Twitter

Yikes!   Its been almost five days since I posted a blog.   Wow.   Well, in case you were worried about me-- I am still alive and kicking!

Kicking and Tweeting.

I have been experimenting with the exciting new phenomenon of Twitter.   I have also been exploring a host of new social media and networking sites and tools.  Oh my... the world is an exciting place these days folks.   The power and potential behind these new medias is phenomenal.   I see it through the lense of how these tools can help out the 1Mandala project and I am excited for us.  I am excited for Humanity!

The essence of these new technologies is greater interconnection and collaborative potential.  I hope to write about each one seperately in the next few days.   

Twitter is like blogging but... you can only use 140 characters.  This means people are forced to succintify their message, links, thoughts, and doings into key words.   Messages can also be easily and quickly posted.   You subscribe to the flow of people you want to hear from.   Ideas and websites and YouTube videos now flow back and forth faster then ever.  The flow of Tweets thus becomes the evolving flow of consciousness of the internet.  You can actually see in real time this phenomenon!

I am using Twitter as a way to share new peace portraits as they come in.  Check out my account and subscribe.  Get a Twitter account if you don't have one-- just at least so you know what all the buzz is about.

http://twitter.com/1Mandala

As Stephen Fry put it in a recent blog entry: “I love how Twitter confirms my all too often assaulted belief that most humans are kind, curious, knowledgeable, tolerant and funny. The absurd constraints of the 140-character tweet seem oddly to bring out the best in wit, insight and observation.”

Money

I have been doing an interview for a Romanian spiritual magazine and Humanity's Team Global.    The journalist's response to one of my written answers was quite dramatic.  It encouraged me to revisit my answer and refine it a little more.   Here it is:

HT: How’s the project financially supported?

I often am asked how I fund the my journey and the 1Mandala project.  The question is  challenging to answer.   It often comes from a certain way of seeing the world and money: First you get money, then you do what you want.  This is fundamentally  different from how I see it.  

In fact it is the opposite! 

My understanding is that first do what you want to do.  Then, money connections, things and relationships arrive that help you create your vision and fulfill your intention.  

I have no savings or source of income.   Ironically, given my lifestyle equipment and project, many people who meet me often think that I am independently wealthy!  

I laugh with a big smile at this.  

If I can share anything with the people that I meet, it is that money is the last thing that you need.  Literally.  Do first want you want, then the money comes and the way becomes clear.   That's it.  No need to strive, suffer and toil for money.  That's just a sign your going about it backwards!

Of course, it is easy to simply speak such words.   However, I feel I can write them because I've been living their truth.  I have had no money or source of income or any job since September.   Nothing!  For three months I had less than 100 euros.  Yet, biking for several months through the European Winter my "needs"  were abundantly met through the expensive countries of Belgium, Holland and Germany.  

Now in the green and warm May of Berlin, I occasionally stop and marvel that I am still alive and that I did not freeze in a Dutch ditch!

Despite absolutely zero financial security, somehow I have never been happier, healthier, better equipped, more loving and more loved than ever.   I've also never eaten better, been able to give more and have never had more fun!   

Not to mention the 1Mandala project is flourishing in 8 languages with a team of people working around the world and I am living my dream making art at  a studio in the most thriving artistic district of Berlin, if not Germany, if not the world.

Money? 

 All I can do is shake my head!

Relaaaationships!

I once had a musician friend who would strum a chord on his guitar and sing a long and melancholically the word "Reeellaaaaationships!"

The thought makes me smile. Relationships make me smile! I've been thinking about Relationsnips lately. Why not write out my thoughts? I share my stuffed animal animations! Why not these ponderings?

In the last two years, I have felt like a submerged swimmer who, after being swept along under the dark water for the longest time, has finally broke the surface. At last I can look about and see the river that has been taking me along.

I look about with understanding. With consciousness. And most of all, with these two things, I can now choose.

Ah... the River: There are sooo many societal, religious and cultural currents that sweep us into relationships. It is natural. We all have our river. But it is also all too often unconscious. These currents-- religious traditions, cultural moores, family patterns, government tax benefits, financial expediency-- they all sweep us into the arms of others. I remember a psych 1000 class where the prof asked the class the single biggest determinate of your next partner. After many failed class answers, he said: "The place where you come from".

Its true. 

All these currents are unconscious, and have little to do with conscious intention. They are all natural parts of the process of who you meet and what happens. For me there has been little conscious intention involved in process of relationships. For years, I was swept with the flow and was just happy to find someone else who liked me!  Then the current would sweep us away. Coming from a great family background I am blessed with the stability and relationship skills to make a relationship work and last. Years would go by.

The relationships were all hands down great experiences. The major ones all could have lasted for many years more. For many people they do. The currents of culture and society and finance are so strong. Its sooo much easier to go with these currents than break with them.

In the last year something has happened though. I've broke the surface on the current. The flow still swirls around me of course. It always will. But its a whole different river when you're aware of what's going on. You can work with the currents to choose with intention. You can choose what you want to experience.Its so beautiful!

No longer must I strive and struggle to meet people. I put out my intentions. Then the current current sweeps me there. Now, people quite literally walk into my life. They sit down on the bus seat beside me. They appear like angels at just the right moment. Its a subtle but profound difference.

It doesn't mean the relationships that evolve are easy. Often they are frought with emotion and challenge. Yet, because of the intention involved,  a new meaning is added to the joy and... most significantly, to the pain. When you know that you have consciously choosen your pain you know it is something to work through and to experience.   Or, of course, you can choose to experience it no more.

With this underlying consciousness to my relationships, I embrace all that comes-- not hesitantly as before. I throw myself into with all my heart. So much better. My moments are so much richer and there are no regrets. Pain... bring it on! What am I learning here? Joy... thank you! Let me share it!   Its sounds sillily simple, but I tell my lovers how I feel-- I don't hold back the good things and the bad things.   I express, live, and love it.

And boy, is ever more fun, rewarding and great for artistic expression and production!

The Epic Journey

This morning I woke up early to make a meeting that I never made.   With time on my hands a spontaneous inspiration hit:   Let's get my best photos from my journey up on an online gallery.

Here I am in Berlin.   Soooo many adventures have befallen me on my journey across the continents to get here.   I have put together my favorite photos in a Facebook Album.

This morning going through my albums a flood of memories came over me--- alone in the vast mountain scape of BC, the steamy forests of West Virgina, bustling Times Square in New York City, wandering around the Capitol Building in Washington, the soaring heights of Salisbury Cathedral, camping near Stonehenge, walking through crop cirlces, dazzling romantic walks through Wales, Ancient stones, hills and castles.   

On to France by Ferry, Eating gifted seafood as the moon rose over my French beach campsite, playing my flute to wild deers and horses, being taken in by monks in Belgium, crazy romance in Brussels, making a mural in the heart of Amsterdam, staying with a family of ten in Holland, eating cheese in Gouda, Holland, huddling in my tent in wet, dark windy, lonely forest, seeing storks in Germany, being gifted a meal by an East German Grandmother as her first foreign guest since 1946.   And then of course, cycling into Berlin, making mandalas with Berlin school children and working on my new paintings here in this fabulous city.

Wow.   That was fun!   Five countries, four languages, and countless new friends later... that was 8 months well spent!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=94509&l=deb110d45d&id=634726536

Making Mandalas with Kids in Berlin!

Today I worked for the second day with two classes at a public school in Berlin. The classes and I explored symboles, geometry, and the making of personal mandalas. The kids loved it. They ate it up and created the most beautiful and elaborate geometrical and colourful patterns. It was so nice to connect with these kids and to share art that transcends the language and culture. More tomorrow!

Rise Up.

 

I want to share this sketch on another painting in the Simple Series.  Its an apropos balance to my last entry. 

On my trip I've often felt this way--  soaring joy at the dazzling beauty around me. 

The feeling of this picture captures two things:  One, intense grattitude for every detail and beautiful blessing of the moment around me.   Second, personal satisfaction at having brought myself to the mountain top moment through my intentions, choices, perseverance and determination.  

The exultant man on the mountaintop is raises his arms to the deep blue sky.    In the valley below, as in his soul,  echoe "Thank You" and "Yeaaaahh baby!" at the same time.

Loneliness is a Long Word

Yikes.   I've been feeling a little lonely lately.  

Coming back last night in the rain, the chill and darkness of the night seemed to cut right to my soul.  I've spent some lonely and dark nights in my tent over the Winter.   Yet somehow, the feeling wasn't quite as overwhelming.  Though this night I came home to a warm apartment and Marion's friendly, whom I am staying with, I was never the less overcome.   It was a jagged desperate feeling that I can only describe as loneliness-- a longing stronger than my many lone weeks on the road.

An open air concert had caught my ear on the way back to the apartment.  It was a bustling gathering wedged between abandoned concrete buildings scrawled over with graffiti.    The courtyard was filled with dark sillouettes, fires burnining in rusty oil drums and the melancholic twang of the singer's voice.   Wow.  Berlin's thriving underground music scene at its best.  The music was fantastic-- a kalediscope of beats and strange noises and improvised lyrics-- yet as tight as you can get.   I stood alone in the sea of undulating folk.  The music jarring emotion of the music resonated deeply with me.  Dreadlocks bounced, funky 70's hippsters grooved and groups of friends and couples conversed and danced. 

 My only companion was my bike that I cautiously kept within sight.     I felt as an island in an ocean.

 I think it has something to do with being in Berlin-- its a big city: I ain't in the country side no more.

 The sheer quantity of people swirling about makes one more conscious of one's aloneness.   It doesn't help that where I am working in Kreuzburg, there are so many funky cool people.   Its not that I don't have friends here.   I seem to have an abundance for the short time that I have been here.  Yet, I long to meet all these cool and beautiful and funky people that dance about me on their way down the street.  Surely they must all be doing and thinking the most interesting things.

I miss my friends too.  

Berlin is also such a cool city.   l wish I could share it all with a good friend or two.  If only I could teleport my friends here.  There are so many cafes and galleries and restaurants and concerts to check out.   Its all but summer now too and the weather is glorious. 

I wish I could express and share the wonderfullnes!  I think this is actually a big thing.  I have so much joy and love welling up in my soul these days.  I long to share it.

And so.... I feel a little lonely.

Time to do some art.