Dear Captain, I am writing to you today, even though some fifty odd years have gone by because you have left a lasting impression on my life forever. You were a dignified and handsome german shepherd with a mostly black shiny coat overall but brown patches on your face and bosom. Your clear eyes indicated intelligence beyond the canine variety.
My grandpa taught you to be obedient and kind at once, so though a guard dog, you did not bite or maim anyone, until the day you were ordered to babysit me. Grandma had gone into town shopping, leaving me with grandpa, However an urgent matter came up in the flour mill that grandpa owned and he had to rush off to take care of it, leaving me behind with you on a square plaid blanket in the middle of the yard. You, Captain were given strict instructions to not let me crawl off the blanket and not to hurt me in any way. I was a baby who had just learned to crawl. You sat next to me looking very tall and proud of the new-found responsibility entrusted you.
I, of course, curious and full of beans, tried immediately to crawl off the blanket onto the more inviting green grass all around. You then grabbed my diaper with your slobbering mouth, careful to avoid any teeth marks on my skin and pulled me gently back onto the blanket.
This happened many times as I was a stubborn baby, just as I am a stubborn adult now, and tried to flee your blanket prison with all my might. Well Captain, I now know you tried your best not hurt me each time you pulled me back.
By the tenth time I was thoroughly frustrated with my failed attempts at freedom and poked you in the eye, very painful I am sure, and I am now very sorry.
You, Captain flinched in pain and quickly bit me, although gently on the lips. I have a scar to this day, although small and almost invisible.
Dear Captain you left an even deeper scar on me that day, because every time I walk past a handsome, dignified german shepherd now, I flinch and cross to the other side of the street.
Nevertheless I realize it was not your fault, as you were never meant to be a baby minder and my grandpa overestimated your capabilities, so I forgive you, rest in peace dear Captain.

I often need to pop out of my studio while painting and have my "grunge" clothes on. They are not tattered but often have speckles of paint on them and are just not up to the yuppy standards of my Queen West neighbourhood, where most people dress to kill, and/or to distinguish themselves as being unique and original. Unique still means high quality and expensive.
After years of ruining my good clothes with paint splashes I stopped trying to compete with the general dress codes, and use old jeans and a faded tee shirt or jogging top or old man's shirt overtop of leggings.
I notice that people are often reluctant to make eye contact with me or talk, even shopkeepers. Only after I smile and ask them how they are or mention something about the weather do they start to warm up. Or if I say I am a painter and that is why I look like this, they look relieved having assumed possibly that I am a street person at first glance. Only then we can chat a bit in a relaxed manner. I feel I give people who are not like me an opportunity to break out of their stereotypic mentality of judgmental attitudes about who is worthwhile to relate with.
When you interact with people you don’t know, who aren’t like you, you get the chance to break out of your comfort zone and change your view of reality altogether. This can spark creative ideas, give you new ideas to think about, and more.
I have had sometimes lengthy conversations with street people on occasion, with an open mind and realized how much I have learned from them afterwards.
We tend to surround ourselves with people like ourselves and we get a pretty narrow view of the world. Of course it’s always important to remember boundaries. Don’t spark up a conversation with someone who’s not interested and don’t push it if people don’t reciprocate. Be respectful and if you’re lucky, you might find someone else interested in sparking up a random little conversation s well.
Apparently there are health benefits to these kinds of interactions and if nothing else they can alleviate a bad mood in yourself or get you to stop thinking about a pressing problem for a moment, which could give you the space to actually solve it.

Since we face unprecedented challenges with climate instability, wars, and economic disparity, there has never been a more timely moment on the planet for humans to collectively access some spiritual/creative potential. We are ready for a quantum shift and we really need one.
Leading minds in science, spirituality, and technology are learning to collaborate. For example the Merraki Institute has partnered with Bill Tiller and is conducting vigorous scientific research in a participatory global experiment.
http://www.merrakiinstitute.com/projects/
Anyone can participate to build a large collective pool of intention that will eventually effect our material world. Either with the link above or collective meditations like International World Peace Day.
We know the butterfly effect lies in chaos theory, it is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state.
I have mentioned this earlier as well among trees, where one tree secretes certain toxic sap to moths and other trees follow suit.

An ecologist, Suzanne Simard discovered that trees talk over vast distances. She studied Canadian forests over a thirty year span. Apparently they have complicated, yet harmonious social lives. According to Suzanne most of the communication happens below ground at the root and chemical level.
Other scientists are discovering that plants have similar senses to ours and that they “talk” to each other — not just through their roots, but as we do: through the air. They release a special gas to warn their neighbors of any danger.
For example, " when the first gypsy moth larvae landed on a mature oak tree that resided in a grove with other oaks. By analyzing the chemistry of the mature oak tree’s leaves, they were able to determine that within a very short period of time, the tree had added a bitter tannin to all of its leaves. The tannin made the tree an unattractive lunch option for the gypsy moth larvae. But what was more astounding was that all the other oak trees in the grove changed the chemistry of their leaves, too, making them unappetizing as well."
"A tree’s year rings are analysed for their strength, thickness and rate of growth. This data serves as basis for a generative process that outputs piano music. It is mapped to a scale which is again defined by the overall appearance of the wood (ranging from dark to light and from strong texture to light texture). The foundation for the music is certainly found in the defined ruleset of programming and hardware setup, but the data acquired from every tree interprets this ruleset very differently."- Bartholomaus Traubeck
And even more astonishing is that trees can produce music. One man placed microphones on trees and than took the recordings to a studio and amplified the sound. It turned out we were hearing symphonies.
Mozart saw music and then wrote it as a young man. It seems the music was there in the ether and he happened to be a worthy vessel for it. If all artists were like Mozart we would have truly beautiful and great art in the world and the intellectual birthing we now do not enjoy, that is conceptual art.

I eat a lot of kale even though eating kale does not make me spiritual. Neither does drinking green juice. Or doing to yoga, or riding a bike. When you embark on a spiritual path you become more conscious of life and living things and do not want to contribute to killing anything. Especially animals. Native Indians mostly hunted and ate meat and so did Tibetan lamas because they could not grow vegetables on their mountainous terrain. It is not eating meat that is bad, it is the inhumane way we treat animals before we eat them. Aboriginals in the past would hunt an animal with a bow and arrow, bring it back for the whole community to enjoy, not wasting a morsel and everyone gave thanks to the spirit of the animal for "giving away". Spirituality is about three things, "Integrity + Intention + Love". You have integrity when your intention matches your behaviour. Spirituality is a measure of how loving your intentions and actions are.
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Even the Buddha ate meat. In buddhism it is a matter of not selfishly picking and choosing, but eating what is placed before you. It is attitude that matters. A lot of staunch vegetarians and committed believers in kale are egocentric people who pride themselves on their sacrifices and secretly wish to live forever, young and beautiful. That kind of motivation is the furthest possible away from being spiritual. It in fact fosters an over-blown ego which is exactly what spirituality needs diminished in order to flourish.

It seems that spiritual development tends to adapt to its environment and in the West, in Capitalism, where profit rules, spirituality is measured by how much profit can be made on it's outer trappings. So we have people eating kale instead of becoming humble. After all they don't want to hurt animals. And yet they do nothing to protest how farming corporations are treating these animals by keeping them all their lives in tiny enclosures with no fresh air or movement. Because supposedly spiritual people are not political. What a pathetic excuse and self-centred attitude. I won't disturb my white and pure energy field by thinking about these atrocities, they rationalize. In fact it is the spiritual people who are contributing to these atrocities continually without limit, by closing their eyes on their world and focussing on their naval.

Spiritual people in the West eat kale and won't get their hands dirty, like helping the homeless, never mind the animals and they think they will go to heaven or be saved just because they are happy and undisturbed. Ridiculous, because you can only become truly a spiritual person when you are so disturbed by the state of affairs in the world that you want to cry and do something about it, contribute to a humane way of living, which means helping the homeless, AND not eating kale. God, I think does not give two hoots about what you eat, but only about what kind of compassionate person you are.



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"One should not pursue goals that are easily achieved. One must develop an instinct for what one can just barely achieve through one's greatest efforts." —Albert Einstein
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To achieve enlightenment is a worthy goal, the hardest of all to achieve. And it is only when we allow our minds to be fluid like water running to its source that we have any hope of coming close to achieving enlightenment. When water in a river is blocked it becomes stagnant, it is not longer clear and pure but filled with scum attached to it and growing in it. Like our minds, when not fluid, stop us from having clear vision and we become weighed down with grime and dirt and can no longer see properly the world around us.

Spring
Spring arrives quickly
Young green shoots slice frozen earth
I am weary

Summer
Early morning dew
On freshly painted branches
Clear like a crystal

Autumn
Red leaves flame out
Brandishing my very soul
I am dancing now​

Winter
Frozen ice crackles
Shearing the sound of silence
I forgive myself

Art, like sex, has become the same as women who sell themselves for sex. A Whore!

Contemporary art has become a global currency. Money has gained a new importance in the positioning and the evaluation of art, to such an extent that one may speak of a new chapter in the history of the art market. The turning point occured in the mid–1960s, when a class of nouveau riche emerged on the horizon of economic change. Peter Wilson, the farsighted chairman of Sotheby’s auction house, spotted them as potential art buyers.

The question was how to win over this group of people, who had the financial means to acquire art but no appreciation for it? His answer was straightforward: by positioning art as both a status symbol and a profitable investment. In 1967, Wilson devised the Times-Sotheby’s Index, which though it is forgotten today, was an early attempt to chart the cost of fine art just like any other commodity. With this index, the rising prices of art became visible and its future profitability plausible.

A mere six years later, in 1973, the transformation of the art market into an investment market was completed with Pop and other contemporary artworks, for millions. Art is often lumped in together with gold as a safe haven from inflation.
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Across the board, the art market is showing exceptional confidence these days and it is viewed by the very rich as an alternative currency. Rather than the art market freezing amid doubts about the global economy, we see the art market thriving with the potential to become an alternative economy all of its own. The art market is totally unregulated and could put Wall Street to shame.

Art no longer has any spiritual or soul value and artists, to survive, are obliging the market place. Very sad. People don't love what they buy anymore, the art piece that fulfills them and will become a new member of their family, Instead they just look at what they can sell it in the future. In fact they will have no feelings for it at all. Relating to their art is of no relevance to them, their sole motivation is to make more money.

​Artists are valued according to how much money they make with their work and NOT the actual value of the work, so Hirst is a great 21st century artist now, something which could have never happened in the 20th century.

Why do we love Halloween so much? And all the zombies traipsing through our streets?

Halloween is the Day we shed our worse fears and embrace death in a celebratory fashion. We give ourselves permission to laugh and dance on graves, in order to appreciate life and experience joy free of fear.

It is loved as much by adults as children. It is all about what or who you will become, what choices you will make. There is no script or plan. Halloween embraces danger as part of life, affirming people’s capacity to deal with it on their own. In our law abiding highly controlled society, halloween encourages everyone to unleash a part of us that loves to laugh, to scream, to be silly, and have fun. It a day anything goes.

The origins of halloween is found in the ancient Celtic festival, Samhain. From present-day Ireland to the United Kingdom to Brittany, France, the ancient Celts marked this as one of their four most important festival quarter days of the year. Samhain commenced on the eve of October 31st, and ushered in the Celtic New Year on November 1st. The Celts experienced this as a threshold time when the normally strict boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead became mutable. On the eve of Samhain, they believed the veil between the two realms was the most transparent, allowing the spirits of those who have died to return to visit earth.

In Mexico it was called the Day of the Dead. The celebrations includes an invitation for the dead to return to their family home for a visit. Families welcome them back by placing photographs of their deceased loved ones on altars, and may even write and dedicate poems to them. Extended families gather in cemeteries on the eve of November 2, and sit at the gravesite of a deceased loved one to hold a feast. The family may keep a night-long vigil by eating the foods they have made in preparation for the celebration, visiting with each other, and praying for all the members of the extended family, both living and dead. They bake bread and make candy in the shape of skull and crossbones, a casket, or a skeleton. The children run through the streets with lanterns and ask for coins.
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In ancient lore shamans were magic practitioners that helped shape the first human societies. As wise as they were feared, the shaman mystics were a high-rank figure in the human society, capable of winning battles, de-cursing allies, they could heal physical wounds and the soul, and also communicate with animal spirits and even shape shift.

In 2012, archaeologists uncovered an unusual site near Lake Świdwie, in north-western Poland. After meticulously analyzing the settlement using modern techniques, the team of researchers concluded that it dated back more than 9,000 years.

Yew blades were found near the lake Swidwie in POLAND...This discovery is unique, as found in other shaman settlements in Siberia and Mongolia only. It apparently served as a sanctuary from where the spirit practitioners engaged into rituals and out-of-body experiences which are now out of reach for modern science or written history. It demonstrates that ancient Europeans had knowledgeable advisors who could read the stars, use advanced remedies from nature, and who knows what other ancient techniques that are now forever lost.

Artists-as-shamans are needed in these warring times. Art heals and reveals that which science cannot. These artists are people in a quest for life's deeper meaning. Shamanism is universally concerned with the well-being of both nature and human nature, and the relationship between them. How can modernity know so little for knowing so much?

In making art, the artist breathes herself out to allow the breathing in of universal air, intelligent with many minds, alive with energy. Artist, shape-shifter, shaman or poet, all are lovers of metamorphosis, all are capable of visions, insights and dreams.

Real artists have taken up the role of the shaman in our times. Possibly because both art and shamanism use the realm of metaphor where feeling is expressed and where healing happens. With metaphoric vision, empathy flows, knowing no borders. Both artist and shaman create harmony within an individual, and between the individual and the wider environment, a way of thinking essential for life, which we have almost forgotten about in our pursuit of money and technology and power.

Artists often suffer in their youth, according to Joseph Campbell, as if ‘the whole unconscious has opened up and they’ve fallen into it’. Shamanism, like art, is a calling, and a young person may be ‘doomed to inspiration’ as the anthropologist Waldemar Bogoras wrote of the Siberian shamanic vocation. In a painful transformation lasting months or years, the young shaman loses interest in life, eats little, is withdrawn or mute, sleeping most of the time. It reads like a portrait of the young artist in a devastating depression. The young shaman overcomes the illness through the practice of shamanism, just as many artists know that their own best medicine is found in their work, like Van Gogh, who was guided by the sun from the dark side of the mind, to the ecstasy of being.