The Academy of European Arts and Culture

Monday, July 29, 2013

Plato: ...How can the teaching of wisdom leave this trail of evil and bloodshed?

Socrates: The truth is drastic medicine. Those who haven't good digestion it destroys.

Plato: But before it does, they destroy thousands more.

Socrates: Does not the sun wither as well as warm? What is already dry is burned, what moist, grows. This is the law of it.

from "Hellas" by Rodney Collin

Watching

John William Waterhouse

Watching...

what happens when I say yes to what is so very close,

so clear... and so filled with beauty...

just being with it...

letting the longing to be here...rest easy and just be.

Deep deep peace... and deeper still.

Such love here..

the soul is love.

Amazing how the creature wishes for such strange things
and won't see what is... already...
just waiting to be recognized, remembered...

the noise falls away...

The fullness within answers all the questions.

Saturday, July 27, 2013

To Give

Gustave Doré

The work is to give, to give in proportion to what one has, to give in proportion to what one understands. As an isolated cell, one can give nothing because on has nothing. As a cell incorporated in a higher organism one can give all one wants to, certain that whatever one gives, one will recuperate from the unlimited reserve of the whole.

~Rodney Collin

Words

Paul Cezanne

So many times as I read your words, my heart stretches... melts... Love enters... the connection with God becomes deeper.

I feel them as vibrations in my heart... what speaks to one speaks to many...
The feelings that generate the words can be felt in whom is reading them and if they were written in moments of pure Love they manifest as Love, they open the heart, and they can heal...

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Remembering Our Truth

School of Rembrandt

What are we doing when we divide attention and when we attempt to self remember? We are trying to come closer to the energy of our Source. In Divided Attention, we are trying to set up the conditions for it and in self remembering we are realizing the experience, even though briefly. In our hardened physical form we have forgotten that we are primarily and essentially a part of one vast energy field.

With divided attention, we, with great attention bring in multiple senses to consciously experience our environment. We see sharply an object or objects in the room, the play of light on them; we hear the whirring of the refrigerator in the corner; we hear the sounds outside – the passing car, the crickets; we feel our feet on the ground; we are aware of our passing thoughts but not attached to them; we feel the beating of the heart; and soon we may feel a subtle energy running through our body. It is as if we were managing to penetrate our physical selves outwardly and inwardly to… to transform our physical limitations into something more palpable for the Gods…. Something that more closely matches the energy of Source, so that it can reach us. We may then receive the gift of Remembering.

~Mervyn J. Brady

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Impressions Octave

William Blake

..it is the ‘state of love’ that must be brought to the impression. By this I do not mean romantic love or even sexual love – in fact at this point neither of these will do it. It must be ‘the state of love’ or ‘the love state’. Love something! Remember the face of a loved one, love a dog, a child, a chicken, something.. But stimulate the ‘state of love’.

This will take the impression much higher – it will penetrate the soul. This is when higher states are reached.

~Mervyn J. Brady

Interesting how we struggle

Arkhip Kuindzhi

Interesting how we struggle with achieving soul love, yet it is a beautiful life long pursuit.

It is a state of being a part of the oneness where you are accepted and where you accept, where you are loved and where you love, and where you feel connected to the greater whole of which you are always a part. We can't escape it, just a choice if we choose to participate. We are always welcome to play in this wonderful place, but interesting how many times we choose to not bask in the most beautiful place we can exist.

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Beauty and Truth

Nicolas Regnier

Music through our emotional center acts quickly and directly to feed our inner world. Hydrogens amplify the impression and the soul expands in its being. Beauty and truth are all the soul needs to be nurtured.

...so close and familiar

One night I went out and looked at the stars, they are very bright
there in the country. What struck me was that it felt like my home
and suddenly so close and familiar. I knew I was able to partake
of it any place in the world, it was real in the purest sense I have
ever experienced.

Saturday, July 20, 2013

His Face

Francisco Goya

His face changed again and I was sure I was looking at a
Monk with a large brown Habit.

He spoke to me although I am sure his lips did not move,

but I DID hear him:
"I have been waiting a long time to meet you.

And now you have arrived.

Of course I would Know when you came here”

I was filled with a huge Love that became almost unbearable and I
thought I would faint.

One thing I knew was I always wanted to remain like this and never leave again.

Friday, July 19, 2013

Conscious?

Odilon Redon

So what of this conscious "Thing" then, what is it? My advice is to
look inside yourself, not me. Try and Remember Yourself and look
around the room, are you different now?? If you can keep doing
this, and loaf there all day, you will enter a most wondrous world.
One where thought decreases in volume, where a thousand images
that you have known about will now be "Felt" and "Experienced"
in a most refreshing new way.

But if you can't. If all you can manage is at most a few minutes,
before the Big machine retakes its place, then, how can you verify me?

~Mervyn J. Brady

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Entered into a place...

Remidios Varo

I feel like I have entered into a place where time enters not. Where what previously existed as fragmented memories first reveal themselves to be important moments, and then with the help of some miracle of grace, become one unified existence. My machine would like to stay unaware of the beauty of the miracle, but somehow I have been let into a secret chamber where everything becomes one.

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Lost and Found

Jacopo Tintoretto

My experience is when people feel they are "Losing Themselves"

they are in fact "Finding Themselves".

The Soul is not the body. It is a completely different entity.

Remember you are not the thoughts but what is observing then.

~Mervyn J. Brady

Monday, July 15, 2013

One Thing

Rembrandt

As complex and interesting as the system is however, a student's
work begins with one thing. And that is the aim to be present.
Because if one is 'not here', then where are you? To hold fast,
to BE or not to BE. This must become our aim above all. To
remember our selves, our souls, in the moment. Even if the
moment is difficult. To learn how to hold a state of presence
even when the machine is tending toward self pity, buffering,
'protecting' its position.

There are many Saints and enlightened men and women that
have written and created works of art or music that describe
the journey. In the Academy we are fortunate enough to have
been given the understanding to unlock these great works so
that they may help and guide us on our own paths.

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Sincere Experiment

Sandro Botticelli

Really every sincere experiment is wonderful, if one does not stop in the middle, but carries it through to the point where it attracts inspiration and high help. Everybody has to find their way to this point individually. Everybody has to find their own way, their own understanding, their alert conscience. They have to accept by themselves for themselves what self-remembering means for them.

~Rodney Collin

Saturday, July 13, 2013

Sacred

Titian

When people have a Magnetic Centre and they find a "Way" they become very emotional and begin to work on themselves and may find a Group of people working on themselves, BUT this is not Sacred, this is the machine and the inner world beginning their little sparring matches and thrust and probe jabs at each other...

Sacred is when this battle becomes acknowledged by something higher and something higher injects something into the affray. Just as a man and a woman may say they are in Love. They are not. Love has visited them. Love was not either of them but was what their respective presences attracted.

 ~Mervyn J. Brady


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Friday, July 12, 2013

The Struggle

Rembrandt

There never was a struggle or a battle which required great valor...

than that in which a man forgets or denies himself.

~Meister Eckhart

Thursday, July 11, 2013

To Love

Edward Burne Jones

To Love is higher than to be loved. We ave a fountain which, if opened, pours out of us. We are at our highest when we truly love, not when we only take.

The devil is really your body - the other side of you. In the desert God said to the devil - Get behind me - which means the soul is first, not the body.

~Mervyn J. Brady

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

The Mystical Ladder ~ Journey Into Awakening

An Evening With International Speaker on Mysticism and Consciousness, Caroline O’reilly

Wednesday, July 10, 2013 ~ 8p.m.-10p.m.
$10 Advance RSVP ~ $15 at the door

Shanti Shala Yoga
3507 Effie Street , Los Angeles, CA

RSVP:
866.312.7922

Pre Pay Via PayPal: academyus@gmail.com

In this talk, Caroline will talk about Love, Mysticism and the steps we take to understand our relationship with our own Soul, and the gift of one another. Through the use of artistic masterpieces she will explore the radiant beauty and wisdom that so often speaks through art, reminding us of the stairways within our beings shining the way home.

Monday, July 8, 2013

And here I am...

Johannes Vermeer

I am here on the computer, a swarm of i's telling me how there are so many octaves I need to finish and the day is passing, and my Soul just wants to share this moment with me, this pedestrian moment. But it's only unimportant to my machine; my Soul is watching for any open space, wanting to be a part of every unguarded moment. Why would I deny this - I should welcome every thought that reminds me to invite my Soul.

And here I am. I am the late afternoon sunlight on the trees, I am the leaves nuzzling the wind, I am the sound of cars streaming by... I can breathe the closing day, I can touch the terrain of this moment... everything I love, all that I am, crashes through my veins... I am this body... but I am so much more.

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Desire

Carl Wilhelm Friederich Oesterle

The little desires are connected to and call forth the bigger ones. Longing for chocolate might be a small desire that resides in the larger one that yearns for the sweet life. And so every desire is worth paying attention to, even though we know if we track it far enough, we will discover that this longing will never cease....that full, bittersweet, empty feeling is like incense in a church - it announces the presence of God.

But it is also that path toward that extreme of desire, that ultimate love that usually feels unrequited, which is the eternal and the infinite. The opening made by desire, that hole in our satisfaction, is the opening to divinity, and only there is our desire brought into the realm of the possible.

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Tongue of Flame

Gustave Doré

The Holy Spirit appeared as a tongue of flame over the head of each apostle. He hovers like a flame over each one of us. When we are positive we reach up and connect ourselves with the flame, and it's light shines through us.

~Rodney Collin

Friday, July 5, 2013

Modern Society...

Hieronymus Bosch

Modern society feeds of the anxieties and depressions it creates and trains us all in, and carefully nurtures us with a consumer machine designed to develop greed in us all to keep going. It creates an impregnable environment of addiction to material things and ridicules the spiritual.

Obsessed then, with false hopes dreams and ambitions we are like people crawling in the desert, dying of thirst and all modern society does is give us a cup of salt water to make us even thirstier.

Simplicity has to be the key to happiness for life in this modern world.

We are terrified of letting go, terrified of living since learning to live is learning to let go.

Let go. Let go. Let go or you will hurt.

Do not grasp at the ungraspable. Let go, you will not fall.

Mervyn J. Brady

Thursday, July 4, 2013

Two Into One

Willaim Blake

When you make the two into one,

when you make the inner like the outer
and the outer like the inner,
and the upper like the lower,
when you make male and female into a single one,
so that the male will not be male
and the female will not be female,
when you make eyes replacing an eye,
a hand replacing a hand,
a foot replacing a foot,
and an image replacing an image,
then you will enter the kingdom.

~Gospel of Thomas