the hill in our younger days, we can keep on running, without any tools or supports. Now, when it comes to walking down the hill, we need some types of tools or supports. It is hard to acknowledge and accept the aging process in our physical body. But aging comes with wisdom. Our body might not swiftly work anymore, but we have earned wisdom and technique to cheat in a way. We might find some shortcuts. Our pace might get slower, but we proceed with confidence.

I have started going down the hill in my life mountain. I have noticed some aging signs in my body, here and there. It can be shocking, but at the same time, it happens to everybody. That’s the way it is. All I need do is to accept and smile.

Personally, I feel lucky to have the same age friend whom I can casually talk about my aging and encourage one another. It is always good to have friends to talk about that.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪ 　

Yesterday, when I was writing a story about drying clothes out in the sun, I kept on having the image of my grandpa-in-law. I had visited my husband’s family since 1998, so I had opportunities to spend time with my husband’s grandparents as well.

Every time when I offered to wash the dishes, my grandpa-in-law gently turned down my offer. He said it was his favorite thing to do. The time in washing dishes was his meditation time. He could fully relax. While he was washing the dishes, he would put a gentle smile on his face.

He would take his time on washing the dishes. He would first store the hot water in the sink and wash the dishes in the sink. Then, he would use the gentle flow of water to rinse each dish to complete the washing. All his motions were slow and gentle. I would feel calm by just listening the gentle water flow sound when grandpa-in-law was washing the dishes.

When I visited another Navajo family, the Navajo elder woman told me that she also loved washing dishes. She said washing dishes is her way of showing appreciation. Appreciation for dishes to hold the food, appreciation to the food, and appreciation to the family to share the food together. She told me it is important to keep on showing our appreciation to everything, and never take anything for granted.   

I like the traditional scenery. After having the big meal with family, everybody gets involved in cleaning. By bringing the dishes into the sink, washing the dishes, wiping off the table, and putting the leftover food in the refrigerator. While doing these choirs, everybody is still having a fun conversation.

 In modern life, we tend to prefer a more convenient and faster way in doing our choirs. But let’s not forget that sometimes it is worth to take time in doing it.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

In Japan, most people hang the washed clothes out in the sun to dry them. Using a dryer is not common.

Now I live in America, and I have a drier at home. But still, I hang the washed clothes out in the sun whenever I can. When I hang clothes outside, I enjoy getting sun light and smelling the dirt and plants in the yard. And, I like the feeling that I am contributing to protect our Mother Earth by saving electricity.

The modern technology has made our life much more convenient and easier than before. Washing machines and driers are one of them. I don’t want to wash clothes by hand, but at least I can continue hanging washed clothes out in the sun. I want to keep on doing some inconvenient and traditional way of living in order to protect our Mother Earth.

Since 2013, I have used the home made laundry detergent. I have stopped using the manufactured hair products and face creams, replaced by olive oil and coconut oil.

There are some other things that we all can contribute to our Mother Earth.

– Walk whenever we can, instead of driving a car.

– If possible, use compost. We can reduce the amount of trash. And at the same time, we can create the nutritious rich soil that we can use for our gardening.

– Buy the local organic produces and support organic farmers.

There are so many great ideas that we can save our Mother Earth. Let’s often talk about that and share the ideas with many people. Our individual contributions might be small, but when they are accumulated by many people, we can make a huge difference together.

Today, my daughter shared one exciting story with me. At school, one of her classmates was laughing so hard, and at the same time, she was shedding tears. It was my daughter’s first time to witness somebody laughing and crying at the same time. Other classmates were the same as my daughter. All of them watched the girl in their astonished faces. Even the girl told everybody she was astonished too. She never experienced that. They all shared that they didn’t know people can laugh and cry at the same time.

I remember the moment when I laughed so hard and tears came down at the same time. I was so surprised. Because I thought laughing and crying are two different things. I had thought laughing comes from happiness and crying comes from sadness. But, now I know they are not totally separated or different; they are all emotions. And, tears come from our souls when we have a strong emotion.

I told my daughter to enjoy every emotion. Experiencing a variety of emotions is one of the privileges that humans can have. In other words, one of our purposes we reincarnated to the planet Earth is to experience a variety of emotions.

When we go back to the spirit world, everything is calm. As far as I know, when we go back our own spirit homeland, all the residences in the realm are at the same spiritual levels. Everything and everybody are very calm and peaceful. There is no events or opportunities that we as in spirit will not have negative feeling such as anger, jealousy, sadness, or fear.

All the negative feelings are possible only in the place where diverse leveled in spiritual age live together, like the planet Earth. I don’t know any other place where we can reincarnate like the planet Earth. As far as I know, the planet Earth is a very unique place.

Thankfully, our lifetime in the planet Earth is limited. Let’s enjoy our life here in the planet Earth, with fully experiencing a variety of emotions. Once we go back to our spiritual homeland, we are going to miss that.

This year, I witnessed the self-healing ability in trees. I saw it in the two tall trees in theneighbor’s front yard.

Last summer, the trees did not look healthy. Some of the leaves were dried up.

At the beginning of this year, before getting warm, the owner had trimmed all the branches off from the trees. The trees had become completely bald on their top parts. Only the trunk parts were left. I felt sorry for the trees.

However, in the spring time, the trees started putting forth their branches and leaves back on. I had observed their recovering process every day.

By the beginning of summer, the trees had completely back to normal state, even much healthier than last year. Now, the trees have exuberant foliage. I was awed by their self-healing energy.

When I saw these trees’ self-healing ability, I thought about Pluto. Pluto deals with “death and rebirth” and “destruction and regeneration.”

The trees looked like dead when the top parts were all gone. But they were not totally dead. The trunk and the roots were still alive, and they had a desire to come back to life again.

I thought it was a blessing to witness it.

It can be applied to us too. Once in a while, we need to get rid of all the excuses and escape routes, so that we can focus on only our core part, just like the trees did. The trees lost all the detailed parts once, then they focused on the trunk and the roots; their vital energy.

As old people used to tell us, we can learn a lot from the Nature.