Entering the Void with the Eyes Open

And if we are praying with the body as well as the heart and mind, then we can also pray to the pine tree, the moon, and the stars. The pine tree is quite solid, the moon is always there on time, and the stars are always there for us, free and bright. If we can be deeply in touch with the pine tree, we are able to be in touch  with the one mind, with God. If touching means that God is able to transmit energy to us, then the pine tree can also transmit energy to us…

… so being in touch the almond tree (St. Francis story) is a way of being in touch with God. You will not find God in an abstract idea. This is something very important. God is here for us through very concrete things.

— Thich Nhat Hanh, The Energy of Prayer, p.70

Transparency: Becoming the Landscape

This morning I was rummaging for a notebook when I happened upon an article previously mentioned in this blog. In the New York Times Magazine, March 18, 2012, Kim Tingley wrote in “The Whisper of the Wild” about a sound recording project in Denali National Park and Preserve. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/magazine/is-silence-going-extinct.html?pagewanted=all)

This location, especially in winter,  is a vast and silent world. When there are no planes overhead, only the sounds of nature are heard– if only the sound of one’s own breath and heartbeat. Coming back from an expedition to install a recording station, and collect recording results, he described an experience he had at the recording site:

Night fell as we retraced our steps along the trail. The sky turned from lavender to indigo while the snow on the ground and the mountains glowed even when the last of the sun was gone. We headed for Jupiter, hanging low above the trees, and as we walked, I pictured the station back on the ridge, wrapped in the same darkness. When Betchkal harvests the audio, he will find us repacking our packs, exclaiming over our frozen apparatuses and sliding down the hillside into the willow field below. He will also, for three minutes, witness us still our movements and attune our ears to one of the quietest places left on Earth. In that window, I could hear the vastness of the valley — no sound marks materialized, like buoys bobbing on an empty ocean, to segment the sense of infinity. The landscape enveloped me, as Betchkal said it would, and I felt I was the landscape, where mountains and glaciers rose and shifted eons before the first heartbeats came to life.

“Standing in that place right there,” Betchkal told me later, “I had a complete sense that I was standing in that place right there and not drawn or distracted from it at all.”

There is a place close to the Blue Heron mining community ( http://www.nps.gov/biso/historyculture/blueheron.htm) in Kentucky, a short hike to the edge of a vast gorge. I love to go to this spot and absorb the silence. It feels like a healing balm. In this spot it is easy to become one with the landscape. It is as if the very silence sucks all of the thoughts from the mind.

However, Nature is everywhere. A weed pushes its way through a crack in a city sidewalk. It is easier to become one with the landscape in a wild place. Knowing that and craving that– I wish to become one with the landscape wherever I am.

Bringing Heaven to Earth

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

Art in the Making: Entering the Void with the Eyes Open 9

Tree World Revisited: Beltane (Extended)

Behold, my brothers, the spring has come;

The earth has received the embraces of the sun

And we shall soon see the results of that love!

 

Every seed is awakened and so has all animal life.

It is through this mysterious power that we too have our being

And we therefore yield to our neighbors,

Even our animal neighbors,

The same right as ourselves, to inhabit this land.

— Sitting Bull

Tonight Brian and I were taking a walk when he noticed sap dripping from a birch tree onto the sidewalk, making a puddle. It was dripping from a broken spot of a branch. This confirmed that the upward energy I was sensing as I drew is indeed real. It touched my heart.

I just discovered that in England the May moon is known as hare moon– Hare emerged from the grass as I drew. May moon is also known as grass moon (different traditions have different names for each moon).

 

Worship the trees as My feet, and you will become one with the heart of the world.

— The Self

What is the Self? It is the pure awareness of “I am,” the original “I” consciousness which has been within us ever since we came into this world.

— Swami Muktananda

Art in the Making: Entering the Void With the Eyes Open 8

Tree World Revisited: Beltane

As I sat on a chair on our front lawn, a few days after the last dollop of snow had melted, I was aware of the surging energy moving upward through the trees. The tiniest of leaf buds were formed, which in two days would flare out into the tiniest of leaves. I hope the energy I perceived is apparent in the drawing.

After considering taking it farther, I chickened out and decided to do an overlay, like I did with drawings 6 and 7. I will see what wants to come forth at Beltane time. Is there something else that wants to appear on the paper that is invisible to me right now?

Today is Beltane and It’s Tree is the Birch!

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

Birches on Beltane

Entering the Void with the Eyes Open

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

One Heart: Grace and Anda Meet in London (Oct 2011)