“The work of art is born of the artist in a mysterious and secret way. From him it gains life and being. Nor is its existence casual or inconsequent, but it has a definite and purposeful strength, alike in its material and spiritual life. It exists and has power to create spiritual atmosphere; and from this inner standpoint one judges whether it is a good work of art or a bad one”.
“That is beautiful which is produced by the inner need which springs from the soul. ”
“All those variety of picture, when they are really art, fulfill their purpose and feed the spirit.”
“Painting is an art, and art is not vague production, transitory and isolated, but a power which must be directed to the improvement and refinement of the human soul.”
“It is very important for the artist to guage his position aright, to realise that he has a duty to his art and to himself, that he is not king of the castle but rather a servant of a nobler purpose. He must search deeply into his own soul, develop and tend it, so that his art has something to clothe, and does not remain a glove without a hand”.
From Concerning the Spiritual in Art by Wassily Kandinsky, first printed in 1914
Dear Beloved Mother Earth, Our Holy Guru,
Since the timeless creation of Your very first breath,
You have been The Great Evolution, the grand source of all,
And humankind has been walking, perplexed, by Your side.
You have given us the powers of five sacred elements,
And we have created our own laws distant from their command.
You have given us soaring mountains to climb,
While we have merely made the ego our ascent.
You have given us deserts to inspire dreams of eternity,
And we have chosen an insatiable quest for all that is mortal.
You have given us your seas to embrace and rock us gently,
While we have taken comfort in our conquering nature instead.
You have given us cool soils to calm our weary feet,
While we have marched on and on, victims of our own polarity.
You have given us Your skies to open up our every inspiration,
But we have failed to overcome the feebleness of our thinking.
You have given us the splendour of flowers as a muse,
And we instead have revered material things.
You have given us all the creatures to teach harmony and difference,
While we have practiced prejudice and distrust amongst ourselves.
You have given us the joy of Your peaceful attention,
And we have remained distracted by the ticking clocks of our minds.
You have given us whispering winds, the desire for our seeking,
While we have been lost in a search for mere desperations.
You have forgiven us time and again for our ignorance and our deeds,
But we continue blindly flirting with absurdity and danger.
You have trusted us as the guardians of Your delightful creation,
And we have brought it now to the edge of devastation.
…
May we learn to make with our hands what is hidden inside our hearts,
Learning to live with less, with satisfaction and charity in our souls.
May we swiftly abandon all falsely created needs, our greed,
And discard all illusions of richness, vanity and self-indulgence.
May we sense the urgency to make changes in our daily actions,
To discover the Metascience of Your nature and to share it with all.
Melissa Richard
(Photograph: bigfoto.com)
The whole human race should take to Kundalini awakening because it will assist us not only in sorting out our immediate health and family problems, but also in resolving global problems. There is only this power and mechanism within us that works out things for our individual benevolence, auspiciously and equitably.
At the moment we are not in control of many aspects of our lives. We are at the mercy of technology. That technology we collectively created now sits on our heads like tonnes of bricks. Entire economies of countries are run by it. Our attention is completely tied up with wrestling with the monster. You will be able to relate to what I mean if you’ve found yourself waiting, for example, on-line to be served by an internet service provider, a bank, a government department or a telephone company.
The bank and government departments come under the area of the Nabhi Chakra, the sustenance and satisfaction aspect of our well-being. The internet and telephone come under the Vishuddhi Chakra, the communication and collective consciousness-awareness aspect of our well-being. By handing over these two vital components of our well-being to technology, we are now running inside an invisible landscape of the mind. This mental realm is totally unreal. It is made up of what we Think. It is devoid of the realities that go with living. There is no way out of this complicated maze except via our Kundalini as She is beyond the maze. She is the All-pervading Power of God’s Love who is all knowledge, all know-how.
Within Kundalini are the many aspects of our being: these are our chakras and nadis (channels). We need to have the Kundalini flowing through them so that Her profound knowledge, Her know-how, can become ours. We can then use this knowledge to re-evaluate what we are doing.
The human form is made up of mental, emotional and physical bodies within the five sheaths. Currently, we are running with the mental body way out in front, and the emotional and physical bodies lagging far behind. They are out of alignment with each other. The five sheaths, reflected within us as our five senses, are in total confusion. This is the stress factor.
The enlightening effects of the Kundalini which triggers the light of the Atma/Sprit to shine in our attention, provides the only solution for us. As individuals make up the collective, it is at the individual level that we must first work things out.
The tremendous healing powers of the Kundalini are there to be used by us. We need to obtain our Self-realisation. Sahaja Yoga is the method, devised by Shri Mataji, which allows ordinary individuals to become enlightened. During the process of Self-realisation, the Kundalini rises from Her abode in the triangular Sacrum bone and pours Her rays of love onto our chakras, threading them like pearls; onto the nadis, drawing them back into alignment; and onto the five sheaths, purifying and soothing them down. In this way, the mind, the emotions and the physical body are restored to their equilibrium.
We need to be in equilibrium to stop what we are doing and change how we are doing things. The human race has run aground in all areas of endeavour by becoming too top-heavy, with the roots withered. Connection to the Kundalini restores the mechanism within us, allowing the roots to become reconnected to the “tree”. The sap – the love that nurtures – can then be redistributed more evenly throughout the various parts, producing a much more beautiful, balanced, healthy and vital tree.
The subtle system in Sahaja Yoga is made up of the chakras and nadis, and is the Tree of Life. Many saints, poets, authors, artists, craftsmen and craftswomen have portrayed it in their works. The Kundalini is the sap that flows, nourishing, sustaining and evolving.
We can take the vital lines of communication and technology that our lives are bound up with to a new level where our well-being is, once more, the centre of consideration. This can only happen if we obtain our Self-realisation.
Greta More
© 2007
(Photograph: world-mysteries.com)
In Sahaja Yoga we learn to witness our own “Dialogue with God” which becomes actually the fragrant and colourful “Contact with God” through this beautiful world that is breathing in and out the Paramchaitanya, the ever-present power of God. We become the thoughtlessly and joyfully aware children of the Adi Shakti. We are part and parcel of this on-going Divine Plan, complex, diverse and simple. We are spreading the Fragrance of God while longing for the force of gravity that is keeping us grounded to the Divine Mother.
In the last few days I was introduced more deeply than ever to the amazing beauty of the Canadian sky, the canvas for the breath-taking, colourful and playful nature of Mother Earth. I was watching in awe – sometimes in the mornings, sometimes during the day, sometimes in the evenings – the display of ethereal arts. These were moments when one could say, “That’s it!” Meditation started simply by a glance at the Sky, just because God was there, present in the upper Present.
All these days I have wanted to share these simple joys, found above, of clouds and horizons and celestial objects, sometimes soft, surreal portals of Divine Creativity. It was almost like taking a peek into the Adi Shakti’s work of creating the world, witnessing Genesis again and again, in a variety of versions.
Another lesson-experience from the sky was that sometimes Oneness feels not completely self-sufficient if it is not also collective. It triggers the built-in need, based on Love, to gather all the people and pull them in so that the One becomes the Whole. In a complete collective of Love it becomes merely Existence, because each single time the need to share was there. And in a way, I was given the answer to the question, “Why the Creation?”
“Whole world is created because there was love,” Shri Mataji has said. “Sahaja Yoga means ‘We are One’. We are all Sahaja Yogis but not separately – together.”
Ioana Popa
(Photograph courtesy of Tanya Andersson)