There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.

–Epictetus

Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.

–Lao Tzu

This is a good reminder that it’s not so much finding the perfect location to do an artwork; what’s more important is the attitude that you bring to your work.

Stick to reality. Pay attention to the obvious, and the subtle will reveal itself.

Yesterday morning I was in east Anchorage early in the morning. I was happy to be able to view the mountains from a closer vantage point than I can from home. There were misty clouds clinging to the mountains, but the ridge line was distinct. I traced the ridge line with my eyes, like an artist preparing to paint. As I did so, I became aware of the mountains behind the ridges that ring Anchorage. These mountains were ALMOST hidden in the mist. I would have missed them if I hadn’t been looking at the obvious.

Most of the time I don’t see the inner range, and I am always thrilled when they become obvious. I feel the way I feel when I dream that I have discovered that there are more rooms in my house than I thought there were. There is a delicious feeling of discovery when the sense of limitations dissolves.

This is important advice for assignment 3. I must continue really looking at what is in front of me and allow myself, through that route, to perceive the more subtle. This is my insurance that I am not just “imagining things.”

And maybe we then realize that what we call “my” life – this small personal part of a reflection of something much bigger – is inseparable from, and deeply connected with Life as a whole.
We begin to sense the oneness, we feel the inner heart of the world, we listen to the earth.

— The Sacred Feminine for Life on Facebook

The earth is not a dead body, but is inhabited by a spirit that is its life and soul.All created things, minerals included, draw their strength from the earth spirit.This spirit is life, it is nourished by the stars, and it gives nourishment to all the living things it shelters in its womb.

—Basilius Valentinus
15th Century Benedictine monk and alchemist

As in storytelling, the work of art already exists as a whole, even as we spin out the particulars. It will be important for me to work with this attitude, establishing it firmly before I begin.

Yesterday I was in a downtown department store, and as I watched the movement of people within it, each bent on his or her own particular agenda, I recalled an exercise that I had followed in the past in regards to understanding Unity awareness.

I introduced the intention to see all movement as happening in one “substance.” (All movement is seen as Citi.) In this way I was aware of the eternal and the transitory simultaneously.

We can live, move, and breathe in this world while remaining aware that all are One. This is also “entering the Void with the eyes open”– the theme of Assignment 2.

I am coming to the understanding that in Assignment 3 I am to be a living, moving component in the ever-changing world while at the same time having a singular focus. Whatever art I produce must be part of the dance. Oh boy! I didn’t expect this. I prefer to be a sidelines observer in life, the one taking the photos of everyone else in motion.

Oh! But I also understand that being a “mover” is just the flip side of being the observer. What changes everything is being the Witness– whether observing from the sidelines or moving in the crowd,  the challenge is to be Conscious.

Whatever action I am taking– whether moving a pencil or brush, or looking through a lens, I must be aware of myself taking that action. I must perceive myself as part of the moving, breathing whole.

There is a video online of an artist working in a tea house. He takes his brush, dips it in the tea, makes shapes on the paper. He then takes his pen and draws within the wet tea shapes with it. He appears to be Present, perhaps inspired by the Japanese tea ceremony. I can view this again as an inspiration.

Move with awareness.  –Gurumayi Chidvilasananda

My Grandmother was a quiet mystic. I found an essay she wrote called “Creation,” while looking in my files for a Christmas poem I had written. This quote is from that essay:

The crown of this creation is man. There is no part of him which is not created and brought forth out of nothing just like everything else.

— Laura Ann Krebs Ely

A  new and deeper realization is dawning in me of the role that Grandma played and plays in my life. Let me explain:

I spent many hours as a child sitting on the green step stool or at the green formica bar in Grandma’s kitchen while Grandma cooked. We talked and were silent together in a kind of authentic flow of time and timelessness. In later years, as I reflected back upon this time, I knew I valued it immensely. I thought it was because it was there with Grandma that my cares floated away; I felt cared for and secure. As my understanding unfolds, I see that those times were times of Presence where the immanent and the transcendent were palpable. Neither of us articulated anything like this. We just knew they were special times (she never even articulated this– it would have been too sentimental for her).

Looking back, I realize that Grandma was “assigned” to me before I was born. She was my spiritual guardian before I was born and she continues to be my spiritual guardian from “the other side.” We are linked together in a definite but, at the same time, unfathomable way. The Great Mystery, within which we are both contained, holds our souls together. Grandma was wise enough to know (as revealed in her essay “Creation”), that we cannot contain this realm within the thinking mind. That said, she also knew that Science is able to illustrate something of it.

This morning as I brought myself to a greater state of stillness in front of the puja (altar) in my meditation room, I became aware that the palpably unique moment is also timeless. It seems to be contradictory, yet it is true. I was aware of what I would awkwardly call a “collapsed moment.” I was here in this unique moment on this day in my meditation room in Anchorage–and–at the same time at Claymont Court (the esoteric studies school that I attended in 1978-79). How can this be? It seems like the gateway to the Great Mystery. It seems like a threshold to Reality. What is it that can simultaneously occupy two disparate moments?

I was led to read about the Great Void in the book by Swami Shantananda entitled: The Splendor of Recognition (An Exploration of the Pratyabhijna-hrdayam, a Text on the Ancient Science of the Soul).

The sacred texts of Saivism, substantiated by the experience of yogis, state that the  supreme Reality exists beyond the creation while manifesting simultaneously as creation. Reality is beyond form and also it is form; it is unchanging and at the same time it is constantly changing; it is eternal and it is absolutely fleeting. In other words, Reality is simultaneously transcendent and immanent; it is visvottirna, that which is the universe, and at the same time visvamaya, that which contains the universe. Taken together, these two inseparable aspects comprise the totality and fullness of Reality. The difference between these two seemingly contradictory descriptions is a matter of perspective. It all depends on how you look at it.

From our ordinary point of view, Citi (… Citi is that which is endowed with the power to know and perceive; it is that which makes other things appear. And how does Citi do this? Citi “makes” things appear in the sense that an object can only appear– or exist–in our experience when it is held in the field of our awareness. (p. 25)) is immanent, first of all; Citi takes shape as the entire universe, a cacaphony of sound and form. But from the transcendental perspective, Citi has neither form nor content, only an unfathomable boundless depth, which the sages of Saivism call mahasunya, the Great Void. The term “void” can be confusing. This is not to say that the Great Void does not exist; mahasunya exists. It is void, or null, only in the sense that there is no subject to perceive objects, for in the Great Void all manifestation is fused with the light of Consciousness.***Here, one experiences neither happiness nor suffering, knowledge nor ignorance, but a thought-free, steady, peaceful state.

***… a transcendant state in which the subject has merged with the object” (Mark S.G. Dyczkowski, The Doctrine of Vibration (1987), pp 118-22.)

***********

The essential nature of everything is worthy of being known. It is said that the mind is knowledge (because knowledge is obtained through the mind). One should  consider knowledge to be identical with the object of knowledge. There is no way other than that (to liberation).    — Sri Guru Gita, V. 100

As I go forward to Assignment 3, I see that it is a continuation of the first two assignments. It will address time and eternity as existing simultaneously. Pretty heady-sounding when articulated. The key is to try to remain in the Witness state as I seek to become one with the object of perception as I engage in the artistic process.

The wise men bedecked in their fancy brocade

Looked into the face of the holy babe.

It shone with a molten, golden light,

Nearly blinded their eyes and banished the night.

They were filled with a deep, inspiring awe

That hung in the air all around the stall.

The smell of the hay was a holy smell.

The bell on the cow was a holy bell.

The ground underfoot was holy ground.

The scraping of hooves was a holy sound.

The wind that blew through and on its way

Was as nectared flowers on a summer day.

All that was rough and plain and low

Was seen that moment in the holy glow

Of the containment of peace and wisdom and love:

What’d been seen as below was revealed as above.

The whole great world was turned upside down

For each bending head below each crown.

And all that was written or sung or said

Of God or Truth or heaven was outspread

As now they were stricken with unkindled light

In the dark, in the stall

On that fateful night.

–“The Magi”– Pamela Ann McDowell Saylor, January 1991