How Meditation helps

"There's neither Heaven nor Hell but thinking makes it so"

A poorly paraphrased quote from Hamlet but it gets to the heart of it.  And how we see the world is at the heART of Art.  

One of the wonderful things about Art I reckon is that its evidence of how different we all are, that we see life and the world from our own perspectives. But if that perspective is blurred by a constant babble of judgmental voices in our heads, an incessant white noise we've forgotten how to turn off, blocked by guilt, regret, sadness, fears that force us to act in automatic self-preservation ways ... how do we know who we are? how can we think/see straight?

By re-training our minds to shut the f*** up, through Meditation.

Its not about any God, or "Positive thinking" - (tho' I do like this image:)

Its about observing thoughts, emotions, fears with Mindfulness, allowing them to come but not allowing ourselves to be swept away by them.  Welcoming them, observing them, then setting them aside and returning to a state of neutrality - the Now.

Its about being Mindful not Mind-full

In this state we can find out how we really are, who we are, and who we want to be.  We can see the past we've lived and the future we want to live. We can choose - and change - but above all: we can SEE.

And its from this knowledge that we can describe the important things.

From the heArt comes Art.

unless, of course:

Work along these sorts of lines can be seen in the Figurative Sculpture section of my website: www.katenewlyn.com