Spirituality and drawings!

My mind kept sending me back over and over to my first post until I realized that there was something I was missing. In order to bring this up, I’ll try to write a bit about spirituality.

It all happened the next day I started the blog and has everything to do with the “follow your dream – it is never late” idea. Precisely, 4 days ago, I started taking drawing lessons, specifically pencil and paper drawing. I came back from the class really happy and excited: for the first time in a long time I am doing and learning something I really love and enjoy.

During the class, our teacher said something about how we should not worry with our first drawings and that with practice, through the days we would see a lot of improvement. Of course, I got myself thinking where I would stand after the last class and, indeed, would be really nice to get somewhere better and to appreciate some evolvement.

Talking with my wife about this, I wondered: “Well, you know what? Maybe I will put them in the blog. Since they are only drafts, I can save them electronically and when the sketch book is all used, if I need, I can just get rid of it. As a plus, I get to have a nice place to track my progress and even get some comments!”

The idea is pretty nice although it bothered me. Reading again post 1 plus the blog description gave me an idea that the blog would only have stuff about peace, our mind, religion, meditation...

But, there is always a but; one of the main reasons of this space is to have all of that mentioned above applied into day to day life. This is where spirituality kicks in!!! 

When talking about the spirit, it is always nice to start with basic questions: What is spirituality for you? How do you get it? How you develop it? And the best one: what does spirituality have to do with drawings, video games, music or whatever we do in our life?

I say everything!!!

Before we get to it, I just want to make it clear that this is only my point of view and not some definition I got somewhere. You may have different opinions and as with most in life, there are neither rights nor wrongs. Also, this is mostly applied to the Occidental world (where I stand now) whose view on spirituality can be completely different from the Oriental one (meaning Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and other eastern philosophies).

Usually, where I grew up, the places I used to go, everywhere, every time one mentioned spirituality, a lot o pre conceptions came into view: “oh, I don’t like religion!!!”, “oh, you have no life” or “oh, I don’t believe in God” (only to mention a few of them!).

But really, is this it?

Please no. No and no! Spirituality is way, way beyond that. I truly believe there are so many spiritualists out there and they don’t even know. 

Let’s look into one of the most basic concepts that most, if not all religions, share: non violence. As you have probably been used to, violence is something we have “incorporated” into our day to day life. It is everywhere: on TV, movies, on the streets, maybe our house, even inside us. Probably, if you look around and stop to think, the world (literally) seems angrier than ever. And so are we. Well, most of us. 

Examples are always good and although he was a very religious person, I always like to mention Gandhi. Mahatma, or great soul, Gandhi was a politician and lawyer who hardly spoke directly about religion or God during his speeches and his life. He was always emphatic on the truth and on non violence principles. Through them, he led India to freedom and until today, he is known as the country’s patriarch.

Or if you prefer, we can talk about atheists who changed things. Jose Saramago, Nobel Prize of Literature and iconic writer. “Saramago was an atheist who defended love as an instrument to improve the human condition” (Wikipedia). “The painter paints, the musician makes music, the novelist writes novels. But I believe that we all have some influence, not because of the fact that one is an artist, but because we are citizens. As citizens, we all have an obligation to intervene and become involved; it's the citizen who changes things. I can't imagine myself outside any kind of social or political involvement." (Saramago, 2006).

So, what about us, the standard, regular people whose mission is not to free countries or to lead people to something higher? 

Well, we are struggling and a lot o times, pushing ourselves to be better. I have met a lot of people that try, really honestly and hard, to meet non violence habits. And by that, I mean not fighting, being respectful, being patient, etc; not only with others, but also with themselves. The best part is that in a lot of cases, they consider themselves non religious people!!! 

Are they not spiritualists???

There are a lot of things we can look at (like love, peace, ethics and morale, honesty, loyalty and so forth) and by taking some time to research what religions say about those, we will find out that we do not need to live in a temple to be spiritualists. The spiritualists can also be people like us, living anywhere, trying to do better in live, to pursue their dreams while leading lives based on the right conduct and good principles! 

The wealth and diversity of life show me that in this world, spirituality is in everywhere I look, hear and touch. Henceforth, it is on the drawings I’ll post in the blog, or the stories I’ll try to tell. It will be on comments people will make and on the relations that will arise from them. Spirituality is all pervading, as long as we choose it to be. As long as we choose to see!