Catbird Mimics Dog Barking

We have a resident Catbird and I have loved listening to his varied whistles, songs, warbles and other strange calls. Yesterday I even heard him mimicking the dogs barking! At first I thought it was the neighbors dog, then I went out on the deck and realized it was the Catbird....truly amazing how much he sounded like the little Bichon next door! I wish I had gotten a video of the call, I did get some photos at least.

New Work

Yesterday I was determined to do something....anything.... in the studio but I still have no energy so I went in tore a scrap of paper and started pouring paint on it. I sprayed it with water and pushed the paint around with my breath through a straw and voila a new painting that my husband says looks like wild horses. As much as I feel blessed to be able to do digital paintings during relapses it was incredibly satisfying to put real paint on paper and move it around!!! Yay!

After the Rain (Or as my Hubby calls it, Wild Horses) 

Acrylic and dye on paper

This morning I played around with a couple of my photos in Photoshop

 Sweetness of Summer

Yesteryear

Hanging by a Thread

Lots of stuff hanging by a thread theses days. We are still trying to pull this real estate deal together but it has gotten very complicated. We need to head up to the property with an engineer and excavator to see if we can do another round of perc tests with hopefully better results. We met a couple of the neighbors that were so friendly and helpful and seemed like a people we would really enjoy a friendship with. The other challenge is that the new medication has not produced the hoped for change so I need to go in for another ultrasound and possibly a surgical procedure. Then there are the multitude of other mundane challenges that most of us face in our lives.

 All of it leads up to a lot of stress and I find I am constantly needing to pull my mind back into a state of meditative concentration to keep the "monkey mind" at bay. Using the words  "I Am That, I Am", as taught in the Moses Code and Wishes Fulfilled, I draw my mind back over and over again, away from the imagined fears, worries and dreamt up disasters to a state of balance and oneness with God. It brings me to the place where there is no illness, pain or stress. Just a peaceful sense of being at one with all that is. For the brief moments that I am able to enter into this state it is easy to feel loved by the Divine, to let go of results and it becomes easy to send that love out into the world to everyone, even those presenting you with challenges.

Ascending to Nirvana

Painting Prayers

I have had a few extremely challenging health days. It feels like forever since I have been able to be in my actual studio painting on silk and it is so easy to fall into a state of discouragement when I feel so lousy and my energy is so low.  My heart is filled with gratitude that I am able to do these digital paintings when I am in these relapses. They feel a bit like prayers, expressions of hope and faith that God will once again deliver me to a state of better health. 

"Attunement"

At a distance you only see my Light ,

come closer and know that I am You. ~Rumi

"Luminescence" 

We are surrounded by the forms
of a formless creator.
Enough with these forms!
Let us go to the Formless One. ~Rumi

New iPad Paintings

We are knee deep in the process of selling our house and looking for a house or land to buy so life has been a bit chaotic. This chaos has kept me out of the studio but I am eternally grateful for the ability to create paintings on my iPad at times like this. Creating art is such a great stress reliever and this life change has indeed been stressful. Not having the energy lately to drag out all my dyes or paints it is so nice to sit with my iPad in the evening and to paint with no worries about washing brushes or cleaning up. The app I use the most for painting is Sketchbook Pro. It is my absolute favorite!

 "Attaining Balance"

Love is the song of the soul singing to God. 
It is the balanced rhythmic dance of planets - sun and moon lit. 
~Paramahansa Yogananda

 "Walk in the Woods"

May you be peaceful, light & happy in body & in mind. 

May you be free and safe from accidents.

May you be free from anger, unwholesome states of mind & worries.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

Falling in Love (Again)

Healer and Guides by Linda Marcille

The most devastating thing I think this illness took from me over the last 12 years was the ecstatic love I felt for the Divine. I remember so many times during episodes of deep illness and despair when I would call out to God and feel and hear nothing in response. I was trapped in the nightmare my own suffering and it had become so vast and concrete that it was blocking my connection with God. 


Over the last couple of years as I have been doing this amazing work with the Brazilian healer, John of God. Very deep healing is taking place in my spiritual core and blocks that I am not sure I could have ever released on my own have been released by this work. My heart is once again opening up and God's Love is pouring in and filling me with that inexplicable feeling of Divine Love. So even in moments when illness limits me and my physical body lets me down I once again have this overwhelming sense of connection with the Divine flowing throughout me. 

In the Moses Code, James Twyman says; " Calling upon the name of God joins us with the source of power that enables us to create miracles. It acts as a bridge between this world and Heaven, drawing into our lives everything we need to be happy and completely fulfilled."  Using the name of God as taught to us by Moses and Jesus, "I AM That, I AM", I am experiencing an even deeper journey into the miraculous. Nothing looks quite the same when your heart is open and the flames of Divine Love are burning brightly within you. 

Simply Falling
"There goes my heart again
All of this time I thought we were pretending
Nothing looks the same when your eyes are open
Now you’re playing these games to keep my heartbeat spinning
You show me love, you show me love
You show me everything my heart is capable of
You reshape me like butterfly origami

You have broken into my heart
This time i feel the blues have departed
Nothing can keep me away from this feeling
I know i am simply falling for you

I’m taking time to envision where your heart is
And justify why you’re gone for the moment
I tumble sometimes, looking for sunshine
And you know this is right when you look into my eyes
You show me love, you show me love
You show me everything my heart is capable of
And now I can’t break away from this fire that we started

There my heart goes again
In your arms I’m falling deeper
And there’s nothing to break me away from this" 

River Flow

Think on These Things 

~J. Krishnamurti

Chapter 17, This Matter of Culture

"I don't know if on your walks you have noticed a long, narrow pool beside the river. Some fishermen must have dug it, and it is not connected with the river. The river is flowing steadily, deep and wide, but this pool is heavy with scum because it is not connected with the life of the river, and there are no fish in it. It is a stagnant pool, and the deep river, full of life and vitality, flows swiftly along.

Now, don't you think human beings are like that? They dig a little pool for themselves away from the swift current of life, and in that little pool they stagnate, die; and this stagnation, this decay we call existence. That is, we all want a state of permanency; we want certain desires to last for ever, we want pleasures to have no end. We dig a little hole and barricade ourselves in it with our families, with our ambitions, our cultures, our fears, our gods, our various forms of worship, and there we die, letting life go by - that life which is impermanent, constantly changing, which is so swift, which has such enormous depths, such extraordinary vitality and beauty.

Have you not noticed that if you sit quietly on the banks of the river you hear its song - the lapping of the water, the sound of the current going by? There is always a sense of movement, an extraordinary movement towards the wider and the deeper. But in the little pool there is no movement at all, its water is stagnant. And if you observe you will see that this is what most of us want: little stagnant pools of existence away from life. We say that our pool-existence is right, and we have invented a philosophy to justify it; we have developed social, political, economic and religious theories in support of it, and we don't want to be disturbed because, you see, what we are after is a sense of permanency. Do you know what it means to seek permanency? It means wanting the pleasurable to continue indefinitely and wanting that which is not pleasurable to end as quickly as possible. We want the name that we bear to be known and to continue through family through property. We want a sense of permanency in our relationships, in our activities, which means that we are seeking a lasting, continuous life in the stagnant pool; we don't want any real changes there, so we have built a society which guarantees us the permanency of property, of name, of fame.

But you see, life is not like that at all; life is not permanent. Like the leaves that fall from a tree, all things are impermanent, nothing endures; there is always change and death. Have you ever noticed a tree standing naked against the sky, how beautiful it is? All its branches are outlined, and in its nakedness there is a poem, there is a song. Every leaf is gone and it is waiting for the spring. When the spring comes it again fills the tree with the music of many leaves, which in due season fall and are blown away; and that is the way of life.

But we don't want anything of that kind. We cling to our children, to our traditions, to our society, to our names and our little virtues, because we want permanency; and that is why we are afraid to die. We are afraid to lose the things we know. But life is not what we would like it to be; life is not permanent at all. Birds die, snow melts away, trees are cut down or destroyed by storms, and so on. But we want everything that gives us satisfaction to be permanent; we want our position, the authority we have over people, to endure. We refuse to accept life as it is in fact.

The fact is that life is like the river: endlessly moving on, ever seeking, exploring, pushing, overflowing its banks, penetrating every crevice with its water. But, you see, the mind won't allow that to happen to itself. The mind sees that it is dangerous, risky to live in a state of impermanency, insecurity, so it builds a wall around itself: the wall of tradition, of organized religion, of political and social theories. Family, name, property, the little virtues that we have cultivated - these are all within the walls, away from life. Life is moving, impermanent, and it ceaselessly tries to penetrate, to break down these walls, behind which there is confusion and misery. The gods within the walls are all false gods, and their writings and philosophies have no meaning because life is beyond them.

Now, a mind that has no walls, that is not burdened with its own acquisitions, accumulations, with its own knowledge, a mind that lives timelessly, insecurely - to such a mind, life is an extraordinary thing. Such a mind is life itself, because life has no resting place. But most of us want a resting place; we want a little house, a name, a position, and we say these things are very important. We demand permanency and create a culture based on this demand, inventing gods which are not gods at all but merely a projection of our own desires.

A mind which is seeking permanency soon stagnates; like that pool along the river, it is soon full of corruption, decay. Only the mind which has no walls, no foothold, no barrier, no resting place, which is moving completely with life, timelessly pushing on, exploring, exploding - only such a mind can be happy, eternally new, because it is creative in itself.

Do you understand what I am talking about? You should, because all this is part of real education and, when you understand it, your whole life will be transformed, your relationship with the world, with your neighbour, with your wife or husband, will have a totally different meaning. Then you won't try to fulfil yourself through anything, seeing that the pursuit of fulfilment only invites sorrow and misery. That is why you should ask your teachers about all this and discuss it among yourselves. If you understand it, you will have begun to understand the extraordinary truth of what life is, and in that understanding there is great beauty and love, the flowering of goodness. But the efforts of a mind that is seeking a pool of security, of permanency, can only lead to darkness and corruption. Once established in the pool, such a mind is afraid to venture out, to seek, to explore; but truth, God, reality or what you will, lies beyond the pool.

Do you know what religion is? It is not the chant, it is not in the performance of puja, or any other ritual, it is not in the worship of tin gods or stone images, it is not in the temples and churches, it is not in the reading of the Bible or the Gita, it is not in the repeating of a sacred name or in the following of some other superstition invented by men. None of this is religion,

Religion is the feeling of goodness that love which is like the river living moving everlastingly. In that state you will find there comes a moment when there is no longer any search at all; and this ending of search is the beginning of something totally different. The search for God, for truth, the feeling of being completely good - not the cultivation of goodness, of humility, but the seeking out of something beyond the inventions and tricks of the mind, which means having a feeling for that something, living in it, being it - that is true religion. But you can do that only when you leave the pool you have dug for yourself and go out into the river of life. Then life has an astonishing way of taking care of you, because then there is no taking care on your part. Life carries you where it will because you are part of itself; then there is no problem of security, of what people say or don't say, and that is the beauty of life."