When I began practicing meditation I was a trainee furniture maker. I failed to get a decent furniture making job and I found myself as a kitchen hand in a local winery. The previous year at school I enjoyed all creative subjects and no mathematical, language or science subjects. Painting, printmaking, workshop, technical drawing and music. I enjoyed washing dishes in the busy kitchen.

My meditation was the very thing that I was looking for. I learnt the path of the heart. To meditate on the heart. To live from the heart and not the mind. To silence the mind so that our hearts inner beauty and fragrance can grow and blossom.

I discovered that as a child naturally lives from the heart so too can I  if I meditate on my heart. That is a more natural way that we can exist. From the heart and not the mind. The mind quite often judges, analyses and criticizes while the heart is naturally peaceful, harmonious and self-giving.

I noticed this reality more and more as my spiritual journey continued. I noticed the natural beauty of God's creation. Things that are created without the mind.

Leaves that fall naturally and lay gently on the green grass, beautiful rolling clouds bursting forth as the light catches the fringe. Things spontaneous, things formed without thought. Even footprints in the mud form a beautiful texture that nobody tried to create. It just forms naturally.

This passion for things natural and love for all things beautiful I carried to my old workplace. The winery. In my case, the kitchen sink! It may be hard to believe but I used to love the various colours and texture formed in my sink as the water got dirty. I did not try to create anything, it just formed naturally.

I dreamed of making a series of photographs of the sink as it was on various occasions. I never did.

Looking back I find it amusing but at the same time I can see it was a small stepping stone for the hearts journey of self discovery.

"Why do you have to suffer
In the stormy winter of the mind?
Just take a permanent vacation
In the sunny tropics of the heart."
~ Sri Chinmoy.

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