Living the Question Blog - Paul Reynolds Kauai » artist

A Good Traveler

Paul Reynolds — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 06:30:15 +0000

Reading at Yoga House Kapaa – 7/01/2010

A good traveler has no fixed plans
and is not intent upon arriving.
A good artist lets his intuition
lead him wherever it wants.
A good scientist has freed himself of concepts
and keeps his mind open to what is.
Thus the master is available to all people
and doesn’t reject anyone.
He is ready to use all situations
and doesn’t waste anything.
This is called embodying the light.
What is a good man but a bad man’s teacher?
What is a bad man but a good man’s job?
If you don’t understand this, you will get lost,
however intelligent you are.
It is the great secret.

Lao Tzu – Tao Te Ching – Chapter 27. circa 500BC

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Are You Ready?

Paul Reynolds — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 22:28:02 +0000

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No Artist is Pleased

Paul Reynolds — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 18:15:27 +0000

Reading at Anara Spa 10/05/2007

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.
And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine
How good it is
Nor how valuable it is;
Nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.
You do not even have o believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate YOU.
Keep the channel open…
No artist is pleased…
There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others

Martha Graham to Agnes Demille

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You are an artist

Paul Reynolds — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 05:25:00 +0000

You are an artist---by Paul Reynolds

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The Summer Day

Paul Reynolds — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 06:15:32 +0000

Reading at Koloa practice 07/02/09

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean–
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down,
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

— Mary Oliver

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What is an artist?

Paul Reynolds — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 19:36:59 +0000

Imagine if you will a ‘few’ thousand years ago and a group of yogis are sitting around in a glade near the Holy Ganges talking it up on the shape of the world, and their chakras and the “Why-are-we-here?” and “Who-am –I?” questions that we still explore to this day. They begin to stir from their seated postures. First an arm perhaps, a leg instinctively extends to remove the stiffness of their seated duration.

“Look my fellows what happens when you do this!” remarks Gupta – “look what I did with my leg! And you know I feel more blood flow there, more energy and truly this leg is much more at ease….”

“Oh I did that last week but I added this to it” remarked his friend Salil as he drew in his other leg and reached his arms out to his extended foot to what we now know as the half-seated forward fold; janu-sirsana. And what’s more, much of my endless worrying has seemed to have become more quiet in my head. I can sit for much longer periods of time!”

“Well,” remarks a third companion “rumor has it that just a league down-river, brother Gorankth has been given a whole bunch of these,’asana’ I think he calls them, and he claims that they were passed down to him by the Lord Shiva himself! Imagine! And not only that, he says he now is able to sit in meditation for days on end!“

“The nerve!” countered Gupta! “I’ll wager that he has nothing like what we have discovered here!– in fact I think if we work on this a little more we can create and discover many more “asana” than he did! Grab some of those palm leaves over there and let’s jot this down before we forget.” “Go ahead Salil, do that one again but this time reach your arm around you back, roll your shoulder back and hold onto your right, no left toe… now what do you feel?? Uh- huh… I see… interesting…okay, now let’s try….”

And so it went for days-on-end before our three yogis took their show ‘on the road’.

Please forgive if I have stepped on sacred toes here, maybe it didn’t happen quite this way. Perhaps it was “divine intervention” or a holy gift from one deity or another that brought us the forms we know today and call “hatha yoga”.

But it appears just as in any art form whether it be dance, the visual arts, music, the culinary arts, that the imagination/divine inspiration (I have yet to find a demarcation between the two) is certainly an active “force” behind their developments. Growth in what ever sensual avenue and tool we have available to us a human beings requires it..

The artist, an archetype of the creative soul is a useful icon as we develop in our practice of hatha yoga. Indeed as we develop in our practice of….Life. We are all artists that make use of an unlimited array of “mixed media”. The pigments, in this case, the practice of hatha yoga.

“….. No artist is pleased . There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction…”
Martha Graham

Enjoy your ability to create! Never doubt for a moment that you are not capable. It is our birthright to build on the imagination that set us upon theses paths and prepares the groundwork for inspirations yet to come.

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Living the Question Blog - Paul Reynolds Kauai » artist

A Good Traveler

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