Yesterday after a swim in the river Aare I had a short look at the art exposition in the park of Villa Mettlen, a beautiful old villa here, where the music school is located (and where my kids are having lessons) and where every three years there is an art exhibition. Last time I was fascinated by some sculptures of Maja Thommen, a Swiss artist living in Italy. Via e-mail we came into contact and one evening, when she was in Berne, she came for a visit with an interesting exchange about art and spirituality. Many of her artworks show a spiritual dimension.
When I went around in the park of Villa Mettlen I was again amused of the banality of a number of pieces exhibited. Rust and oxidation seem to be the favorite elements of the artists, and some show raw or even brute artefacts. Some demonstrated a good handicraft work, others seemed to me like intellectual concepts solidified – dry uninspired, repetitions of much seen forms.
The intellectual plane doesn’t have a connection with the plane of intuition, from where original creativity stems. Although several objects showed interesting plays of forms, only very little did appeal to me through an expression of beauty.
Beauty is a reflection of the sublime planes of the spirit into matter, radiating, and of clear, shining colours, sometimes going into transparent states. In materialistic forms grey and dark, dull colours prevail. Several objects in the expositions expressed suffering and being bound to matter – a real reflection of the dark and heavy sides of our age – “modern” art.
Luckily there is a synchronizity of states, and more lightful expressions of creativity do exist as well.

Last week a friend from Germany sent us a folder with two fairy tailes of the Brothers Grimm and thoughts from her and from a group work. It is fascinating to see how the genuine folk tales contain in a symbolic form teachings of eternal wisdom stirring the souls of the readers or listeners. Many modern scientists think the tales, often full of seemingly cruel adventures, are expressions of existential fear and need to be “purged” before reading them to children. But when you read them with a spiritual understanding, you see that they are telling about the path of the soul. The soul,� encaged in matter, through a long journey (of many lives) finds back to a union with its origin.
One of the tales I got was about a girl whose hands were cut off to avenge a curse of the devil on her father, who later got silver hands, then, because of her pure life, new hands and finally found union with her husband, the king. The hands represent our attachment to material life (the grip) and silver or moonlight the denser worlds of matter. The girl are we as a soul, who finally finds back to an eternal life with the spirit-king.
This tale deeply touched me, because it expresses the inner urge towards light which is a thread through my life.

A friend just sent me a note about the incredible 3-D mural art of artist Eric Grohe. Here are some more pictures of artworks by him in a large format. It is incredible how the entire ambience of a locality changes by these artistic designs.
See also the post on Perspectives and Illusions with the link on the artwork of Julian Beever.

The weekend supplement of the Swiss newspaper “Der Bund” reported about a project of two Austrian artists who in summer 05 had covered all advertising signs, logos and company names of a commercial street in Vienna with fluorescent monochrome yellow foils. In this two week project called “Delete” (you find an English description by clicking into the upper left “deleted” area) they just left those written signals necessary for road safety. They just have published a book in German on this campaign.
On this project they say: “The aspect of deleting – The lettered, indented, grid-iron order of the street space is transformed into a ‘smooth’, orderless space, which unleashes something akin to pure potentiality …. a process of letting go occurs, or, to put is more positively in lines with the principles of Taoism – a vacuum is produced which maintains the fullness.” A deeply spiritual motive.
The project was meant as a protest against the flooding of the cities with ads, thus commercialising public space. This visual inundation is an expression of the modern over-active business-oriented way of life, and a campaign will probably just create a momentaneous awareness of the continuous bombarding. A more sustainable change has to come from the inner. Through a meditative work you are washing of the graffiti from the walls of your inner nature, as I hinted at in a post 2 weeks ago.
It is my experience that this continued exposure to silence deletes the sensual imprints and re-creates the pureness of the original state. From this the noise of irrelevant impressions gets neutralised and instead of getting sweeped away you stay in contact with your higher self.

A friend from California sent me a link to the website about Akiane, a 12 year old child prodigy from Idaho, USA. She is a painter and a poet, having started at the age of 4 and having reached by now an astonishing quality of ripeness. The mass media have discovered her and even a book about her has been published.

What seems to me to be even more interesting is the deep spirituality expressing through her. Having been born by an atheist mother and a “worldly-minded” father, she had at 4, a life-changing spiritual transformation, converting the whole family to Christianity. She has been teaching herself drawing and painting and is learning mostly from her own keen observation and study. The inspiration for her art and literature comes from her visions, dreams, observations of people, nature and God. Her favorite topics are people and spiritual subjects. The quotes from her given on the website are very interesting and are an expression of eternal wisdom:
“I teach and they run away. I listen and they come. My strength is my silence.”
“I have been blessed by God. And if I’m blessed, there is one reason and one reason only, and that is to help others.”
“The meaning of the shared-self is the meaning of wisdom and love.”

Though on the site they speak of “a Christian artist”, the creative expression of the soul is something universal and not limited to one or any religion. The expressions of eternal wisdom come from the undercurrent of existence, expressing through different forms and at different times. A soul like that of Akiane is not just “dropping from heaven”, but has a long story of experiences, on which she is – unconsciously – tapping. What seems to us like an early blooming flower is an expression of a long time of work and ripening over a series of lives. It is like the electricity, which is not mysteriously being created at the wall outlet, but there is a long generation process behind.

A friend from Munich send me a link to an inspiring sildes-movie by Kate Nowak: “May you be blessed“, if you like to see it. See also the text of it.

I yesterday read an article in the Swiss Coop consumer-magazine about the film “Our Daily Bread” of the Austrian producer Nikolaus Geyrhalter (pdf). It is a shaking, award-winning documentary film, without voice-over commentries, about food production in Europe. You can see pictures or trailers from the website. It is a ilm about why the food today is so cheap, whil in other fields the prices are rising. He shows how plants and animals are instrumentalised and integrated into a production process in a totally dehumanized form. While the hygiene in the enterprises is high and the production processes are very efficient and standardized, they are entirely inhuman, just oriented towards keeping the costs low.
They have filmed in about 20 companies in many countries of Europe, but don’t mention the names, since the processes are similar; many companies had refused to cooperate, while others were proud to show how they work. The film is not judging, but just showing the actual work situation, providing enough space for reflection and sensibilising for where our food is coming from.
Some time ago I had published an issue of Good Will in Action about “Food and Drink” to show the importance of a right dealing with food on the spiritual path, hinting at the dimension of the food production. I think it is of utmost importance to be conscious of what we are doing and which are the consequences thereof. Through our individual decisions which food we buy and how we consume we can contribute a bit for a change.

Two days ago I got an e-mail from a friend from Minnesota, USA. She is a graduate student in the English program of St. Cloud State University studying creative writing. Since several months she is doing the English translations of the Good-Will “Lunar Messenger” and cooperating with the editing of the Paracelsus- Health and Healing magazine.
She now wrote that she is just celebrating her first publication as a managing editor with the Kaleidoscope, a literary arts publication with a multicultural theme It is annually published through the Write Place at St. Cloud State University, and now for the first time in print and hyper-text. Each year, a graduate student takes charge of the publication, and this year it was her turn. She has contributed some poems and the editorial.
Though German by birth, a few years ago she went to the States. Her shamanist affinity and her reflects her deep inner bond with nature and in part of her poems or the editorial – echos from previous incarnations?
She is an intense searcher and worker, striving towards a sensitive, soul-filled attitude in life. For a long time she has been working to overcome shadows of the past – this motives are also echoing in other poems. On the spiritual path, when the light of the soul is growing, these graffiti-like imprints on the walls of the inner nature are slowly being washed off, so that the pureness of the original state can start shining forth.

Many things we are doing seem to be ephemeral, without leaving any traces. The desire to leave behing something lasting is with many people, not only politicians. It often reminds one of building castles in sand, being washed away with the next tide. A fascinating play with creation of out of sand is on sandfantasy.com, where you find videos of an artists drawing in sand.
Not all “traces in sand” however are ephemeral. There are landmarks of the Great Ones surviving thousands of years, like those of Buddha or Christ, who haven’t even written a book themselves. They came from the depth of the source of creation, with the full power of spirit behind. There is a beautiful legend from the Leaves of Morya’s Garden about the Signs of the Christ, with a painting of the Russian artist Nicholas Roerich. It is an inspiring tale about the founding of the inner temple, which is not made of sand or by bricks and mortar, but of the tissue of the eternal.

Everyone has his or her own perspective, which is not the total view. Dealing with my wife, our children or at work I am often astonished how different one can view the same thing. In the “Occult Meditations” of K. Parvathi Kumar I just came across the following thought:

“Each one’s life carries another perspective. If one circumscribes oneself and looks to one’s life, one’s pan, one’s pleasures, one’s problems, it gives a totally limited and narrow perspective. If he sees life in general and equates his life with life general, he gets a much better equation of understanding…
For example if a person has an incurable sickness, he may suffer much when he looks only to his suffering. If he observes life in general he would find many like him and sometimes he may even find many in deeper suffering than the suffering he is in. Life as a whole when equated with, man relives himself from the suffering of self-circumscription. He joins general life and moves on in a state of joy instead of moving in suffering.

A few days ago I got from Joyce, an American friend, some photos of incredible chalk drawings from Julian Beever. This artist has to have an extraordinary sense of perspective and proportion to make them appear 3-D. Have a look at his website.
A great way of creating an illusion of a specific perception (through the camera).