Saturday, February 18, 2012
U.S. Used Nazi Salute During Pledge Of Allegiance Before WWII
Today's Forgotten History: Americans used to salute the flag during the Pledge of Allegiance until 1942, when Congress banned the practice because it was too similar to the salutes used by Nazi's and fascists during WWII.The salute was called the Bellamy salute, created by Francis Bellamy, who also created the Pledge of Allegiance. When the practice was banned in 1942, it was replaced by the hand over the heart gesture still in practice today.Below is a picture of U.S. school children saluting the flag while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Art
By Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, England.
What is “art”?
At its most deep and basic level, art is expression.
Everything is art.
We are surrounded by art:
the way we talk; the way we eat; the way we smile;
The way we hate; the way we love; the way we work; the way we dream.
The way we act is simply an expression of what we are, or what we have let
ourselves become. And in this sense, life is art.
Art, as a creative process, is often a
Conscious expression of an idea, a theme, an emotion, a perception.
Every move we make is art,
Conscious or unconscious.
The world we have all contributed to sculpting,
Which, in turn, sculpts us,
Is art, a reflection of the collective labyrinth of our hearts.
Art is about bringing out what is within,
A process of manifestation,
Since manifestation is the primary essence of expression.
Art is therefore the endeavour to know oneself,
To bring out what lies within, and to perceive it, to understand it.
In expressing a perception, a feeling, an idea,
One is portraying what is within oneself,
What one grasps with one’s consciousness,
To what is without oneself and within the “other”;
One is communicating, bridging the gap between hearts,
Dissolving separation.
Art is a striving towards a certain harmony between all beings,
towards unity.
Art is the endeavour to become one with oneself,
To understand oneself,
By contemplating what is brought forth out of oneself in the creative process;
It is the endeavour to become one with others,
In the act of conveying to the heart of others,
What one’s own heart comprehends;
It is the endeavour for self-realisation,
And realisation of the unity of all hearts.
Art is a striving against that which separates and deludes,
A movement towards the attainment of the knowledge
That division and conflict are the overflow of illusion.
The perfection of art is the erosion of illusion
And the evolution of a pristine, unitary vision of life and reality.
The true artist is one who,
Perhaps unwittingly,
Is attempting to grind away the barriers of self-deceit within the soul,
To topple the walls of misunderstanding that divide all souls.
The true artist is one who,
Whether they know it or not,
Aims to dissolve all such fragmentation,
To heal the wounds scattered within and without,
To bring us to an unadulterated clarity,
A pristine awareness of the deep relationship
Which is the Root and Sky of all things.
The true artist is not merely one who paints,
Who composes songs,
Who sculpts,
Who writes poetry or prose,
But is someone who starkly perceives the fragmentation of their own being,
Of society,
And who, through art,
Seeks to draw their being - and all beings - together,
In the name of achieving the vision of Truth.
The true artist is one
Who carries the endeavour for the perfection of art
Into all spheres of life,
For it is only upon the vast canvas of Life Itself
That art can reach its fullest possible perfection,
That unity can have its fullest possible expression.
The perfection of the art of living,
Which embraces, transcends and includes all modes of art,
Is the goal of the true artist.
Real art lies not in painting,
Not in writing,
Not in singing,
But in living,
For it is only in living that life has its purest and most meaningful
expression.
Thus, the deepest and most crucial question
The artist must constantly seek insight into
Is that which asks,
“What is the meaning, the purpose, the reality,
That life itself is supposed to express,
What is the supreme ineffable mystery that alone is worthy of expression?”
It is a meaning that overflows from the Supreme Unity
Which embraces all things,
That the true artist intuitively seeks to unveil.
The artist is contantly searching for insight into this,
Not merely in the various modes of art recognised by a culture,
But in life itself,
For it is the perfection of living that is true art.
Art is the endeavour for love:
For in striving to know oneself, to know the other,
To reveal oneself to oneself, to reveal oneself to the other,
In striving to unite all
In the apprehension of what is within and without,
One is striving to give expression to the relationship,
The Compassion, the Majesty, the Beauty,
Which is the Root and Sky of all things.
A work of art reflects,
In some way,
The artist who worked it.
In any creative act there is a symbol of some dimension of the artist’s being.
Any expression is a manifestation of a living depth that yearns to be known.
Art is an expression of the yearning to be known and to know.
Art is the recognition that only in relationship are we real as individuals.
Art is the realisation that reality is perfect relationship, endless
compassion, all-embracing Unity.
We are all unconscious artists,
Carving our lives brutally in the sensitive flesh of Nature.
We should learn not to carve, but to flow with the secret song of Truth
That guides the Universe we are so divorced from.
We wonder why life can be so brutal,
But is it not sheer ignorance of the sovereignty of harmony,
That guides our driven fingers to contruct this wasteland of egoism we call
“life”?
Reality repays humanity with what humanity itself strives to be.
Who is to blame for unnoticed injustice and corruption,
Except the lame artist
Who paints, who sings, who writes,
Who works, rests and plays
Without knowing why?
Who is to blame for ignorance, suffering and disharmony,
Except the divided humanity that knows not what it means to be human?
Who would deny the reality of the pain of those without shelter?
Those whose stomachs bulge in malnutrition?
Those whose hearts ache in hopelessness?
Those who are poverty-stricken?
Starving?
Thirsty?
Bereaved?
Orphaned?
Oppressed?
Those who are the victims of a sick system?
Those who surround us, yet remain invisible?
Is it not the blind artist of humanity, that maims its Mother,
That maims itself, in the name of fun, pleasure and power,
That cuts at its own body,
Deaf to its own howls of torment, horror and despair?
Blind to the blood that streams down our stricken cheeks,
Deaf to our cries that yearn for mercy and hope,
Dumb because the intoxicated drug-soaked sponge of our consciousness
Keeps us ignorant of the truth,
Drunk, uncoordinated, incoherent.
And when Truth chooses to awaken this “artist”,
And surely It shall,
What will stop us from beholding the Beauty, the Majesty, of Truth Itself,
What will prevent us from trembling in terror
At the realisation of our pettiness, our blindness,
What will halt us on our reckoning with Justice,
With our own wounds, our own scars, our own insanity?
For life is but a dream on the way to death,
And death, an awakening unto the reality of life.
Nature is the work of the
Ultimate Artist,
All things dance to Its secret melody
Of harmony, wisdom and peace.
And we are Its vicegerents,
Come to paint the only picture worth painting.
But so far have we fallen
From Truth’s sweet embrace,
So low have we become
Compared to the height of love’s glory.
Die before ye die:
Awaken to reality from the dream of your life,
Before death rips open your eyelids
And you can do nothing but behold the Truth
Of Love and Justice
That shows you what you are
And what you have become.
What have we made of life?
For us, life is a dream that we weave for ourselves
In a haze of ignorant assumption.
Life is a labyrinth of need and desire,
Of pain and pleasure,
Of work and play,
So predictable in its small pointless surprises.
So many things have we invented to pass the time,
So many goals, so many amusements, so many tasks,
On the foundations of some ineffable drive to be.
(To be what? What does it mean to be?)
We know not the Aim
So we invent our own ones.
We know not the Path
So we tread where we like.
We are scattered about in our isolated dreams,
Tossed to and fro by tides of our own making.
The world we have sculpted is a manifestation of what we have become.
We are surrounded by a symbol of ourselves.
These ugly cities and trash-ridden slums,
These wasted villages and smoke-filled skies,
These heart-hungry bullets and blood-thirsty bombs,
These money-craving business men and war-torn nations,
These luxurious decadent elites and oppressed poverty-stricken masses,
Are but facets of the world
That is but a reflection of the hearts which sustain it.
We are swamped in the pointlessness of our own art,
Immersed in the relativity of our own values,
Caught in the web of our own confusion.
We are so ignorant and yet we do not even acknowledge
Our own ignorance.
The drug that soaks the sponge of our minds
Is our own global self-portrait, self-deceit.
We are blinded by our own reflection,
Bombarded by the emergent insanity of our collective vanity.
Our language, our culture, our politics, our economics, our ideals, our norms,
Express the fragmentation at the very core of our being.
Art without the spirit of its own nature -
To become awake -
Is but perversion and blindness.
True art,
Art that is true to itself
Is meditation,
Its goal being insight into oneself,
And mutual compassion.
A work of art is a window into the soul of the artist.
True art is a bridge between hearts,
A purging of the impurity of illusions that divide people.
Art is a resurrection of inner depth,
Inward plenitude,
An eruption of emotion,
Of intense tranquility,
A flower plucked from a land of forgotten dreams.
What is this land of forgotten dreams?
It is but the reality of our relationship,
Our unity as brothers, as sisters,
Our oneness
Through the Unity that embraces all things.
Art is remembrance.
Our art reflects what we become, and what we are devoted to.
But we are artists, who know not why.
We paint our history a schizophrenic portrait
Because we know not why, we know not how
And we do not care.
What is “art”?
At its most deep and basic level, art is expression.
Everything is art.
We are surrounded by art:
the way we talk; the way we eat; the way we smile;
The way we hate; the way we love; the way we work; the way we dream.
The way we act is simply an expression of what we are, or what we have let
ourselves become. And in this sense, life is art.
Art, as a creative process, is often a
Conscious expression of an idea, a theme, an emotion, a perception.
Every move we make is art,
Conscious or unconscious.
The world we have all contributed to sculpting,
Which, in turn, sculpts us,
Is art, a reflection of the collective labyrinth of our hearts.
Art is about bringing out what is within,
A process of manifestation,
Since manifestation is the primary essence of expression.
Art is therefore the endeavour to know oneself,
To bring out what lies within, and to perceive it, to understand it.
In expressing a perception, a feeling, an idea,
One is portraying what is within oneself,
What one grasps with one’s consciousness,
To what is without oneself and within the “other”;
One is communicating, bridging the gap between hearts,
Dissolving separation.
Art is a striving towards a certain harmony between all beings,
towards unity.
Art is the endeavour to become one with oneself,
To understand oneself,
By contemplating what is brought forth out of oneself in the creative process;
It is the endeavour to become one with others,
In the act of conveying to the heart of others,
What one’s own heart comprehends;
It is the endeavour for self-realisation,
And realisation of the unity of all hearts.
Art is a striving against that which separates and deludes,
A movement towards the attainment of the knowledge
That division and conflict are the overflow of illusion.
The perfection of art is the erosion of illusion
And the evolution of a pristine, unitary vision of life and reality.
The true artist is one who,
Perhaps unwittingly,
Is attempting to grind away the barriers of self-deceit within the soul,
To topple the walls of misunderstanding that divide all souls.
The true artist is one who,
Whether they know it or not,
Aims to dissolve all such fragmentation,
To heal the wounds scattered within and without,
To bring us to an unadulterated clarity,
A pristine awareness of the deep relationship
Which is the Root and Sky of all things.
The true artist is not merely one who paints,
Who composes songs,
Who sculpts,
Who writes poetry or prose,
But is someone who starkly perceives the fragmentation of their own being,
Of society,
And who, through art,
Seeks to draw their being - and all beings - together,
In the name of achieving the vision of Truth.
The true artist is one
Who carries the endeavour for the perfection of art
Into all spheres of life,
For it is only upon the vast canvas of Life Itself
That art can reach its fullest possible perfection,
That unity can have its fullest possible expression.
The perfection of the art of living,
Which embraces, transcends and includes all modes of art,
Is the goal of the true artist.
Real art lies not in painting,
Not in writing,
Not in singing,
But in living,
For it is only in living that life has its purest and most meaningful
expression.
Thus, the deepest and most crucial question
The artist must constantly seek insight into
Is that which asks,
“What is the meaning, the purpose, the reality,
That life itself is supposed to express,
What is the supreme ineffable mystery that alone is worthy of expression?”
It is a meaning that overflows from the Supreme Unity
Which embraces all things,
That the true artist intuitively seeks to unveil.
The artist is contantly searching for insight into this,
Not merely in the various modes of art recognised by a culture,
But in life itself,
For it is the perfection of living that is true art.
Art is the endeavour for love:
For in striving to know oneself, to know the other,
To reveal oneself to oneself, to reveal oneself to the other,
In striving to unite all
In the apprehension of what is within and without,
One is striving to give expression to the relationship,
The Compassion, the Majesty, the Beauty,
Which is the Root and Sky of all things.
A work of art reflects,
In some way,
The artist who worked it.
In any creative act there is a symbol of some dimension of the artist’s being.
Any expression is a manifestation of a living depth that yearns to be known.
Art is an expression of the yearning to be known and to know.
Art is the recognition that only in relationship are we real as individuals.
Art is the realisation that reality is perfect relationship, endless
compassion, all-embracing Unity.
We are all unconscious artists,
Carving our lives brutally in the sensitive flesh of Nature.
We should learn not to carve, but to flow with the secret song of Truth
That guides the Universe we are so divorced from.
We wonder why life can be so brutal,
But is it not sheer ignorance of the sovereignty of harmony,
That guides our driven fingers to contruct this wasteland of egoism we call
“life”?
Reality repays humanity with what humanity itself strives to be.
Who is to blame for unnoticed injustice and corruption,
Except the lame artist
Who paints, who sings, who writes,
Who works, rests and plays
Without knowing why?
Who is to blame for ignorance, suffering and disharmony,
Except the divided humanity that knows not what it means to be human?
Who would deny the reality of the pain of those without shelter?
Those whose stomachs bulge in malnutrition?
Those whose hearts ache in hopelessness?
Those who are poverty-stricken?
Starving?
Thirsty?
Bereaved?
Orphaned?
Oppressed?
Those who are the victims of a sick system?
Those who surround us, yet remain invisible?
Is it not the blind artist of humanity, that maims its Mother,
That maims itself, in the name of fun, pleasure and power,
That cuts at its own body,
Deaf to its own howls of torment, horror and despair?
Blind to the blood that streams down our stricken cheeks,
Deaf to our cries that yearn for mercy and hope,
Dumb because the intoxicated drug-soaked sponge of our consciousness
Keeps us ignorant of the truth,
Drunk, uncoordinated, incoherent.
And when Truth chooses to awaken this “artist”,
And surely It shall,
What will stop us from beholding the Beauty, the Majesty, of Truth Itself,
What will prevent us from trembling in terror
At the realisation of our pettiness, our blindness,
What will halt us on our reckoning with Justice,
With our own wounds, our own scars, our own insanity?
For life is but a dream on the way to death,
And death, an awakening unto the reality of life.
Nature is the work of the
Ultimate Artist,
All things dance to Its secret melody
Of harmony, wisdom and peace.
And we are Its vicegerents,
Come to paint the only picture worth painting.
But so far have we fallen
From Truth’s sweet embrace,
So low have we become
Compared to the height of love’s glory.
Die before ye die:
Awaken to reality from the dream of your life,
Before death rips open your eyelids
And you can do nothing but behold the Truth
Of Love and Justice
That shows you what you are
And what you have become.
What have we made of life?
For us, life is a dream that we weave for ourselves
In a haze of ignorant assumption.
Life is a labyrinth of need and desire,
Of pain and pleasure,
Of work and play,
So predictable in its small pointless surprises.
So many things have we invented to pass the time,
So many goals, so many amusements, so many tasks,
On the foundations of some ineffable drive to be.
(To be what? What does it mean to be?)
We know not the Aim
So we invent our own ones.
We know not the Path
So we tread where we like.
We are scattered about in our isolated dreams,
Tossed to and fro by tides of our own making.
The world we have sculpted is a manifestation of what we have become.
We are surrounded by a symbol of ourselves.
These ugly cities and trash-ridden slums,
These wasted villages and smoke-filled skies,
These heart-hungry bullets and blood-thirsty bombs,
These money-craving business men and war-torn nations,
These luxurious decadent elites and oppressed poverty-stricken masses,
Are but facets of the world
That is but a reflection of the hearts which sustain it.
We are swamped in the pointlessness of our own art,
Immersed in the relativity of our own values,
Caught in the web of our own confusion.
We are so ignorant and yet we do not even acknowledge
Our own ignorance.
The drug that soaks the sponge of our minds
Is our own global self-portrait, self-deceit.
We are blinded by our own reflection,
Bombarded by the emergent insanity of our collective vanity.
Our language, our culture, our politics, our economics, our ideals, our norms,
Express the fragmentation at the very core of our being.
Art without the spirit of its own nature -
To become awake -
Is but perversion and blindness.
True art,
Art that is true to itself
Is meditation,
Its goal being insight into oneself,
And mutual compassion.
A work of art is a window into the soul of the artist.
True art is a bridge between hearts,
A purging of the impurity of illusions that divide people.
Art is a resurrection of inner depth,
Inward plenitude,
An eruption of emotion,
Of intense tranquility,
A flower plucked from a land of forgotten dreams.
What is this land of forgotten dreams?
It is but the reality of our relationship,
Our unity as brothers, as sisters,
Our oneness
Through the Unity that embraces all things.
Art is remembrance.
Our art reflects what we become, and what we are devoted to.
But we are artists, who know not why.
We paint our history a schizophrenic portrait
Because we know not why, we know not how
And we do not care.
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