Love.

No matter how many instruments man invents across the ages, to measure, define or organize time, the world will never be defined by time or by time’s keepers for that matter. Instead it will always be ruled by all of the things that exist outside of it… immeasurable substances, that do not follow earthly rules, or respond to “dimensional” dictums, but rather to the other invisible systems that co-exist with this material world. These things live, not in clocks and broken logics…. but somewhere both far and close… both in the heart and in the vastness of the universe….giving life to our cells, granting sparkles to the stars and always making sure that what survives of this life is not the bones or ashes, but the fluttering essence of all that is worth saving……. love.

Art: The soul of life.

The Islamic artistic tradition sustains that nothing captures the soul of life and of eternity in a clearer way than patterns of geometry.

Shall we contemplate? 

Architecture: Tea Time at Emirates Palace Hotel

Summer’s Glow

It’s summer. Summer is not only the time of sunshine, long hot days, beach wanderings, swimming in the ocean, wearing chiffon dresses and having fresh cool fruit all the time. Although those are some of my favourite things about the months of summer, I know  it is so much more than that. Summer is the season that is symbolic of the vitality of youth and of life just beginning to thrive; it is the time when life is blooming in a million colours and opening up in an infinite number of energies. It is the time when birds begin to fly; when baby animals start to take their first steps and it it the time when flowers punctuate the landscape with a million bright and happy colours and forms. It is the season of happiness…. For the sensitive hearts, it is a time for experiencing, feeling and being in the sunshine. For the wandering souls, summer is a time to be outside, to feel the cool winds, dance until midnight and laugh with the moon.  Summer has always been seen as a reason to celebrate, and the summer solstice ( the longest day of the year) has been celebrated in every ancient civilisations since the beginning of time. Today, we seem to have forgotten about these unique energies that only summer carries within itself. We seem to have forgotten completely that what summer carries (that is the reason that sustains all of these beautiful celebrations, experiences, and natural happenings) is one single simple thing that is very often overlooked…. Energy! Summer is energy in a thousand different forms. Energy thrives and spreads in the sunshine rays, in the blossoming of the flowers, in the warm temperatures and even in the cool winds…. Energy compels the animals to grow, to fly, to crawl and to exist.  It is energy that is the underlying magnetism of summer. It is this thriving of life that is the core of these summer days. And, as for me, as an artist, painter, I am always most creative in the summer.  So, today, as I take a break from creating and lie in the beach in this hot summer day, I make myself take a moment, pause and remember that although this is the time for creating with that summer energy, for feeling and for living life in full it is also the time to absorb those beautiful vital energies, to capture them on the inside and freeze them deep within our hearts, because sure enough, they won’t last forever… fall will be here shortly, and that is a whole other story. But for now, we get to experience and feel those Energies in full bloom.

 

Waking…

I woke up in the middle of the night in a sort of startle. Something was confronting me…. Somewhere between the land of sleep and the world of being fully awake, I tried to think about it and see if anything remained at all. Something was startling me, confounding me, making me restless, alive and somewhat frantic. I found myself wondering if it was good or if it was bad, and then I realised that my eagerness to fall back into that world made that answer very clear. I looked outside, the moon was shining, paused right in front of my window. I traced back the trails of the dream. I couldn’t remember any of it at all, not one single thing,  but it was true and it was real, whatever it may have been. Eventually, after a few minutes I fell back asleep, secretly hoping to fly there again.

When I wake in the morning that feeling is still there: hovering, lingering….. Making me perfectly aware of all those hidden places that we live in when we sleep. That feeling…. it lingered. I still couldn’t remember any details, I couldn’t remember anything that could be described at all (just a total amnesia). But that feeling…. Oh, that feeling. It’s better than every single concrete memory or idea that could have remained. It was an unrested night, a tempestuous sleep, that made me wake up as if I had not slept at all. I make some coffee and dwell in that feeling, wondering, even though completely in vain, what it was all about. But I smile… It doesn’t even matter. I remind myself that the night dreams are more real than anything else we can ever experience; I remind myself that while we sleep, our soul flies around the endless world, through time and spaceless dimensions, planning, doing and being all that it is supposed to be. Although the only thing that remains is this sort of emotional field that lingers behind, I smile. It is more than enough.

 

Those who dream.

For those that dream… reality is almost always a sort of prison we can never escape from. The dream, stronger than anything of this world, fuels our spirits and lights our souls. It chases us, it makes us act, change, be and exist in ways we never even considered. It shapes our thoughts, it guides our actions, and it acts as a sort of light at the end of a very long darkened tunnel. It is the dream (not the small dreams, but that life dream that has deep roots within us) that never subsides and never diminishes. It is always there… keeping our souls on fire. And although reality seems like a prison (and indeed, it kind of is), it is from this reality that we must fly from, gradually… steadily and faithfully moving towards that spark that makes us light up like a star.  I smile. I like knowing that so many other people, although rare, are also filled with sparks that never subside, and that they too… belong to the world… as…  those who dream.  

So when we meet… don’t tell me your worries, your day or your concerns; don’t show me who you are with empty words or a thousand explanations… just tell me your dream. 

 

The way we feel…

Some think feeling is only feeling… but that is not true. It is a highly incomplete idea of a huge part of our existence. Others go as far as saying that feeling and emotions are only a form of weakness. But again, that is not true. I don’t know where these people get their certainties from, but it surely is a narrow and simple minded view of life. Feeling is so much more than the word can claim. Feeling comes from a world that we do not understand just yet: it comes from the soul. It is in feeling that we gain a sense of existence, a sense of belonging and a sense of ‘dwelling’ as Heidegger used to say. Without feeling (without those infinite emotions that abide inside of us and that compose our complex inner worlds) there would be no imagination at all, no desire to create, no ability to be creative and no intuitive understanding of life itself. It is feelings, emotions, that make us human… they give us our ability to have compassion, to experience love, to know peace, to have empathy and above all, they give us our inner strength as hope. They grant us our ability to dream… they make us feel alive, giving us an understanding of what living is in the first place. Where would be without our feelings? Long gone… I am sure. For without them humanity for sure would have extinguished itself, just as those that do not understand and grow their feelings and emotions, have no problem at all, in extinguishing other species (animals). The world can say and do as it pleases… but as for me… I know that it is feelings and emotions that connect us to our souls. So if we could save only one thing of our humanity in this complex numbing world it has to be this: the way we feel. If we can save that, then everything else will follow, and the world might find peace… for once and for all.

Pictures above were taken in Bali in June. More about that here: An elephant named Arum. 

Sarah Frances Dias

Where wild flowers grow…

I want to be where the wild flowers grow, where there is no difference between here and there, where the halo of the moon is always golden and where the stars forever shine in silver shades of blue that glow like neon lights. I want to be where the animals are free to roam and wander with all the shadows of the dancing trees, where the endless landscape sparkles like purple glitter dust, where the birds fly high aimlessly circling the burning sky. I want to be where peace abides, where freedom dwells, where there is an ecstasy that runs deep with the energy of a thousand suns. I want to be in that place where there is only love carelessly flowing from every dancing soul. That’s where I want to be… even if that place only exists in the corners of my dreams or in the sparkles of the next life, that’s where I long to be. Some of those mentor’s of mine, long gone to be able to talk to me here and now, tell me that place is already here, inside of me. But if that were so, then where does this longing come from? This longing that never diminishes and never subsides…. So I just sit here, in this corner of my world, in the middle of the midnight hour, and dream of that place where the wild flowers grow.

Picture above was taken in February at the Pompidou, Anselm Kiefer’s exhibition. 

The living moment is everything

 

Moments like these are indeed completely indescribable and forever fleeting. They come in like a gush of water out of nowhere, like a thunderstorm out of the blue skies, like a rainbow in a rainy dreary day or just like a shooting star in any dark random night. D. H. Lawrence used to say that: ‘’The living moment is everything.’’. How right he was. One single maddening moment, that is completely alive. So overwhelming and breathtaking, so overpowering and wonderful that all laws of the material world are broken in a heartbeat. With it,  time, just like a cliche, stops. The past is gone, the future doesn’t even matter, and here and now doesn’t even think about its own existence; space, just like the blue heavens, turns into nothing but thin air, vanishing as if it were nothing at all.  On those unique moments, the mind finally subdues, the body rests with ease and the heart finds some kind of loving peace; those are the moments the soul is at home… All those moments that we had experienced, that we had accumulated, are moments that could never be taken away; they belong to the insides, and there they live… awakening us to move forward, to experience more and to be more. It makes me think… maybe it is not at all about the happy ending in itself, but about the stories that define each moment, that compose a great and worthy existence. And if we find that each day is already its own happy ending… that seems to me, to be the best kind of life. Forget about tomorrow… isn’t it true, all we have is today anyway? Just this moment. Just this second, to do whatever it is that we can do, to somehow… make this world a better place.

Picture above taken last year on my way to London.

Made of Stars

There is this scientific idea, that explains that since earth and the whole of the universe exploded from a nothing (Big Bang Theory), we as humans ( our cells, our bodies and our hearts) are made out of the same matter as the stars. But this is not the only theory that claims that. Some spiritual ideas claim that we are in fact essences that came from the stars (Star-childs). These star-childs are not only made of the same matter of the stars, but they also came from the stars: meaning that they are beings and souls that belong to other dimensions and to other worlds, of the heavens, that chose to come to earth to experience human life and to help raise the earths vibrations into another level of spiritual development. I don’t know about you, but I think this is so beautiful. It’s just one of those ideas that resonates inside of me, in the core of my existence. Maybe some of us, did indeed come from the heavens, and are meant to be raising the earth’s energy and vibration. Maybe all those feelings of inadequacy and misplacement that some people feel, are there because they are indeed… true. Their true home is not here on earth, at all… but instead, their true home… is in the stars, where they came from. And lastly, in yet another way, we are all stars in our own little way: shining our light, against the great dark void of the night which is the state of affairs of this world. May we always be stars shining our light…