“Open Wings” | Anthony Satori
“Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows them.”
– Herman Melville
Beauty and Harmony
nature
The Sage’s Mind
“Ocean Cave” | Anthony Satori
“The ten thousand things are insufficient to distract the sage’s mind – that is the reason he is still. In the midst of darkness, he alone sees the dawn. In the midst of soundlessness, he alone hears harmony.”
– Lao Tzu
Between Eternities
“California Poppies in Spring” | Anthony Satori
“A positive and cheerful state of mind is a direct and immediate gain – the very currency, as it were, of happiness. It is not, like all else, merely a cheque upon the bank. For it alone makes us immediately happy in the present moment, and that is the highest blessing for beings like us, whose existence is but an infinitesimal moment between two eternities.”
– Arthur Schopenhauer
Every spring, when I see the California poppies bloom, it fills my heart with warmth. It reminds me that love exists outside of time and space. It reminds me that every single day of this brief lifetime – this exquisite and most precious moment between eternities that we’ve been given – is an opportunity for us to manifest our inner light, to engage in acts of compassion, kindness, goodness, and love, and to expand our enlightened mind.
These beautiful, vibrantly orange-colored flowers bloom every spring, and then disappear. But the sensations that they awaken within me remain vividly present, all year around. I truly believe that love – real love – once created, can never be destroyed. And joy, indeed, is the infallible sign of the presence of God. And every time we engage from a pure heart with the Spirit of Light and Love within us, we touch eternity.
The Mind of God
“Vibrations” | Anthony Satori
“In string theory, all particles are vibrations on a tiny rubber band; physics is the harmonies on the string; chemistry is the melodies we play on vibrating strings; the universe is a symphony of strings, and the ‘Mind of God’ is cosmic music resonating in 11-dimensional hyperspace.”
– Michio Kaku
Simple Harmony
“Walden Pond in Spring” | Anthony Satori
“But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?”
– Albert Camus
The Pace of Nature
“The Pace of Nature” | Anthony Satori
“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Lightning Bolt
“Lightning Bolt” | Anthony Satori
“I have found that if you love life, life will love you back.”
– Arthur Rubinstein
The Flowering of Our Humanity
“Pink Rose” | Anthony Satori
“One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life, and dedicate ourselves to that.”
– Joseph Campbell
Elevate Your Mind
“Seek Light” | Anthony Satori
“Artists are here to disturb the peace.”
– Madonna
I disagree.
Artists are not here to disturb the peace. Quite to the contrary, artists are here to point the way to something better, something higher. Artists are here to illuminate universal goodness, beauty, and truth. Artists are here to connect our minds and spirits by shining a light on shared human values, virtues, and meaning. To put it most succinctly, artists are here to elevate consciousness. And this, it seems to me, is quite the opposite of “disturbing the peace.”
It’s true, sometimes the expansion of consciousness can be disorienting in its exhilaration. It can have the side effect of shaking up the status quo, of waking us up from the hypnosis of complacency. But this is not the primary goal of art. It is not even its primary side effect. And if we mistake this secondary side effect for the actual purpose of art, we will miss it entirely. If we proceed under this misapprehension – especially if artists themselves engage in this folly – we will miss out on one of the most sacred and pure paths to enlightenment and enrichment that we, as humans, have available to us.
Other potential sources have failed us in this pursuit, time and time again. Religion, politics, media, education – each have failed us disastrously in this measure, at some point or another, often in what seems to be nothing less than orchestrated concert. And when we find ourselves in this state of affairs, art remains the last and best refuge of enlightenment. And when artists fail to live up to this ideal – when they fail to even recognize it – society suffers greatly.
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“Humanistic scholars and artists used to be, and were supposed to be, as a group, carriers of and teachers of the eternal verities and the higher life. The goal of humanistic studies was… to inspire the student to the better life, to the higher life, to goodness and virtue. But in recent years and to this day, most humanistic scholars and artists have shared in the general collapse of all traditional values. And when these values collapse, there are no others readily available as replacements.”
– A. H. Maslow
A Single and Eternal Flow of Energy
“Lightning Storm” –|– Anthony Satori
“The sensation of ‘I’ as a lonely and isolated center of being is so powerful and common-sensical, and so fundamental to our modes of speech and thought… that we cannot help but experience selfhood except as something superficial in the scheme of the universe. I seem to be a brief light that flashes but once in all the aeons of time – a rare, complicated, and all-too-delicate organism on the fringe of biological evolution, where the wave of life bursts into individual, sparkling, and multi-colored drops that gleam for a moment only to vanish forever. Under such conditioning, it seems impossible and even absurd to realize that my ‘self’ does not reside in the drop alone, but in the whole surge of energy which ranges from the galaxies to the nuclear fields in my body. At this level of existence… my forms are infinite, and their comings and goings are simply the pulses or vibrations of a single and eternal flow of energy.”
– Alan Watts
Satori Circle | Art & Culture 