Imagination is key for living in the 21st century

The Magazine of Yoga editor, Susan Maier-Moul interviews Hari Kirin Kaur Khalsa and Thomas Moore in "Conversation: Hari Kirin and Thomas Moore": "Chakras and Soul — The authors of Art & Yoga and Care of the Soul talk about imagination, making spiritual art in the 21st century and translating the original Christian gospels."

Husband and wife talk about imagination, humanity, reality, art, and the Gospel message. Hari Kirin answers a question about sentimentalism and fundamentalism in art.

"Hari Kirin: Any kind of duality – you’ll notice it lacks humor or has a fundamental “I’m right” point of view. It’s sentimental because it only acknowledges part of reality. In yoga and art, always try to include the opposite. Make something, and un-make it. Doing and not doing. Knowing and not knowing. Wisdom and foolishness. effort and effortlessness. Perfect and imperfect. Both sentimentality and fundamentalism are defenses against being ourselves."

Moore responds to a question about the meaning of the Gospel texts without an overlay of earlier translations.

"Thomas: I see a challenging spirituality and a radical suggestion of how humanity could thrive and prosper mainly by dealing with greed and self-interest. The Gospels say that everyone should be a healer and operate from a therapeutic frame of mind. The Greek word therapeia (therapy, of course) comes up again and again. I’ve thought a lot about this notion of sentimentality. I see it as a defense against the challenge of life. If you make something unnaturally sweet, you don’t have to change your life. You can remain numb. Yet we don’t have to be cold and only realistic either. The Gospels inspire and waken the imagination to possibilities. Yes, I’d like to move from sentimentality to inspiration."

This conversation continues in the magazine tomorrow. Part Two, about religion and science is available.

New book unites soul and spirit in everyday life

Thomas Moore writes the foreword to Hari Kirin Kaur Khalsa's Art and Yoga: Kundalini Awakening in Everyday Life, published by Kundalini Research Institute, to be available Summer, 2011. His foreword includes:

"Artists are genuine creators, giving us bodies and landscapes and objects. They populate our imaginations with figures that live as presences in our lives that affect us and instruct us. The soul is hungry for images and, in fact, lives on them the way we live on food. We can never have enough images...

I’ve been waiting for this book for a long time. It represents a shift that I hope will become more evident as our new century progresses: a shift from separating matters of soul and spirit — images and practice, the poetic and the well defined, the intuitive and the carefully reasoned — to uniting them... When soul and spirit come together, there is a great healing. These two dimensions, like yin and yang, are the building blocks, the essential dynamics, in everything that is tangible and alive."

Scroll down this linked page to read a brief excerpt from the introduction. Moore and his wife, Hari Kirin, offer From Religion to Spirituality as a weekend program at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, 25-27 March 2011.

Moore describes a better future in contribution

100 Words: Two Hundred Visionaries Share Their Hope for the Future is a compilation of insights to make our world better. William Murtha asks contributors, "In 100 words, please share empowering stories and thoughts that best encapsulate your insight, wisdom and feelings on how we can move towards a more just, fulfilling, and peaceful world." He follows with, "What five books, poems or songs have most inspired both your life and your vocation?" Thomas Moore responds in this collection. This book is on Facebook and Google Books. According to Amazon's preview, kindly provided by Barque member, Swingdancer Ken, Moore's entry reads:

"Thomas Moore: We are slowly heading toward a future when war will seem unthinkable, illness will be understood as an affliction of the soul and spirit as well as the body, and education will be based in joy rather than punishment.

Our most important challenge now is to embrace our full sexuality and dedicate ourselves to art, dream, beauty, and sensual delights. As people, we are not made up of brain cells and genes; we are bodies ensouled, created for the entertainment of ideas and sensations.

Five Books that have Most Shaped Moore's Vision:
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Shunryu Suzuki
Re-Visioning Psychology, James Hillman
The Book of Life, Marsilio Ficino
Memories, Dreams, Reflections, C. G. Jung
Letters of Emily Dickinson

Who Is Thomas Moore?
Thomas Moore has been a monk, a musician, a professor of religion, a psychotherapist, and a full-time writer and lecturer. His most well-known book is Care of the Soul. Today he fits no categories of belief or affiliation, religious or professional, but his work breathes with the spirit of Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Blake, and William Morris.

100 Words: Two Hundred Visionaries Share Their Hope for the Future
Compiled by William Murtha 
Paperback: 432 pages
Publisher: Conari Press
Date: May 1, 2010
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1573244732
ISBN-13: 978-1573244732