Archive for the ‘Spirituality’ Category
Form, Formlessness, and Life
This afternoon, after a short time, I closed my eyes while sitting in the hanging chair suspended from the eave of my house. My sleepy sleep deep mind rocked back and forth like a babe in a basinet and I could feel each rise and each dip so supremely deep that I might have been rocked to sleep, if even for a moment. Eventually tho I rose again and put the book back – Shambhala: Sacred Path of the Warrior by Chogyam Trungpa – in which was spoken of and I read of the act of recognizing and indentifying oneself through countless reference points – now I am doing this, now I am thinking this – and then the act of forgetting, losing oneself in that. And then, if we encase ourselves in a sea of I’s – how terribly lonely it gets! Because we have separated ourselves from everything at that point. Good food for thought and meditation. I find myself meditating on these things while making dinner, petting the kitty, working on whatever my work may be, while walking down the street, into a store, driving my car. I find myself considering – form is formlessness but formlessness is also form.
I read somewhere someone once – we’ll say a monk or a lama – saying that, while form as formlessness/emptiness is relatively easy to understand – the reverse, that formlessness becomes form, is sometimes much more difficult to fully realize. We can intellectualize these things – we often intellectualize- we know this or that – but until we have the direct experience of it, it’s sort of a useless tool. It’s like having a hammer and knowing completely and thoroughly how it works but til we use it – til we actually lift it and heft it’s weight and feel it’s balance and swing it do we see how one might use it. Until then, it does us no good what so ever. the same goes for various concepts of form, compassion, wisdom, awareness. It feels that the more i understand the nature of emptiness, the calmer I am, the more loving, the more compassionate, and the less prone to whims of this or that. I’ve gotten better at it for sure over the years. but still… I get into arguments. I hold back. I do this or that. To be the warrior is to be exposed, to be raw, and to know that nothing – nothing what so ever – can hurt you because there is nothing, ever, that can be hurt that is you. Or me. Or anything. And so we are simply 100% honest – with others and, most importantly, with ourselves.
The Multifaceted Diamond
Over the years I’ve encountered numerous philosophies and ways of being in the world. I’ve tried them on like outfits. Some fit okay but weren’t suitable for all occasions and had to be left behind. Others didn’t fit at all and, in their metaphorical stitching, were shoddily made, had too many loose threads and too many hidden pockets. I can’t deal with that sort of mess. Some have fit rather well – sexy when they need to be sexy, respectable when they need to be respectable, and secure, when they need to be secure. In essence, some have reflected deeper ways of being for me than others. Some have fit in far more circumstances than others.
One proverbial outfit that I have been drawn back to, time and again, is Buddhism. This isn’t to say that I identify as “a Buddhist”, just that it’s approach and philosophy – it’s way of looking at the world – has continually supported my growth and, at it’s core, it’s basic system of understand, has yet to have show any loose ends.
Of the vast tree that is Buddhism – a philosophy that has devolved into a religion as much as the teachings of Christ have branched out into a multi-headed beast – it is the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism that have been the most present in my life and, of that school, I’ve tended to appreciate the rather lucid and accessible writings of Chogyam Trungpa (as well as Pema Chodron, a student of his). There are various views and stories of Trungpa and I’ll leave that to you to ferret out. However, it is perhaps his association with the Beats, with Allen Ginsburg, with Naropa, with drinking and drugs and the psychedelic 60′s that allows him to bridge a cultural divide and the worlds of the ancient East with the new age West, entering into Western culture through the hippie doorway. The beats and poets and their entourages were seeking to get down to the core – away from the story, man, and just go with what was happening. Trungpa had an uncanny knack for writing and speaking very straight forwardly and stripping the story – the dogma, the religion – away from the philosophy. And I appreciate that.
Buddhism itself can be a very dogmatic religion full of curtseys and salutations and rules and restrictions. In this way, it isn’t any different than most other religions. Because of this, I can understand how those who are raised Buddhist gravitate toward Catholicism and vice versa.
I, myself, was raised a Catholic. Did I take to Catholic philosophy the way that I did to Buddhist understandings? Well, for me, it was tough to weed out the philosophy from a religion that states, in answer to the question of “Why?” that it’s because it’s in the Bible and because God said so. That is decidedly not philosophy. Later on, I came to understand the message that Jesus (or whoever that whole bit of the Bible was about as that is sometimes up for debate) had to share. His message of brotherhood and compassion and seeing God in all things, seeing the divine as the abundant core of all things, is very relevant and inspiring.
Ultimately, Christianity had a lot to say about this human family – how we should treat one another, how we should love and that we should do so because God is at the center of all things (according to the Gospel of Thomas) but, as a religion, it had very little to say regarding why it was difficult to do so sometimes other than the dogmatic devolvement into sin and guilt. Buddhism, on the other hand, deals a lot with why we have such a hard time being open and loving and compassionate in the world. It can be summed up in three words: attachment, indifference, and aversion. It is the dance between those things, and all the desires and stories and fears and beliefs that we associate with them, that makes it sometimes difficult to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, which is, ultimately, to love one another unconditionally and, in fact – love all things unconditionally: even this glass, the driveway, the lines on the street, my cell phone, the floor. Everything. Just let them be as they are. Instead, we have a belief in a separate ego identity and, because of this, create hierarchical system of likes and dislikes according to the whims of an illusion. Madness!
Religions are powerful because they speak to some of the deepest parts of ourselves: our desire for spiritual union, our loves, our fears, our projections. God is, for so many people, a great big projection of Parents, a safety net that makes people feel cared for. It gives them a sense of authority when they need to tell someone else what to do (well, God said so!). Or it’s just something to answer to that isn’t themselves. Granted, the UFO-heads have simply replaced the outward “God” with Aliens or Star Beings or whatever. Same with the 2012/Mayan Prophecy folks. One way or another it’s this superstition that something out there is going to come and save us or is watching over us or is something we will have to answer to that is the basis of most belief systems. The superstitiousness of religious thought pulls us away from the religions core philosophy. Religions become as powerful and huge as they are because there is, inside of them, core truths about human nature and they capitalize on this.
Buddhism, too, is not without it’s own superstitions, belief systems, and dogmas. However, the core of Buddhism, it’s answer to the question of “Why is it hard to love others openly at all times, including myself and all that surrounds me?” is what always drew me back. According to the various teachers I’ve met over the years, the answer is always the same: “Why? Well, because there is this belief in ‘ego’ and this attachment-aversion thing. You are skeptical? Good! Great! Tell you what, try it out, see how it works. If it doesn’t work, throw it out. If it does, keep at it.” And that was it.
“Why is it hard to love unconditionally?”
“Well, because we have attachments and the basest attachment of all is to the belief of a solid core ego-identity. As long as that belief is there then we will continue to fall. Whenever you can get through the ego, there is always this thing that remains and the best word we have to describe it is: compassionate wisdom.”
“Ah, well… how do i know what you are saying is true? After all, when I asked the priest that, he just said it was original sin, guilt, all that stuff.”
“Sit. Breathe. Focus on your breath. Do this for a long time. Then get back to me.
And sure enough! There it was! Burning endless compassionate love. Only after days of sitting did I uncover what had never been covered. That’s the only way I have to describe the underlying nature. To put it into words is to compartmentalize an experience. So we will move on.
The point is: we’ve been given inwards paths and outwards paths and they are all one path and it’s only how deeply we choose to self-identify and how much we are willing to let go that either ever hold us back.
I ran into my landlord the other day. He happened to be outside of my house, dealing with remodeling the back house. He’s a small (to my 5′ 11.5″) Asian fellow. To be perfectly honest, I don’t know from where: Japanese? Korean? Chinese? I confess ignorance. I think he’s Vietnamese. Southeast Asian, for sure. In any case, he wanted to chat a bit. He’s seen my art and likes it, has even told me he reads my blog sometimes and enjoys my writing. He might be reading this right now. Hi Edward!
He asked me about Violet, who he knows is studying philosophy, and that ignited a thought in his head about things he’d read about quantum physics. The gist of which, that he related to me, is that physicists have found that these minute particles – smaller than quarks – solidify when we go to measure them or predict them to be in a certain place but, at other times, simply go back to being waves. it is as if they solidify in response to our measuring tools and, at all other times, are simply energy waves. When we let everything be as it is, it is simply energy? Undefinable, unmeasurable, imperceivable: except when we choose to perceive it. Unquantifiable – except when we choose to quantify it.
This amazed him, he said. Not just because of it’s relevance to how we perceive the world but because of it’s relevance to the religious Buddhism that he grew up with. “I’d just thought it all was superstition – that life is just perception,” he said to me, “but now science is proving what these people had figured out many many years ago – that reality is a response to our perceptions.”
I laughed. It was true.
I confessed to him that I too had grown up with a superstitious religion – Catholicism – and only later in life did I come to appreciate the truths that were buried within it.
He laughed and said that I was perhaps smarter than I gave myself credit.
Fair enough! Can’t argue with that!
The thing is: so many of us get turned off by Religion and Superstition that we fail to see the truths that are embedded within these systems. I’m not suggesting you go out and get a Bible or a copy of the Dhammapada or the any other book. It’s just that the belief systems that last are the ones with a core Truth. And the truth is that which is the simplest, most sincere way of being. Why? Because those belief systems are the ones that are most attuned to self-preservation and living harmoniously with the world around themselves. If we create a healthy world around us, then we will live a healthy life and if we can figure out how to do so – all the better. Sadly, those core truths then get tampered with by humans whose sense of Self doesn’t extend any further than their own skin and, in greedy and manipulative ways, end up using these truths for their own self-aggrandizement: for controlling the masses, for money or power or lust or greed. It has happened to the teachings of Jesus, to the teachings of Buddha, to the teachings of Mohammed, and so on.
And yet, there is a line, a lineage, a train of thought, that has continued throughout time and has woven itself through art, science, music, literature, poetry, philosophy… A train of thought that has continued to evolve even as it’s left it’s own religious structures. It is a spiritual way of being and a sense of union that unites all things. It is only up to us to perceive it.
It is this:
I am you. You are Me. Which is to say:
One, all, everything, none, all at once, and not at all. We. Us. Now.
It is a voice which is projected and perceived through countless means: through paintings and poetry and song, through the work we do and the way we greet each other, through the lives we lead and the seeds we plant, through the plants we nurture and the hearts we fill. We repeat the story back to ourselves again and again and again simply because of the joy of doing so, of hearing so, of experiencing so and the ecstasy that happens when one more note is discovered in that endless endless song.
Yet, are we so enraptured by this story that we will destroy the earth while we listen to it, while we speak it, while we sing and dance and love and rejoice and hate and cry and mine and pillage and burn and trash?
Is that, too, part of the dance.
If it is all perception and the whole of reality freezes itself into whatever view I take of it: “the people need saving” or “the people are saved” or “the people are. period.” or “….” then who am I to do anything?
I can only live as I know how with my own sense of self-preservation. Why would I do unto others as I would have them do unto me? If I kill, I will be killed. If I steal, then I’ll be stolen from. If I love then, likely, I’ll be loved. If I feed, then I will be fed. And so on.
I seek to live a healthier, happier, more loving life because it helps you to do so as well. And, by helping you to do so, you will help me to do so. And we will live long. And prosper. That’s the goal. To live long and
Yet, when I die, when I close my eyes, for all I know: it’ll all be gone.
I identify as an artist and, as such, I love and seek beauty. For me, the most beautiful is the most loving, the most compassionate, the most joyful. I’ll never know those things if I don’t dredge up the dirt. I can only be the diamond if I have been the coal. I can only be the lotus if I have planted myself in the muck.
Muck is a perception. Coal, and our attachments and ideas around it, also just a perception. Diamonds, too. Life is simply endless becoming and endless is-ness.
I love the darkness as much as I love the light because I cannot see a difference between the two.
I am you. You are me.
You and I are one.
I wish you happiness.
I wish you freedom.
Endlessness.
Boundlessness.
One thing at a time.
And all at once.
Love.
The Spectre of Self-Doubt
Self-Doubt is a mask worn over the mask of Self-Destruction that is worn, ultimately, by Fear. Self-doubt: I-don’t-know-if-i’m-good-enough. It’s a mask that says: maybe I should never have started. Self-doubt says: am i – is it – will it be ever be good enough? Do I actually suck and no one is telling me? Even when they congratulate me and pat me on the back? Even then? Will I ever make it? Am I ever good enough?
The Wright Brothers: for some reason or another they come to mind. Two guys trying to fly a plane – to lift this thing off the ground. I’m sure they heard more “You’ll never make it” than “I believe in you.” So they worked daily on believing in themselves. In the end, though, math doesn’t lie and their math was, in the end, sound. So they succeeded.
There are the more abstract worlds, though, that some of us choose to live in that doesn’t seem to appeal to ordinary mathematics. Myself, I decided to be an artist. As an artist, a painter, I use a stick with a bunch of hair glued to the end to push and pull colored pigments suspended in a polymer medium around a surface of woven cotton covered with a hardened chalk substance. Granted, the stick is rather finely crafted, the hairs are supremely smooth and supple, and the “paint” is luxuriously smooth and homogeneously mixed. I might be using it to create a scene expressing the intensity of living. I am using it to illuminate a vision of my mind. I am exploring the verdant valleys of my soul and how it relates to the world around me.
But.
But then self-doubt comes creeping in.
When self-doubt arrives, everyone else looks so sure of themselves, so confident. When self-doubt makes itself at home, every glitch in the system looks like a five-lane highway. When self-doubt is there to stay, nothing will ever get done and things crumble.
Self-destruction is the ruler of Self-Doubt, which is just one more minion of small ‘s’ self which is built on a foundation of fear – fear of it’s own demise. Big ‘S’ Self knows better but depending on how much time we give it versus small ‘s’ self, depends on how much we will listen to it. Self-Destruction, that wily bastard, is happy to start chipping away at our masterpiece which is, ultimately, the perfected Self.
Like every one else in the world, I sometimes crumble.
Just as an investor earns returns on his investment, so there are returns on the work we create. When the people like it, we rejoice in their rejoicing. When the critics like it, we rejoice. Yet, if one in 99 critics doesn’t like it, we linger over the words of that one. We see all other words as just placation – mere salve for a wound – while the words of the critic sting and we take them personally. The others: oh, they satisfy ‘ego’, we tell ourselves in our too-spiritual monologue. Don’t get wrapped up in that, we tell ourselves with little ‘s’ self wearing the cloaks of our teachers, our saviors. Why don’t we allow ourselves (ourSelves) to just understand that we are doing something right?
It can be so very difficult sometimes to allow for that. You are on the right path. You are ferreting out the proper vision. This is the message that life returns back to us in various coincidences and syncopations and gifts – like echoes of our actions. And yet, that little ‘s’ self would like very much if we didn’t hear it so it pulls out the magnifying glass to examine the criticism and shoves aside the praise. We’re trying to destroy our ego, it says, don’t listen to that bullshit pat-on-the-back praise.
Sometimes, those 99 positive reviews and the 1 negative review are just the voices in our heads. Like an old-time operating room with an entire audience reviewing our every move, our work is on display for every voice – every face we’ve ever known – to judge it.
Some will love it. But, says the voice of self-doubt, they always love what we do. We can’t do any wrong in their eyes, so what’s the use in even bothering with them?
Some will merely like it. We’re always trying to please them just a little bit more. Really we just want their love but we are fine with the ‘like’. Fuck those people, says little ‘s’ self.
Some will neither like nor dislike. We really only wanted their attention if their attention was positive. Really, we hate it when we don’t get any attention for the blood and tears we grind up to create this.
Some will not like what we have done at all but will not be passionate about it or have a reason. To each their own, we say, those people never had any conviction to begin with.
Some will very much dislike it. For obvious reasons! we cry, our flaws are so apparent! It’s not good enough. It never was. Why are they so dead-set against it? Their opinion will, sadly, matter the most to us because it saps at our joy. Their confidence erodes our own.
And, with that, Self-doubt will slowly but surely, if we allow it, undermine our defenses against Self-Destruction. If we run that race, we’ll end up with all the others: living up to the potential that the biggest doubter set up for us. We will always be trying to create Good Enough or Next Best or Good Try when all we really want and desire are the masterpieces that we know are in there.
We set up the paradigm at a young age. Whether we wanted to or not, we wanted to please others, most notably, from the start, our parents. We found that if we pleased other humans they showed us Love. We weren’t sure what that was exactly, but it had to do with a sparkle in the eye and a tone of voice and a sense of belonging and openness.
Later we went to school and met others. There was something similar in that sense of belonging, that Love. That sense of confidence overflowed into the things we created.
Somewhere along the line someone who wasn’t so caring (or to whom it was similarly said) declared: “You did it all wrong.” Their tone of voice threw us off. The look in their eyes made us feel ‘outside’. Even though we had friends, family, everything, one person was able to snatch it all away. As time went by, it was one more and one more and one more until we learned that some liked what we made and some would not. What no one told us was that many of those who ‘liked’ us merely did so because they too wanted to be loved. It was merely an exchange and, deeper down, they too were afraid of not being loved. That fear was self-doubt; it was the shadow beneath the twinkle in the eye that said ‘I like you! Let’s be Friends!’
How do we nurture the inner fire that burns on and on? The inner fire: soft, holy, sacred. This inner fire: driving, focused, and divine. It knows very clearly what it is and what it wants. Ego gets in the way. Little ‘s’ self gets in the way. But ego can provide support, when it feels like playing along. We’ll all throw logs on that fire when it’s warmth feels so good. We’ll all throw fertilizer under that tree when it’s fruits are so sweet!
So why, even when the fruits of our work are sweet, why do we doubt ourselves?
Fear.
That this time we won’t be loved. This time we will fail.
The guards at the gate of our mind cower, listening to a song that got played over and over – have ye but faith in ME then you might succeed. But WHO?! Goddamit!
Why, in all my years of school, of church, of being a valid citizen, did they never teach me to have faith in myself? Because, I was told, I am a sinner from the start, a miscreant in the making, a criminal because I chose to do things that they labeled crimes. And, thusly, I could never be trusted to make the right choice. After all, no one else trusts themselves to make the right choice.
When I gave up all that to go be an artist, the echoes remained. The driving passion behind my brush and in my actions pushed me into lovely, beautiful spaces. It brought me to epic peaks and cascades of wonder and sublime sensuality and they were all experiences that existed while holding a paintbrush, facing a canvas, pushing around that pigment suspended in polymer and, because I’d focused and focused and focused, and driven myself past every voice, and forced the most high conclusion, I found great light. And each piece has explored depths and risen to heights that I can only wonder at.
Self-doubt will challenge every path at every step of the way. My path is Painting. It is Making Art. When I step back and look at what I have created – a raw expression of myself – it is no wonder, I say, that I feel the barbs of criticism more than the salve of compliments. The salve is not necessary. I already feel good. The barbs however, they sting. And when I stand before my blank canvas or work on it while it’s in the throes of not-done-yet, those barbs pull a bit. But I pull against them. They tear out. I push further and find, again and again, that which I was aiming for and that much more death of little ‘s’ self.
Belief in yourself, in who you are, and in your deep raw talents that manifest themselves through that thing that is undoubtedly your Life’s Path, is what will drive you to fulfill your dreams and goals. This is not about ambition. Ambition is being rising above – it is about Self and Other. This is merely about Great Success. The Great Success is Life.
May you reach every Great Success.
May you achieve your Most Highest Goals.
May you experience Love without boundaries.
Altar
Sardines in an artichoke and baby portabella-laden red sauce, simmering upon the stove turned into a dinner of rich worth with greetings from the depths and counterpoints. The gradations of reds that twisted in and out of the dappled oil bits of artichoke mushroom roasted red pepper layered over slices of golden polenta all sank into my mouth and over my tongue in a daring dance of making-my-eyes-roll-into-the-back-of-my-head yumminess. That was a beginning.
Sometime around 11pm the next day, after love, laughter, light, and dark, I went to bed.
Upon the altar, a wood shelf of relatively classic lines sticking out from the wall about five or six inches and not more than two feet wide, above my desk, this wide oak drafting table from which I look upon my world and see, mostly, when I look up, a wall not three feet from my face with this altar, is a large amethyst chunk, given to me by a dear friend. It sparkles in purple mathematical crystalline reflection. The friend who gave it to me, as a birthday gift I think, tends to traverse the same purple wavelengths that one might imagine the amethyst travels and when I think of her, it’s not hard to imagine amethyst. Around the half inch thick piece of calcite the amethyst sits upon, are a handful of double terminated quartz crystals, given to me at the wedding of two other friends. To either side of these are two small figures.
On the left is the Buddha. This Buddha, carved from some dark wood, is the Thai Theravada-style buddha with long narrow arms and a thin face in calm repose, watching the breath, symbolizes the calm and graceful unfolding slowly from within doing the same dance he has always done. This buddha was given to me by another dear friend. This person lives in the land from whence this buddha came, exploring just what it means to be truly happy. True happiness is not an easy thing to come by and, at the same time, is the easiest thing in the world. This friend, he seems to be doing a fine job of it.
To the other side of the amethyst, almost equidistance as the Buddha, is Sparkles Brown, a small figure made from sparkly fimo. He is about three and a half inches high, has creamy white sparkly pants, gold sparkly shoes that match his gold sparkly hat in the shape of a small morning glory perched delicately upon his head and, upon his brown shirt, a gold star. His two gold dots of eyes and one thin golden smile look at me with the kind of simple happiness and love that is devoid all the stories as to why we love. He too was given to me by a dear friend. This dear friend made him for me just before she left to visit a friend of her own with whom she shares a deep connection. This friend who gave me Sparkles Brown also happens to be my wife.
Moving out to either side of the altar: crystals, gifts of stones from the universe and friends, a scorpion suspended in acrylic, a half geode found on the shore of a lake in Kentucky while canoeing, three thin golden snail shells in descending size from pet aquarium snails, shells with noteworthy lines found on a sea shore, other bits of sacred detritus, and, finally, two small framed photos, flanking the altar.
On the one side, the right side where Sparkles Brown keeps watch, is a small easel, a very small easel, upon which is a little glass frame and in the little glass frame is a picture of me at, maybe, age 2. I am a chubby little boy sitting on a swing set and the picture has that yellowed slightly faded look of the mid 1970′s. I am sitting there in my diaper, laughing and squinting, eyes half-closed in the daytime sun: half closed because my smile is so large. The smile would come and go and come again, as smiles do, but I’ve never quite stopped squinting.
On the left side of the altar is another picture – this one framed vertically and there I am again, squinting, holding my wife from behind her with my hands wrapped onto her belly, smiling and bright eyed and the two of us tan and in sleeveless white satins and silks, bejeweled, on our wedding day, happy, blissed, exhausted.
All of these things represent bits and pieces of who I am, and of some of the gems of friends who come and go through my life.
In the center of the altar, resting on the double terminated quartzes, is a small skull of perhaps a mouse. It was found in some encrusted owl poop on the land of another beautiful friend. It was carefully cleaned and painted and placed here. We could all be snatched up, devoured, and pooped out at any given moment. The entire universe is consuming itself all the time, continuously dying and being reborn and growing and changing and dying again. How many of those lifetimes of moments do we relive the same pattern? How many do we shift direction all of a sudden, consciously choosing a new path?
Directly below the altar there are two more small pictures. On the left, underneath the wedding picture is a small, neatly cropped photo of my grandparents on my mothers side. I was always very close to them. They are very happy in the picture, retired and on a vacation in Spain, the same place Violet and I took our honeymoon. My grandfather, a jovially loving Italian who would have loved my wife, has passed away since then. My grandmother, 84, is as chipper and fastidious as she has ever been. This is a bit of where I have come from. They too are smiling wide. Their eyes squint in the Mediterranean sun.
On the right side is another picture, this one of my Dad and I. It is our birthday – his birthday is a day before my own, on Aug. 25. My birthday is the 26th. We are smiling as well. I think I was turning seventeen in that picture. In the picture I have a goatee, a baseball cap. I am wearing a white t-shirt with a small design I made of a person standing on the edge of a building, about to step off, his back to the viewer, maybe he’ll fall, maybe he’ll fly, who knows, and below it a caption reads “This time I was standing on the edge of the world”. It was always regarded as a bit of artsy daydreaming, never a consideration that I might consider jumping. My dad – his smile makes his eyes squint shut. Look, I come from a long line of squinters. Me, I am looking off to the left and, from where I sit right now, my eyes look a tad bloodshot but I wouldn’t be surprised – I had a lifestyle then of perpetual blanketing my mental landscape – always throwing another mattress upon the pea that was making me feel uncomfortable. And, at the same time, I was just doing my best to make sense of the unfolding life around me, chilling, living, teetering on the edge, waiting for my chance to take a leap and stretch my wings and soar with the occasional heart-wrenching plummet.
In between these two photos, taped in the middle, laminated, is a Chinese fortune from a cookie eaten who knows when.
It reads: “Among the lucky, you are the chosen one.”
Coupled with the grace, a dash of skill maybe, and fair bit of false starts, there has always been that “luck”, if that is what one wants to call it. When I look at this chain of a life that is laid out here – from my grandparents to the chunk of amethyst – I love it.
Writings: A Different Bus
So, in the interest of consolidation and presentation, I’ve decided to take off the “Writings” section of my website and am putting most of those pieces here, in the blog, a good enough place. So… enjoy…
A Different Bus (11.13.08)
Some dreams begin with a sense of what is missing. This dream begins with an open agreement.
In the middle of the Great Leap of Faith, I found life to be quite ready to make a deal. Let’s do this thing together, it suggested. I’ll trust you. You trust me. Let’s make a deal. We’ll arrange better terms, make installments. We’ll get you a nice car, a lovely house, a pool, a yard. Tell you what, we’ll find a way to go about this thing you seek – this deeper meaning – this open sense of being – we’ll do this thing together. Let’s read some books. There are dusty symbols with your name on them hidden in their golden leafed spines. I know a guru, a teacher, a path through the mountains if you’ll just settle down. Tell you what – I know this guy that’ll make you famous. Tell you what – tell you what – tell you what – let’s establish some trust in one another, maybe a compromise, a secret handshake that only you and I know – no more hiding things from each other behind locked doors in a pile on the floor – no more borders between mine and yours. And it handed me the pen.
But a leap of faith does not end with signing a contract. The hand was there, ready to sign. A table appeared in a barren room, two chairs and a dotted line. We faced each other, myself and everything else and that sense of separateness, even though it tried to negotiate a belief of togetherness sat there across from me, nibbling at my confidence, tugging at my sleeve, whispering ‘gotcha’ in my ear.
I paused my breath and the moment passed, the offer a flock of birds disturbed by the churning of swamp grasses as I trudged through the muck, encountering lifetime after lifetime of swamp monster identity. I lay on a log in exhaustion. I fingered a reed and, in my dream, turned it into a lovely raft. I took time with my craft, using the process of salvation creation as a sort of building meditation. I knit a shawl from their tufts and tossed it over my shoulders and pushed myself off from the shore setting out for a destination somewhere across the oceans.
Hark! I cried. Alas! I shouted. Ta-Ta! I declared.
I sang sea shanty dirges under the light of the moon, drinking purified fish tears and eating the leavings of the dew. The days and nights passed til they blended together as one motionless wave and the currents forgave my lack of direction because they appreciated my willful intention.
I worked myself to the bone. I found that sometimes I wished never endingly that I could have a space to call my own but the fire inside me pushed on and I kept moving a little further forwards, a little deeper into that empty void of destination.
I rolled the die, advanced my player by two and was granted a free turn.
I looked up at my negotiator and threw down the pen. If this was my move then I was determined to take it to it’s furthest end. Drop your weapons, I demanded and let me see your reasons.
My mind turned on me and fell to the floor. And I, I left it for dead.
Now I am a missing piece – this patchwork outline of me has fallen into space like a brick dropped from the Babylon tower by some freemason giving the secret hand handshake and the Eye to his comrade in the stars.
I am a man in blue, a man in red, a man in yellow or green.
I am waiting here for you. I am not wearing any disguises.
My time has come and my bus has arrived and I am one of the masses flowing through an endless river transcribed with shallow meanings – a pallor cast over it in a language always yearning for a deeper mode of expression C’mon buddy, says the driver, yer holdin’ up the works.
Yanked out of oblivion stare, I pay the dime nickel and quarter and am sitting two rows back further than I need to be and floating three inches above my seat, watching this rhythmic sea of heads bob up and down to hydraulic pumping of bus brake bumping. Business suits seamlessly pressed topped by eyes staring into certain futures based precisely and with great accuracy on affirmed notions of financial acuity – futures in securities and soaring prices of flesh in the basement bathroom – dirty underpinnings of a glorious kingdom – little children pumping away the pistons to pay for John Q. Public’s home in the Hamptons.
Hovelled in between the clear successes, a homeless man with a squadron of lice doing maneuvers upon his crown smiles a toothless grin spelling out how he giveth himself into temptation.
Next to me, an old wise woman whose wisdom is held in her ears by the lifetimes of cotton ball build up, dampening all sense of sensation purses her lips with a sense of impunity, rising above all open seas to a God whose arms know no color and sings great hosannas in the highest but she can’t feel much anymore of the tips of her fingers and that sensation stretches all the way up to the middle of her brain where cotton seeds planted there when she was a wee one have taken root and grown thick with cotton balls clouding up and confounding the works.
What am I doing here in this mess? I ask the man in the toothpaste ad who grins down from above me while a little girl plays his ivory white. I am getting off this bus.
What am I talking about, I am not going anywhere. I am still on the bus. I am going further.
I rise in a fury and crash my way to the front: Watch out driver, I’m taking the wheel! I am driving off the pier and into the ocean and the other passengers are floating away in the bubbles of their mental activities. I am swimming with fishes, concrete blocks slipping away from my chest exposing my still beating heart. It grows in size and sighs a sigh of relief – my heart – loosening and lightening in the situation like a summer storm across an open divide- my hair stands on end down here – equipped with special fluidic static electricity while the tactile futility of my mind washes up upon the beach like a thousand rippling carcasses of drowned sailor men whispering soft secrets of the sea to those who care to stoop closer to listen.
And I stoop there and listen to their seductively shallow tales about women in bars sitting upon tall stools drinking messy beers talking to tattoos on the arms of their attendant evils. I am transported upon their salty breath.
Would you like another, asks the skull-faced man bringing an ill, a derision, a misplaced emoticon.
Simply put, the drink taken from the waiting waiter is sipped slowly with red lips that leave stains on the rim of the glass, like the kiss of a rose leaving pieces of it’s petals for future detectives to ferret out.
I walk past them all.
The detectives holding magnifying glasses using tweezers to carefully extract faint wisps of the remaining roses to drop in their manila files stare into my slit eyed gaze and wonder to themselves if this man is from round these parts.
Ocean water slops from my shoes and seaweed dangles detachedly at my wrists and my heart is an exposed and beating mass of muscles but I have no fears there, I am done defending it. My stride is not misstepped and my steps are not misplaced and my direction is clear and certain making the detectives feel less at home in their own bodies than I am in mine. Such confidence is contagious unless one is inoculated at a young age, growing old and immune to things like wisdom and learning and tall stepping vision.
You will know me when you see me, said the prophet to the masses. And sure enough, they did, whispers the old man in his sleep while the lice on his crown bow in homage to the fly who has accomplished a landing upon the lobe of the left ear.
Escape fantasies bring me back to present.
I should have taken a different bus.
But I didn’t.
I linger onwards and the bus belches forwards, heaving and yawning into the future.
A cloud of crumble ramshackles is punching ice skate cutting in a stormy black weather system hovering over me, blowing me forwards – through otherwise blocked doorways.
If I were in charge, I would walk through a different door. I would have taken a different route.
But I don’t. I didn’t. This system is a mess with schedules bleeding desire for change. Their motorcade is split in two and they follow us with a distracted air –always there, always reaching for our truths while their horses do the math, adding it up, adding it up, better accountants than financiers.
Once I was a banister, helping people along, a support for their troubled hands when the climb became just a little too long. Countless hands would run along my smooth wood grain leaving a dull waxy polish, soft to the touch yet supportive and, seemingly, forgiving. But those who fell, reaching out for my support yet missing it, found my forgiveness to be a myth and, with their heads hitting hard upon the curving wooden rail of my balustrade, their feet slipping out from beneath them, they would find that I stood tall and did not care if they walked or climbed, crumbled or fell.
So now, on the other side of that equation, understanding what makes this system tick, I find my way up the stairs – one by glorious one – step by beautiful step – relying on internal gyroscopic grace and not crutches that take it’s place.
In a half forgotten dream, on a landing between flights, I stare at a movie poster of a flick that’ll never be made with a hero chin courting a damsel in distress. To tell you the honest injun truth: I won’t miss it. Unmade movies are thoughts and what-ifs, hypothetical solutions to cliff hanger strategies – with nails bitten to the wick and hairs dancing on end, I can’t stand that kind of stress, so I back down to where I feel I belong, in the trough, in the valley, with the big wheels that keep on turning and a mind that keeps on churning out this drivel of poetry, this line by line symphony of melancholic lifetime after lifetime drudgery.
I am a juke box of memories – a thousand stanzas and refrains from FM radio days replayed over and over and over again til they have carved their own pathways through my synaptic systems, standing the test of time. I try to carve out better habits from the bramble of memories but the refrain of just another old-fashioned love song is easier to travel down than hacking out a new habitual direction. The call to action is like mother calling me for dinner but this time I don’t answer, this time, I go all the way.
Some would find my disjointedness charming but they never had any spine to begin with.
This is my stop and I am getting off..
We are going to start over. We are going to start again. With our feet crushing the pavement and our backs to the wind. We are going to leap the sun. We are going to move the mountains. We are going to drink it in. We are going to ride this route to the end.
And I am getting back on
How I can’t stand this overcoat of emotions. It weighs me down to no end. I wish it had come with instructions. That would have helped to make it all clear. A legend or a map – a cheat sheet telling me that the lizard will appear sixteen times and the woman only twice so that I could give up hope and live instead on expectation, setting my traps wisely with a more refined meditation. Instead I am lost in embroidered patterns spelling out lineages of family history intricately woven into eons of genetic imprinting – penguin apples dancing mice laughter like lizard tails flicking in and out of women whose legs spread to give birth to buffalo bottle stoppers, cork screws opening up another vintage, ice clinking in cocktail glasses, gentle laughter patchwork fading to ragged ends of rope and choking on my own tongue, waking again in a start, a sweat, and rolling over to sleep it off.
How many times did I need to relive the hem of my coat, wear my lifetime on my sleeve, finding my next chapter in a secret pocket sewn inside the lining?
I wish this coat had come with instructions. I would have left it on the bus had it not been sewn to my own mandibles, burrowing under my skin, into my beating heart and my veins – had I not opened it and found little old women knitting, each breath deflating my heart little by little to the rhythm of crochet hooks click clat clicking in rhythmic succession, one sleeve unraveling to be knit into the other, caught in my own personal feedback loop.
A circus barker on a corner is crying out: the wheel it spins round and round – where it stops YOU can’t be found – if the devil calls your name – you – are – OUT –
Little old ladies look up at me, glint in the eye, wrinkled wide smile wise to ages of curiosity: “Don’t mind us, we’re only dreaming.”
For some reason I am assured and you’d think I’d feel relief as I close the coat and look around the bus or the bar or the stairwell but no one notices the universe beneath my cloak where a thousand spiral galaxies are spinning their way to oblivion, planets and worlds live out countless lifetimes of hurt anger oppression and aggression – enlightenment enjoyment ecstatic devotion – stars exploding into implosions of emptiness – a vast and empty blackness – all of it tucked into a pocket, a seam, a hem. But out here on the edge, two rows back further than I need to be, I only get caught in blank stares gazing half way between here and nowhere making sure not to catch me in their mediocre tunnel vision monotony.
I open the neck and peek inside again and find worlds unfolding before my eyes – great undulating starry arms and points of light colliding without a sound – massive polarizations of male female intensities – grandiosity and miniaturizations – fascinating scenes of purple and green – pictures of bleached white sheets on a line – memories of lying on the grass outside – a sunrise – open eyes – a universe unraveling from the center of my mind.
I dig around in there for the book, a manual or at least a how-to guide – something to tell me what to do with the endless vision – but I find the movie instead. I put it on and find they’ve cut my scenes and the lead doesn’t look a thing like me. Myself, I am lying somewhere on an editing room floor making love to the bottom of a shoe grinding me into the linoleum, passing me up for a greater monumental conclusion as I become another memory not god enough to make the final cut. What did I do wrong or what did this guy do right?
Now the story has all changed and while the nuanced grace of the kangaroo kazoo leaves me somewhat speechless still I wonder how it could have come to this. When did I let go and leave another director in charge. When did the feeling of not holding on set in. It’s a dream of events, missing sequences and missives in the night – did they see me? Did I get there? Did it all happen on time?
The movie has teeth and it’s latched on to my sleeve. The glint in its eye, the snarl in it’s lips – it makes me pause to consider. It’s a lifetime conclusion, a source of confusion, a means to an end.
I intend to take a different bus. I get off at the next stop and this time I stay off. Dusty corners with dim lit waterfalls and highways gnashing at the bit. The circus barker looks up at me from his corner of the world, shrugs his shoulders and writes another line. He’ll have his epic; we’ll all have our day.
I enter the library. Rows and rows of books covered in dust. No one reads any more; all they really do is stare while the soft dust of centuries settles upon their lids. We are all made of stars and the dust is our leavings. I breathe in deep and taste a little bit of everyone, a little bit of everything. I am looking for something – the transliteration, the news or information, some useful bit of education. It’s in here somewhere. The gorgeous lead, the damsel in distress – the Asian girl with the beautiful eyes and alive wide smile – the old cotton eared woman who was once a little girl with dreams. Every lifetime passing means another chapter written on this long and winding narrative. Maybe in the footnotes there will be some mention of me. Maybe in a liner note or a bit part in an appendix of some forgotten journal will be my bit part in infinity.
I have my thumb marking a chapter of a hefty tome, another hand scans a table of contents while my tongue leafs through the pages of trees whose roots dig deep into the ground tracing back centuries of meaning and, while language is a changeling, passing through filters of sentimentally charged semantics, pages with folded corners highlight a phrase that now stands lost to meaning, the depth of the matter is not so timeless after all. But I still cannot find one bit of me or life or what it means and how to lead.
A how-to manual – that is all I seek.
Insert Part A into Hole B. A good start but it goes in so many directions from there.
In all of these nameless volumes, all of them brimming with caveats and empty missions – masturbatory fantasies encased in a writers grandiose visions – we climb a stairway up several flights of mental aptitude or high dive from cliffs whose faces read out the way to freeing ourselves from mental servitude but it goes by so quickly that the momentary lapse of thinking sits in the corner of a bar, drinking. I look over at her and I think – is she winking?
So I join her and we sit and talk for six drinks time. All hers, none mine, and I hope in her babbling about the wisdom of ancients and compassion never ending that there might be some seed of nourishment – something to plant in my garden but there is not one useful bit of instruction. She tells me I could take a bus but I could also ride a train. I could sit in a bar and drink drinks with a stranger while she sits in the corner, talking to the sunset in the wood grain. She tells me to swim to the bottom of the ocean and dig up an empty bucket, climb the corporate ladder, stepping on heads and climbing atop shoulders, just so I can see what the view is like from way up there. There is great joy, she tells me, in seeing further than the sights of others.
I could be all of this, she offers. All of it and, of course, more.
I could be everything. I could hope and pray for a sign. I could practice my prostrations with mantras bubbling from my lips and rosary beads at my fingertips. I could be sitting in a home for special folk dribbling tonight’s dinner onto my chest. I could be all of this but I am more than this. How long will I wait for a sign?
The room is lit then in a menagerie of red and white and with the sudden flashing lights of a passing ambulance, I understand. I see in the back of that speeding van a sputtering candle hooked to monitors and heart respirators and a soul flying close behind – screaming out: I’M NOT DONE YET – I didn’t even begin… How long will I wait?
My pause sits across from me and winks, takes a sip of her drink and throws it in the corner to the sound of shattering ice and crackling glass. Her lime leers its green-toothed grin and wanders into the forest of my meanderings.
Life is sudden and then it’s passed, it whispers from the trees, it’s tail flicking and disappearing. There is no decipherable code – no decoder ring to eke out a hidden message – no symbols that have esoteric meaning, in fact – the whole menagerie of hallucinations – all of them sending only one message – ego leaves no instructions for it’s own dissolution.
There will be no light to lead the way.
I stand from the table and approach the edge of my cliff.
Hang on! I cry and take the leap.
Hang. The Fuck. On.
(if you want to stick around)
Late Night Painting II
II.
Sometimes, one aspect gets to drive and choose where we’re going. If Bear gets hungry is so hungry that he won’t let Mr. Business Man stop to think then the Mr. Business Man needs to compromise for a moment and allow Bear a chance to eat, understanding that he and Bear share the same body and Bear’s basic needs are as important as his own. If the Mr. Business Man wants to make a deal that seems fluid enough but goes against the ideals of the Inner Buddha Mind then they have to talk it out and see who comes up with the clearest solution. Sometimes the clearest solution is turning down the deal. Sometimes, it’s just a rewording of a contract. If The Lover has just been let down, we must take notice of conciliations offered by Inner Child who really just wants to be loved and allowed to play. The desire to be loved wears many masks and sometimes becomes a motivation that has less than noble intentions for it is an i-me-mine sort of emotion. All the while, the Inner Batman, a vigilant watcher, keeps an eye on everything. Underneath that mask is only me. The inner Batman has the fatal flaw of seeming both aloof and sometimes overly righteous. Yet, he also helps maintain the nobility of all of these aspects, just as Inner Child and the Lover remind him of his softness and ability to yield. All of these aspects – both individually and as a whole – have the potential to devolve into the i-me-mine space. Yet, they also have the potential of evolving into the all-one-being. So who watches? Who guides? Who is the overseer here? Whose eye is the all-seeing eye? And who really gets to drive?
All together, these aspects are a part of a larger whole that, like Jane’s Addiction or Phish or any other band of great musicians, is greater than it’s parts. That larger whole is both the ego and lack of ego. Ego is simply there as a built up identity structure that the mind creates as a placeholder for “i” in the same way that we create a concept around “cup” or “painting” or “Barack Obama”. We create a concept of an inherent being within us that we identify with. This is all well and good but when the intentions of this being become less than wholesome and the subtle patterning and conditioning of a lifetime of learning at the hands of the cultural norm which preaches the i-me-mine edict, it becomes, shall we say, rather hollow. Yet, when we start to subdivide it and learn it’s nuances, we find different identities who all developed in our being as answers to specific situations that life at one time asked of us.
This, too, is all well and good – my inner meditator might not be so suited for wearing the suit of the inner business man. So the inner business man is there to serve a valuable purpose. The inner business man has his mind on infrastructure and marketing awareness and fair deals and sustainability and growth and doesn’t always think about things like hunger, so there is this bear that is a pretty physically oriented sort of thing. Now, none of those can be tender and soft yet playful and child-like. So we have Inner Child. Then, of course, there is the punk-ass flirtatious lover. Well, to be fair, they are all lovers, but the punk-ass sort of has that bred into him. Watching over all of them is the Inner Batman, aloof yet fully aware of all that is going on – he is there to protect and serve.
I am the sum of my parts. I am like this table: the table is a collection of parts creating a concept of table. I am merely a conceptualization, walking through this world. My paintings are also conceptualizations. Everything that I create is a conceptualization of some mental concept. Even the person I’m creating when I look in the mirror before stepping out the door is a concept – a loose reproduction of what is inside or what I would like to create or be. The only time I stop maitaining this concept is when I stop thinking about it.
There is a magical moment in painting, when I am no longer thinking about what might come next or how that might interact with what has come before it, when the brush and the canvas and my hand and my mind and body and spirit are all one and are moving in this lovely beautiful aware flow. Sometimes these moment stretch… and stretch… Sometimes. Sometimes the mind checks out. Sometimes it’s a record on repeat stuck on some emotionally charged event or phrase or word or person or place. But even then, like a loop in some song, there is a release, a momentary space in which, if we remain open to the possibilities of life, an answer might appear. Most of the time, that answer is: LET GO.
This is the meditation. This is the concept of what I paint. In all of the flames, in all of the clouds and the dark corners, in the stars and spirals, I lose myself, I crumble. And I allow those pieces of me to remain there.
In it’s wake there is always something that goes beyond “a light”. It is what Mircea Eliade called, in all of his studies of the nature of spiritual experience, the “mysterium tremendum”. There really are no words for that space. However, the reflection of that moment of Letting Go upon the canvas is something magical, effulgent, creative. It’s a leap of faith. An effervescent line. A bit of laughter caught in the paint. It’s a reflection of a concept of absolutely everything and absolutely nothing. It is union.
An Open Apology
As you may know I went to Art Basel Miami a month ago in December. While I was there I attended the Moksha Art Fair. It was a multi-faceted event and featured some really beautiful and powerful artwork. As I sat on the plane on the way home, a bit worn out from five days of, well, everything, I wrote a blog entry about it that was not entirely flattering and, I think, overly critical.
Ray Oracca, one of the organizers of the event, went out of his way to contact me and talk about some of what I had written. We had a long heart-warming conversation about art, communities, framing situations, etc. In the end, I could see where he was coming from and recognized the places I had misspoken.I sincerely apologize for any views I expressed that did not tell the whole truth, were tainted by my own lens, and, in the end, may have dissed an event that a lot of time, energy and love went into.
I don’t know a whole lot about the Moksha Family in Miami. Those people that I did meet, who were intrinsically involved, had warm hearts and a sparkle in their eyes. They were genuine in their openness and certainly working hard to create something beautiful. In the end, it seems to be a bit like my own Moontribe community – a disparate tribe hailing from many walks of life sharing a common love of art, music, dance, and fun. They are people who are working at being non-judgemental. They are allowing each other room for growth. They work at putting on events that bring people together in a communal space. They most treasure the open exchange of ideas and energy. In this way, we help each other with our spiritual evolution. They, we, all of us, working together on a common vision from a million different angles.
Thank you.
Mansions of the House
I’ve got to step up inside myself and stand there at my door sometimes; you know, not hang out deeper inside the mansions of my mind, thinking someone might find me back there, painting or daydreaming, biding my time, enjoying the view. Sometimes I’ve got to step up and be the doorman. Welcome! Welcome I say, politely, but with gusto, not over bearing but with just the right amount of exuberance tempered by tactfulness as a good host must be.
There is often, I think, a great hesitancy of inviting people in like that: what might they find there? How well do I, myself, the supposed master of my house, know this mansion? Did I leave the doors unlocked? Are there any demons hiding under a bed or behind a door with sheets over their heads? How might it show it’s face? In what glance or gaze or quirk of speech or passing phrase might it be evident in the course of the conversation between you and I?
I watch these things closely. Not because I’m afraid of what my hand might show, but because I, too, wonder: what might be in there still. What is the meaning behind that statement, what is the intention behind that phrase or point of reference or inference. I watch them because I am curious about what might be the underpinnings of my belief systems.
I remember when I first took ayahuasca and the shaman who was leading the journey, an older man, small and wrinkled and from Peru, said something like ‘let us explore the mansions of my father’s house.’ I always felt that phrase aptly poetic for the experience of the inner world and for the journey we were about to undertake into the fractalizing and sometimes very compartmentalized nature of our minds. There are no closets in these rooms inside, only more rooms, closets that open into foot ball fields, rooms within rooms ad infinitum. Within some are altars. Within others, the dirty laundry. I suppose it’s for us to examine for whom or what the altars are for and also, while we are at it, separate and clean the laundry.
There were times in our lives when we revered a way of being, paid homage to a trait of personality. There were other times when a reverence was laid at the feet of the holiest of holies. The holiest shifts in meaning, growing deeper, wider, broader and, sometimes, completely redefined. Old altars are forgotten, new ones constructed. By the same token, shrines to belief systems now defunct are not always torn down only because we have a hard time letting go. Instead, new belief systems get built and a room gets closed off, forgotten, unused, but still taking up space. Maybe house cleaning isn’t all that is in order. Every house could use a little remodeling.
So we stand at the doorway because inevitably we go out into the world – we discuss ourselves, what we do, from whence we hail and to where we are going, and we tell a story that treats us well as we attempt to elicit something from the viewer: a sense of pardon, a chain reaction of empathy to endearment to love. Because really, in the end, we only want ever to be loved, accepted for who we are and we wonder: am I the living room as much as the basement? Will this person understand?
‘Welcome,’ says the doorman. ‘Welcome to the mansions of my father’s house.’
His statement is a layer cake of meaning, a fine paella of statements mixed with nuanced spices.
Take heed, fair guest: my rooms are wide open. Let us explore together. You never know what you might find and, to be fair, neither do I. Together we explore and, in this house of mind and in the mansions of it’s rooms, let us hope we don’t lose ourselves and, if we do, let us hope that which we find is a greater treasure than that which we’ve lost.
In the exploratory stories, half way between the top floor and the deepest basement, in a storage closet that opens to forever, I’ve got a pile of sketchbooks that go back to the drawings I made as a lonely scared child. I keep them to remind myself of where I’ve been, where I’ve come from and where it’s all gone to. I did my best to dispose of the drivel. What’s left is enough of a cross section that it can let future historians have a sampling of where I’m from.
Here, in this attic, is a bottle, the first bottle and only bottle. It’s never been emptied. It’s always been half-full. I’ve done my best to finish it. I am in love with new beginnings.
This right here, this balloon, half-deflated, is quite significant, or rather, it was, at one time. Good thing the things of the mind are biodegradable!
How about this door? What might we find inside it’s corners….
Oops!
Where are we now? What, you say, you know this place?
O this is your old kitchen, from as a child, as a seven year old, scared from the bee outside and your mother was nowhere to be found and you felt it best to find her and when you did she was a disinterested mess? You know this place. This is your house. This is your mansion. It’s true, I’ve been to places like this myself. I think my own place like this was nothing like this. But you’re not the first, so let us navigate it together.
We arise, we fall. It’s like that. We traipse in and out of each other’s mental spaces. It’s just like that when two people open up to one another.
And in the nuances of our speech, in the subtleties of our movements, are written the understandings of our lifetimes. At times, there is nothing but joy and if you find me on the right day, I will have naught but love, dripping and dancing off of every note of my being. Find me on another day and it might be different. I might be a bit more like coal, for real. No one is to blame for that but me and the only reason I have is that I’m still turning that chunk of coal into a diamond. With enough concentration and patience, enough focus and mindfulness, it all turns into diamonds.
And one way or another, the dancing love, it remains. Why am I so convinced of that?
A little birdie told me.
And I listened.
Unmasking: The Deeper We Dig, The Higher We Rise
Detail: Unmasking: The Deeper We Go, The Higher We Soar
Effulgent bubbling up love comes up and over like a pot come to a boil or a fire bent on over flowing or even just a long slow simmering of flavors and meditations. Mind wide open and alive and sparks from fires and flames all lapping and licking at my feet, my heart, and my hands pushing me inwards, upwards, and onwards.
The deeper we dig, the higher we rise. Digging and finding, searching and wondering, wandering outwards and into the investigation. Find a mask and unmask the mystery til we reach the next layer of interwoven illusions to uncover. Every time a mask is discarded our load gets a bit lighter and, through the course of some lesson, we find a touch more love, an ounce more compassion, a modicum of wisdom to add to the puzzle that continues to spell out what we always find we already knew – that mind loves a riddle to unravel.
There is a vast unfolding all around us… inside my heart and mind there is a… inside every thing, atom and sun, there is a…
a continual reaction.
But all things come to pass, to be used as the fodder for the next sun’s fire. Metaphorical understandings create day dreams that become new inventions inspiring another persons imaginings… and on and on.
I only pray for the grace to get it all done!
To what or whom do I pray? Maybe nothing, maybe everything, maybe whatever it is that ignited this reaction inside of me that, once sparked, seems hell bent on pushing ahead, forging onwards. It jumps and dives and crawls around inside ferreting out the uncomfortable places where ego tries to hide.
Whoa! hey! It throws it’s hands up in the air. Wasn’t me! Wasn’t here!
But we pull it out, get on up the stairs, and get back to the discussion at hand, a little more ease to the dance.
Where were you the night of…
Who were you with on the afternoon of…
What were you distracting yourself with when you should have been…
And on and on and on.
What is the best song to sing?
One that just doesn’t let up. One that just doesn’t let down. It is best to boggle the mind. The mind needs a good boggling every now and again just to put it in it’s place. Just to set the record straight. I’m just a scribe here, I’m just a channel.
It is in those moments that we can ask: who acts? Who is the “doer”, who is the “watcher”. Can the universe, and by universe I mean everything else that is outside of this shell of a body, can it play a guitar? Can the universe hold a paint brush? A pen? A sewing needle? If it could, what would it say? What would it paint? What would it play?
Love. Just love. In all of it’s multifold forms. It would be love in green and love in plaid and love in jeans and love in slacks. It’d be love in the woods and love in the streams and love in the alleys with their stinky smelly steam. It’d paint love in the canyons and in the cracked window panes, love on the fire escapes of the well-boggled brains of all those human beings, running and scurrying and planning and doing in that worlds they’re creating. It’d play love in the songs of the birds in the morning and the crickets who chirp towards the last light of evening. It’d be the entire world without words and it would be the words as well. It would say love in a way that you’d never considered. It’d place itself in ways that you’d always overlooked. It’d whisper in your ear, softly against your neck, touching you, just so, aside the curve of your cheek – listen, don’t give up, I am everything and I too shall pass.
Most of all, though, it’d be well outside the bounds of any form you may have believed to be the object of itself. It’d clothe itself as a breeze, a whimper, a laugh.
It is a very beautiful thing, this existence dance, the loving path.
Experiencing Bliss
Today is the birthday of a friend, someone I’ve not seen in quite a long time but a friend none the less – someone who is very close to my heart. I have that little reminder that pops up on the side of my Facebook page to thank for that notification and I have her to thank for lifting a veil, for calling me out, for changing my life.
It was maybe six or seven years ago (how time flies!) when we first met and there was some chemistry there. So we had a thing and I had a thing for her. We spent a bunch of time together all of a sudden, just like that. I was in my usual (at that time) space-surfing-no-home-to-speak-of mode, painting, partying, traveling a bit here, traveling a bit there. She was a painter and pretty focused on a Tibetan Buddhist path. At that time, I think she was in school, I don’t remember exactly. Anyhow, this is all just auxiliary information. The point is: there was a spark, a fire, a reflection, and I respected her.
A conversation one evening went something like this:
“Michael, you smoke a lot of pot. You’re stoned quite a bit.”
This was certainly a fair, inarguable observation. In truth, I would hazard to guess that I’d been stoned for 300 days a year, at the very least, for the previous eight years. Illuminating when you add it up like that. I had, in any case, gotten high at least once a day for those three hundred days. Some of those days – in the midst of the painting binges for instance – were spent in such a haze that there was no in or out, high or low – it was just one long sustain and all I could do, or think of doing, was keep myself there. While I may have felt I was productive in my painting, in retrospect, I wasn’t productive in much else. While I may have been experiencing great highs, I certainly wasn’t integrating much.
“Yes, well… I may smoke a bit in the morning, take a hit or two…” But I knew it was a tough one to argue.
“Well, to be honest, it’s tough to hang out with you because there’s always this veil – this sort of space between you and I. In fact, it’s between you and the world. Really, it seems sort of selfish. You end up forcing everyone to get through this veil and you’re in there but it takes some work to find you. You’re not straight forward with life. You’ve got this veil to hide behind.”
Well, she said that in so many words.
“So, really, I like you a lot but I can’t really deal with the constant stoniness. So it’s either me or the pot. If you want to be with me, you’ve got to give that up.”
So I chose her. I’d like to imagine it was an easy choice but truthfully I don’t remember. I’m generally aware enough, even in the most egocentric times, at weighing choices like that – door number one is a path you know, a habit, a pattern. Door number two holds something new, different – an opportunity for growth, maybe new adventures, some light.
I chose door number two.
The short end of that story is:
Ultimately, it didn’t ‘work out’ between us. But we are where we are when we need to be there. And we came together for the lessons we had to share with each other. Giving up smoking pot broke through all kinds of things – suddenly life was REAL. In fact, it was so very real that I started drinking heavily because all kinds of emotions came up – sadness, depression, loneliness, attachment, wanting, craving, everything! – and they were quite hard to deal with because I’d never actually dealt with anything. I’d lived in my head and my daydreams for so long that screwing my head back onto my body was, in fact, rather disconcerting. I didn’t know how to handle it and I freaked out for a little while. It was sort of a heart wrenching/heart opening time. The drawing above, at the start of this post, was drawn during that time. It is called “The Heart Dance”.
For people who say there is no addiction in marijuana and no withdrawals… Sure maybe for the recreational smoker, this is absolutely true. But, as with object of addiction – whether it be alcohol, drugs, television or hamburgers – if a person finds that it helps to squelch the real emotions that they don’t want to deal with and it works, and it makes them feel good, they’ll keep going back for more. That’s addiction. Take the object of attachment away and everything it was being used to block rears it’s head. That’s when it turns out there are a lot of demons down there. Granted, marijuana likely helped me in many ways – it was a tool that I had at my disposal; a teacher in plant form. But, as with any teacher, as with the parable of using the boat to cross the river: once you’ve made it across the river, it’s best to abandon the boat. For all I know, I’d been lingering on that shoreline for far too long, hanging out with my boat.
So for a little while, all I seemed to be able to do was calm the demons while I learned how to deal with myself, knowing I’d get back to the darkness. So I worked with the tools I had, picking up new tools along the way. I worked on finding a center (and dealing with the urges and cravings that sought to pull me away from that) and figured, however consciously, that I’d get to the darkness. All good things in their own time!
Ultimately, when I got back to painting – by that time it was in Costa Rica – my work was so much more present. I was more efficient and my lines and approach crisper than it’d ever been. To top it all off, I was having these experiences that actually felt like they could be integrated into my being and I began to understand what “Being on the Path” really meant. I’d never realized what I was missing. I’d thought, for a long time had convinced myself, that I ought to be high in order to paint. I’m sure I’m not the first artist to fall prey to this belief. Now I found a deep reservoir of creativity, an endless and boundless spirit, and I found I had the skills to illuminate it. As I passed through these things, so did the emotions rise and fall, rise and fall.
Through that process, as demons have come and gone and challenges have been met, I’ve discovered more than I’ve ever dreamt. I’ve pushed myself and allowed myself to be pushed in ways I’d not imagined possible. And I’ve found something inside, something nameless, shapeless, wordless, some truth, that allows me to participate in this world, through my work and my interactions with others, in a way that is truly enlightening.
This friend helped lay some groundwork for all that came after. She is someone who helped me to step onto my path and be who I am – and admit to myself who I am – without just living a daydream of what I might be. So I say happy birthday to you, my friend. And thank you. May you live long. And prosper.
This one is dedicated to you.
May all beings experience bliss.
