Spiritual Art Blog - *Ed P

Glimpse of God

I completed this picture during the week. You’ll find the story behind in the post below.

How can we get a glimpse of God?

Thought for the Week

If we do what we love and love what we do, we are helping to bring love into our world. As the love flows through us into our work we may catch a glimpse of God. We won’t know how we affect those around us but with love flowing through us it has to be a positive influence. When some people see something which has been created with love, they can feel its essence and thereby catch a glimpse of God

Trail of Immortality
Recently I read the book, Trail of Immortality, by Gabriel Ezutah. In the book he tells of his dream travels with his spiritual teacher. He describes many different lifetimes and the lessons he learned from each incarnation. At one point he visits a gallery of spiritual art works and describes a picture there. He explained how there was a volcano in the middle of a bright blue ocean. The title on the picture was Glimpse of God. Later he tells of visiting this place and seeing the volcano.

I was struck by his description of this sighting of God. Being a spiritual artist I thought that I might try to create my version of this volcanic glimpse of God. After creating two rough drawings I contacted Gabriel Ezutah and asked him if what I had painted was any way near what he had seen. Gabriel explained that he used the word ‘volcano’ as he didn’t have any other word to describe what he saw. He also gave me some guidance on the colour and brightness of the light and the scale of the two Souls visiting the area.

Gabriel’s book helped me see a different aspect of life with the many stories in his book. His words inspired me to create a picture which may go on to inspire others in some way. This is how the Holy Spirit or the Life-force works with its power of love. Gabriel Ezutah loves to write and his words can be inspirational. I love to paint and maybe some will find inspiration in the pictures I create. This is an example of how love works to brighten the lives of those who come in contact with us and the work we love to do.

This is happening all the time
This kind of interaction is happening all the time. Anything we love to do shines with love and brightens the world around us. For example it is enlightening to see a parent playing and having fun with their children. When we see couples sharing a tender loving moment we are lifted a little with the love that radiates from them. When we come across a piece of technology that helps us in our life, we appreciate the effort and love put into it by the unknown engineers, developers and workers who created it.

When we see a beautiful flower or natural scene our heart is warmed. We may not credit the Higher Power or the Life-force for creating it but we do feel a little love and this brings a little more joy to our lives. The Almighty doesn’t care if we appreciate It. It wants us to benefit form Its Divine Love which it gives unconditionally. There is a constant stream of beautiful moments happening in our lives but many of them we miss. We are too caught up in our busy lives to stop and see the beauty and love around us. Out lives keep us distracted with its stresses and pressures preventing us from allowing our love to flow into those around us, our work, our environment and our interactions with people.

How can we get a glimpse of God?
How can we get a glimpse of God? We need to set some time aside each day where we can connect with the spiritual site of our selves. We need to learn to be still, to take time to listen to Life, to observe It, to reconnect with It. If we can spent fifteen to twenty minutes in contemplation each day we will slowly begin to see how Holy Spirit brings beauty and love into our lives. This regular spiritual exercise will open us bit by bit to the lessons, insights, beauty and love the Higher Power is giving us every day.

Once we have established this link to our inner worlds we may have an opportunity to meet an inner guide, such as the one described in Gabriel’s book, Trail of Immortality. A guide such as this can help us see more love and beauty in life. We can then ask to be shown a glimpse of God if we are ready and able to withstand exposure to such a powerful source of love. When the student is ready the master will appear.

Wishing you love and beauty on your journey through life.

*Ed Parkinson

You may catch a glimpse of God in some of the other articles in the Spiritual Writings page. Click here to go there.

For more info about Gabriel Ezutah’s book, Trail of Immortality, please click here.

The Arty Party - note it in your diary

The Arty Party will take place over the weekend from Friday evening 10th to Sunday 12th June. On Friday we’ll open the Arty Party around 6pm so you can drop in on your way home from work, or call in later for some wine and foody bits.

On Saturday and Sunday we’ll be open from 2pm until 6pm. It’ll be something nice to do in the afternoon.

At the Arty Party we’ll have videos explaining the thinking and ideas behind some of the pictures. There will also be a demonstration where Ed hopes to answer the question he gets asked the most “How do you create the pictures?”

Ed will be around to answer questions and give insights into the pictures.

If you'd like an invitation, please email ed @ edp-art.com or send a note via the Your Comments page on the website, www.EdP-SpiritualArt.Com.

Below is a video of the last Arty Party in November.

A glimpse of God quotes

“The Voice of God is speaking to us every day, in every way, in the smallest things in our everyday life.”
Harold Klemp

“You can find the footprints of God wherever there is beauty, virtue, humility, justice, truth, love and peace.”
Sri Sathya Sai Baba

“Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God's handwriting - a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“To some, beauty seems but an accident of creation: to Muir it was the very smile of God.”
John Muir

“Beauty seen is never lost, God's colors all are fast.”
John Greenleaf Whittier

“ Beauty comes in all ages, colors, shapes, and forms. God never makes junk.”
Kathy Ireland

“Serenity and inner beauty come when we wait upon God. 'Waiting' like that is not merely wasting time.”
Eva Burrows

“Live with men as if God saw you; converse with God as if men heard you”
Seneca

“I took a day to search for God, And found Him not; but as I trod, By rocky ledge, through woods untamed, Just where one scarlet lily flamed, I saw His footprint in the sod.”
William Bliss Carman

“Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes - The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.”
John Muir

“Our hearts are drunk with a beauty our eyes could never see.”
George W. Russell

“I've never seen a smiling face that was not beautiful.”
Anon

“That which is striking and beautiful is not always good, but that which is good is always beautiful.”
Ninon de L'Enclos

“Some people, no matter how old they get, never lose their beauty - they merely move it from their faces into their hearts.”
Martin Buxbaum

“Close your eyes and see the beauty.”
Anon

“When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other.”
Chinese Proverb

“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”
Confucius

“Do I love you because you're beautiful,
Or are you beautiful because I love you?”
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II

“Beauty... is the shadow of God on the universe.”
 Gabriela Mistral

“I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want - an adorable pancreas?”
 Jean Kerr

“Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked.”
Saint Augustine

“People see God every day, they just don't recognize him.”
Pearl Bailey

“In nature we see where God has been. In our fellow man, we see where He is still at work.”
Robert Brault

“God waits to win back his own flowers as gifts from man's hands.”
Rabindranath Tagore

“I say to mankind, Be not curious about God. For I, who am curious about each, am not curious about God - I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least.”
Walt Whitman

“Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message.”
Malcolm Muggeridge

“Don't look for God in the sky; look within your own body.”
Osho

“I do not believe in God, for that implies an effort of the will - I see God everywhere!”
Jean Favre

If you’d like to fins another glimpse of God, click here to go to the Spiritual Inspirations page for more wise quotes.

 

Steps of Experience

Below is the latest development of this picture, Steps of Experience.

Fear of death

Thought  for the Week

For many of us the fear of death can overshadow our whole life. If we are in a delicate state of health or getting older it is often something that is in the back of our minds. Will I survive this, what happens when I die?

Many believe this is our only life and for this reason they see death as the end with nothing after that. This piece of misinformation comes from our Christian beliefs. It is interesting to note that early Christianity did have the concept of reincarnation as part of its teachings. So the belief that we have many lives was obviously held by Jesus.

If we can re-establish this concept into our thinking we begin to see a light at the end of the tunnel of death. If we have had a number of previous lives, then it stands to reason that we have had an equal number of deaths. Yet we are here now, having survived those deaths. So death is a natural part of life and something we have gone through previously. This understanding can help liberate us from the fear of death.

How can we see what death is like?
That theory is all very well but how can we see what death is like? How can we know this is true or even get some kind of evidence that we do survive after our physical death? Here’s a simple exercise we can try and an explanation of the process.

When we are tired we take a snooze, our body stops moving and except for the vital functions, like breathing and our heart beat, our body stops working. In this state we drift off into our dream worlds or a place in our imagination. Our attention has moved from our physical world to our inner world. While in this inner world we may experience a pleasant time, an emotional time, a blend of memories and activities, participation in events, discover new ideas and insights and meet friends, guides and family. This is a place we go to regularly. In fact we go there anytime we sleep.

Our focus of attention
Our attention has left the body and moved to within ourselves. What part of us has moved into this inner world? What has left our physical body to go within? Our focus of attention has moved away from our normal daily physical activities to now focus on our memories, thoughts and intuitions which we become involved in within ourselves. This part of us has a number of different names depending on where we are and what we are doing.

These inner parts or bodies are:
Our Astral body which explores our emotional areas,
Our Causal body which examines our memories,
Our Mind which delves into the logical areas of life,
Our intuitive self or our subconscious which is a subtle area receiving messages from a higher source,
Or Soul body, the true happy part of ourselves which lives in the present moment.

Soul doesn’t have the past or future to deal with as It can see all of these together. Getting into the Soul body is the ideal situation as it is the happy and loving part of us.

However we are here in the physical world with time and space to deal with. It’s not important which body we go to when we sleep but the realisation that we do go somewhere out of our physical body can be the initial spark which helps us shine some light on our fear of death.

Make the most of this
To help us make the most of this realisation we can try to make use of the information, memories, feelings and insights we encounter while in the sleep state. By keeping a journal of our inner journeys we can begin to reap some real benefits. We may discover that our dreams foretell events to come in our lives. They may also give us insights into our situations in life and how to resolve some of them.

By writing these little gems of wisdom down, we bring from our inner world to our outer physical world. They are no longer a subtle thought, they are now a note in our journal which we can read and remember and put into action if necessary. Once we build up this habit of taking notes from our inner insights, we begin to see that our inner world has a reality of its own. Once the light of this realisation begins to dawn on us, the darkness of the fear of death begins to recede. We then move into a brighter life where the fear of death has disappeared.

Wishing you light and love in your life.

*Ed Parkinson

If you would like more help in moving on from the fear of death, click here to see more uplifting articles in the Spiritual writings page.

Arty Party

The Arty Party will take place over the weekend from Friday evening 10th to Sunday 12th June. On Friday we’ll open the Arty Party around 6pm so you can drop in on your way home from work, or call in later for some wine and foody bits.

On Saturday and Sunday we’ll be open from 2pm until 6pm. It’ll be something nice to do in the afternoon.

At the Arty Party we’ll have videos explaining the thinking and ideas behind some of the pictures. There will also be a demonstration where Ed hopes to answer the question he gets asked the most “How do you create the pictures?”

Ed will be around to answer questions and give insights into the pictures.

If you'd like an invitation, please email ed @ edp-art.com or send a note via the Your Comments page on the website, www.EdP-SpiritualArt.Com.

Below is a video of the last Arty Party in November.

Fear of death quotes

“Life is the stream that pulls us along on an inevitable course that leads to the death of the physical body… The goal is not to avoid death but to make our swim in the stream of life easier, by going with the current.”
Mary Carroll Moore

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear... And when it is gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear is gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
Frank Herbert

“Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.”
Buddha

"Defeat the fear of death and welcome the death of fear.”
G. Gordon Liddy

“The fear of death often proves mortal, and sets people on methods to save their Lives, which infallibly destroy them.”
Joseph Addison

“The safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.”
Voltaire

“Have you not considered those who went forth from their homes, for fear of death, and they were thousands, then Allah said to them, Die; again He gave them life; most surely Allah is Gracious to people, but most people are not grateful.”
Quran

“The heart s desires are obtained by meditating on God, and the fear of death is dispelled.”
Guru Nanak

“Let your hope of heaven master your fear of death.”
William Gurnall

“I have made a lot of mistakes. But I've worked hard. I have no fear of death. More important, I don't fear life.”
Steven Seagal

“The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity - designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny of man.”
Ernest Becker

“We cannot banish dangers, but we can banish fears. We must not demean life by standing in awe of death.”
David Sarnoff

“He who doesn't fear death dies only once.”
  Giovanni Falcone

“When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.”
Tecumseh

“It is not the rich man you should properly call happy, but him who knows how to use with wisdom and the blessings of the gods, to endure hard poverty, and who fears dishonor worse than death, and is not afraid to die for cherished friends or fatherla”
Horace

“Set honor in one eye and death in the other And I will look on both indifferently; For let the gods so speed me as I love The name of honor more than I fear death.”
William Shakespeare

“A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.”
Albert Einstein

“The chief problem about death, incidentally, is the fear that there may be no afterlife -- a depressing thought, particularly for those who have bothered to shave. Also, there is the fear that there is an afterlife but no one will know where it's being held”
Woody Allen

“The fear of death is worse than death.”
Robert Burton

“I'm not afraid of death. It's the stake one puts up in order to play the game of life.”
Jean Giraudoux

“There is always death and taxes; however, death doesn't get worse every year.”
Anon

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
Mark Twain

“People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It is as though they were traveling abroad.”
Marcel Proust

“Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me.
The Carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality”
Emily Dickinson

“While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die."   
Leonardo Da Vinci

“Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.”
Alice Walker

“I shall not die of a cold. I shall die of having lived.”
Willa Cather


Looking for more inspirational quotes to help you rid the dear of death? Click here to find lots more quotes on the Spiritual Inspirations page.

Steps of Experience

Step by step we are developing this picture, Steps of Experience. I say 'we' because I’m really don't have a particular plan or idea of how the details of the picture will turn out. As I put images into each of the steps, the selection is random. There is a guiding hand from a higher source suggesting images. This helps keep the picture a little purer so that I am not so personally involved. The picture is more open to your interpretation. If you see a story or meaning in the picture, that is yours. That story is yours and what you see in the picture is yours.

This works well while creating a picture but it can work well in any aspect of life. If we are open to see the guidance of a higher power in what we do in life, we will have it working with us. We just need to be aware of it.

What is spiritual?

What do we mean by spiritual? Anything that happens within us which is related to our understanding of life, how life works and gives meaning to our lives could be described as spiritual. Anything that has to do with us finding happiness, understanding and brings love into our lives.

A definition
Just as a matter of interest here are a few definitions from some online dictionaries for the word, Spiritual.
The Online Dictionary 
1. Of, relating to, consisting of, or having the nature of spirit; not tangible or material. See Synonyms at immaterial.
2. Of, concerned with, or affecting the soul.
3. Of, from, or relating to God; deific.
4. Of or belonging to a church or religion; sacred.
5. Relating to or having the nature of spirits or a spirit; supernatural.

Dictionary.com 
1. of, pertaining to, or consisting of spirit; incorporeal.
2. of or pertaining to the spirit or soul, as distinguished from the physical nature: a spiritual approach to life.
3. closely akin in interests, attitude, outlook, etc.: the professor's spiritual heir in linguistics.

Cambridge Dictionaries Online 
relating to deep feelings and beliefs, especially religious beliefs
Traditional ways of life fulfilled both economic and spiritual needs.
spiritually adverb

Google Dictionary 
Of, relating to, or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things
I'm responsible for his spiritual welfare
the spiritual values of life
(of a person) Not concerned with material values or pursuits
Of or relating to religion or religious belief
the tribe's spiritual leader

From the three definitions above, the following might be a suggested simpler definition of the word, Spiritual:
Sacred, closely akin in interests, attitude, outlook, relating to, or affecting the human spirit or Soul.

Sacred Moments
Sometimes there are sacred moments in life which we can only describe as spiritual. It could be the sight of a flower with the sun sparkling through the rain on its petals. The scene in front of use stirs some memory or feeling which opens our heart or brings back memories or transports us to a place of peace and tranquillity. We have been touched on an inner level by the simple flower in front of us.

People
Sometimes people can have a spiritual effect on us. There are occasions when we are listening to someone we become inspired by their words or the vision they bring to our mind. Their insights and ways of communicating with us stimulate us and lead us to new areas of awareness. They help us with the development of our inner selves, our attitudes towards the world and can even change the direction of our lives.

Souls having a human experience
A number of people, teachings and writings suggest that we are not just humans with a spiritual side but that we are spiritual beings or Souls having a human experience. The core of our essence is Soul, the spiritual side of us. This can be a bit of an adjustment for us to handle if we have been used to thinking of our selves just as a human being struggling to understand our lives.

If we can grasp this concept we will gradually arrive at a place where we see that there really is no death. Yes, our body dies at the end of our lives, but our essence, our true selves, Soul, continues our life in our inner worlds. At death we go to the areas we have been constantly visiting as we daydream, recall memories, wonder about things, and think deep thoughts. These areas of our inner selves continue to exist and we adjust to our existence there. Our focus has now moved from our physical world to our inner world.

Spiritual Power
Is there a spiritual power? What is it that drives us to see the spiritual side of life, what helps us to see these insights and increase awareness? Curiosity can help. An urge to find an understanding of life will lead us to search for insights to life. Our desire for happiness can also help us seek out the deeper discoveries into our existence. The power that can really inspire us to spiritual heights is love.

Love is at the core of all things spiritual. Love brings happiness to us. Love opens us to being creative. Love inspires us to act with kindness. With love in our hearts it brings us closer to source of love. Love is spiritual. We are not talking about the love of someone or something because they are beneficial to us. A spiritual love gives without expecting anything in return. This love is given because it benefits another and in the giving the giver is also touched by the golden gift flowing through them.

What is spiritual?
Back to our question again, what is spiritual? We’ve discussed sacred moments, inspirational people, Soul having a human experience and the spiritual power of love. We can combine these and see ourselves as Soul going from moment to moment. Taking inspiration from the people we know, meet, see and read about and allow love flow through us we will begin to take on a number of spiritual aspects in our lives. With these attitudes and ways of seeing life, we become spiritual.

As we go through your lives with its challenges and problems, we can switch our attitude from seeing life as a continuous spiral of issues, to one where we look at life from a higher viewpoint. We see ourselves as an immortal Soul focused on this physical life so we can learn who and what we are. We are working to see the spiritual in all areas of our life. When we get to this point we discover the answer to, what is spiritual? Everything is spiritual. Life is spiritual. We are spiritual, we just need to become more aware of this insight.

Welcome to all that is spiritual, welcome to life.

Wishing you a spiritual life.

*Ed Parkinson

Looking for more about the spiritual life, click here to see more on the Spiritual Writings page.

Arty Party

New date for Arty Party

We've changed the date for the Arty Party. It will take place over the weekend from Friday evening 10th to Sunday 12th June. On Friday we’ll open the Arty Party around 6pm so you can drop in on your way home from work, or call in later for some wine and foody bits.

On Saturday and Sunday we’ll be open from 2pm until 6pm. It’ll be something nice to do in the afternoon.

At the Arty Party we’ll have videos explaining the thinking and ideas behind some of the pictures. There will also be a demonstration where Ed hopes to answer the question he gets asked the most “How do you create the pictures?”

Ed will be around to answer questions and give insights into the pictures.

If you'd like an invitation, please email ed @ edp-art.com or send a note via the Your Comments page on the website, www.EdP-SpiritualArt.Com.

Below is a video of the last Arty Party in November.

Spiritual Quotes

“You are Soul, a particle of God sent into this world to gain spiritual experience.”
Harold Klemp

“Knowledge of the HU is the greatest spiritual gift one could give to another. Singing it will make it possible for you to hear all the sounds of God and become spiritually uplifted.”
Gabriel Ezutah

“When you examine the lives of the most influential people who have ever walked among us, you discover one thread that winds through them all. They have been aligned first with their spiritual nature and only then with their physical selves.”
Albert Einstein

“You must enshrine in your hearts the spiritual urge towards light and love, Wisdom and Bliss!”
Sri Sathya Sai Baba

“Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.”
Buddha

“Coincidences are spiritual puns.”
G. K. Chesterton

“It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations.”
Kahlil Gibran

“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”
Martin Luther King, Jr

“The most spiritual human beings, assuming they are the most courageous, also experience by far the most painful tragedies: but it is precisely for this reason that they honor life, because it brings against them its most formidable weapons.”
Friedrich Nietzsche

“You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience.”
Teilhard de Chardin

“Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.”
Denis Waitley

“You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.”
Swami Vivekananda

“Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but - more frequently than not - struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.”
Martin Luther

“The first act of awe, when man was struck with the beauty or wonder of Nature, was the first spiritual experience.”
Henryk Skolimowski

“We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.”
Stephen R. Covey

“Love is a sacred reserve of energy; it is like the blood of spiritual evolution.”
Teilhard de Chardin

“Your profession is not what brings home your paycheck. Your profession is what you were put on earth to do. With such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling.”
Virgil quotes

“It isn't until you come to a spiritual understanding of who you are-not necessarily a religious feeling, but deep down, the spirit within-that you can begin to take control.”
Oprah Winfrey

“If you do a good job for others, you heal yourself at the same time, because a dose of joy is a spiritual cure.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“This is the ultimate end of man, to find the One which is in him; which is his truth, which is his soul; the key with which he opens the gate of the spiritual life, the heavenly kingdom.”
Rabindranath Tagore

“The spirit of man is more important than mere physical strength, and the spiritual fiber of a nation more than its wealth.”
Dwight David Eisenhower

“You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self. Don't turn away from possible futures before you're certain you don't have anything to learn from them.”
Richard Bach

“Impart as much as you can of your spiritual being to those who are on the road with you, and accept as something precious what comes back to you from them.”
Albert Schweitzer

“Intuition is a spiritual faculty and does not explain, but simply points the way.”
Florence Scovel Shinn

“The spiritual path -- is simply the journey of living our lives. Everyone is on a spiritual path; most people just don't know it.”
Marianne Williamson


Looking for more spiritual quotes, click here to go to the Spiritual Inspirations page.

Steps of Experience

Picture

You may notice that the ‘steps’ on each of the paths are semi transparent. I’ve done this to illustrate the fact that our experiences are something solid for us but not necessarily solid for others viewing them. We can go through an experience and learn a lot from it. Another person can go through the same experience and not learn anything from it. We all have our own way of looking at things based on the experiences we have been through. For example if some one gave us a gift of a 1,000 of our own currency, depending on our previous experiences with money, this may be a significant gift or something of little consequences. If we are wealthy, the 1,000 will be just a small increase to our wealth. If we are poor the 1,000 could be a months earnings and a major boost to our fortune. So depending on our experiences, any event may be significant or almost useless.

A note to help us understand God and Life

Thought for the Week

Understanding God and life can be difficult. God's reputation among us humans is often unclear and with a number of people it is not good at all. God is blamed for the problems, wars, unhappiness, diseases, disabilities, and many other difficulties in life. Because our understanding is limited we blame God for all the faults we see in life.

A lot of us have been told that God has put us here on Earth to go through life the best way we can. We get one life and then we die. We’re not sure what happens when we die but we’ve been told if we are good we go to heaven, whatever that is, and if we are bad, we go to hell, which is pain and suffering. Not a pleasant scenario.

Soul, a spiritual individual
There is another concept which suggests that we are Soul, a spiritual individual, learning about life, who we are, why we are here and in the process discovering what God is. We go through many lifetimes learning something from each. Our knowledge and wisdom increases with each incarnation. Part of our learning process involves karma which returns the deeds we have done to others back to us, whether they are good or bad. Karma helps us understand the results of our actions. A lot of our karma comes back to us as skills, gifts, talents, problems and challenges in other lives.

Grace and Love
We have been given our existence by a Higher Power which wishes us to realise who and what we really are. It wants us to understand God and life. It has given us the freedom to do as we wish so that we can become like It. It wants to share Its grace and love with us. In order for us to be able to handle such power we must first be educated in how it works and the results of our actions.

Our experiments
We are now in the process of our education and are coming to realise there is more to life than our physical world. We are exploring the purpose of God and life. The Higher Power has created an area where we can experiment safely without us damaging our true happy, loving selves, Soul. This area uses time and space to contain our experiments and any damage we may create.

As we Souls play with our freedom we soon become tied down with the boomerang effect of our actions. Where we imposed our will on someone or stole something, these deeds return to us and we are subjected to the same offence. To add to our misery we will probably lash out at the Soul returning the karma to us, which then adds more karmic lessons to our pile. This piling up of karma can help explain the differences in people. Their poverty or wealth, their skills and handicaps, their attitude and personality.

Our own creation
With this understanding of our role in our own development and creating our karma, we begin to see how our problems are really of our own creation. Some of us may have a challenge in accepting the idea that we have had many previous lives where we created our karma but there is too much evidence around us to deny this fact. For example, how come we have completely different personalities, goals, desires to our siblings? Why are twins, who have been brought up in exactly the same manner, so different from each other?

Our different personalities are a result of the experiences we’ve had in previous lives. We know lots of stuff from our other lives but because we have a new physical brain it has to be taught and filled with information about its immediate world. There is also the benefit of starting with a clean sheet when we start a new life. We are not burdened with the memory of our mistakes from previous lives.

Love is the solution
So how do we sort out all this karma we’ve created and piled up over our lives? The key to being released from this pile of karma is Love. If we can become aware of Love in our lives and focus on it we will begin to clear our debts to others. Most of our challenges come from us doing things for selfish reasons. If we can do things for Love we will begin to make right our previous errors. Love is the solution.

If we can do what we love, provided it doesn’t interfere with others, we will begin to reconnect with our true self, Soul. We will also be getting closer to seeing the reason for our existence. We will begin to share the grace and love the Almighty has for us and understand God and life a little better.

Wishing you love in all aspects of your life.

*Ed Parkinson

For more insights into Goad and life, click here to go to the Spiritual Writings page.

Arty Party

News

Plans for the Arty Party are developing nicely. It will take place over the last weekend of May, Friday evening 27th to Sunday 29th. On Friday we’ll open the Arty Party around 6pm so you can drop in on your way home from work, or call in later for some wine and foody bits.

On Saturday and Sunday we’ll be open from 2pm until 6pm. It’ll be something nice to do in the afternoon.

At the Arty Party we’ll have videos explaining the thinking and ideas behind some of the pictures. There will also be a demonstration where Ed hopes to answer the question he gets asked the most “How do you create the pictures?”

Ed will be around to answer questions and give insights into the pictures.

If you'd like an invitation, please email ed @ edp-art.com or send a note via the Your Comments page on the website, www.EdP-SpiritualArt.Com.

Understanding God Quotes

“The tiny human mind can never hope to understand the Author of Creation. But we can love God and others. Fill yourself with love. Then you will learn everything you ever need to know about God and life.”
Harold Klemp

“My own very deep understanding is that things of Spirit and God are better experienced if belief would have any lasting foundation. Granted, we begin with faith at first, but this should lead to some personal inner or outer experience, which naturally ushers in spiritual awareness and great strength in the individual.”
 Gabriel Ezutah 

“I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn't.”
Jules Renard

“It is easy to understand God as long as you don't try to explain him.”
Joseph Joubert

“If God wanted women to understand men, football would never have been created.”
Roger Simon

“The true felicity of life is to be free from anxieties and perturbations; to understand and do our duties to God and man, and to enjoy the present without any serious dependence on the future”
Seneca

“''God is Love,'' we are taught as children to believe. But when we first begin to get some inkling of how He loves us, we are repelled; it seems so cold, indeed, not love at all as we understand the word.”
W. H. Auden

“Laughter brings you to reality as it is. The world is a play of God, a cosmic joke. And unless you understand it as a cosmic joke you will never be able to understand the ultimate mystery.”
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

“…people do not understand the way of God. How can they know why particular event takes place at a particular time in a particular manner? He alone can know. But people try to sit in judgment and talk ill, when for example one dies of illness at this place, how can anyone escape death?”
Sri Sathya Sai Baba

“Let the Fear of God be your feet, and let His Love be your hands; let His Understanding be your eyes. Says Nanak, in this way, O wise soul-bride, you shall be united with your Husband Lord.”
Sri Guru Granth Sahib

“God wants us well. And all we really need to have is that understanding.”
Daniel Johnson

“When God loves a creature he wants the creature to know the highest happiness and the deepest misery He wants him to know all that being alive can bring. That is his best gift. There is no happiness save in understanding the whole.”
Thornton Wilder

“It has pleased God that divine verities should not enter the heart through the understanding, but the understanding through the heart.”
Blaise Pascal

“A dog's smile and God's processes are not understood by anyone.”
Oromos of Ethiopia

“Everywhere you look in science, the harder it becomes to understand the universe without God.”
Robert Herrmann

“I say to mankind, Be not curious about God. For I, who am curious about each, am not curious about God - I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least.”
Walt Whitman

“Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace. Money will come if we seek first the Kingdom of God - the rest will be given.”
Mother Teresa

“God understands our prayers even when we can't find the words to say them.”
Anon

“In many areas of understanding, none so much as in our understanding of God, we bump up against a simplicity so profound that we must assign complexities to it to comprehend it at all. It is mindful of how we paste decals to a sliding glass door to keep from bumping our nose against it.”
Robert Brault,

“It is easy to understand God as long as you don't try to explain him.”
Joseph Joubert

“God is not what you imagine or what you think you understand. If you understand you have failed.”
Saint Augustine

“The feeling remains that God is on the journey, too.”
Teresa of Avila

“As the poet said, "Only God can make a tree" - probably because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.”
Woody Allen

“God: The most popular scapegoat for our sins.”
Mark Twain

“But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.”
Vincent van Gogh

“People see God every day, they just don't recognize him.”
Pearl Bailey

“How tired God must be of guilt and loneliness, for that is all we ever bring to Him.”
Mignon McLaughlin

“I just hope God does not get bored of dreaming me.”
Anon

“Your talent is God's gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God.”
Leo Buscaglia

“God is the perfect poet.”
Robert Browning


Understanding God a bit more may be helped by reading some of the wisdom on the Spiritual Writings page. Click here to go there.