San Miguel Icons

 Powered by Max Banner Ads 

These images, and thousands like them, embody the wisdom of ancient mystics, they represent an archetypal dynamic around the world. The love motherhood requires is beyond our ability to fully comprehend. Within this relationship is the potential to given and received love, as well as the capacity to release and surrender that same love. Find someone to be tender with… today,
peace be with all of you, think love its the only thing that will sustain us.

The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the seed of all true art and science. To know what is impenetrable manifests itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty. This knowledge, this feeling is at the center of all true religion.

New religion continues to express art in the modern world. For many people change from tradition is a complete impossibility, and I can understand why they may think this. Formal religion is driven by narratives that are familiar for many but for some quite lifeless. New religious art has a tendency to remove all meaning and reduce the images to vague symbols. The old religious doctrines are a strait jacket for some contemporary artists.

The importance of the relationship between art and religion is still revealing itself. The church and the artist understand the affiliation between them, and the value of this ongoing dialogue. I believe the religious impulse will not just go away, we are improving our understanding of the divine without confusing it with formal religion. Religious art today has no contemporary origin but rather the same mystical undefinable experience found in the past expressed in the new mind.

http://bit.ly/pLYQiV

Peacebestill spirituality

Dali lama says the key to freedom resides in our ability to understand and THINK MORE, it is ignorance of self and other which causes our discomfort. He encourages us all to contemplate and analyze our individual actions on the landscape of the actions and its effect on others. Our accomplishments and activities are not isolated and unique to ourselves. We have indeed an effect on each other, the planet and  potential Global peace. Go slow through life, what is the rush, we are all going to die eventually. Be enthusiastic and cherish the life we have been given. Our focus each day tends to be more on our bodies and satiating them through food, excerisize, creature comfort, work, etc. More attention and love must be given in developing and fostering a healthy and deep relationship with our minds and spirits.

Peace on Earth will transform our rituals and services at prescribed hours into institutions embracing more comprehensive doctrines and hierarchies. The new spirts of peace will embrace a daily life style of commitment to a global culture of non-violence, respect, justice, and peace, where there is no more oppression, injury, torture, or killing of other human beings.

Forgiveness, kindness and generosity foster lives of service for the common
good. Spiritual healing will come collectively gradually reaching full potential as human beings.

peacebestill.net

There is an irrevocable, unconditional norm for healing our spiritual selves, in our families, communities, nations, and religions. In particular, there is need right now for the spiritual healing with regard to the aggression and hatred in the name of religion. The ethical spiritual phycology already exists in the practice. Ancient guidelines for human behavior have the potential to provoke a new sustainable world order. We are interdependent on the well-being of the whole and everyone’s decisions, actions, and failures affect the well-being of the many.

Peace on Earth will transform our rituals and services at prescribed hours into institutions embracing more comprehensive doctrines and hierarchies. The new religion will be a daily life style of commitment to a global culture of non-violence, respect, justice, and peace, where there is no more oppression, injury, torture, or killing of other human beings. Spiritual life requires treating others as we wish others to treat us; each of us an example, respecting others dignity and individuality, without exception. We will learn to open our hearts and allow the narrow differences to meld into a culture of solidarity and relatedness. Consider humankind as a family and species of the spiritual world. Forgiveness, kindness and generosity foster lives of service for the common good. Spiritual healing will come collectively we reach full potential as human being.

Major religious leaders and their followers have an obligation to agree on and teach
unity rather than division as a way of life.

1. The primary purpose of religious teaching is to tame the mind and open the heart.  Religious practice is designed to be the
   antidote to any violent tendency latent in the mind. The mind and heart are
   strengthened to embrace all kinds of forgiveness and peace.
2. Learning about and respecting the diverse faith traditions around the globe allows our
   hearts to be softened. Practice forbearance by developing patience, tolerance,
   self- control, moderation, mercy, leniency, restraint, in one’s daily life. The
   intention for the practice is to foster a wholesome community for everyone.
3. Religion promotes and encourages love for this planet which sustains us. The planet is a
   container where we are karmically connected according to Buddhism and Gods
   creation according to Judeo-Christian theology. The indigenous spiritual
   traditions have always supported a proper and compassionate relationship to the
   natural world and the cosmos. Their communities excel in recognizing the deep
   interdependence of human beings, animals and nature.
4. Be a force of good and speak out consistently on the immorality of inequality;
   active charity and goodwill is an obligation of the faithful. There is plenty
   to go around and the creative potential within humanity to make equality come
   about.
5. In reality we own nothing, only the idea of controlling things. Humanity has not
   fully embraced the idea of sharing without ownership due to our fear of
   thinking we will not have enough. What has been offered since the beginning of
   time is more than sufficient. Waste not,
   want not. Using the last little scrap makes you more appreciative of where
   the next scrap is coming from. The abundance we already have slows down our
   desire for more and enables to live lives of simplicity.
6. True spirituality recognizes all valid paths lead to the truth. Encourage every
   member of your sect to be committed to the faith while remaining genuinely open
   to the values present in the faith of others. Time tested religions have come
   and gone, the great ones have always been verified, modified and confirmed, and
   possibly improved over last past 5,000 years. Our future depends on what we do
   now with what we have collected form the past.
7. Religious communities must learn to dialogue with the secular communities in the spirit
   of pluralism and ethical compassion. The world belongs to both groups and has
   suffered as a result of each groups’ behaviors. Let us look for the interconnectedness
   of all things and acknowledge the bigger picture within our shared human
   nature. Reason and belief are required of everyone.
8. Peaceful co-existence will be of paramount importance where science and technology are
   taking us. The Religious will not find explicit directions in their sacred
   scripture to control the rapid change and enormous power now in the hands of
   humanity. However, the opinions of time tested spiritually faithful can be
   heard by science and technology, voices that balance being human with wanting
   to be God.
9. We are one and that oneness has the potential of harnessing the power and energy
   of millions of believers to the cause of peace and human happiness. We can
   establish genuine peaceful co-existence among all people by seeing others as
   ourselves and ourselves in a group serving others.

Project for World Peace and Prayer, assembling the 16 parts to form the installation. 40 prayer wheels all saying,”Forgive our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us”, 27 images, 70 archetypal images. The work is completed and installed in a small community outside of San Miguel de Allende, most satisfying seeing it finally.                                                          God only knows where it will take us from here.

art installation for world peace project, peace and prayer

Religion is the only human endeavor which has consistently attempted to provide us with a model to pattern our individual lives harmoniously. Our religious traditions have always encouraged ordinary people to live and think at levels of integrated complexity that would be otherwise impossible. If we are going to succeed in transforming the misguided and destructive values that are leading us to the brink of disaster, the future will require us to embrace more fully the vast knowledge and wisdom inherent in the world’s diverse religious traditions.

As we approach the 21st Century, interreligious dialogue will be an indispensable tool for charting a new course. The dialogue between us will affirm the positive value of diversity through constructive interaction and open listening.  A renaissance in the mind of humanity     will open the possibility of integrating a living ecosystem with today’s technology.

When we examine the sublime and enduring wisdom that the natural world has to offer, we find that these living ecosystems are excellent examples of maintaining unity in-and-through diversity. Thus, living ecosystems provide an apt analogy of what may be accomplished with the new mind that emerges when humankind’s religious and cultural traditions meet in dialogue.

Solving the interconnected ecological problems that threaten our future on the earth are of paramount importance. The health of the planet is the greatest challenge that has confronted the human race in its entire history. Every day we are being forced to learn, adapt and evolve a new mindset where the global ecosystem can continue to flourish. Our modes of envisioning a global ethic will serve as the template for humankind’s newly emerging global attitude and will have to reflect creative co-operation between us all.

 The dialogue among the world’s diverse religious traditions must expand and embrace conversations concerning ethical business practices where resources are concerned. Social responsibility by the business community fosters the emergence of a new recalibrated eco matrix, where the planet is our friend; respected, protected and embraced for her uniqueness.

All living creatures are part of this profoundly interconnected holistic living planet. Developing an ethos from this perspective, humankind will begin to evoke a sense of humility–envisioning and responding to each other and the earth with a new global consciousness.

The emergence of a new global ethos will involve a profound transformation of humankind’s consciousness(es)–. a “collective” consciousness that is integrated through dialogue. Perhaps the central task before us is to learn how best to engage humanity in an authentic dialogue caring for what “others” are “saying,” as well as listening and caring for the earth.

       What is the difference between spiritual growth and spiritual addiction?

Spiritual addiction is an addiction about which very little is known. When someone is addicted to alcohol or drugs or work, it is very easy to recognise that they are outwardly behaving as an addict would. That is, you can see that they fall over and hurt themselves, crash cars, or behave erratically, or are constantly at work and not at home with their family and friends. Their addiction is often visible to outsiders (but not always to the addict themselves).

Spiritual addiction (and its sister addiction, Religion Addiction) are different in that the addiction is an internal process. It does have similar effects on the lives of those around the addict, but the external factors are less apparent.

Spiritual addiction is when you are addicted to the feeling of being in connection with the Divine, whatever that means to you. It is a physical feeling that is similar to the high that drugs or alcohol gives you, and it is very easy to get addicted to. Society also celebrates someone who lives an outwardly “good” life, and so the addiction can be less easy to identify.

Very often, people who become addicted to spirituality are those that find life too painful, and cannot abide living in their body. The process of prayer or meditation or other forms of connection through dance, music, or being of service lead to the person leaving their body or mind and feeling sheer bliss and love in connection. This is a method of escaping the issues and challenges of life, pain, and growth that form part of spiritual growth.

A person who is in spiritual addiction will come to be unable to live without the spiritual high. This is to the detriment of their normal life, and they begin to allow chaos into their life around work, relationships and life as their addiction becomes the most important thing to them. This is the opposite of spirituality where a person embraces life, its challenges and obstacles and works through them to find peace.

Spiritual growth is very much an experience that is had through the body. It also involves learning to control the mind. Whereas spiritual addiction will allow the person to check out as often as they can, spiritual growth encourages people to own their journey, pain and emotions and work through it in order to grow and learn. We chose the lessons that we are being faced with, and we were also given the exact physical body that we needed to learn them.

Consequently, a mystic who goes to sit in a cave for decades is very much in spiritual growth. Whilst he is seen to be apart from society as he works his lessons through the experiences of the body and mind, his communion with the Divine is from a very human stance. He remains in his body and works through his issues and emotions and discovers the Divine without leaving his body or mind.

A spiritual addict can be quite challenging to be around. Spiritual growth is a part of who you are, and it is the way that you choose to live your life and be in the world. Many people that are addicted to spirituality seem to have lost themselves in the addiction and it becomes all they do. Do you know people who talk of nothing else? Who try to persuade you to see it their way?

It is important to understand that no one chooses to become an addict, and it is a disease. Most probably, they are experiencing deep pain, and like the rest of us are just trying to get by the best way that they can. However, any form of addiction will prevent any kind of spiritual growth, because the addiction will keep you in deep denial, and spiritual growth is about facing the demons and moving through the pain.

Recovery from this addiction, like any other, is about learning to accept yourself in entirety, even the parts that you despise. It is about looking at your past, and dealing with it, and moving past it so that it no longer controls you. This allows you to become as the Divine intended, free from self and able to love and be of service to others.

Written by Caroline Nettle

Please retweet this article.

Caroline Nettle is passionate about healing, recovery, and assisting others to grow. Sign up for the newsletter at Spiritual Growth Tools and receive a FREE copy of the ebook “How to Heal Chakra Imbalances”.
If you are interested in growing spiritually, visit Spiritual Growth Tools Products and find something that can help you in your growth.

icons of St John, egg tempera, mary jane miler

“http://www.sanmiguelicons.com/blog/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/silent-john1.jpg”>DROWNING IN NOISE?

Flowing silence is………………………….. Freedom,
Foreseen silence is………………………… Infinity,
Vibrating silence is………………………… Creation,
Maintained silence is ……………………….Strength,
Allowed silence is …………………………..Rest,
Received silence is …………………………Joy,
Perceived silence is………………………… Knowledge,
Silence alone is ……………………………..Being.

The silence of God is the source of all evolution,
The silence of God is pure consciousness.