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8 April 2008 |
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| Few
are those who see with their own eyes and feel with
their own hearts.
Albert
Einstein
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There
is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening
that is translated through you into action, and
because there is only one of you in all of time,
this expression is unique. And if you block it, it
will never exist
through any other medium and be
lost.
Martha
Graham
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The
greatest thing is, at any moment,
to be willing to give up who we are in
order to become all that we can be.
Max
De Pree
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Finding
Your Inner Artist
Shana Aborn
Remember
when absolute bliss meant smearing finger paints
around a big piece of paper for an hour? When
you squished modeling clay between your fingers,
trying to get the shape just right? When you had
the power to turn macaroni, glitter and fabric into
works of art just by applying your imagination and a
few generous smears of Elmer's glue?
You
were being spiritual without even knowing it.
Creating art of any kind is an act that involves the
part of our souls we usually don't tap into on a daily
basis. We rely on our emotions, our intuition
and our heart to lead us to the finished
product. We use art to express our innermost
selves, to bring us closer to our sense of the divine.
The
trouble is, most of us haven't done anything creative
since we cut out paper snowflakes in third
grade. "I was never any good at it,"
we say. Or, "My stuff will never hang on a
museum wall, so what's the point?" It's so
easy to neglect the artist in us because most of
day-to-day living is so uncreative. We don't
need art to raise the kids or attend a meeting or pay
the bills, so we assume that it's nonessential for all
but the few people lucky enough to be able to make a
living at it.
Wrong,
wrong, wrong. If anything, we need to express
ourselves through art more now as adults than we did
as children. For one thing, it's a terrific
release for stress-- when you're totally engrossed in
capturing a still life or shaping a clay bowl, the
rest of the world automatically shuts itself out.
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We
need the outlet for our emotions, too. Think of
the last time you felt overwhelming joy and didn't
know of any other way to share it but to wear a silly
grin all day. Or the frustration that led you to
reach for a pint of Ben and Jerry's or head to the
mall to buy something you didn't really need.
There was the anger that made you shout out nasty
insults you regretted later. Or the times you've
felt miserable for no particular reason.
Wouldn't it be better to put some of that misery on
paper rather than moping around? Some of the
greatest works of art in the world were created by men
and women in the heights of ecstasy and the depths of
despair.
So
this week, pick at least one day to become an
artist. To start, find a medium that suits
you. Crafts stores have basic pastel, charcoal,
watercolor and paint sets. Borrow your kids'
jumbo box of crayons. Raid your pantry for
macaroni and glue. Or just pick up a pencil and
paper--whatever seems to be calling out to you.
My mother used to make imaginative creations out of
seashells, rocks, sharks' teeth and metallic spray
paint. My dad recently started putting together
collages out of pictures clipped from magazines--he'll
work on one for hours. I have one of his works
at home now, a stunning group of images representing
the creation of the earth. But you don't have to
stick to biblical themes or any themes at all, for
that matter. Just get the pencil or brush to the
paper and see what comes to mind. Paint the
color of trees after rain. Draw an
emotion. Ask your heart what it wants to create.
The
messier arts--clay, finger paints, and the like--are a
great choice for freeing the mind and spirit.
There's something about getting your hands nice and
dirty that can be very liberating. Just spread
out a lot of newspaper, put on an old t-shirt to wipe
your fingers with and let yourself go. Slosh,
slop, squish all you want. Feel your hands
smearing and slipping. Marvel at how the colors
mix or how many textures you can create on a glob of
Play-Doh.
The
one thing I advise against is working from a kit or
one of those TV programs that show you how to paint a
particular object or scene. That's not being
spiritually creative; that's just following someone
else's idea of what a still life or ocean should look
like. And no fair using clip-and-paste art on
your computer. This is your personal
creation. Use your own work, your own
imagination.
Whatever
you do, be gentle with yourself. Don't rip up
your work because a line didn't come out right or the
paint dripped in the wrong place. We've all
heard the little voice of the self-censor inside our
heads--the one that makes the gagging noises and says,
That looks terrible! Who said you could do
anything creative? Better pack it in and go back
to doing the laundry. Before you even begin,
turn off that censor and plunge ahead, no matter what
the result. If a line comes out wrong, erase it
and start again. If the paint dribbles, work
with it. If the pot is lopsided, so what?
Nobody ever said, "The Venus de Milo would be so
much more beautiful if it had arms."
Give
yourself permission not to be perfect when you're
creating artwork. Come to think of it, that's a
spiritual lesson in itself. God doesn't ask us
to do everything perfectly-- only to put a perfect
heart into what we do. The point isn't to make a
masterpiece worthy of hanging in the Louvre. It
doesn't even have to be good enough to stick on your
refrigerator. It just has to come from your
heart. If you come away feeing satisfied that
you've expressed yourself, you've done it right.
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You're
not going to find ultimate
enlightenment in just one meditation
session or, for that matter, in a
hundred. The point isn't to become
perfect or more 'religious'--it's
to increase your awareness of
yourself as a spiritual being and,
I hope, to bring you closer to your
concept of God. You may not feel
utterly transformed, but chances
are you'll at least feel more
peaceful, less stressed and eager to
continue exploring your spiritual path.
from
the introduction |
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Living
Life Fully, the e-zine
exists to try to provide for visitors of the world wide web a
place
of growth, peace, inspiration, and encouragement. Our
articles
are presented as thoughts of the authors--by no means do
we
mean to present them as ways that anyone has to live
life. Take
from them what you will, and disagree with
whatever you disagree
with--just know that they'll be here for you
each week. |
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Eyes
Wide Open
tom walsh
Thankless
Work
Many
people in this world have pretty thankless
jobs. They go to work day after day and
do the best they can at it, but they never get any
sort of thanks from the people they serve.
There are the obvious jobs like that, such as the
people who pick up our garbage, the people who read
our meters so that we can pay our utilities, etc.,
but there are many more that we often never think
about at all.
What
about the person who delivered the gasoline to the
gas station so that we can fill our cars' gas tanks
with gas? What about the people who built our
homes, the places we live in day after day?
And the people who mined the copper that was used in
our pipes and the electrical wiring in those
homes? Or
the people who delivered the food to the
supermarkets, or the people who put it onto the
shelves so that it would be easy to find? And
do we (or can we, even?) ever thank the people who
wrote the software that allows us to go online, to
do our taxes quickly and easily, or to write e-mails
to our friends and family and business associates?
Most
of these people will remain forever anonymous to
us--we'll never know who they are, or who they
were. They did their jobs for their employers,
got their paychecks, and moved on with their lives,
working on other projects or assignments. We
can never know their names, and who knows--we might
even have seen some of them on the street once in a
while, not having any idea of who they were.
My
hope is that they received satisfaction from doing
their work well, and that they were paid fair wages
for all that they did. My wish is that I could
thank them sometimes for what they do for us.
Their contributions to my life are concrete and
important, and I do appreciate what they've done for
me.
There
are people who would argue that there's no real need
for thanking them, since they are paid for their
work and after all, they're doing work that they
chose to do. And most people who do thankless
work are pretty used to the fact that people don't
thank them, and they don't let it bother them much
at all.
But
I say that any time we feel gratitude for anything
that we have, it can be a very valuable experience
to find the person or people responsible for
bringing it into our lives and simply saying a
heartfelt "Thank you."
There
was an episode of Scrubs that treated this
subject in a unique way. A doctor who was
escorting a patient out of the hospital made it a
point to tell the patient just how much work he had
done to save the man's life--simply because he
wanted to be thanked. The man left without a
word of thanks. The doctor then went to the
man's home to find out why he hadn't said thank you,
and the man asked "For what? You were
just doing your job. I pick up your trash, and
do you ever thank me for doing my job?"
There
are many people out there who are more than
deserving of a simple "thank you," but who
never really receive it. There are many other
people in other lines of work who hear people thank
them regularly. Perhaps we could look a bit at
the balance and ask ourselves whether we can help to
balance things out a bit. After all, if we're
getting lunch in a fast-food place, we're more than
willing to thank the person at the counter who took
our order and who brought us our food, but what
about the people in the back who actually cooked
it? There has to be a balance somewhere, but
we'll never find it unless we look.
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Why
be afraid of what people will say? Those who care
about you will say, "Good luck!" and those who
care only
about themselves will never say anything worth listening to
anyway.
J.Z.
Knight
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Free
Wallpaper! Just click below
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Measuring
Success
Chris
Widener
As I have worked with people over the years I have
seen an amazing thing. People often get
frustrated because they aren't achieving
"success." There are lots of
possible reasons for this, but one reason I have
found that sticks out is that many people allow
their definition of "success" to be driven
by someone or something else.
Instead, we ought to be looking at our own, skills,
opportunities, life situations, etc., to determine
what it would mean for us to be a success in our own
mind rather than someone else's.
Thus, the key to "success" is all in the
head -- our head! We develop our own thinking
about what it will mean to become a success.
The frustration comes in when we look at what
someone else thinks is a success and try to attain
it, only to find it elusive.
For one person, being a success may mean to make
$100,000 a year. For another it may be
$250,000. Another may not be concerned with
the yearly income but be more concerned with a net
worth.
Still another may not be motivated by money and may
consider himself a success by how many street kids
he gets pointed in the right direction and into a
productive life.
Now the temptation would be for the person working
with street kids to think they aren't a
"success" because they don't make much
money. The temptation for the person making
$100,000 may be to think they aren't a
"success" until they make $250,000.
And the temptation for the person making $250,000
may very well be to think they aren't a
"success" because they aren't helping
street kids! And 'round and 'round it goes
when we are gauging ourselves by another's measure
of success.
So my advice is this: Set your own course, and
stay on course. Don't measure yourself against
any other standard of success. Do what you do
best and the rest will take care of itself.
Here is the truth: Being a success is doing
your best, not being the best.
When we get to that point, we will experience a lot
more joy and a lot less frustration. And that
sounds good to me!
Reproduced
with permission from the Chris Widener Ezine.
To subscribe to Chris Widener's Ezine, go to http://www.chriswidener.com
or send an email with "Join" in the
subject to subscribe@chriswidener.com
Copyright Chris Widener International. All
rights reserved worldwide. |
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i thank you God for this most amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
e e cummings
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