Khalil Gibran

On love: 

“When love beckons to you follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And when he speaks to you believe in him, Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden. For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth......

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure, Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor, Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears. Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.

Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love. And think not you can direct the course of love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course. Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself."

But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully.”

On children:

• Your children are not your children.
  They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
  They come through you but not from you,
  And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
  You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
  For they have their own thoughts.
  You may house their bodies but not their souls,
  For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
  You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
  For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
  You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
  • 
    

On joy and sorrow:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy. 
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced. 
When the reassure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

"Come from forever, and you will go everywhere.” 
― Arthur Rimbaud

At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.
Salvador Dali

I tried to drown my sorrows, but the bastards learned how to swim, and now I am overwhelmed by this decent and good feeling.
Frida Kahlo

Martin Luther King

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, 
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. 
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar, 
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. 
Through violence you may murder the hater, 
but you do not murder hate. 
In fact, violence merely increases hate. 
So it goes. 
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, 
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. 
Darkness cannot drive out darkness: 
only light can do that. 
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Dr.Martin Luther King Jr.

Cowardice asks the question - is it safe?
Expediency asks the question - is it politic?
Vanity asks the question - is it popular?
But conscience asks the question - is it right?
And there comes a time when one must take a position
that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular;
but one must take it because it is right.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Nonviolence is the answer
to the crucial political and moral questions of our time:
the need for man to overcome oppression and violence
without resorting to oppression and violence.
Man must evolve for all human conflict
a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation.
The foundation of such a method is love.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech,
Stockholm, Sweden, December 11, 1964


A nation that continues year after year
to spend more money on military defense
than on programs of social uplift
is approaching spiritual death.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967


Man was born into barbarism
when killing his fellow man
was a normal condition of existence.
He became endowed with a conscience.
And he has now reached the day
when violence toward another human being
must become as abhorrent as eating another's flesh.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life.
Longevity has its place.
But I'm not concerned about that now.
I just want to do God's will.
And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain.
And I've looked over.
And I've seen the promised land.
I may not get there with you.
But I want you to know tonight,
that we, as a people will get to the promised land.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

I've Been To The Mountaintop, April 3, 1968

Nelson Mandela

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”

Sometimes a good laugh is all you need to revamp.

Contradictions

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again."

"Trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity."

Sometimes it seems we swim through a world of contradiction. In the end though, it's all just the same. You could try again. You could try something else. You could wait. 

The real question to ask is, "What would put the wind back in your sails?"

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all friends, close, far and between! On and on this rollercoaster goes and where it stops, nobody knows. So excited and I just can't hide it!!!! This will be a great year! 

Dreams

Our brains are capable of so much more than we can possibly be concious of, and it's all happening behind the scenes. In fact I do believe our minds are completely infinite. Evidence of this, and I mean just the tip of the iceberg, can be experianced in dreams. Just last night I was watching music videos produced in my mind, going to music I havnt even heard in years, and then even going to epic music my mind created. The viewing perspective is what gets me all excited, thinking of the fact that I was simultaneously the viewer/beholder of something I was creating, and without even realizing myself to be the creator at the time. Then in the next scene last night, I was painting quite extraordinarily, and enough to strongly influence some of my current and next works. It was great!!!!! I have really been on a heavy dream kick lately. (I have also been painting for hours everyday!) I love it! Time just doesn't exsist anymore when you're in there...what fun it truly is.

Yeah! Good morning

http://youtu.be/42KNbYMGxFw

Feelingpsyched!

The Visionary, Mystery and Social Media Thrown Into The Melting Pot

You've got tremendous ideas. You may even posses the nature of fantasy or dreams, but you have forward thinking ideas — ideas that change the way the world works. Even so, living as a visionary has the potential to be a mentally exhausting life experience. Being able to look ahead, while balanceing the mind and keeping the pace is the truest lesson in my experience. You can gather information, you can get an intuitive grasp on the pace of action, you may even possess the ability to read people to a fairly accurate degree, and from all of this you can tend to delineate a course of events. You have a strong grasp on your potential, and more than you can express to yourself or others in a humanely form. Any process will take time and this is when things can get frustrating. You must master patience, (become at ease with the present-- certainly a challenge for me sometimes) see the bigger picture, and respect the great mystery. You may be able to foresee volumes, but the path ahead will always remain mysterious and this is the most inspiring part. You may also be able to foresee a lot about a human being, but the lesson comes,once again, in respecting the mystery and realizing the vastness of experience inherent in us all. 

Little can be gathered about a human from a single casual conversation, and even more so, little can be gathered from the unintimate public realms of social media. Who wants to post their deepest darkest secrets and life experiences to a public forum? We all understand this and until we can discover something better, we're doing the best we can with what we've got. I'm grateful for the ability to connect here with artists all around the world. The social media bubble seems to have just exploded this past year and it offers us a lot. Let's continue to support and encourage each other in this community we have built here in 2014. Each of us is an important piece of something much greater. Thank you all for being you. Let all of us foward thinkers take a moment to find comfort and bask in the glory of knowing that the change we want to see in the world, the rennassainse, the revolution-- is NOW! Now is the destination, as the journey is the objective.

Great Art

A great painting I find to be very much like a great song; both sounds and images pulled fom the infinite. Beauty can be found in the relationships and harmonies between notes the way a dynamic painting flows smoothly from form to form. Great content, whether musical or visual, does well to also hilight it's counterparts: the empty spaces between notes or figures that you can recognize to be a portrayal of the infinite. A great artist can lead you through this infinite portal and through a range of new and perhaps unconcievable emotion. My favorite artists are those who can shake you around, and really make you think a bit before sending you off on your way again. 

Love Yourself

You treat yourself the same way you're going to be treated. It may sound kind of trite but it's true and I think this statement even precedes the "golden rule": "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Fill your own cup and it's only natural that it will spill over to others.

I almost didn't add this but I think I have to just to balance the equation. Loving yourself is not to be confused with narcissism which I consider to be the opposite. Narcissists look at the world in terms of "I never have enough" and so they don't actually give themselves love. The narcissist focuses on a lack around them and is self-concerned.

My first stay in AZ this year

A night in the desert

The terrain lays vast and speechless

Only after the sun has danced through the motions

Of it's rich descent through the western sky

And the moon dreams down upon me with favor

Familiar smells, sensations, take a whirl at

Dragging me into a past

Or egging me on towards a future

Yet I awake to the present moment

Where pain and beauty find their meeting place

Aware and ever present in each other's company

For a moment I find still peace

And the saguaro, strong and wise

Doesn't need eyes to see this

Chuang Tzu

Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly...
Suddenly I awoke...
Now, I do not know whether I was then
a man dreaming I was a butterfly,
or whether I am now a butterfly
dreaming that I am a man.

Chuang Tzu (c.360 BC - c. 275 BC)

A fellow artist recently shared this and I found it beautiful & on point

It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know 
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon...
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.
I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.

It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.

(Oriah Mountain Dreamer)

Your freedom...especially of thought and feeling

I cannot encourage enough the importance of not allowing others to dictate to yourself how to think, or how to feel. And just as severe- don't handicap yourself by attempting to curb, hide or restrict the thoughts and feelings that flow and occur naturally. Most notably, many try to hide their pain, but pain is something you carry because you feel your deepest strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. At the root of it all, I feel many are afraid of themselves, and of their own reality; their thoughts and their feelings most of all. Many talk about how great love is, but in all honesty love can be painful and some feelings are disturbing.  We all experience pain and it's a feeling that wakes us up. Your feelings are a part of you and your personal reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re trading in your reality for a show. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on an act. There can't be any form of positive large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. Allow yourself to experience your deepest fear, and it will dissolve until you break free.

Jimi Hendrix - Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)

Vexed?

On and on the river flows,

Through gentle rise and fall,

Through aggressive tides,

To accept or contest the currents?

Masterful woe, 

Or domineering preferment.

The Power of YOU!

Time to put these thoughts into words...
I think NOW is the time to realize fully and utilize our INFINITE potential as living beings of this universe. This is both in a personal sense for myself or anyone else, and a collective sense as human beings in general. (As well as any other species in the cosmos that may need some kind of reaffirmation because who knows, they could have self doubts too. lol.)

I find that we often hand our power over to, firstly, our past actions and trains of thought, our insecurities, our feelings of insignificance as compared to others, and secondly, even to any and all possible "more intelligent life" out there, instead of fully realizing the miraculously advanced and intelligent life that we are. For happiness sake, and for the sake of positive progression, it is time to stop the self- force fed delusion or bad habits of self-degradation or "spell" if you will, and free ourselves completely from mental slavery.

Time to realize the immaculate perfection that we are. Because we are IT! All there is. Now is it! Anyone and everyone and everything is it! And it is all YOU! Evolution is internal through the ever present now moment, and so Now is the time! Allow yourself to break free ;)

Melodia