Spiritual Art Blog - *Ed P

This blog is updated weekly with a Thought for the Week, an Inspirational Quote 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.

Gateway

Here’s a further exploration into representing the gateway to heaven at the top of the Mountain to Heaven. The spiral from the resting Soul connects with it’s higher self in the Ocean of Love and Mercy.

What’s next? How to develop your spiritual side of life in the New Year

Thought for the Week

So you've been reading this blog for a while and hopefully it has made some kind of positive contribution to your life. If you want to take the next step, in developing the spiritual side of your life, there are a few options open to you. 

Your current spiritual path
Put more love and attention on your current spiritual path. All paths have some good core values which come down to love. If we can find the love in our path we have found the real heart of it. If you can’t find the love, then it may be time to move on and find something that has the values, ideals and systems that suit us. If a path, group or religion brings more love into our lives, we should go for it. 

Do something spiritual each day
If you want to go it alone for a while, try to do something spiritual each day. Spend a few minutes each day connecting and recognising the inner part of our lives, the spiritual side of life. If we can spend time contemplating every day, we’ll begin to see and feel the results in a few months. Start with five or ten minutes and work it up to twenty minutes over the next twelve months. The HU song is an excellent place to start.

Favourite Thought for the Week
I asked some friends to select their favourite Thought for the Week from the last year or so. Below is the list, with an introductory paragraph to give you a feel for its content. Choose the ones that feel right for you and click on the headline to read the article.

Spring Clean our Mental Programmes
Sometimes we need to reset the mental programme we use to run our lives. Sometimes we build up habits and routines which are no longer useful to us. It can be a bit like a Spring clean. The trouble with the mental junk we have, is that it all seems to be important. So how do we select the good from the bad?

The Lord's Prayer – a spiritual interpretation for today
Some say the Lord's Prayer was given by Jesus as an example of how to pray. It was not meant to be learned off by heart but that it is a basic outline of how to pray. Let’s have a look at the Lord’s Prayer and see if we can express its sentiments in modern language which we can easily relate to and understand.

Everyone is equal as Soul
From the perspective of Soul, our true selves, we are equal to all other Souls. When you look at our different lives with the overview that we have created our destiny by the choices we've made previously, we begin to see that we are all equal. 

A simple guide to Inner Travel
The key to inner travel is a tool which is often neglected or lost in the busy lives we lead these days. This tool can transport us anywhere in an instant and we won’t have to pay air fares or taxes to get there! This wonderful tool is our imagination. We use it every day to work out simple tasks, ss you read this we are going to try some Inner Travel.

Pay attention to our attention
We need to pay attention to where we put our attention. Wherever we put our attention, we will be drawn to or it will be drawn to us. That means we have to be mindful of our thoughts because whatever we are thinking of, is where we have our attention.

Spiritual Jewels
To get a better understanding of ourselves we need to look at the different parts within us, our spiritual make up or anatomy. With a clearer idea of how we work we can begin to find jewels of wisdom and insight which can help us become a happier person.

Heaven to Earth
We are very aware of our physical bodies and surroundings but our focus on the outer world can blind us to the spiritual beauty that is within us. Soul is in the centre and our physical self can get so rooted in its world that it is often unaware of its connection with Soul.

Seeking to live in the Now
Most of us are searching for something subtle, something to sooth the hunger within. Those of us with that hunger are seekers. Our goal in life is to be happy. We may not know exactly what we are seeking but we have a constant hunger eating at us, making life uncomfortable. It is our desire to reconnect with that spiritual part of ourselves, Soul, which makes us seekers. We are seeking to live in the Now.

The importance of being Hu-man beings
If we can connect with the Life-force within us we can become a lot happier and bring more love into our lives and to those around us. There is a hint to our true make up in the word human. "Hu" is an ancient name for God and "man" is a reference to mind and the physical body of man.

May we have the insight to see all our blessings as we take the next step into the New Year.

*Ed Parkinson

Inspirational Spiritual Life Quotes

“Living can be a joy. It should give us a sense of wonder and love.”
 Harold Klemp

“By having a reverence for life, we enter into a spiritual relation with the world By practicing reverence for life we become good, deep, and alive.”
 Albert Schweitzer 

“A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.”
 Thomas Merton

“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

“Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn. The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and prejudices and the acceptance of love back in our hearts. Love is the essential reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life. Meaning does not lie in things. Meaning lies in us.”
 Marianne Williamson

“I'm fulfilled in what I do... I never thought that a lot of money or fine clothes -- the finer things of life -- would make you happy. My concept of happiness is to be filled in a spiritual sense.”
 Coretta Scott King

“In my travels I have found that those who keep Heaven in view remain serene and cheerful in the darkest day. If the glories of Heaven were more real to us, if we lived less for material things and more for things eternal and spiritual, we would be less easily disturbed by this present life.”
 Billy Graham

“Let your whole life be a spiritual song.”
 Sri Sathya Sai Baba

“I consider myself a student of many religions. The more I learn, the more questions I have. For me, the spiritual quest will be a life-long work in progress.”
 Dan Brown

“My job in this life is to give people spiritual ecstasy through music. In my concerts people cry, laugh, dance. If they climaxed spiritually, I did my job. I did it decently and honestly.”
 Carlos Santana

“Music is mediator between spiritual and sensual life.”
 Ludwig van Beethoven

Gateway

Below is recent development of the picture Gateway. I wanted to develop the girl or Soul into a major element of the piece but this angel isn’t working. She looks like she is about to be sacrificed on some altar. That’s not the message I want to give. So I’ll have to go back to the drawing board. 

Wishing you love and blessings for the Christmas

Wishing you the best of Christmas Greetings at this time. Depending on where you are in the world and your culture, it may or may not be a time of celebration for you. I still wish you love and blessings today. 

I’ll just say that again, I still wish you love and blessings today. How does that make you feel? Hopefully it adds a little warmth and optimism to you, with the knowledge that love and blessings are available to you.

It’s just a greeting but it does have an impact. It’s the same as any greeting we use when we meet people. Do we greet people with an automatic response or do we put a little thought and feeling into what we say? The automatic response is easy, we do it all the time and it has little or no impact on the people we greet. We can change the affect of our greeting by spending a few seconds thinking about it and adding a little goodwill to complete it. 

Christmas Shopping
I was Christmas shopping yesterday. It was the last Sunday before Christmas, the biggest annual holiday of the year, in Ireland. The shops were packed with people buying gifts for their friends and loved ones. I was looking for a particular gizmo and I had been told they were available in this shop. It sold music, games, movies, DVD box sets, and all the gizmos that go with them. 

The particular gizmo I was looking for wasn’t on any of the shelves or counters. I spotted one of the store staff in his purple t-shirt with the store logo on it. He was about twenty years old, bright eyes and a quick smile. I caught his eye and he bounced over to me. “How can I help you, sir?” he beamed. His big white smile shone bright against his tanned skin. 

I explained the particular gizmo I was looking for. He said they had them in the store and thought they had the particular model I was looking for. He bounced off like a rabbit into the secret warren where the gizmos were stored. He quickly returned and presented me with the thing I was looking for. He then brought me to the checkout and explained to the teller who the gizmo was for. I thanked him for his assistance and he bounced off to help another customer.

The Gizmo Guy
When I say bounced, he did bounce. Not in an obvious fashion. When I saw him the first time, he was about three meters away. When I caught his eye, he bounced over to me in one second. He was able to dodge between people to get to where he wanted to go, quickly. 

When he arrived beside me he smiled, when he brought the gizmo to me, he smiled. He was happy to help the customers, he was happy to be working in this store, he was happy and his happiness greeted me when I met him. His smile was infectious and I had to smile while talking to him. His greeting and his whole sense of joy changed me from a tired weary shopper into a happy appreciative person. 

Spirit of Christmas
The gizmo guy gave me a good lesson in how greetings work. If we are happy within ourselves, thoughtful of the person we are greeting and have a good feeling or enthusiasm for what we have in common, we both benefit from meeting each other.

If I can bring the spirit of Christmas (love, kindness and happiness) into my greetings at this time of year and into the New Year, like the gizmo guy, it’ll be a job well done. 

Wishing you love and blessings for this season and all seasons.


*Ed Parkinson

Inspirational Greetings Quotes

“I greet you. Not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you now and forever, the day breaks, and the shadows flee away.”
 Fra Giovanni Giocondo

“To awaken each morning with a smile brightening my face; 
to greet the day with reverence for the opportunities it contains; 
to approach my work with a clean mind; 
to hold ever before me, even in the doing of little things, the Ultimate Purpose toward which I am working; 
to meet men and women with laughter on my lips and love in my heart; 
to be gentle, kind, and courteous through all the hours; 
to approach the night with weariness that ever woos sleep and the joy that comes from work well done –
this is how I desire to waste wisely my days.”
 Thomas Dekker

“Hello, Do not greet anybody when the heart is filled with anger distrust etc. Have, instead, a pure hollow from which a whole hearted Hello emanates.”
 Sri Sathya Sai Baba

“The words you speak are an expression of what you are and what you’d like to be”
 Harold Klemp

“And when you are greeted with a greeting, greet with a better (greeting) than it or return it; surely Allah takes account of all things.”
 Quran

“Christmas, children, is not a date. It is a state of mind.”
 Mary Ellen Chase

“Best of all, Christmas means a spirit of love, a time when the love of God and the love of our fellow men should prevail over all hatred and bitterness, a time when our thoughts and deeds and the spirit of our lives manifest the presence of God.”
Charles Dickens

“The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. This wasn't for any religious reasons. They couldn't find three wise men and a virgin.”
 Jay Leno

“I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.”
 Shirley Temple.

“It is Christmas in the heart that puts Christmas in the air."  
 W.T. Ellis

“Christmas is not as much about opening our presents as opening our hearts.”
 Janice Maeditere