Artist: Philip Straub
Medium: Photoshop and Painter
About this Image: A painting created for the popular trading card game, Magic The Gathering
"I think we each have a personal sweet spot as well. It's the state of mind in which we experience the most joy and satisfaction in being ourselves. And from that place of pleasure and joy in being ourselves, energy arises to flow out into our day bringing with it the depth and resonance of our own beingness, bringing with it blessing." - David SpanglerDavid Spangler (born 7 January 1945) is an American spiritual philosopher and self-described "practical mystic". He helped transform the Findhorn Foundation in northern Scotland into a centre of residential spiritual education. Spangler is considered one of the founding figures of the modern New Age movement, although he is highly critical of what much of the movement has since become**, especially its commercialistic and sensationalist elements. In recent years he has emphasized a practical or incarnational spirituality in which our everyday lives—our physical, embodied, sometimes resplendent and sometimes shabby persons—can be experienced as spiritual or sacred, as opposed to a spirituality concerned solely with the transpersonal and transcendent.
**(although he is highly critical of what much of the movement has since become) - oh yes indeedy. I refuse to associate with almost all of it. I was a Hippie. The real ones moved on. Many went into the hills but there were those like Stewart Brand who built a kind of New Capitalism. Some went into this New Age thing but I have to believe again that the real ones moved on. It is really easy to allow the demons to devour you.
Sometimes like John Lennon who wrote Imagine, the demons get you in the guise of another deluded soul on the planet. Back in the 60's I partially read the Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo Thodol?). In that book it pointed out that to the trained spirit the demons are just as I describe here, and your soul depends on not allowing foul smoke to govern your path, no matter how demonic threats seem to become real, to matter, to solidify before you on the path. So...
Vanquishing Demons
Imagine the world
Reaching past your fear of loss,
Giving you the sun.
The demons have departed.
They've gone underground for now.
They were just foul smoke
No substance, only swagger.
This will be your truth.
December 31, 2008 3:42 PM
First posted, May 10, 2009
Enjoyed the post, the image and the information. The poem is good too, continuing the conversation. When you say “The real ones moved on”, I wonder if it was more, they found their beliefs, and the need to explain, to hear themselves, wasn’t there after that. I wonder if the noise goes away, when we become comfortable with ourselves. I have a hard time believing the preachers are just passing on the word.
ReplyDeleteAnthony, you have made a good point that is true in many fields, yes? It is about the work, always. The flash takes care of itself. To call attention is a function of greed, I think, and capitalist business is its personification, thus the questionable work of advertising. Yet once the demon is thoroughly in place there is little to be done.
ReplyDeleteI am no less involved, though, even though I know it. Here on this blog, I engage in "advertising" as I add ever more voices to my own, like David Spangler's today. As I do this, my base broadens. The biggest page on my blog I did a while back, with a uTube of Frank Sinatra. That post has had visits every day ever since.
Is it not so strange that when true and wise and clean ideas are discovered they become muddied as soon as the masses find them? Why is it that only the few can hold them reverentially and the many bastardize them?
ReplyDeleteReaching past your fear of loss - that would be acceptance. I'm finding more and more that acceptance is the holiest of words.
xo
erin
Erin, I don't know why the few are chosen. That's the language, isn't it? Somehow chosen. Because you are right, the masses cheapen and outright lose the connection.
ReplyDeleteIt is said that Shangri La is a country of masters devoted to the balance of the planet in order to offset the fact that we generally are astray and would destroy everything, and would have already but for Shangri La.
Even there it is a small circle, while the rest basically do no harm. As for the rest of us, it is said that the awakened few at every level are busy on some level rushing around holding the balance of the planet so it does not shatter or spin off course.
Without that activity, we would have had World War III in the fifties and many other wrong turns which have been averted so far.
It is getting dicey though.