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Coming Together to Love, Heal & Empower

Inspiring Stories of Dragonflies and Spiritual Awakening

Inspirations

Issue Number 2
December 2001

Welcome to Inspirations! Global Community For All sends out this e-zine filled with short, inspiring stories of love, healing, and empowerment every three months. We share this dragonfly story and story of spiritual awakening to encourage and inspire each other to be the best we can be each day of our lives. Thanks for joining us, and may these words inspire us to ever deepen our commitment to love, heal, and empower; to open to divine guidance; and to choose what's best for all.

Dragonfly Story – Marjorie Singer
My Spiritual Awakening
– Fred Burks


Dragonfly Story -- Marjorie Singer

It is the dragonflies that teach me to remember the magic. I have always known that I have magical connections around me, but it is the dragonflies that continuously remind me to feel them.

I have always felt protected on a deep level. I have never felt a sense of profound aloneness in this world. With an amazingly loving and supportive family at my base, my reality grew from there – connectedness.

When I was in high school my Aunt Diane died. We shared the same birthday, March 14, though hers was 40 years before mine. Aunt Diane was an artist, welder, colorful spirit, joyful heart, deep listener, powerful creator and teacher. She was a profound inspiration to me, to my family, and to most people whose lives she touched while she was alive. And her spirit still shines for us all. And for me especially, she still shines and speaks to me through the dragonflies......

Dragonflies: connection to the afterworld, purveyor of dreams.

My Aunt Diane had given me a dragonfly in the form of a pin a few years before she died. I still have it on my altar. A couple of years after she died, dragonflies began to appear at unique moments in my life. An older college classmate who reminded me of Aunt Diane was wearing a dragonfly watch. She told me that it was given to her by someone very significant who had told her the power of the dragonfly.

In Tanzania, East Africa, after spending the day with a creative woman artist who reminded me of my Aunt, she brought me into her living room. There I saw an enormous beautiful dragonfly she had painted on the wall. At a summer festival after my friends had me explain to them about my dragonfly connection, I left for an hour to my tent. When I returned they told me a dragonfly had come and played on their shoulders while I was gone.

In Israel, while sitting on a rock talking with my friend about whether or not I should kiss a man I had met, two dragonflies began flying back and forth in front of us making love. I went on to have a great connection with him.

During a 10 day silent meditation retreat in Thailand, as I sat by a pond each day, dragonflies appeared dancing all around me. The final day of that retreat a male friend I had brought to the retreat (who I did not see at all during the 10 days and who knew nothing about my dragonfly connection) gave me a card to open later that he had made for me during the retreat. As I opened it on the airplane on my way back to America my heart smiled....he had drawn on the cover of the card....a dragonfly!!!

While working with refugees in war-torn Azerbaijan, every day I would walk down the same path to work. For many months, it was very difficult for me to feel beauty in such a depressing situation. Then one day while walking to work, I saw some dragonflies flying beside me on the path. A big smile of realization crossed my face. The dragonflies were there! They had always been there! I just had to open to seeing them. The stories go on and on.... While traveling throughout the world, as well as while staying in one place, I continuously have dragonflies appear and kiss my soul.

And so I feel blessed. Continuously. I regularly open to my Aunt (as well as to the spirits of my other ancestors) for guidance and support on higher levels. I believe in the interconnectedness of us all. And that magic is there whenever we open to it, and sometimes even when we forget!


Fred Burks – My Spiritual Awakening

Growing up with a father who was a minister is not what it might seem. Seeing dad preach great virtues from the pulpit to a large congregation who looked up to him just didn't resonate with the way dad treated our family and the way he acted at home. For one thing, he preached on the importance of freedom, yet forced us to go not only to church, but also to Sunday school every week, when I had much better things to do with my time. I did admire some of my dad's moral beliefs, I just wished he'd practice what he preached with us.

I never was one to believe something just because someone in authority said it was true. From as young as I can remember, I questioned the existence of God. I liked the historical figure of a loving Jesus and would even use him as a role model, asking myself, "What would Jesus do in this situation?" But the concept of God was too abstract. I had a very inquiring, scientific mind which wanted to see proof before believing in anything. I also wanted no help in this from my dad, from anyone else, or even God for that matter. With an ego at least as big as that of my dad, I always preferred to teach myself and to prove for myself anything important. If there was a God, I would find out on my own.

When I was a high school senior, I became involved with a wonderful, loving group of born-again Christians. This group was strongly oriented towards personal growth and supporting each other in being loving, shining witnesses for Christ. Though I never did become a born-again myself, I became one of the main leaders of this group. They were very accepting of my questioning the existence of God, particularly as I lived my life by very loving Christian principles. When people were concerned about my being saved, I asked them when they prayed not to pray for me to become a born-again, but rather to pray that God would lead me down the path that was best for me.

Not long after leaving this wonderful group of friends to go away to college, I found myself for the first time in a spiritual crisis. Without my supportive friends back home, and feeling pressured by pushy born-again Christians at college to become born again, I felt somehow lost. All my life I had proudly said to myself that if God did exist, I would find the proof myself. Yet feeling lost and truly in need of help, I decided to let my ego step aside. For the first time in my life, I prayed to God to show himself to me if he did exist.

Within two months of that prayer, a friend showed me a book called Life After Life by Dr. Raymond Moody. This book described the experiences of many people who had been declared dead at the hospital and yet miraculously come back to life. The fact that they came from such different backgrounds, yet had very similar experiences while "dead" completely convinced me of the existence of the spirit world and the divine. After this experience, I began to pray more actively, knowing that my prayers were really being heard.

Within a few months I had another powerful spiritual awakening. I was reading an inspiring book called Cosmic Consciousness by Richard Bucke when something in me shifted. It felt as if a door on the top of my head opened and a tremendous amount of inspiring information began pouring in. Tears of joy streamed from my eyes as I suddenly found myself remembering all these things I once knew from what felt like a time before I was born! Simply amazing!!!

I know that both of these spiritual awakenings would not have happened if I hadn't put my ego and arrogance aside and directly asked for help from God. I know now that if I ask with a pure heart and ask above all else for what's best for all, my prayers are always answered. As a result of that initial prayer and the following two inspirational events, not only did I become convinced of the existence of the divine, my life also took on a very clear, intentional spiritual focus–a focus which has continued to bring blessing after rich blessing into my life to this day.


Thanks for sharing in these inspiring stories on dragonflies and spiritual awakening with us. We wish you lots of inspiration and all the very best in the coming month.


Explore the mind and heart expanding websites managed by the nonprofit PEERS network:
www.peerservice.org - PEERS websites: Spreading inspiration, education, & empowerment
www.momentoflove.org - Every person in the world has a heart
www.personalgrowthcourses.net - Dynamic online courses powerfully expand your horizons
www.WantToKnow.info - Reliable, verifiable information on major cover-ups
www.weboflove.org - Strengthening the Web of Love that interconnects us all

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