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Happy Halloween Reading! 📖📚

I am looking outside of the house from the fourth floor and enjoying a quiet day. I see the tree tops sprinkled between the neighborhood houses, the cloudy sky and the two books on the table near me, that I want to share a few thoughts about.

The Book of Night by Holly Black

Horror stories are not my favorite genre so how did this book land on my bookcase?

First of all, it has an original plot, one I have never heard of. The book was a Sunday Times No. 1 Bestseller, definitely helping me to decide to go for it and I liked the cover design a lot!

This has been described as a “dark fantasy story” with a “killer ending” that I also enjoyed reading. The edition I have got has 400 pages and I have finished reading it in around 10 days I guess. A new angle to the magicians world with a good pace and a character that in the end was determined to do the impossible to save her love.

Reading this book was similar to trespassing from Yin to Yang or vice versa. You know when someone is all “Love and Light” and then they go and peek at the Dark! Someone who was annoyed at my “think positive attitude” asked me back then if I cannot get into trouble 😵‍💫 because I want to live as a Soul? Of course I also have troubles and challenges. This is not Paradise after all. So there it is, the “other side”, the world of the Shadows.

Bücher der Autorin Holly Black bei Amazon.de

Hey, if you live in Germany take a look at the Amazon.de page that I have linked on the left

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Or this one for fantasy bestseller:

Amazon.de Fantasy Bestseller

Shadow Dance by David Richo

This is an older edition (1999), I have read this book around 20 years ago and I took it out of the bookcase because I will read it again soon.

The subtitle “Liberating the Power and Creativity of Your Dark Side” says a lot and indeed summarizes the content of this book very well. My guess is that we experience a lot of persons who live out their Dark Sides blindly nowadays and it’s a lot of chaos and turmoil in the outer world. Only because this outer world is the consequence of the chaos and turmoil a lot of us experience in our minds and feelings.

There is a lot of food for thought here. Being a nerd all the way from first grade to finishing university 1999, I sometimes felt that I was not free to show myself the way that I was and couldn’t find a solution to that old situation. A lot of people are searching happiness and one path towards this is to practise positive thinking. Well, it goes around like a wheel, light going to dusk, night then dawn and light again.

To quote David Richo:

Too much light creates a longing for night.

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Almost spring

Winter is slowly going away and spring is almost there. Looking at the blog, it seems like nothing is happening here. Since June I only managed to create a new page Sleepless nights, a text that emerged on itself at the end of 2020. #Lockdown is also almost gone. We still have restrictions and there is hope that public life will resume in April.

I have never really thought that my birthday in the beginning of March will be affected – it was. Still lockdown. I usually don’t have a big birthday party. I wanted it this year to be different, to play music and dance, to invite everyone who was in my life for the past five years.

So it will probably be a bigger party, at a later time, together with friends that missed their celebration in this hard time.

The good thing with the current situation is that I have grown my Instagram following and it’s amazing. There is nothing more motivating than having followers reacting to posts. If you happen to be a follower, thanks!

Second edition of book one Soul Connections is out there and I have discovered really useful tips for KDP authors. Right now I want to learn everything about KDP !

Meanwhile there is some more merch in the pipeline and hopefully it will be approved soon. The process is quite a slow one but for me it is worth the waiting. If you might be interested, there are some pieces linked in the footer so you can check them out.

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The Big Gap, part two

This post is continuing The big gap, part 1.

Being in a gap: how does it feel? As the Covid-19 lockdown continued, people started to relax a little bit and myself I got a little bit too relaxed – till my job was gone.

But I was prepared. I knew what to do and sent my job applications right away, no need to start crying over spilled milk, life goes on.

I couldn’t have managed it this way if I didn’t experiende the loss of a job before. That time I felt like my world was going down. I was overwelmed and couldn’t cope for a while. Looking back it seems to me that I was lacking the proper tools and the proper reactions to handle that. And sadly I did not find the support that I had needed outside of me, I did it alone. Well, we all get wiser in time …

This slowing down of the public life and of parts of the economy affected my personal life in a way that a diet does – this one being a “stress diet”. The chance was now so palpable to invest more time and energy in my home, cooking skills, work-sleep balance 😉 I have watched so many shows and movies as in the previous two years combined – satisfying my brain’s thirst for stories and data.

Now I actually get the chance of a great job and I feel a lot more motivated – even excited! – about the new beginning that is slowly coming.

Movies seen before the Lockdown in March 2020 / Lockdown 2 in December 2020:

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Four reasons to start your spiritual journey now

Social distancing is still there and by now I guess that some (new) routines were born. Did you spend time on hobbies that you couldn’t do because you didn’t have enough time? I found myself posting more often on social media, working on expanding the reach for my art, trying hand lettering as a new way of expression.

Lately I have been thinking about the reason why do I do all of this. Spirituality is a part of my life since teen years now, it fuelled my creativity and gave me a rock solid basis for crisis situations like the current one. Talking to friends and acquaintances I started to realise that there is still little knowledge about the benefits of investing in your spiritual life:

1. It doesn’t cost anything to get started. With most hobbies you need to purchase stuff . Want to sew? need a sewing machine. Want to draw? you need paper and lots of pens etc. For this one you just need a little bit of time and a quiet space where you can be on your own.

(C) Dora Marii

2. Your inner world expands. You start to receive new insights and sometimes even get the feeling of a light literally going on.

Besides, people realise that through this inner connection to their soul, they are connected to the society and the Universe. Loneliness thus becomes impossible to experience 🙂

3. Personal stories are easier to understand and to let go of. Healing takes place and even if sometimes there is sadness, it doesn’t pull someone down like a heavy stone.

(C) Dora Marii

4. You learn lots of new techniques and meet new people. In my experience you don’t need a Guru to make progress. It is good to have someone to exchange ideas and get support from time to time.

Which techniques do you use or learn currently? Do you have a favourite online event that you want to share?

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The Big Gap, part one

By now I have been through three weeks of home office and one week of vacation since the Social Distancing situation started. Clearly some things have changed and I wonder as many people do, at this time, if things will get back to what they used to be or if we all are going to define anew what “normal” is.

Copyright 2020 Dora Marii – Closed stores in Cologne’s main shopping street Schildergasse

Hopefully, we are able by now to see that there are some advantages when working from home – as this is possible, of course, since many jobs are not suitable to this. But as long as someone is doing an office related job and is using a computer, this is largely applicable. To be frankly, many of us have experienced before that when contacting an insurance or the support of a company, the person at the end of the line stated that they were doing home office and “please be patient” meanwhile he or she was looking through the records.

There are mixed feelings about this subject. After all, if you are used to getting up in the morning and go to work, it’s a little irritating if you are put in a new situation where you have to develop some habits first.

Man is a creature of habits and propensities

Thorstein Veblen

The more important thing is though, which businesses will make it through this dry period, which ones will have to close permanently?

If you look for example at retailers, most of which had to close their stores, the ones that cannot offer a replacement of their in-store services are suffering. It doesn’t have to be online shops. Some stores that I have seen while taking a walk are displaying posters that state that orders by email are welcome and that they deliver at home.

Delivery services are in demand and if this situation continues, it will become an opportunity for people who love going out. By delivering goods they can also support small and big stores – it’s a win-win situation.

What about you, are you also affected by the current Stay-at-Home situation?

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New moon

This is not a romantic post to clear things up, if someone might think “moon=romantic”. Nature’s beauty is in my eyes unique and very inspiring. I took this picture from my balcony two days ago in the early evening. Shortly after that the moon took on a yellowish colour and was much more beautiful to look at. I’d love to paint that some time soon.

We have this difficult time where the Corona (Covid-19) virus infected lots of people all over the world and public life has been slowed down in Europe since a couple of weeks ago. New moon is said to be the phase of introspection, of going inside and finding the light within, which then becomes a guiding light for yourself and for the outside world. As we go out less, we have the opportunity to rest, think about ourselves and about our personal priorities, about the relationship to our selves, to our family members and to our friends, about our profession and our social activities.

I hope that you will find out that all humans are connected – not just because this virus is spreading so fast, but because physical distance is not equivalent to emotional distance. Someone is only separated when his/hers heart is closed meaning that this person is not showing his/hers feelings and is not aknowledging the feelings of other persons. This is the time to become “unfrozen”.

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Frozen – best animation movie

I have seen the movie again as a test, to check out if it still moves me like it did the first time I have seen it at the cinema. This time it touched me in a different way; it still is a major story in my opinion.

As Frozen 2 is running at cinemas everywhere, I used the opportunity to watch the first part on DVD – having seen it multiple times with my kids, this time I have chosen to watch the original version.

Google search “frozen snowflake” – Copyright of the respective owners

It was some time in spring 2013 that I have watched it initially and it gave me hot and cold shivers on my back. The effect was so powerful that it led me to a life changing decision – having hidden for a long time some skills that I had like automatic writing and being able to read between the lines – so I have decided to stop hiding, the way that Elsa did, and open up. Coupled with the decision that is OK if only a few persons can accept me the way I am – cold is not bothering me anyway – it was like opening a door to further life experiences and the birth of “Soul Connections”.

The theme of “true love kiss” vs. “act of true love” was crucial. Stopping that ideal of romance that many more stories have propagated was so healing!

And of course, the Love that you feel in your heart is healing first of all – yourself. This movie has many parallel issues going on, it is worth writing a longer series about. The main message was so powerful than and it is now – is that of Love melting away the ice of Fear and Greed – and of Ice as a positive life protecting force. It is Elsa’s self-defence Chi, if you want, her Element and she had to understand that it “came out” the second she needed protection. As she eventually understood and let go of fear, she was able to direct it.

We only become lovable if we show ourselves – then someone like Anna is able to come along and love us. So let go of hiding !