Creativity

I believe if a person could spend his whole waking time being aware of his hara – as is taught in some Eastern religions – his life would be so different. He’d always have his own identity. No-one could push him off course. Nothing would really affect him, and all his negativities would be superficial.

And

It is imperative, I believe, for us to see, to Know, our mother’s Soul, her Godliness, her Buddha-Nature. Only then can we Know our own – and so, at last, be relieved of our anguish.

This does not mean that our mothers need to change but

Empathy: identification with another’s feelings. (From the Greek pathos, feeling). The German philosopher Theodor Lipps propounded a theory of aesthetic empathy: “Art appreciation depends on the viewer’s ability to project his personality into the object.”

Hakuin Ekaku, the great Zen master made his life statement with his final piece of calligraphy: “a giant character for ‘midst,’ with the inscription, ‘Meditation in the MIDST of action is a billion times superior to meditation in stillness.’”*

Action Meditation: the Soul at work.

* Ed. Sushila Blackman, Graceful Exits (New

The quickening: the mother’s first awareness of the baby within. And by capitalizing – Quickening – I am referring to the mother’s first awareness of the baby as spirit within her.

All acts of Creativity are giving back

Wordsworth “believed with Coleridge that                         All thoughts, all passions, all delights,                         Whatever stirs this mortal frame,                         All are but ministers of Love,                                     And feed his sacred flame."

Every artist, whether he knows it or not, is an emissary of the Spirit World.

The power of art is that it attracts – but first the subject must attract the artist.

What if all Schools of Art insisted on all their students undergoing the five years’ training as did Keats to be what was then called an apothecary?