India is a land of contradictions.

Walking through a back alley in Delhi, on one side the wall is decorated with tiles bearing images of Gods, Goddesses and Deities. Turn my head the other way and I see children sorting through waste and shovelling it with their hands onto an enormous pile of rubbish.

This vast country, famous for its rich spiritual heritage, with its huge population, has an enormous waste problem.
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Illustration Friday is one of a multitude of projects on the web with the simple desire to unite minds across the globe and to share inspiration and creativity. In my eyes it is a simple example of how the web can be used to establish a worldwide family.

It is a very simple concept. Each Friday, a theme is given and anyone around the world can illustrate the topic and then submit a link to their illustration from the website.

Anyone is free to suggest a topic and any aspiring or established artist can interpret the theme.
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Stream of consciousness exercise:

London.
Strange place.
Or maybe it is because I have left the cosy cockles of my Manchester spiritual family behind.

Money, clothes, property.
He went to an Argentinian restaurant and ate a steak an inch thick, he boasts.
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Mind buzzes,
Fickle bee.
Flower to flower,
Drinking sap of memories
and humming of things to come.

When mind-mouth is open
Eye is closed.

When I is open
Mystery unfurls
Like new leaf
Studded with rain gems.

Voices hushed
Listening to colour,
Shapes,
Mystical whisper of Now.

Spiritual practices, such as meditation, have existed for thousands of years, yet it is still only a small percentage of the world’s population that choose to follow a spiritual discipline.

I am defining spiritual discipline here as the intuitional practice of meditation to develop the subtle layers of the mind rather than adherance to a religious faith - a popular phenomenon - because I see them as two entirely different things.
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