Have you ever thought of your spiritual practice as a way to help the whole world?
— Parabola Magazine
All posts by Pam
Entering the Void With the Eyes Open
To give life, we must enter the void, the silence between our thoughts. Here in the unbounded, the formless, the gap, is the source of all manifestation, all creation. This is the place where synchronicity begins to unfold and where the seemingly impossible takes place.
– Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
Looking With Your Whole Body
This is it! This is a huge part of what I am trying to do. Thanks to Facebook and Parabola Magazine.
http://www.parabola.org/looking-with-your-whole-body.html
And there’s a shift that happens when I’m drawing or when I’m looking at the dog or a horse or looking at someone in my mind’s eye, there’s a shift where something in me listens, but not with my ears. There’s another kind of listening. It’s kind of like from the knees up to the shoulders is like a receiver or a satellite dish allowing something to come in almost through my middle. It could be seeing who someone is. It could be seeing the dog in the gallery when the owner said, my dog doesn’t need water.
JR: Yes. So, I’m standing in the gallery when a woman walks in with a dog and the dog is saying to me, I want water. It was a big Bernese mountain dog. I could see it in the dog’s posture, it’s presence—but it’s a double thing, seeing the dog and also a listening in yourself. So I asked the woman, Would you mind if I gave your dog a bowl of water? And she said, “Oh, my dog has had water and isn’t thirsty.” So I said to the girls at the gallery, do you have a bowl? They gave me this big stainless steel bowl and I went to the bathroom and filled it with water and came back. The woman says again, adamantly, “Trust me. It’s my dog and it’s not thirsty!” Well, as soon as I put the bowl down, the dog started drinking and practically drank the entire huge bowl of water. Then it licked my hand. [laughs]
RW: That is really a seeing, but not what we think of.
JR: Right. But seeing isn’t what we think it is. What we call seeing is “looking.” Looking is when you go out and you look at something. You have a number of facts about that thing and you put them together as a mental construct. Okay? When students in my class look at the model often they are not seeing it. Paul Klee said to his students, “Yes. I want to draw what I see, but first you must see what you draw.”
RW: I agree, we don’t see very much, but what is it when someone stops and keeps looking and then starts to see more, literally.
JR: To me, the act of seeing is coming into an understanding of the whole of what’s occurring.
Repairing the Fabric of the World
Repairing the Fabric of the World
http://www.parabola.org/repairing-the-fabric-of-the-world.html
Tikkun Olam, “Repair of the World”
Mallot a deserving recipient of award
COMPASS: Other points of view
Published: April 25th, 2012 07:15 PM
Last Modified: April 25th, 2012 07:15 PM
Throughout the year, Congregation Beth Sholom and its members strive to live by the Jewish philosophy of tikkun olam, “repair of the world.” According to one version of this philosophy’s origin, at one time a perfect world shattered and sent shards of creation all over. The world was broken. It is our responsibility to assemble the shards, to raise them to the light. We meet this responsibility through our actions, individually and collectively…
If one man can do so very much, then imagine the possibilities of all of us rising to the occasion, taking our places and repairing the world we all inhabit.
Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/04/25/2440052/mallott-a-deserving-recipient.html#storylink=rss#storylink=cpy
Getting Ready for Drawing 8
I wrote this in writing practice today (topic: stitched to the earth):
Enough detail to seem real but enough left to imagine. I love this kind of balance. I like to feel that a painting or drawing happens in a real place yet has something present that is not immediately discernible. Some evocation of that which is beyond the senses. Caress the divine details. The details must have an aura or they are dead.
I am inspired by Marc Chagall, 
Marc Chagall: Le marchand de journaux, 1914.
I am surprised that the picture was inserted into the blog! This painting is particularly grounded compared to others he has done. I will look at more of his work.
With the ingredients of “stitched to the earth,” and spending some time finding what it is about Chagall’s work, I will soon begin the next drawing.
Entering the Void with the Eyes Open– thanks Jenny!
Mindful
Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less
I see or hear
something
that more or less
kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for –
to look, to listen,
of light.
It was what I was born for –
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world –
to instruct myself
over and over
inside this soft world –
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant –
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the very extravagant –
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these –
the untrimmable light
with such teachings
as these –
the untrimmable light
of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?
~ Mary Oliver ~
(Why I Wake Early)
Art in the Making: Entering the Void with the Eyes Open 7
I experienced quite a bit of resistance as I worked on this drawing. I determined I would take a copy of “April Afternoon” and see what needed to appear in the open spaces. This issue came up first with the drawing “Tree World.” There was empty space and I sensed the unseen in it but wasn’t ready to allow the pen into that space. I love empty spaces and to leave the unseen unseen. However, I knew I had to take the plunge (inspired as I was by process art approach). Besides, I had already done so in “Sunz Reflection.”
I worked on this in stages, allowing new elements to present themselves. I was worried I was just cooking things up in my personal imagination.
However, I happened upon a book inspired by the work of Rudolph Steiner that mentioned what happens in the Northern Hemisphere in spring (Living a Spiritual Year by Adrian Anderson). It seemed to me that there was a correspondence between what I had drawn and what was discussed in the book:
In earlier times people were aware that with the exhaling of the earth’s auric forces the multitudes of elemental beings that during winter were relatively inactive under the ground experience a renewal of their powers and gradually ascend further into the heights as summer approaches… A common theme in ancient spring festivals was the “marriage of the sun to the earth”… We might look upon all the new life and growth of spring as an expression of the creative powers of the sun beings– the regents of the solar system..
I was wondering about the figure in the upper left, a kind of angel with human faces in the hem of his robe. Then I read in Steiner’s The Calendar of the Soul (Second Week, April 14-20):
Out in the sense-world’s glory
The power of thought gives up its separate being,
And spirit worlds discover
Again their human offspring,
Who germinates in them
But in itself must find
The fruit of soul.
I had already drawn an odd, hooded figure on the far side of the inlet. When I returned to the drawing I found myself repeating the image in the foreground. I didn’t really want to be doing this– it seemed to insert itself by its own will, and I felt it was ruining “my picture.” Then the word “penitentes” echoed over and over in my mind. I looked it up and the first thing I saw was a stunning photo of ice formations that had the shape of the figures I had drawn. They are called “penitentes” and they are formed on high altitude glaciers by the process of sublimation (direct evaporation from ice, skipping the liquidation phase– http://physics.aps.org/story/v17/st7). I thought, yes–right now, right here– snow and ice are undergoing sublimation– the sun is so intense, not all of it turns into water first!
The penitentes as a religious category have the same formation with their pointed hood caps and robes. And they undergo psychological/spiritual sublimation as they (in some cases) self-flagellate– indeed the figures I drew held something like a whip with a pointed object at the end– a certain kind of leaf cluster has been used for self-flagellation, I discovered. This is, of course, a practice at Easter time (I did the original drawing on Russian Orthodox Good Friday). In this manner lower impulses are transformed into higher ones– skipping over the manifestation of the impulse in cruder form.
I was pretty amazed by how all of this was woven together in the context of the season– both the physical processes happening at this time and the associated spiritual customs. It all seems to link up!
I haven’t completely gotten over my concern that I am “cooking things up.” However, these discoveries are giving me more confidence that something can come onto the paper that is connected with genuine forces at work in the world– that something beyond my own subjectivity might be involved.
ps:
”There is a tendency to think that you are finished when either you don’t know what to do, or you don’t like it and want to get rid of it, or you like it and are afraid to ruin it. These are not valid reasons to stop. You are finished only when the painting is finished inside you. The painting decides, not you; the natural intuitive process decides, not you.” ~ Life, Paint & Passion
Entering the Void with the Eyes Open
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the door sill
Where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
Rumi