This morning when I did my nature meditation, I continued in the mode of appreciating details, or, as Natalie Goldberg says, “caressing the divine details.” I was able to put my attention on one thing and just rest there with the object of attention: the daffodils, a birch tree top, the mailboxes at the neighbors’ house (never noticed before!), the Land Rover parked across the street. I felt satisfied and content to rest my attention wherever it fell.

All of my life I have avoided many details, have not wanted to get trapped in them, and thus become a prisoner of the senses. Now I find that I can rest in the details, that I have a space in the Heart for them to reside. I believe this is what I mean when I use the term “ensouling the world.” When we transcend judgement and duality we enter the world with an open heart and there is then the possibility for true compassion to grow within us. The polarization/negativity that seems to be so stark these days is, I hope,  in its death throes at the end of a long age of darkness. I hope that this is the dawn of a new age of non-dual perception.

Peace mounts to the heavens,

The heavens descend to earth,

Earth lies under the heavens,

Everyone is strong.

–Victory Song of the Morrigan, Book of Fermoy

Within the light that out of spirit depths

Weaves germinating power into space

And manifests the gods’ creative work:

Within its shine, the soul’s true being

Is widened into worldwide life

And resurrected

From narrow selfhood’s inner power.

— Rudolph Steiner, The Calendar of the Soul (5th week, May 5-11)

Birch

Birch is regarded as a feminine tree and Deities associated with Birch are mostly love and fertility goddesses. It is one of the first trees to show its leaf in Spring. Eostre/Ostara, the Celtic goddess of Spring was celebrated in festivities and dancing around and through the birch tree between the Spring Equinox and Beltane. Birch twigs were traditionally used to make besoms (a new broom sweeps clean). Maypoles were often made from birch and birch wreaths were given as lover’s gifts.

http://www.goddessandgreenman.co.uk/beltane

I am coming to understand more clearly why these two drawing series assignments needed to be done with pen. I have a tendency to perceive things energetically and to avoid details. When drawing or painting I like to have broad sweeps of energy with a few significant details. There’s nothing wrong with this. However, I am learning to give my complete attention and appreciation to details rather than avoiding them. In that way I am learning not to be overwhelmed by or “shorted out” by details. I can give myself to them completely.

This assignment is helping to “rewire” my system so that I can fully incarnate, own my physical senses, and allow them to become spiritualized. I believe I mentioned Red Riding Hood and the wolf in an earlier post… and that the Huntsman has come, making the rescue. Details do not need to trap me in a materialistic prison any more. I begin to perceive details with new eyes, the eyes of the Heart. This has been an ardent wish of mine, and it is being actualized.

The heart is the hub of all sacred places; go there and roam.

~Bhagawan Nityananda

Maypole dancing (http://www.egreenway.com/months/monmay.htm)

“For thee, sweet month; the groves green liveries wear.
If not the first, the fairest of the year;
For thee the Graces lead the dancing hours,
And Nature’s ready pencil paints the flowers.
When thy short reign is past, the feverish sun
The sultry tropic fears, and moves more slowly on.”
–  John Dryden 

I sense a kindred nature to my own:

Thus speaks perceptive feeling

As in the sun-illumined world

It merges with the floods of light;

To thinking’s clarity

My feeling would give warmth

And firmly bind as one

The human being and the world.

— Fourth Week (April 28-May 1)

I find this uncanny, in light of the ruminations in the previous post.

One of the most important things I have learned from Laura Simms, my storytelling mentor, is to see storytelling as a living reciprocal event. The storyteller is telling the story to the audience while the audience is simultaneously informing the storyteller; they are bringing forth the story together.

I woke up this morning realizing that this is what happens with the drawing process, with conscious art, as well. While I am perceiving/drawing something, that something is also perceiving me.

I am deeply listening to the bird sing. When I am listening in this way, the bird is also aware of me. This is what it means to live in the world with an enlivened soul. An enlivened soul is a participant in a living reciprocal event. Drawing is not necessary for this to happen, but it can become a means to bring this about. One’s entire body and being are used to cultivate ensoulment.* I can see by the red line that ensoulment is apparently not a word. I would like to keep it anyway.

G. I. Gurdjieff was known to say, “Let the observer become the observed.” I used to think that meant that instead of observing others I should observe myself. I didn’t think of it in this way. Consciousness must have this quality of living reciprocal relationship. If we are to “wake up,” as admonished by Gurdjieff, Christ, and others, we become part of a “new world” of reciprocal acknowledgement and perceiving. Maybe the trees and birds have been waiting ever so patiently for eons for us humans to “get it.”

Looking up the word eon for spelling, I came upon this definition:

Eon:1:(Gnosticism) a divine power or nature emanating from the Supreme Being and playing various roles in the operation of the universe; 2:the longest division of geological time; 3:an immeasurably long period of time.

“Calling forth the world” is a phrase that came to me as well. By being deeply attentive to myself and to another being or element at the same time, I am “calling forth the world.”

* There is a difference between sketching and drawing. I have felt that this is so and that what I am doing is drawing, not sketching. Maybe because I don’t have the skill level to sketch, I must draw. When I try to sketch, I feel uncomfortable, as if I am not paying due respect to what is in front of me.

As a teacher, there’s a huge difference, for example, between a sketch and a study. They can be called the same thing. A sketch is something that’s sketchy. Looking is sketchy. A study is where you’re studying with your body… (Jane Rosen, Parabola Magazine Interview, Spring 2012–http://www.parabola.org/looking-with-your-whole-body.html)