Spiritual Art Blog - *Ed P

This blog is updated weekly with a Thought for the Week, Inspirational Quotes and News about Ed P and his Pictures. To make sure you don’t miss anything, type in your email address in the Subscribe panel on the right. 
Thanks for visiting and please leave a comment on anything that stirs your imagination.

Meeting Place

This is the latest development of the picture Meeting Place. It's not quite right yet but it is going in the right direction. I'm not happy with the position of the crystal meeting place, it needs to be higher up above the mountains.

Why Worry?

Thought for the week

Our mind doesn't make sense a lot of the time. We often get into a habit of doing something and we just keep doing it. This is often the case with worrying. It is just a habit we have. If we want to stop the pain and turmoil the worry brings we have to find a way of breaking the habit. Here's a story about a worrier and her daughter.

There was a lady who lived in the country with her family. They had a farm with cattle and some horses. From an outsiders viewpoint it looked like a well run and successful farm. However for the mother living on the farm it was a different story. She was plagued by worry. Here is a list of just some of her worries:
Will they be able to get enough milk from the cows?
Will any of the cows get sick?
Will one of the horses get injured and have to be put down?
Will the weather interrupt their electricity supply?
Will her husband be able to repair the farm buildings?
Will her children living in the city be okay?
The list goes on and on. When she solves one worry another one surfaces to burden her again.

How can we deal with these things?
One day she began to feel worn out by the constant pressure of her worries. She asked one of her daughters “How come you don't worry about anything? How come I'm the one who has to do all the worrying around here?” Her daughter who had lived away from home for a number of years and had some insight into human behaviour said “Why do you feel you have to worry? What does it achieve?” Her mother replied “If I don't do it, who is going to look after all these problems and troubles around here? How can we deal with these things?”

The daughter explained “I know you feel you have to worry about all these things but my attitude to life is different. I've learned that worrying doesn't help the situation at all. I've discovered that worrying just damages me, it gets me upset over things I have no control over. What I do is take care of what I am doing now. I make the best of the situation I am in at this moment. If there is something that concerns me, like having money to do something, I'll do something about it now, like putting away some cash or work out a plan to get the money together. I then see if it works out. If it doesn't I try something else.

What we need rather than what we want
“I believe that life has a way of giving us what we need rather than what we want. If I do the best I can at this moment and then let life do the rest, it usually works out fine. It doesn't always work out the way I had expected but in the end it is usually the best solution. If you think about where we are now and how we got here, you'll see that all the worry did nothing to help. I find that if I do something rather than worry about it, I get a sense of achievement. The little bit of action moves my attention off the worry and onto something more productive and positive.”

The journey out of worry to peace
Her mother looked at her and sighed deeply. “I'd love to be able to do that. How can I get to that point?” The daughter, seeing the earnest plea in her mother's eyes and remembering back to her own journey out of worry to peace, said “It will take time but you can do it.”
“Where do I start?”
“Have you heard of meditation, contemplation or yoga?”
“Heard of them but I don't really know how to do any of them.”
“Okay, here's a simple exercise which I started off with and still use every day. Let's relax here in our chairs. Take a few deep breaths, slowly breathing in and out.” They both breathed deeply. After a few minutes the daughter said.
“Now, when you breath out, say or sing the word Hu, like this” She sang the word Hu in a long drawn-out tone, almost like a song. The sound blended with the soft wind blowing outside. The mother joined in with a little apprehension but after a few breaths she relaxed and sang at her own pace.

After a number of minutes, they came to a natural stop and sat there peacefully. The mother broke the silence. “I feel relaxed and calm. Is that because of the singing?”
“The Hu helps you reach a balanced state. It brings you into your heart, into the place where you are happy, safe and loved. I use it a lot, whenever I an anxious about something, like meeting someone, going to a strange place or when I begin worrying about something. He helps me get to a place where I can see things from a higher view. I seem to get a better overall picture of the situation and I'm less anxious about it.”

Make a habit of it
“Is that it? Do I just sing Hu and relax?” asked the mother. Her daughter continued “To get the most benefit you should spend fifteen or twenty minutes a day singing the Hu in a quiet place where you can relax and contemplate on the sound. Pick a time of the day when you won't be interrupted and then make a habit of doing it.
“I've been doing it a long time now and find it essential for my peace of mind. While doing it I also get insights into things going on in my life and they help me keep on top of things.”
Her mother got up and gave here a loving hug saying “Thank you for sharing such a lovely gift.”

Wishing you peace and love.

*Ed Parkinson

If you need a little more help to eliminate worry, read one or two more articles on the Spiritual Writings page by clicking here.

Inspirational Worry Quotes

“Fear drives away love. Without love, there is no surrender of all our inner cares and worries to the Mahanta (our inner guide).”
Harold Klemp

“Worry is a misuse of imagination.”
Dan Zadra

“Today is the tomorrow we worried about yesterday.”
Anon

“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.”
Leo Buscaglia

“Do not anticipate trouble or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.”
Benjamin Franklin

“If you can't sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It's the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep.”
Dale Carnegie

“I've developed a new philosophy... I only dread one day at a time.”
Charlie Brown (Charles Schulz)

“Troubles are a lot like people - they grow bigger if you nurse them.”
Anon

“If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.”
E. Joseph Cossman

“I keep the telephone of my mind open to peace, harmony, health, love and abundance. Then, whenever doubt, anxiety or fear try to call me, they keep getting a busy signal - and soon they'll forget my number.”
Edith Armstrong

“You can't wring your hands and roll up your sleeves at the same time. “
Pat Schroeder

“Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere.”
Glenn Turner

“Somehow our devils are never quite what we expect when we meet them face to face.”
Nelson DeMille

“Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.”
Swedish Proverb

“Never bear more than one kind of trouble at a time. Some people bear three - all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have.”
Edward Everett Hale

“That the birds of worry and care fly over you head, this you cannot change, but that they build nests in your hair, this you can prevent.”
Chinese Proverb

“Worry is an addiction that interferes with compassion.“
Deng Ming-Dao

“You can never worry your way to enlightenment.”
Terri Guillemets

“There are two days in the week about which and upon which I never worry... Yesterday and Tomorrow.”
Robert Jones Burdette

“A day of worry is more exhausting than a day of work.”
John Lubbock

“As a rule, what is out of sight disturbs men's minds more seriously than what they see.”
Julius Caesar

“I refuse to be burdened by vague worries. If something wants to worry me, it will have to make itself clear.”
Robert Brault,

“Loneliness, insomnia, and change: the fear of these is even worse than the reality.”
 Mignon McLaughlin

“How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.”
Thomas Jefferson

“Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.”
Arthur Somers Roche

“We have to fight them daily, like fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies.”
Etty Hillesum

“There are people who are always anticipating trouble, and in this way they manage to enjoy many sorrows that never really happen to them.”
Josh Billings

“Only man clogs his happiness with care, destroying what is with thoughts of what may be.”
John Dryden

“Blessed is the person who is too busy to worry in the daytime and too sleepy to worry at night.”
Anon

“Real difficulties can be overcome, it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable.”
Theodore N. Vail

“No man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when tomorrow's burden is added to the burden of today that the weight is more than a man can bear.”
George MacDonald

“Rule number one is, don't sweat the small stuff. Rule number two is, it's all small stuff.”
Robert Eliot

If you need more wise quotes to help prevent worry, click here to go to the Spiritual Inspirations page.

Meeting Place

As I was working on this sketch of Meeting Place the colours and image seemed familiar for some reason. Then I remembered that it was similar to a picture on the cover of a book I was reading recently.

Can you see the similarity?
I then got to thinking, did the artist who created the book cover go to the same place where I now was? The more sceptical would say that I was influenced by wht I had see previously on the book cover. I would say I came across this on my explorations to create the picture I have in my mind's eye. The final picture will probably different from where it is now. Let's see how it turns out.
By the way if you are interested in the book Those Wonderful ECK Masters, you can get
it on ECK Books here:
http://www.eckbooks.org/items/Those_Wonderful_ECK_Masters-96-0.html
or on Amazon here:
http://www.amazon.com/Those-Wonderful-Masters-Harold-Klemp/dp/1570432171