All posts by Pam

Entering the Void with the Eyes Open

A temporarily homeless man in London describes how he becomes more and more attentive to the interplay of ravens and magpies, squirrels and crows while he waits for night to fall.

You become enthralled by nature because you’re there for hours… you feel you’re touching nature or you’re just a part of it. And then the night closes in and you can hear the traffic decreasing and the pubs getting louder as people are going home. It’s at that point you think, now’s the time to go to sleep.

— Raymond Lunn (Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now– as Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It And Long for It, by Craig Taylor

More Thoughts on Entering the Void with the Eyes Open

I have been down with the flu for a while. This has been frustrating in that I haven’t had the strength for doing the drawings. But it has perhaps offered time for something to gel so that I can express it more clearly.

For some time I have been making efforts to experience the senses in a more deep and integrated way. I have felt that the experience of the senses can be a gateway to a more profound perception of/way of being in the world. I have been working to see with the eyes of the Heart and hear with the ears of the Heart. These efforts have brought forth fruit and I have been able to enter another realm of being in the world. The moments when I am in this state are like many-faceted jewels. In these moments I am no longer seeing the world as something moving past me, outside of myself, invoking my standard, and, in comparison, crude reactions. In these moments I feel I have entered the world of the poet.

The price of entering this world has been high from the point of view of personal ego. I have had to struggle against laziness and conditioned ways of seeing things. I am grateful for the help I have received in this effort, and consider this help to be an act of grace, without which no efforts of this sort are possible.

Now I see that this drawing assignment is a challenge to go farther on the path of seeing with the eyes of the Heart. I guess you don’t step off Easy Street and then get to drift on a raft like one of those commercials for taking a vacation in the tropics!

I have capitalized Heart because I am talking about something other than, yet inclusive of what we often describe as heart. This Heart extends far beyond the experiencing of the range of human emotions.

Thanks for reading this, if you have gotten this far. Here’s to the next step on the path!