Meditative spectrum 2

A moment lost within time

becomes a memory, helping us survive

  and learn the new lessons,

             the lessons that guide

   our journey through these moments, 

                         these moment of our life.

excerpts from THE BOOK OF AWAKENING by Mark Nepo

All Fall Down

Lead us from the unreal to the real.
- a Hindu invocation

It was a snowy night and Robert was recalling the time two springs ago when he was determined to paint the family room. Up early, he was out the door, to the hardware store gathering the gallons of red, the wooden mixing sticks, the drop cloths, and the one-time brushes that always harden, no matter what you soak them in.

He mixed the paint outside and waddled to the door with a gallon in each hand, the drop cloth under his arm, and a wide brush in his mouth. He began to chuckle in telling what happened, “I teetered there for minutes, trying to open the door, not wanting to put anything down. I was so stubborn. I had the door almost open when I lost my grip, stumbled backwards, and wound up on the ground, red gallons all over me.”

At this point, he laughed at himself, as he has done many times, and we watched the snow fall in silence. I thought of his little story the whole way home. Amazingly, we all do this, whether with groceries or paint or with the stories we feel determined to share. We do this with our love, with our sense of truth, even with our pain. It’s such a simple thing, but in a moment of ego we refuse to put down what we carry in order to open the door. Time and time again, we are offered the chance to truly learn this: we cannot hold on to things and enter. We must put down what we carry, open the door, and then take up only what we need to bring inside.

It is a basic human sequence: gather, prepare, put down, enter. But failing as we do, we always have that second chance: to learn how to fall, get up, and laugh.

Meditate on some threshold you are having trouble crossing in your life. It might be at work, at home, in a relationship, or the doorway to greater peace.
Breathe steadily and look to yourself to see if you are carrying too much to open the door.
Breathe slowly and with each out-breath put the things you are carrying down.
Breathe freely now and open the door.

Lucky in Love

A wedding invitation card designed for my sister. When my so-called 'clients' :P approached me for the design of their wedding invitation, they knew exactly what they wanted. "The feel had to be elegant & simple" they said.
Oh! did I mention I love 'color and chaos' in my art.

But nevertheless I like exploring new styles. So after exchanging a few emails, it was quite clear that the names of places they visited together, represented by a skyline, had to be the dominant element. My sister Ketki Harale has hand drawn the skyline (luv it).The colors and typography added to the elegance.
And the brackets!?
If you ever meet them, first thing you'd notice is they love MATH :)

I love my paints

shhh...

QU"O"TES

the story..