Tag Archives: quotes

A Fleeting Moment

Deer Crossing

 

“It’s a moment that I’m after, a fleeting moment, but not a frozen moment.”

-Andrew Wyeth

Greens through the Trees

 

 

 

This life is so precious and the wonders are astounding.  That is what compels me about photography.  You must be fully present to acknowledge these wonders, then make a choice as to what to frame, what moment to capture.  We’re doing that continually of course – making choices of what to focus on, what to acknowledge, what to see and remember.

Deer in the Woods

 

 

I’m choosing to remember and focus on love, truth, energy, small and large nature wonders, life’s grace…

 

 

“When you really pay attention, everything is your teacher.”

-Ezra Bayda

Moose, Cameron Lake 8

lowercase art

This article from The Lewicki Agency’s website (http://thelewickiagency.com/uppercase-art-and-lowercase-art/) has the words to help explain the muse and the need for expression that I have passion for.   I love bringing those expressions to fruition here on Sweet Breathing’s blog/website.  It is purely personal.  It may never be read or seen. It’s simply what I have in my be-ing that day as I connect inside and outside with the world – especially nature’s world.

My expressions in photography and words are not Art (although the quotes that I often pair with my offerings from the masters that speak to me about these wonders often are).  My photos and words are certainly not “Fine” nor the “Uppercase Art” this article discusses. But they are indeed “lowercase art” in the very way this article describes.

This blog truly is an honest and raw dialogue, in pictures and words, about my world, my life, and my experience – my constant thread to wonder.  It IS freeing, creative and often does (as the author writes) “reveal another dimension of my understanding.”

lowercase art.

Yes, it explains it pretty well.  Thanks Andrea.

MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

from Andrea Lewicki:

“There’s a difference between Art and what I call ‘lowercase art.’

Both are forms of creative expression.

Both are dialogues about our world, our lives, our experience.

Uppercase Art is fine art. It’s created in awareness of a particular domain of expression.

Uppercase Art has lineage.

The most important distinction of Uppercase Art is that its dialogue includes an external audience. Uppercase Art has a life outside the artist.

Lowercase art is created more in the insulated awareness of an individual’s life. It has a certain wild individuality. Lowercase art is an internal dialogue, within the artist. It’s personal, deeply individual. You invent the rules, the traditions, the standards.

You create and take apart and recreate all within the privacy of your own experience.

Both Uppercase Art and lowercase art are about creating meaning. Both can be inventive and radically new. In both Uppercase Art and lowercase art, you learn to improvise through obstacles, solve the unique problems that arise from your inventions, and reveal another dimension of your understanding.

But lowercase art is primarily for you. It’s your creative playground. What starts in lowercase art sometimes ends in Uppercase Art, but it doesn’t have to. Lowercase art can be messy and incomplete and still make perfect sense to you.

When you create lowercase art, you create your own creative shorthand.

Lowercase art is liberating, an activity of pure freedom, safe from external judgement.

It’s yours. It’s where you can be most freely you. There’s courage and connection here.

Lowercase art is good for your overall wellbeing.”

Sap Frozen in Time, Woods Lake

“Inspiration isn’t delivered on a silver platter to an idle or distracted muse. Inspiration is received by open eyes, open mind, & open heart.”

-Andrea Lewicki

Moonbeams & Rainbows – A Gallery of Photos

Some Kiss We Want

There is some kiss we want with
our whole lives, the touch of
 
spirit on the body. Seawater
begs the pearl to break its shell.
 
And the lily, how passionately
it needs some wild darling! At
 
night, I open the window and ask
the moon to come and press its
 
face against mine. Breathe into
me. Close the language-door and
 
open the love window. The moon
won’t use the door, only the window.
 
From Soul of Rumi
by Coleman Barks

 

Glacier National Park Wonders – A Gallery of Photos

“Wander here a whole summer, if you can. Thousands of God’s wild blessings will search you and soak you as if you were a sponge, and the big days will go uncounted.

Goat Haunt

If you are business-tangled, and so burdened with duty that only weeks can be got out of the heavy laden year, then go to the Flathead Reserve; for it easily and quickly reached by the Great Northern Railroad. Get off the track at Belton Station, and in a few minutes you will find yourself in the midst of what you are sure to say is the best care-killing scenery on the continent – beautiful lakes derived straight from glaciers, lofty mountains steeped in lovely nemophila-blue skies and clad with forests and glaciers, mossy ferny waterfalls in their hollows, nameless and numberless, and meadowy gardens abounding in the best of everything …. ”   John Muir

Glacier National Park – just a few photos of the wonders there…

*Slideshow will load below.  Hover in the black area below the photo to pause or go forward and back.

Continue reading Glacier National Park Wonders – A Gallery of Photos

Positive Ions

Hell-Roaring-Creek-1024x680

Is there anything more peaceful and powerful to the soul’s experience than the rhythm and power of surging, moving water? Torrents of water are falling from the sides of mountains everywhere now.  Where the water narrows into smaller and smaller spaces the intensity builds to a crescendo of power and music.

Trail of the Cedars, Waterfall

 

Negatively charged ions are showering us when near this powerful movement of water. This is a good thing!!Powerful Water

From the article “Ions and Consciousness” in the magazine “Whole Self”: 

Technically speaking:  “Ions are charged particles in the air that are formed in nature when enough energy acts upon a molecule such as carbon dioxide, oxygen, water, or nitrogen to eject an electron from the molecule leaving a positively charged Ion. The displaced electron attaches itself to a nearby molecule, which then becomes a negatively charged Ion. It is the negative ion of oxygen that affects us the most.”Waterfall

I also read from Comtech Research:   “the normal ion count in fresh country air is 2,000 to 4,000 negative Ions per cubic centimeter (about the size of a sugar cube). At Yosemite Falls, you’ll experience over 100,000 negative Ions per cubic centimeter. On the other hand, the level is far below 100 per cubic centimeter on the Los Angeles freeways during rush hour.”Sparkling Water

 

So, get out to the rushing, moving water!  Feel the positive energy all ’round and Breathe!

Waterfall, Going to the Sun, July 3

“As many raindrops join to form a great river of water,
many souls join their highest intent to form
the river of evolved consciousness.”
– Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Waterfall in Yellowstone

 

On Being Enlightened

Searching, absorbing teachings, reading the masters, sitting in meditation, being with nature… all in the quest for “enlightenment”.

The seeking for the deepest truths is a lifelong quest, but the journey to enlightenment finds us right where we started… in this very moment, being truly and uniquely who we are.  Knowing the creative potential in the moment, with focused, savoring, attention on the be-ing-ness of living, takes me as close as I think I’m going to get to enlightenment – and it is enough.

 

As the quote goes:

New Mexico, Taos Square & Clouds“Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.  After enlightenment;  chop wood, carry water.”

-Zen Proverb

 

 

Sound Healing

Sound.  Primordial manifesting. Healing and transporting.  The music of the spheres providing the foundation of our experience.  The word.

Traveling with the sound healer Tom Kenyon in Bhutan brought the totality of sound’s power to bear on my life.  In conference rooms and temples, the pure resonance and connections of his tonings were astounding.

DSC_0453

Bhutanese Man with Prayer Wheel

The nuns pictured above too held us transported with their chants & singing.

Every culture uses sound and music and has a need for these expressions.  Drumming, toning, chanting, singing….

Tom Kenyon’s work as a therapist brought him initially to the exploration of the potential of the power in sound for healing for his patients.  This exploration moved into deeper and deeper realms… his five octave voice is a miracle.  The sounds, toning, music, and chant seem to come through him, not from him.

“I become like a tuning fork to the information that is coming through me, in shamanism they call it being the ‘hollow reed’…”

-Tom Kenyon

“It’s ok to look up to make sure there’s only one person up here making these strange sounds.  But what’s important is what’s happening inside YOU.  That’s where the power is.”

-Tom Kenyon

A new film about his work, called “Song of the New Earth” is making the rounds of screenings around the country.

Check it out here:

http://woodycreekpictures.com/films/song-of-the-new-earth/

And here’s a link to his website for a list of seminars and some free downloads:

http://tomkenyon.com/

Tom Kenyon

You may not embrace, understand, or believe all that is contained there, but if you can allow an opening to healing and connection while absorbed in the sound, you may find an expansion of your perception, and find help with healing and connections.

Click here to access a sound healing session called the Inner Sun Meditation:

https://tomkenyon.app.box.com/s/swra2vzh5pfxj196h8ac

I often listen to Tom Kenyon tapes for meditation and for healing and hope they may be helpful to you.  As the quote from Tom states below, I’ve seen miracles happen with sound.

“I’ve seen miracles happen with sound…”
~Tom Kenyon

“Each celestial body, in fact each and every atom, produces a particular sound on account of its movement, its rhythm or vibration. All these sounds and vibrations form a universal harmony in which each element, while having it’s own function and character, contributes to the whole.”
-Pythagoras (569-475 BC)

“Do you know our soul is composed of harmony”

-Leonardo da Vinci

Music of the Earth’s Breathing

“We have fallen
into the place where
Everything is music”
~Rumi

Bhutan River

“I wonder if anyone else has an ear so tuned and sharpened as I have, to detect the music, not of the spheres, but of earth, subtleties of major and minor chord that the wind strikes upon the tree branches. Have you ever heard the earth breath?”

-Kate Chopin

Rocks - Time

“The earth has music for those who listen.”

-George Santayana

Absorbed and immersed in the music, greens, life energy, breath of the earth’s longest day among 365.  Solstice!  A sweet celebration to breath into…