Bread Crumbs of Sacred Sunday

Every Sunday I read the weekly newsletter from Brain Pickings by Maria Popova. It's one of my sacred Sunday rituals.

“One of the functions of art is to give people the words to know their own experience... Storytelling is a tool for knowing who we are and what we want.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“Because self-knowledge is the most difficult of the arts of living, because understanding ourselves is a prerequisite for understanding anybody else, and because we can hardly fathom the reality of another without first plumbing our own depths, art is what makes us not only human but humane.”

— Maria Popova

Our spiritual journey in large part is finding a way to come home back into ourselves. Our body. Our hearts. And most importantly, the passionate stirring of creativity that gathers in the solar plexus and wishes to become ethereal. 

When Waves Of Doubt Approach

It requires deliberate effort, and practice, when continuous waves of doubt and fear chatter in surround sound.

I move from study to hot beverage, on the mat, into a short conversation over the phone, back to posing, and finally to meditation.

My silly ego taunts: "it's not working!"

I'm learning it's not about the result, but consistent action.

TUNE IN.

TURN TO SPIRIT.

ALLOW LOVE & LIGHT TO LEAD.

Regardless of what I feel, or notice through the avalanche of brain and ego...

SURRENDER AND LET GO!

Words from Adyashanti finally calm the storm, I thought you might enjoy them:

"This universe where you find yourself has been unfolding for billions of years, birthing stars, exploding stars, and then creating out of stardust this magical and mysterious planet we call home. If you start from the beginning and fast-forward, watching the unfolding of Life like a movie, you will see that forms—a planet, a mountain, a ladybug, a human being—continuously appear and disappear.

In the process of all this appearing and disappearing, you have shown up. You have been given the gift of experiencing a tiny slice of this 13.8-billion-year process. What a valuable gift that is! Imagine that there is a single turtle in all the seas of the world, and that turtle surfaces from the water only once every hundred years. Now imagine there is also a single golden hoop floating on the seas, tossed this way and that by the winds and currents. How often would the turtle, on its once-a-century visit to the surface, put its head through the golden hoop? It has been said that to be given a human life is just as rare as that happening.

For a moment, allow your whole being to open into the joy of that miracle. Life has been evolving for billions of years before you arrived, and it will continue long after you depart. For a few precious years you get to experience this constantly unfolding river of Life. The doorway back into consciously connecting with Life is this moment. This is the only moment that matters in your whole life. This moment in which you are reading this book is the place where you can rediscover all of the joy, the creativity, and the Love that is at the heart of Life.

Dip the finger of your attention into the river of your experience by lifting your eyes and simply open to your life as it is right now. See it. Hear it. Fully experience it. This moment is uniquely different from any other moment of your life."

—Adyashanti

Reading The Dazzling Darkness

When it came time for Mr. RockFord Orvin’s painting the creative challenge and invitation dazzled my palette.

My first mixed media on wood. Watercolor, pastel & colored pencil.

This project, I had started several years prior, as part of my spiritual healing. I didn’t know it would be for him. Or that I'd be returning favor to a best friend who continually blesses others with gifts of art. He's always making original pieces for other people.

I knew this was divine intervention.

I wondered if he had ever been gifted an original piece.

When he opened his present he gasped and covered his mouth with one hand. I could see it in his eyes. I felt it in our hearts. He'd been touched by the student. 

Thanks for teaching me so much about painting RockFord!