Art Classes – ” Grow your Soul with Pencil Magic” are currently happening online every Friday morning at 10:30 am pt here – http://www.justin.tv/gorebaggtv

How is this bardo training? That varies who it participating. In a way, doing Art is a sneaky way to get someone meditating, and to speak with Kurt Vonnegut (please see posted letter at the end) – we are growing our soul. Meditation does have a profound effect on your brain and states of consciousness.

Working deeply with animals and Nature can awaken a part of your soul. Doing art awakens another. Almost anything can work as a tool for transformation, a tool for awakening – we just happen to be doing this one at the moment.

In all honesty, the “class” part tends to happen at the beginning of the segments, then it is practicing together – shading, scribbles, figure and ground to start with. This practicing together, the participation and willingness to engage and stay with the process – also is bardo training – building essential qualities and habits.

Lately I have come to this: the only real purpose is to wake up and live life from that place. Having become a harmonious human being is a good thing to be able to actually live life according to your highest knowing, but not a prerequisite to awakening. To even begin to intuit for real, to start to see that is IS a dream – to really get the oneness of it all – leaves one speechless.

In any case , you are invited to join, to participate -and to grow your soul a little more. We would love to see you and  the classes are free.

 

Here is a link to the series which is the foundation for this class: Draw Good Now

A Fun video from the house and tree class

In 2006, a group of students at Xavier High School in New York City were given an assignment by their English teacher, Ms. Lockwood, that was to test their persuasive writing skills: they were asked to write to their favorite author and ask him or her to visit the school. Some of the students chose

Kurt Vonnegut. He was the only one to reply – and it is an inspiring letter. He died  April 11, 2007. With much gratitude to all involved, there is the text:

November 5, 2006

“Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:

I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.

Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!”

Kurt Vonnegut