All Dressed Up With Everywhere To Go Part 3: Ritual Behavior

 Prelude

Let's hop off that two-edged sword of discernment for a moment ((it can be really, really sharp!), stuff it in our backpack and take a stroll into the landscape of the Imaginal.  But, one may ask, how do we get to that terrain in the first place?  Here we are in our day-to-day real world, paying bills and making lunch and driving to work; the thousands of mundane and often irritating tasks in that shared world which constantly draw our attention, feed our anxieties, lure our desires.  Getting from the here and now of phones and computers, news and gossip, risks and responsibilities, to the Imaginal Realm seems at the least daunting, at most a pipe dream.

Putting aside the obvious fact that we go into the Imaginal naturally every night in our dreams, we'll have to look for hints and clues, perhaps even obtain a roadmap to help us on our journey.  But even with a roadmap in hand we will need a vehicle, a means of transport.  There is a clue available for us on that quest - that symbol that the Imaginal Realm passed on through the dream I referred to, the one that initiated this discussion.  Namely, the white tuxedo.  In that regard I'll reach back into my backpack and snag that black bow tie of discernment again (if you're gonna wear a tuxedo you're gonna need a bow tie), and... voila!!... all dressed up with everywhere to go.

I spoke in a previous posting of the possible symbolic associations that a tuxedo engenders.  There is one I hinted at yet somehow couldn't quite nail on the head at the time, and it's that association I want to explore more clearly now, the one I'm hoping will possibly transport us to our destination.  I'm talking here about an important clue the symbolic tuxedo gives us - the notion of ritual.

Fugue

One very common use of the term "ritual" is, simply put,  habitual action.  I have a morning ritual - I get out of bed, make a pot of coffee, turn on my computer and bring up a weather site.  This happens pretty much every morning without thought.  It's a simple routine without mysterious meaning or depth, yet it serves a function - the coffee perks me out of the night's slumber, the weather report helps me plan what I will wear that day, how my intended goals will be effected by rain or snow, cold or heat.  I imagine we all have many such rituals throughout the day, rituals we hardly notice.

At the other end of the spectrum is my dictionary's primary definition of ritual - a religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order.  This type of ritual might simply be for some a method to bring a community together, a bonding, or a networking tool of sorts.  It might, for those so inclined, actually trigger an Imaginal experience - a vision of Jesus or Mary at church; a conversation with spirit guides during a peyote ceremony in a sweat lodge; an eruption of bliss and ecstasy while chanting mantra on a yoga mat.  These are all legitimate forays into the Imaginal Realm, usually by individuals though occasionally shared by many or most of the community in attendance. 

In any case, it's a prescribed event with rules and methods, sometimes evolved and formulated over eons of traditional practice, and which by the nature of repetition can become nothing more than habitual action, remaining on the level of a networking event, a fun Friday night psychedelic trip with buddies, a soothing chant during meditation to help relieve anxiety and lower blood pressure ( all legitimate activities, but not forays into the Imaginal).

Between semi-conscious habitual actions (like my morning ritual) and prescribed ceremonial actions (like ingesting peyote in a sweat lodge) lie a whole range of ritual-like activities.  After my morning ritual I oftentimes  engage in a series of what is popularly known as yoga exercises.  My intent is very particular in this regard.  I'm not a student of Hatha Yoga, in which case these exercises might be a very solemn affair among other practices with the intent of achieving Satori, or Moksha, or Kundalini activation.  Rather, I simply want to take care of the body, make it more limber and agile in its actions within the world.  I have a book describing these exercises in word and picture, and these are indeed prescribed instructions I follow.  In this case the ritual also engages a process, in that repeated sessions over time gradually achieve my aims.  Yet in no way am I looking to explore the Imaginal Realm through these methods.

At least not as a primary process.  There is a secondary process that seems to tag along in parallel on its own.  When I'm done with the exercises I'm more relaxed yet highly focused, more open and receptive in the sense of beginner's mind.  This changed state of being just might, at times, open doors to the Imaginal.  A similar thing happens when I go to the gym 3 or 4 days a week.  I perform the prescribed activities dictated by the various machines,  ritually following a specific order every time.  Once again the primary process is oriented toward the body, to improve strength and endurance so as to to increase effectiveness in the world.  Like yoga I come out focused, relaxed, etc. (though I have yet to exit the gym to see faeries dancing in the evening sky).

All of these actions I've described are prescribed rituals, whether religious or secular, Imaginally purposed or practical.  They have their structures presented to the practitioner by a traditional institution of one sort or another, the parameters developed within a culture over time.  Sometimes they achieve their goals, sometimes not.  Sometimes they have secondary processes at work, sometimes not.  But what if you were to endeavor to develop unique rituals for yourself, rituals not handed down to you by the Upanishads or Planet Fitness, especially if your purpose was to create a vehicle to transport you to the Imaginal Realm?  How would you start?

To be continued....

All Dressed Up With Everywhere to Go Part 2: The Black Bow Tie of Discernment

Prelude

White tuxedo, black bow tie.  That was the odd costume I suddenly found myself wearing at the emergence of the Big Dream from the confused chaos of the seemingly mundane small dream that night.  I say "odd" because I have only one time in my life worn a tuxedo (at a brother's wedding decades ago) and that is not the sort of attire I aspire to;  blue jeans and a t-shirt will do just fine, thank you.  Even so, the black bow tie especially stands out for me as a symbol for the simple reason that I have owned only one tie of any sort in my entire adult life.  I find them vaguely repulsive at worst, strangely silly and superfluous at best.  The only one ever in my possession was a signed Jerry Garcia psychedelic tie given to me by Mr. Garcia himself in thanks for my volunteering at a fund raising event he had participated in.  I never wore it, and eventually gave it to an aging Deadhead I was acquainted with.  Thus, you can probably imagine just how odd it was for me to find myself in that  black noose while in the imaginal dream world.

Obviously a strong symbol here, so what would one associate with such a specific article of attire?  A few things come to mind - tradition, formality, constriction, pageantry, celebration, novelty, authority, sternness, silliness...hmm, some contradictions showing up here (btw, a bow tie also reminds me of the mathematical symbol for infinity, but I'll put that aside  for now).   If we're to tease this out it seems it's time to bring in the context of our destination, or more precisely the territory of our journey; the where amid all the every-wheres waiting in potential.  And that, of course, is the Imaginal Realm.  In that context an entirely new word symbol comes to me, one born of a particular necessity while traversing the various islands within that island nation - that is, the term discernment.

So now we have the black bow tie of discernment.

Fugue

I'll point out here that I'm not advocating the black bow tie of skepticism; or disbelief; or worse yet, cynicism.  To quote my dictionary:  to discern is to detect or perceive with the eye or intellect; to discriminate.  One might say, to discriminate between truth and fiction, to perceive what-is without agenda born of hidden or unhidden paradigm fixations.  Most skeptics and cynics can't see outside the box they've built around themselves, the paradigm they cling to.  I have a small story to illustrate this.

This story played out during the time of the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, close on the heels of 9/11.  The Bush administration was making a great effort to convince the American public of the necessity to embark on that war.  Colin Powell, a man respected and trusted by many from all sides of the political spectrum, was called upon to make the case.  At one point in a presentation to the presidential press corps he displayed a satellite photo of two trucks parked by a road in the Iraqi desert, stating that U.S. intelligence believed the trucks were carrying missile launchers armed with weapons of mass destruction capable of hitting Israel and even parts of Europe.  Later that evening Kofi Annan, then Secretary-General of the United Nations, was asked by a reporter what he thought of this evidence presented by Powell. Annan replied "All I see are two trucks in the desert".

Kofi Annan was using discernment.  He saw trucks in the desert.  Colin Powell saw missile launchers with weapons of mass destruction.  It turns out Annan was right - no weapons of mass destruction were ever found in Iraq.

One might ask in this light what the uses of discernment are within the Imaginal Realm.  After all, discernment is to a great degree a function of logic, a cognitive skill which some suggest does not apply to the island of the dream world, much less the island nation it inhabits.  Nonetheless, I would suggest discernment is an important tool to carry in your backpack on that journey.  When traveling among faeries and dead people and ascended masters a healthy dose of discernment just might be illuminating, and by default a bulwark against hazards.  And hazards there are.  When a channeled entity is met, one who has taken over the mind and body of a living person, are we to trust the message even if we accept the truth of the channeling?  I have personal experience meeting a self-proclaimed channeler who evaded questions and dissembled left and right.  Was he actually being channeled?  I have no idea.  But my bullshit detector, a great tool of discernment, was sounding the alarm.  I later found out his closest followers eventually abandoned him.  To use the analogy, they had been seeing weapons of mass destruction, then finally saw trucks in the desert.

But it's a two-edged sword, this tool of discernment.  It can, if not being used carefully, blind us to possible truths outside our hidden paradigms.  As a friend once suggested, in the Imaginal Realm one sits on the edge of that two-edged sword.  Does it cut our butts, or tickle them?

To be continued...

All Dressed Up With Everywhere to Go Part 1: Imaginal Entanglements

Prelude:

To begin with I'd like to explain  the genesis of the title of this new blog series.  It began with a dream, one in which a recently common theme of obstacles, frustrations, misdirections and confusions in  my dream world inhabited an apparently necessary journey I was embarked upon, a journey with uncertain intent or destination.  In other words, a mostly mundane and forgettable nocturnal adventure.  But then the scene suddenly shifted, and what had been what I sometimes term a "small dream" began to morph into its flip side, what I term a "Big Dream".  With this shift I I found myself in a large, brightly lit room, perhaps a ballroom.  To my surprise I noticed I was dressed in a white tuxedo and black bow tie.  I began wandering through the room, now peopled with a number of equally well dressed guests.  I passed close by a woman I recognized who, upon seeing me,  commented with a smile "You look like you're in love!".  This seemed rather odd on its own, yet as I passed by another female acquaintance a few steps on she repeated the same declarative, "You look like you're in love!".  This scene repeated itself exactly several times more as I wandered through the room, which confused me since I am decidedly not in love with anyone, nor have I been so since my young adulthood (unless being "in lust" is synonymous with being "in love").

And then the dream abruptly ended as I woke up to the blare of my alarm clock.  As I fumbled out of bed to make coffee I pondered over this strange string of identical comments, puzzled but mildly amused at the disconnect to my real-life amorous condition, or rather the lack thereof.  Just then a thought popped into my mind, one practically as disconcerting as the dream comments from my female dream interlocutors - I realized that what they meant was not that I looked like I was in love with someone, but that I was IN LOVE, or more precisely I was WITHIN LOVE.

I was absolutely certain of this new revelation of the meaning of the dream message, but it had a peculiar feel to it.  I have never, as far as I can remember, thought or felt or intuited that I was "within love".  This characterization of my life condition is one I've never expressed, nor is it one  I would anticipate embracing in any foreseeable future life condition evaluation.  It had the feel of a message from something outside myself, or perhaps from some strange and usually inaccessible region of my interior self.  In any case, I knew this to be the real content of the nocturnal message.

Later that afternoon I had occasion to email a friend on some matters and, knowing he appreciates the slip and slide of our dream lives, related to him the content of my dream and the sudden revelation of its interpretation.  His reply was immediate. "Knowing you as I do, Jeff, I would add another meaning implied in this dream - you are all dressed up with everywhere to go!". 

And so the title of my new blog series.  Which begs two questions.  Firstly, where does one go when everywhere is in play?  And secondly, what does one wear that qualifies as "all dressed up" when embarking on that journey?  I think these questions are closely related, though for now I will begin with a discussion of the second.

Fugue:

If one is to embark on a journey, appropriate attire is called for.  You might say a tuxedo is appropriate for a wedding, or a splashy event like the Oscars.   It is decidedly not appropriate for an exploration of the geosphere, like a hike into the Grand Canyon.  Nor for exploring the biosphere, as in a trek through a tropical rain forest.  It is apparently appropriate for a dream journey, which is by definition a journey through the noosphere, the sphere of thoughts and ideas, dreams and reveries, culture and creativity.  The noosphere is vast, yet mostly invisible.  You might call our dream life a little island in the vast landscape of the noosphere - a very special kind of island where linear causality in time is rather loosely held, where stories have a beginning, and another beginning, and another; where the middle is sometimes the end: where the end is almost never.  

Let me rephrase that.  Our dream life is an island within an island nation within the noosphere.  Recently I stumbled upon a name for that island nation, one that is derived from a Sufi notion and expanded upon quite beautifully by the author Cynthia Bourgeault.  That name is the "Imaginal Realm".

First off, I don't mean by that name, imaginary.  We don't imagine our dreams, like we might imagine what it would be like to get rich, or play professional baseball, or suddenly score a date with that hottie down the next row of cubicles at work.  Dreams happen to us, and in that sense they are real (at least when we're immersed in them).  Yet they are not real in the same way our normal everyday waking life is real.  They exist within the imaginal realm, and are real in that realm -  an island within that island nation.  And it's the contours of that island nation that I want to explore in order to figure out, at the least, what the appropriate attire is for that journey.  To begin that exploration, I'll quote from Bourgeault in her book "Eye of the Heart".

The term "Imaginal Realm" has its original provenance in Islamic mysticism, but the idea itself - if truth be told an archetype more than idea - is common to all the great sacred traditions.  It is traditionally understood to be a boundary realm between the worlds, each structured according to its own governing conventions and unfolding according to its own causality.  In traditional metaphysical language, it is the realm separating the denser corporeality of our earth plane from the progressively finer causalities which lie "above" us in the noetic and logoic realms.

I say "boundary", but the imaginal world is more of a confluence, for the word "boundary" suggests a separation while what is really at stake in the realm is an active flowing together. 

Experientially received within one's own quiet subjectivity, it appears as an allusive aliveness, a meaning presenting itself in "glimpses and visions", a  foretaste or reminder of a higher order of being to which the human heart actually belongs and to and from which it responds, with infinite tug.  The imaginal nudges us, beacons us, corrects us as we stray from our authentic unfolding, rewards us with dazzling glimpses and reassurances of that "other intensity" to which we truly belong, and in whose light the meaning of our earthly journey will ultimately be revealed, like the treasure buried in a field. 

Pretty much everything she says here does, or at least can, apply to dreams.  But like I said, dreams are one island among many in this island nation of the Imaginal Realm.  The Imaginal Ream can pop up in everyday life in the form of synchronicities, intuitions, creative epiphanies.  Just as importantly, it can show up as visions, voices, precognitions, clairvoyance.  It can appear as a dialogue from a disembodied entity as in channeling, or a message from a deceased loved one, or simply as a sculpture of the Goddess in the form of a twig at one's foot.  

I suspect all of us have experienced the Imaginal Realm in one form or another, even if we won't admit it to any but our closest loved ones (if even them).  But it's there, it's real.  I experience it almost daily in my creative work life, in those moments when something appears in the work that is decidedly not me, but of me in some strange and mysterious way that I can't rationally explain, that is somehow outside the causality of the normal world I usually inhabit.  As I've also related, I have occasionally encountered it vividly in my dream world, in the "Big Dreams". So, to get back to my original question, if I want to explore this realm further, what is the appropriate attire?

And in that, I will refer to the dream I related at the beginning of this blog post.  Dreams are saturated in symbolism, and the symbol that pops up most strongly for me in my dream attire is the black bow tie I wore.

To be continued...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Confessions of an Explorer, Part 6: On the Nature of Faeries (And Mermaids)

"Every once in a long while a fisherman reels in a mermaid." - comment by a friend after hearing my story of the blue circle.

There's something curiously Faerie-like about the art making process.  We've all heard descriptions related by novelists of how they plan a story idea, work out the outlines and structure of the tale, frame the attributes and personality of each character - all of this only to find as the writing proceeds that the characters start to write their own dialogue, changing the direction of the narrative seemingly to suit their own purposes.  All of this culminating in the author questioning who exactly it was that wrote that novel.  I imagine improvising musicians often have a similar feeling, as well as musical composers - Johannes Brahms spoke in an interview in the early 20th century of how he felt that his best music arose when he was able to hand over the work to a higher power and just get out the the way.  In other words, let the Faeries do their work.

I've written before in this blog of my finding those moments when, after finishing a piece, I could think back and remember every step, every decision, every nuance - yet still wonder where the heck this thing in front of me came from.  Some call this almost typical creative experience an intuitional breakthrough, perhaps one facilitated by a letting go of the small egoic self that allows the usually veiled higher self to move to the center and speak.  The experience is quite magical, yet something the creative agent can grasp, can own.  Let's call this a borderline Faerie experience.  

In contrast, the experience of the blue circle is of another order.  I set up the conditions - the circular panel, the grid laid out to accentuate a spherical effect, the failed attempts that led to a thick layer of blue paint to establish a new starting point.  That was the extent of my input, and as I explained, when I left the shiny-wet blue circle laying on a table to dry I was more than a little discouraged.

Then something I can't account for happened overnight and I returned to discover a masterpiece; a totally unexpected, unimaginably sublime message from some source outside my experience, conscious or unconscious  This was a real, full-on Faerie moment.

Which begs a question - what exactly do I mean by the term 'Faerie'?  As you may have surmised, I'm using it in a generic sense pointing to the possible existence of realms or dimensions outside of our usual rather limited 5-sense perceptions and equally limited cognitive abilities.  I could use the term spirit world, or inter-dimensional realms, other-worldly habitations, or just simply the ghostly realms.  The word Faerie was suggested to my by my Irish friend, that being a term meaningful to her culture.  Another might say Angels, or Daemons, or Spirit guides.  I like Faerie because it's so in-your-face goofy.  It directly challenges the rational mind-set because it's so silly in a way, so childish - think of fairy tales, or Peter Pan's Tinkerbell.  We've all grown out of that, haven't we?  No one over 8 years old believes in Santa Claus....right?

But then a blue circle happens, and suddenly Faeries seem perfectly reasonable, or at least reasonably possible.  I mentioned that encountering that artwork immediately gave me a sense of otherness, of forces outside my day-to-day perceptions. Is there something, or some things, or energy, or entities that exist beyond our usual abilities of detection?

For the off-the-cuff doubters out there, I simply suggest they examine the dream world they inhabit every night, remembered or not.  I'm not speaking of psychological analysis, as valuable as that method can be.  I don't think I'm at all unusual in having found myself, on occasion in dreams, within completely other-worldly landscapes among other-worldly inhabitants; places and 'people' of shape and form and mysteriousness such as I have absolutely no reference in the waking world, including Hollywood.  Even in the most common dream we might fly, or breath underwater, or hurtle off a cliff in a car headed to a deep river valley below, only to slow down and finally hover safely over the raging waters just feet away.  Where could this all possibly come from, on a nightly basis?  Is it such a common experience that we mostly ignore it, mostly lose any sense of wonder about how it could be?  How many times have you told yourself "It's just a dream"?  And you think Faeries are silly and childish?

For the rest of us non-doubters, or at least non-dismissers, the idea of a Faerie realm is an intriguing possibility, if for no other reason than most of us have experienced at various times in our lives experiences so unusual that no reasonable explanation cuts the cloth.  In fact, reasonable explanations can be completely irrelevant.  But it's hard to admit these experiences, given the usual ridicule they illicit.  I know.  Who seriously believes what I've described as my Kundalini experiences?  Not many, sadly.  I can't blame them; at times I can hardly believe it myself!  Yet there it is. And there is the blue circle, hanging right now in my new exhibition space in my studio, which I've titled " Fairy Portal".

And so, what do we make of the nature of Faeries?

To be continued...

Confessions of an Explorer, Part 5: Mystery Appears

Something happened in my art studio recently.

I had been working on a large circular panel, laying out with thread a grid of squares and then painting over that grid with layers of color.  Other than the intentional nature of the grid as a starting point I had no firm idea of where the piece was to go.  As is often the case, I was simply content to let the process take me where it wanted.  Unfortunately the sneaky fella (can we speak of an artwork as a fella?) took a wrong turn and before I caught on we had hit a dead end in the form of a pool of quicksand.  A little discouraged, I decided it was necessary to retrace my steps and get onto firm footing  I spray painted a rich blue color over the entire circular surface, laying the paint on heavy to assure that I would end up with a solid blue color field as my new starting point.  It happened to be late in the afternoon and, realizing the thickness of the wet paint would take quite awhile to dry, I lay the piece on a work table and packed it in for the day.  As I headed out the door I caught a last glimpse of the shiny wet blue circle, hoping with a sigh that the freshness of a new day would indicate a different direction for me to pursue.

When I returned to my studio the next morning I was in for more than a big surprise.  Here's in image of what I found had happened to my blue circle in the dead of the night - in my empty and locked art studio:

 

I was flabbergasted!  Look at these details:

 

 

 

I kid you not, I had no part in this transformation.  I was dumbfounded by the sheer beauty of it, by the absolute coherence that is so evident.  A strange feeling of otherness came over me, the sensation that some alien presence had shaped the paint.  Even today it looks to me like a symbol language, an alphabet with a distinct yet mysterious message which speaks not to the rational mind, but to something deeper, something almost instinctual, something untranslatable, ineffable, yet profoundly moving.

I immediately realized this artwork was finished.  Nothing more for me to do here; it was perfect (which in my book is good enough!).   In fact, one of the most perfect artworks I've had a hand in; yet my part was simply to set up the grid on the circular panel, lay in as much blue paint as I dare apply, and blithely walk out the door.  I had not the slightest inkling that some entity, some spirit, or at least some beyond possible stroke of luck would take over and create a masterpiece.  For my part I was home dreaming of strange dogs following me around as I searched anxiously for where I was supposed to be, which I'd forgotten because the car had spun off the road over a cliff, hurdling at a dizzying speed down to the waiting river below, only to slow down and finally hover inches above the raging waters, which allowed me to leap out of the car into a crowded holiday party on shore where no one could give me directions to my destination because I had forgotten where I was going and WHY ARE THOSE DAMN DOGS FOLLOWING ME EVERYWHERE???!!!

Well, it was a strange dream, but that's what was occupying me as faeries were working their magic in my studio. 

Of course, we all know in our modern, sophisticated, rational minds that there is no such thing as faeries, or Santa Claus, or the Easter bunny.  Ask anyone with a cell phone if they've videoed a faerie, and if they say yes demand to see it. This whole thing was just a natural process - paint resisting paint aided by the winter coolness in my studio which caused a very slow dry time.  So I set out to duplicate the effect, identifying the sheen of the paint, the density of the added pigment, the coolness of the environment.  Making some small panels to experiment on, I tried one combination, then another, then another...and got nothing.  Persevering, I tried different brands of the paint medium, different sheens,  different densities of pigment...and got nothing.  This went on for two weeks, when finally I got just the slightest hint of the effect, but that would be the best I could do.  It was getting frustrating and I was baffled as to why the solution was eluding me.

Then it occurred to me that I was approaching this conundrum from a completely wrong perspective.  It wasn't a matter of identifying causal factors, like solving a chemistry problem.  There would be no solution for me at the end of a physics equation.  The real truth was that I needed to figure out how to communicate with the faeries; and to do that, I might have to translate the message in the artwork.

To be continued...

Addendum To a Prelude To a Plelude

If you read my last posting here you might remember the story of an unusual healing I underwent, the apparent result of an experiment in utilizing the potential of energies that I've observed coursing through my arms and into my hands. It was certainly a surprise to me, one that was encouraging yet perplexing.  The little jeffy in me, the skeptical one, was unconvinced.  Alternately, Big Jeff simply echoed the comment from a friend who had read the account - Why not?  I decided there was a need to experiment further, and an opportunity quickly presented itself.

Soon after the period of the mysterious healing I decided the eyeglasses I had been wearing for several years were scratched beyond help and in need of replacement.  I went in to the shop to order a new pair and was informed that the prescription had expired and I was in need of a new examination.  That seemed like an annoying expense, but I acceded and set up an appointment with my ophthalmologist.  Little did I know that I would be in for a surprise.

After all of the usual mini-tortures that come with an eye exam, the doctor informed me that not only did I need a stronger eyeglass prescription, but that he had detected unusually high pressure inside my eyes and had spotted signs of early stage glaucoma.  He explained that glaucoma was the result of this high pressure squeezing on the optical nerve at the back of the eye, and over time this pressure would cause a gradual decrease in peripheral vision, eventually leading to a kind of tunnel vision.  He also explained that if caught early -as it was, hopefully, in my case - it could be treated, and so he referred me to have a more thorough examination at an eye surgery clinic in the area.

As you might imagine this was rather unpleasant news, exasperated by the fact that I am a dedicated VISUAL artist.  As so many come to realize, getting old sucks!!!!  I was unsettled, but the news of possible treatment was at least a bit encouraging.  After mulling things over for a couple of days I decided the best thing to do was to get the whole picture as quickly as possible, so I called the clinic to make an appointment.  They had received my referral and I was on file, but this was a busy clinic and the earliest  time I could get was six weeks out.  So much for quick.  I agreed to the date and time and resigned myself to waiting it out.  

Which turned out to be a blessing in disguise, for I realized this was the opportunity to experiment once again with the kundalini energies coursing through me.  I immediately integrated into my almost daily kundalini session a focused meditation, similar to the one I described in my last post concerning the skin blemish.  In each session, once I could feel the energies strongly flowing into my hands, I would raise my arms together, then  lower them until the palms of the hands hovered just over my eyes - right hand over right eye, left over left.  Every time, within seconds, that particular indescribable sensation that some label prana would envelope my eyes.  In my mind I imagined the prana working to return each eye to its natural, healthy state.  Two or three minutes would pass, at which point I would raise my hands high again, then return them to my side.

Did I believe this was going to make a difference?  Big Jeff simply suggested, why not?  On the other hand little jeffy counseled, don't hold your breath.  You might say the totality of me didn't believe this would work, but nonetheless had faith that something good would come of it.  At the least this faith allowed me to cut back on some of the anxiety and go about my day to day business with a degree of equanimity, where eventually it became a back burner issue in my life...until the day before the exam, when little jeffy started to lose it with flashes of anxiety.  Interestingly, Big Jeff held his calm, repeating over and over to the little guy the simple question - why not?  And guess what?  The calming advice worked.  By the day of the exam little jeffy was, if not exactly enthusiastic, at least  mostly stoic about what was to be revealed.

And so I, meaning the totality of me, walked fairly calmly into the clinic.  In fact, looking back on it now, I'm surprised at how calm I was.  This was quite possibly a life changing moment, yet I simply arrived, spoke pleasantly with the attendant at the desk, and submitted to a barrage of bizarre vision tests - modern medicine, as good as it supposedly is, is a madman's technological nightmare.  I had no idea what was being done to me, or for what purpose.  Room after room of crazy machines to stick my head into, barraging my eyes with unspeakably crazy light effects intended to tease out how far I have deviated from normal eye health.  After an hour of this I was led to a quiet room, where I received eye drops to dilate my eyes, being told that after 20 minutes the drops would take effect and a doctor would examine me.

I had brought a book, anticipating possible long waiting times.  It was one I was re-reading at the time, titled "The Time Falling Bodies Take To Light", an irony I only just now see.  It's a fascinating book examining the beginnings of language and culture in very early Homo Sapien life as long as 100,00 years ago.  Surprisingly, I became completely absorbed in the book despite the coming verdict from the doctor.  When he arrived he put me through a detailed examination of my eyes, yet for the first time since I arrived I felt I was being examined by a DOCTOR, not a machine.  He was a nice guy.  The assistant he brought was a nice gal.  They worked smoothly together, and I was comforted in a weird way.

Then the verdict came.  I just listened with no anxiety, no expectation.  Whatever was coming, I was ready for it.  The doctor said, rather simply, that I had no high pressure in my eyes.  I had no signs of glaucoma.  He recommended I come back in a year for another exam, but otherwise I was OK.

You can imagine the shit-eating grin on my face as I heard this verdict, partially disguised from the doctor by the covid mask I was wearing.  As I left, driving home with my temporary sunglasses shielding me from the intense light entering my still-dilated eyes, I considered the possible implications.  Maybe my ophthalmologist had made a mistake, had misdiagnosed my situation.  Or perhaps, just perhaps, prana had done its work.

 Why not?

To be continued...

Confessions of an Explorer, Part 4: Time Is On My Side???

Yet Another Prelude to a Prelude

I've been reporting observed events related to my Kundalini experience with the intention of getting them on record.  I'm not necessarily certain how to interpret them - what does one make of electric toe wiggles, dancing lights, arm to hand rushes of energy?  Not for me to say at this point -  just the facts, ma'am.  Here's the latest:

As the arm to hand energy sensations continued to increase I thought to conduct an experiment.  Many who speak of Kundalini conceptualize the energies as Prana, a life force that normally supports our biological machine at a low level we hardly notice, yet has the potential to greatly increase when activated.  Given my experience this seems a sensible possibility to me, and so I began to wonder if the discharge of energies into my hands could be utilized in some way.  We all have probably heard of individuals who claim to use energies of some sort to heal - laying on of hands, so to speak.  Could this energy radiating into my hands be some version of that?  If so, how would I test it?

I have very light skin, and  noticed a dark growth appear just above my left clavicle perhaps 5 years ago or longer.  Very small at first, hardly a concern, yet over time it has slowly increased in size to the point that recently I've considered having it looked at by a dermatologist and possibly removed.  Instead, I decided that this would be the object of an experiment involving the strange energy sensations rushing into my hands.

Let me first describe my current Kundalini practice.  Almost daily at some point in my activities I stop the normal flow of events and lie down on my back to do a 20 minute Pilates session aimed at loosening my upper back,  neck and shoulder joints.  Quite effective, by the way.  After finishing, still flat on my back, I start a mini-ritual, taking a deep breath as I spread my legs to shoulder width, then another deep breath as I spread my arms a bit from my hips, turning palms up.  One more deep breath and I close my eyes.  At that point I mentally fall into my body, and within minutes, sometimes seconds, the Kundalini/Prana energies begin to make themselves evident.  Often beginning at the perineum, sometimes in the heart region, the energies typically slowly build until they run down my arms and into my hands, creating an exquisite sensation in my fingers that causes them to flex and wiggle.  Here's where,  recently, I began my experiment.

Using the notion of Prana as a life force underlying our biological selves, I began conceptualizing the energies in my hands as having the potential to return damaged organs or cells to their normal, healthy state.  With this in mind I started to proceed with the experiment, the process as follows.  I extend my arms fully upward, and as I do so the sensations increase, surging to my fingers.  Then I lower my arms, hands going to my left neck area.  With my left hand I pull back the collar of my shirt and hover the open palm of my right hand over the skin blemish.  I hold this position for perhaps a minute, sometimes longer, literally feeling energy flowing into my palm.  When my arms begin to tire I end the experiment, raising hands first to the sky, then lowering into my normal Kundalini session position.

Did I believe anything would come of this?  The little jeffy in me was entirely skeptical, but willing to go along for the ride - after all, what was the harm?  Big Jeff just observed with arms folded over his sternum.  He had seen enough of the unusual to know better than to form an opinion; he is by nature very, very patient.  The Unborn was kicking in the womb.

I performed this experiment almost daily, but after ending the session tended to quickly forget about it as I immersed myself in day to day life.  After my usual morning shower I would occasionally glance at my shoulder, though most of the time it would not occur to me to check if there was any progress.  Then one morning, after three or four weeks of experimentation, I consciously took a look in the mirror and thought I detected a small change in the blemish, though I didn't have my glasses on and couldn't be sure due to a little fuzziness.  The next morning while in the shower I felt a little itchiness in the area and when I scratched it a piece of skin sloughed off.  I jumped out of the shower, putting my glasses on and wiping steam off the mirror.  I looked and...behold!  The very dark patch of skin was gone, and all that was left was a pale remnant of the shape!

What to make of this?  If you're going to insist on coincidence I can't argue with you, except to remind you that this patch of dark skin had been with me for many years, slowly growing over time, showing no signs of going away.  It had become a familiar, if slightly unnerving, presence in my body.  And now it's gone.

Just the facts, ma'am.

To be continued...

Confessions of an Explorer, Part 3: Can Culture Make Whoopee?

 Prelude to Another Prelude

In keeping with my last posting here I have a new Kundalini observation to share.  I previously mentioned the curious physical phenomenon I associate with my developing Kundalini process - the toe tingles, and the low illumination visual perceptions of dancing lights.  Not long after those arose yet another related surprise made itself known,  a pattern of lovely tingling nerve sensations  running down my arms and into my hands and fingers.  Subtle at first, these sensations now are quite strong and consistent, often signaling the beginning of a transition to a whole body prana/nerve explosion.  All of these experiences are available to me at most any time, though the intensities vary from day to day.  Yet in the long run there seems to be a steady increase in those intensities, suggesting a developmental arc, the goal of which is not yet apparent to me.

BTW, this recent August 18 was the 13th anniversary of the first onset of this mystery.  Quite a ride. 

Prelude

Mark Rothko (1903 - 1997 was a Latvian born American painter best know for his works under the genre identified as Color Field Painting.  He came into prominence in the 1950's and 60's and was an active, internationally renown painter until, after a protracted and deteriorating illness, he committed suicide.

If you're not familiar with the term, Color Field Painting is pretty much exactly as the name describes - large swatches, or fields, of pure color laid out in an abstract manner, usually on large canvases to amplify the effect.  Here's one of Rothko's works:

After his death a collector of his work living in Houston built a chapel there in 1971 and installed 14 large paintings that Rothko had produced for that purpose. The interior walls were almost completely covered  for 360 degrees.  Known as the Mark Rothko Chapel, it was (and presumably still is) a non-denominational chapel, free of admission and open to anyone desiring to spend time in contemplation within this aesthetic environment.

From 1973 to 1976 I found myself living in Austin, Texas, about 100 miles east of Houston.  I was in no way involved in an art practice at the time and knew next to nothing about contemporary visual art - a few works by Andy Warhol were probably the scope of my experience in that world.  I was young and mostly directionless, proverbially still trying to find myself.  The Rothko Chapel had only been up for a couple of years, and had make quite a splash in Houston; enough of a splash that word of it reached my ears in Austin.  When I had a chance to visit Houston for the first time some friends urged me to make a reservation to visit the chapel site, and that I did.  

I was one person when I walked in, and quite another when I walked out.

It's hard to describe the experience - ineffable, as they say, though almost 50 years later still indelibly inscribed in my memory.  The painting were huge, maybe 10' x 12' on average, and dark, yet incredibly subtle in the variations and nuances of color change.  I was alone, and spent my allotted time standing in place slowly turning round and round and round, almost breathless, stunned to the core.  I had never come close before to experiencing such a viscerally powerful visual presence.  

Perhaps because I was in a directionless, seeking stage of life I was ripe for it; open and defenseless and willing.  Or maybe that chapel was a true contemporary sacred site, and I experienced what many people did within those walls.  In any case, when a little bell rang announcing the end of my visit I exited in something like a dream, which stayed with me for the rest of the day.  I was a changed young man.

Fugue

This was, without a doubt, a whoopee experience, one between me and the work of a man 4 years dead.  How did it happen?  It was pure,laser-hot cultural transmission, perhaps similar to the experience of a stone-age young adult, innocent and naive, being led into the cavern of cave paintings at Lascaux, France twenty thousand years ago.  And as I imagine it was for my stone-age comrade, it was transformational for me.

So now we can see not only is there whoopee in the physiosphere, and lots and lots of whoopee in the biosphere, but that whoopee does indeed enter the noosphere through cultural interaction.  I've written here before of another cultural whoopee experience I had in that same young adult time frame of my life. after the first reading of Tolstoy's War and Peace.  I've had several since then - for example my first hearing of Beethoven's Opus 111 piano sonata, and the live concert experience of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem in which, upon ending, an entire audience of several hundred people were stunned into silence - nary a clap or bravo for at least a full minute, followed by a spontaneous and sudden thunderous applause.

These whoopee moments don't just come and go, like an ice cream cone on a hot summer afternoon.  It's my contention that they become a part of you, a living part that ceaselessly works on your personality structure, invisibly shaping and forming what you are to become.  Sometimes consciously, but mostly unconsciously or at best subconsciously, these experiences accumulate, each one entering into the process of your becoming, joining in the little workshop of your ever-changing life.  All of it driven by whoopee.

A process it is, and there is something about process that is always true - it happens over time, past to present to future. Or should we call it past-present-future?

To be continued...

Confessions of an Explorer, Part Two - As Above, So Below

 

Prelude to a Prelude

You may be wondering at the title of my last posting - Vocatus atque non vocatus, deus aderit.  It's an inscription in Latin on the tomb of the psychologist Carl Jung, and means "Called or not called, the gods rise".  I hadn't thought of that inscription for years until just recently I noticed it while scrolling through some of my very old postings.  It seems quite appropriate now in relation to my Kundalini experiences, appropriate in ways I hadn't considered many years ago when I first ran across this phrase.

But before I continue with my conceptual exploration of Kundalini I want to keep you up to date and share with you some of the more recent observations I have made in the development (there's that word!) of the Kundalini process I've been engaged in for these many years.  About two years ago I began noticing a new direction the energies seemed to be taking within my body.  Previous to that the sensations tended to start at the base of the spine, or sometimes the heart region,  and move up into my cranial region.  Then out of nowhere I began to sense a movement downward along the inside of my legs culminating in, of all places, my big toes.  The sensations were not strong, but definitely pleasurable.  It was like little mini-orgasms in my big toes - you might imagine my amusement!  This was not something I directed or willed, it just started happening.  Interestingly, I've seen no reference to this phenomenon in any Kundalini discussion, traditional or contemporary.  Slowly over time this has branched out into all of my toes and increased in intensity.  I can now, while engaging in what I call a Kundalini session, begin the most exquisite flow of sensations upward through the base of the spine, then the heart, then into the head, by simply wiggling my toes!

You probably think this is weird; I can't blame you, I think it's weird myself.  But there is more.

There has been a new and subtle change in my visual field of perception, a change that began perhaps about the time of the toe tingles.  One of my studio rituals while  in 'little jeffy' mode is to take a break during the day, turn down the lights and do a series of Pilates and yoga exercises on a low assembly worktable covered with a packing blanket.  It's an age thing - as I get older little aches and pains seem to persist and grow, and these exercises are a great way to minimize them.  As I'm doing these exercises I'm facing an old peeling painted brick wall displaying a soothing and quite beautiful texture in the dim light.  At some point, I can't pinpoint when, I began noting very subtle movement in the texture of the brick, as if little lights were dancing and flickering over the surfaces.  At first I assumed it was just a trick of the eye and thought little of it, but over time it has increased in intensity, and now at times when I'm looking at that wall it's not even a bit static visually, but a whirling kaleidoscope of light particles, sometimes so intense I can barely recognize the old wall textures.  Curiously, this light show disappears under normal illumination. 

Weird, I know.  Darker than any mystery...

Prelude

As above, so below.  Or put another way, as in the macrocosm, so the microcosm.  Almost a cliche, yet there is a kernel of truth there, a seed we might germinate to grow a new seedling of perspective.  The particular little seedling I have in mind is none other than the euphemistic term I used in the last posting when discussing early life on our planet - "whoopee".  So let's make a little whoopee here (figuratively speaking) and tease this thing out.

We'll start with the microcosm - little you, little me, little doggie, little birdy.  One thing everyone and every living thing in their holonic microcosm has been through (and probably remembers nothing of) is birth .  We generally take it for granted, but it's actually quite an astonishing thing on all levels.  For instance (speaking of seedlings), with the arrival of spring I've begun my annual attempt at growing potted tomato plants at my studio building.  I take these little tiny dried up tomato seeds and stick them into some wet dirt, then watch for days as the wet dirt just sits there, being wet dirt.  Then one day I check it out and there is this little stalk poking its head up out of the dirt.  Miraculous!  Yet, kind of ordinary, usually just taken for granted.  And that stalk grows and grows and grows, till one day it flowers, and out of the flowers tiny green spherical objects emerge, and they grow and grow and grow, then turn red, at which point I cut them up and  eat them....and experience an explosion of flavor in my mouth that makes me cry out WHOOPEE!!!

How all of this happens is simple.  Whoopee.  OK, the tomato form of whoopee is a little different than the average human  form, but whoopee nonetheless.  And it's that whoopee that paves the way to the astonishing miracle of birth.  From little mice to massive elephants, ants to anteaters, fungus to redwood trees; it's whoopee all the way up, all the way down.  You might say, the Biosphere is saturated with whoopee!

But what about the physiosphere, the sphere of rocks and moons and suns and galaxies?  Dead planets drifting through a vacuum; asteroids being pulled around willy nilly by the nearest gravity field; stones falling mindlessly down a mountain side during an avalanche, only to sit right where they stop for the next ten thousand years.  Where's the whoopee in that?

Well.......let's go back to the beginning, to that moment when time and space began and the cosmos was simply a massive burst of undifferentiated, incomprehensible energy.  Eventually, out of that ocean of fire emerged relatively little fireballs we now know as suns, and out of groupings of suns emerged galaxies, and within galaxies from individual suns emerged solar systems with planets.  Or to use another term rather than emerged, let's call it birthed.  How did all that happen?  Was it planned, orchestrated, guided?  I don't think so.  I THINK IT WAS WHOOPEE!!!  I mean, look at this image from the Hubble space telescope -

 

Dumb, purposeless accident?  No way.  That's pure, unadulterated whoopee at work.  You might say, the Physiosphere is also saturated with whoopee!

Which leaves us - if we're to consider not just the Cosmos but the entire Kosmos - with the Noosphere. the sphere of mind and culture.  Of course, lots of whoopee going on in most people's imaginations, but not much of consequence is usually birthed of that.  But if we think of mind, then think of the meeting of minds, we find ourselves in the sphere of culture.  Does culture somehow become the grounds for whoopee?

To be continued...

 

 

 

 

My Significant Other is the Kosmos: Confessions of an Explorer Part One - Vocatus Atque Non Vocatus, Deus Aderit

Prelude

I just re-read my most recent posting on this blog site, and the incident it details was indeed a remarkable series of events.  But now I'm going to shift gears just a bit and go into a broader exploration of what overall has occurred in the last twelve plus years since my world was upended by that energetic opening in the body which took me, and its subsequent unfoldment.  This potentially could involve some difficult reading for followers of this blog (and difficult writing for myself), so I'll try to keep it as simple and entertaining as I can for both of our sake.  My intent is simply to arrive at some clarity by laying out a framework with which we can all look at and make some sense of this unusual phenomenon sometimes labeled 'Kundalini Awakening'.

But to do that I'll have to first clarify where I'm coming from.  Though Kundalini is often spoken of within a spiritual context (and I'll use the term 'spiritual' in the most open, generic sense for now), I myself am not a spiritual seeker, nor have I ever been.  I've never followed any sort of spiritual/religious dogma or practice, nor sought a spiritual teacher or guru.  Even in art school I never had a particular mentor (I like to say I spent seven years in art school, then spent the next seven years forgetting everything I learned there; that's when the real work began).  I'm not looking for God in any way, shape or form - for that matter, not even in formlessness.  Though not a seeker, I will split some hairs here and describe myself as an explorer; perhaps, one could say, an explorer without a destination, but still guided by principles inherent in three questions I've mentioned in the past - what are we; why are we here; what are we doing here?

The vehicles of that journey have varied, though prominently centered around three activities - creative visual practice; philosophical speculation, both through deep readings and deep conversations with fellow explorers; and of course writing, such as in this blog.  All the while through these activities I've carried with me - sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously - that faith that I spoke of in the last posting, that yearning to know that this exploration of mine into our sometimes painful, often wacky, occasionally awe inspiring Earthbound life is, in fact, not only a worthwhile venture, but is exactly what I, at least, need to be doing.  A Buddhist might call it my dharma. 

Where that dharma is leading me I have no clue, but along the way in my journey I stumbled upon something entirely unexpected and astonishing; or perhaps it stumbled upon me.  That discovery, of course, was the Kundalini I've been speaking of.  For twelve years now it has stuck with me, seemingly working me over through both body and mind.  And yet, I can even now borrow the title of my last group of postings and simply say "it is darker than any mystery".

But it just so happens I have a little flashlight...

 

Fugue

...and that flashlight's name is evolution.  Another name is creativity.  Another name is development.

Evolution, creativity, development - three words that in many ways are interchangeable.  If we think of the term evolution as we typically do, we usually picture the evolution of the Cosmos.  Consisting of the physiosphere and the biosphere, there is a traceable  movement through time from the Big Bang to the emergence of life on this apparently lonely (for the moment at least) ball of rock we call our Planet Earth. 

It's really astonishing to flesh out this picture.  From - so far as we know - nothing, came an immense and unfathomable release of pure energy, followed by the gradual condensation of that pure energy into fireballs of matter, then further into stars and solar systems and galaxies on an unbelievable scale (it's been recently estimated that there are on average 2.25 billion stars per galaxy, and possibly a mind-bending 2 trillion galaxies!!!).  Then, 10 billion or so years later on our little, lonely planet, somehow someway life emerges within the primordial swamp in the form of tiny, squiggly one-celled creatures who could actually make choices (imagine the little fella swimming along without a care in the world, then sensing a strong glucose current and thinking "hmm, I think I better hang a left here" - OK, single celled creatures don't think in words, but you get my drift).  Not only that, they eventually discovered that by making a little whoopee they could produce new versions of themselves (contemplate that - the evolutionary emergence of whoopee!).

From there time starts to compress as multi-cell creatures appear, then complex organisms leading to the underwater plant world, followed by the underwater animal world, and on to dry land.  Species after species after species appearing then disappearing for billions of years, until 100 million years ago dinosaurs ruled the lands, only to be interrupted by the explosion of a large meteor strike in the Gulf of Mexico and the subsequent nuclear winter which wiped out everything on Earth bigger than a chicken.  And that opened the door for the mammals - at the time no more than small underground dwelling rodents who managed to survive the calamity of the meteor strike, suddenly having the freedom to roam on the surface.

And after 100 million years more of mammalian species endlessly appearing then disappearing, the human species emerges 100-150 thousand years ago.  And that species would eventually be able to discover and comprehend something astonishing - evolution itself!  And write about it on glowing instruments that make letters and words and sentences appear and disappear with the touch of a finger...

If you don't look at that big picture and see boundless creativity, then, well... maybe I need to work on my communication skills!

So in my view, one could well say evolution is, for all intents and purposes, creativity itself.  It's also development - like I said, big bang to physiosphere to biosphere, and with our arrival on the scene , to noosphere.  Clearly a line of development.  And to quote a well used phrase from many religious traditions, "As above, so below", the below being little you and little me, tiny blips on the immense cosmic scene...or perhaps, if we forget quantity and focus on quality, not so tiny?

To be continued...

My Significant Other is the Kosmos: Darker Than Any Mystery - Part 8, Third Movement

I want to quickly clarify something here.  This blog is not about politics, nor will it ever be.  However, to keep the sense of the little tale I'm telling I need to make a quasi-political statement.  This is from little jeffy's world - it's there that politics sometimes rears its muddled head, and little jeffy has to deal with it on some level.  Comes with the territory of the common, mundane world.  I'll keep it as simple as possible:

As I mentioned earlier, I believe we have a unique opportunity in this time of personal, societal and cultural unmooring to remake ourselves.  This is always available to us on the personal level, but on the societal and cultural level it's a much tougher lift, so this opportunity is important.  To put it bluntly, the biggest impediment to achieving this in the political arena is Donald Trump and his gang.  If he is re-elected it will be a huge setback and a much, much tougher row to hoe, which would be a real shame.

That's it, that's my orientation.  Back to my tale...

You might now be guessing what that lunch conversation turned into.  My three comrades spun off into a 45 minute mutually supporting tirade that could have come right out of the Fox News playbook - Black Lives Matter being a Marxist trained organization; COVID as a Chinese conspiracy, mask wearing a fraudulent fix; Joe Biden going senile; rioters at demonstrations as leftist provocateurs organized by radical socialists.  On and on and on it went like a feed-back loop building to a crescendo.  I was stunned into silence as they peppered me with one conspiracy theory after another.

I'd heard all of this before of course, but it surprised me and I was unprepared.  Besides, if I had answered back it would have provoked them more, and I just wanted lunch to end!  So I held my tongue and breathed a sigh of relief when we returned to work.

I was troubled by the incident, and it followed me into the next day.  Upon analyzing my reaction I could see it was not the arguments that bothered me, not even the fervor and the gloating.  It was the emotions that lay just underneath the surface of the tirade - anger, resentment, hatred.  And underneath all of that, a real, palpable fear.  And these were guys I had considered decent fellows.

Little jeffy was shook up.  His faith , his yearning for the possibilities in front of us to remake ourselves had taken a blow.  With all that anger and resentment and fear dominating so many, what chance was there?  And of course, his concerns for the common, mundane world followed him into the studio, and he couldn't shake it.  Big Jeff observed his rattled studio assistant and could only shake his head.  The trials and tribulations of the common, mundane world do not directly affect him - he's too busy probing the mystery dimensions and working his magic; and besides, he at most holds opinions very, very lightly.  But little jeffy's agitation was getting to be distracting, even to the point that The Unborn was kicking a little harder in the womb, probably sensing the agitation himself.  That would just not do!

So in my mode as Big Jeff I took action.  I went to the singing bowl altar, ritually acknowledging the three holons and the holarchy.  When done I took an extra step, one I save for only the most important occasions.  I asked for help.  I didn't direct this request anywhere in particular; no deity, no beloved saint, no angels or Earth spirits.  I guess you might say, since my Significant Other is the Kosmos, I directed it to the Kosmos.  Knowing that little jeffy's faith was teetering, was on the line and under assault, I simply asked for a message, or better yet a sign to help restore his battered faith.  I struck the bowl and sent the request out into the Kosmos.

Later that day I was thinking intently about signs from the Kosmos, wondering what form they might take - an inner voice, what Teresa of Avila called locutions?  A random but relevant message from someone I know, or someone I  don't know?  A dream perhaps?  I was thinking "Signs, signs, signs, what would a sign actually look like?"  And then a film I had once seen popped into my mind, "Signs" by M. Night Shyamalon, starring Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix.  It had been awhile since I'd seen it and details of the story eluded me, but I remembered that the signs the title alluded to were crop circles that Mel Gibson, playing a farmer/ex-minister, found in his fields and which portended an alien invasion.  I got a chuckle out of that - no crop fields in my world, so I could cross that one off of my list! Nonetheless the film kept popping into my consciousness, the title so intriguing under the circumstances.  Ultimately I decided I would have to adopt beginner's mind and remain open for anything, without preconceptions.  

By evening I had forgotten the whole thing, busy cooking for the week's lunches and catching snippets of news on TV.  It was a warm, pleasant evening and as dark approached I strolled out to my favorite spot in the local park to  watch the sunset.  When I returned I  decided to flip through the 7 or 8 movie channels I have on the TV, looking for something entertaining to help wind down the day.  The very first channel I flipped  to was showing "Signs", starring Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix!!!

I kid you not.  Believe me, I could not have made this up.  The little jeffy in me was flabbergasted.  "This is impossible!  What are the odds?!  How could this just be a coincidence?!"  The Big Jeff in me simply smiled.  "Of course".  

It was just 5 minutes into the film, and as I find M. Night Shyamalon films mysteriously eerie and filled with surprises I settled in to watch, looking forward to re-acquainting myself with the story. 

 (As an aside, I imagine most of you have seen this film; it was quite popular.  I'm going to recount some of the action to refresh your memory, but if you haven't seen it I hope I don't ruin it for you.  In any case it's worth seeing either again or for the first time.)

In the beginning we get a flashback to a time when the Mel Gibson character was a minister.  His wife is killed in a horrendous accident while jogging, pinned to a tree by a pick-up truck driven by a neighbor who had fallen asleep at the wheel.  The minister is able to get to her before she dies, and her last words to him seem to be nothing but gibberish.  

As the film proceeds we return to the present.  The minister has dropped his vestment and collar, having lost all faith in his religion and quitting his ministry after the senselessly random and brutal death of his wife.  He has returned to his farming, and this is when the crop circles begin appearing in his fields, the signs portending an alien invasion.  As I watched I noticed something I don't remember taking strong note of at first viewing - a running theme throughout the story is the issue of faith.  We hear it in the conversations the minister has with his brother and two children as the ominous events unfold.  You get a real sense of how bitter and disenchanted he is, how the universe seems to him senseless and barren.  He's in a black void, as if floating on a vast ocean with no land on the horizon in any direction.

I mentioned the crop circles.  Certainly they were one of the signs referred to in the title; menacing signs, we find out, as the aliens begin to appear and threaten the family.  But other signs show up, signs that are not at all obvious as they appear in the narrative.  Simple things, so simple we barely take notice of them as we watch - the young daughter leaving half empty water glasses all over the house; the young son suffering asthma attacks as the fear builds; the brother's trophy baseball bat hung above the fireplace mantel. These all become highly significant as the alien threat builds.  And of course, it turns out the gibberish spoken by the dying wife seconds before her death was not gibberish at all, but prophetic advice.

On the surface this is a science-fiction movie about an alien invasion, but the real message is about signs, and about faith.  The subtle signs save the family, and the minister wins back his faith, is redeemed by the signs.  And guess what?  Little jeffy had gotten his sign - the movie, with its themes of signs and faith, appearing in my mind that afternoon and then at exactly the time I would turn on the TV that evening.  It was the Kosmos responding almost immediately to my request in the most unexpected way possible, against astronomical odds.  Little jeffy got his "Signs", and got his faith back.

   

My Significant Other is the Kosmos - Darker Than Any Mystery, Part 8: Ya Gotta Have... 2nd Movement

2nd Movement

Over a long period of time I've noticed an interesting aspect of my art practice that has progressively seeped into the day-to-day work in the studio.  To put it simply, ritual has come to increasingly define how I approach even the simplest of activities.  This hasn't come about by conscious intention; rather, it seems to have gradually grown into the fabric of my activities without my noticing, until one day it dawned on me what had happened.

To illustrate what I mean by this I'll need to reintroduce a couple of characters I've labeled as holons, the ones that help to make up the holarchy that binds together my particular self-sense.  As you may remember, the world of my art practice, the creative alchemical world, is the world of Big Jeff.  He's the intuitive magician who somehow reaches into mysterious realms and pulls out dazzling and completely unexpected objects of wonder.  Little jeffy, inhabitant of the common, mundane world, has no idea how he does it, but the little guy is along for the ride.  You might call him the studio assistant.  He has the physical skills, the rational problem solving strengths, the sheer determination and willpower to get Big Jeff to the studio every day.  He also sweeps the floors.

In my particular practice these two characters work hand-in-hand; it's a nice symbiotic relationship.  Much of the work they do in the actual production of artworks is, as it turns out, rather mundane and tedious.  For instance, while working with spools of thread on painted board there is a tendency for the threads to slide uncontrollably down the side when placed at a steep angle to the edge.  To solve this problem the first solution was to rough the edges of the board with 40 grit sandpaper, creating a tooth to hold the threads in place.  This worked to some degree, but was ultimately inadequate and so a new solution had to be found.  What was finally arrived at was the use of a very small, thin-bladed wood saw to cut tiny slits into the edges of the board, slits no more than 1/16 of an inch apart.  The threads slip into the slits, holding them in place.

As you might imagine this can be very monotonous work.  At 16 cuts per inch the average artwork of 200 inch circumference requires 3200 tiny cuts.  Very carefully placed.  Guess who does that work?  Of course, that's little jeffy's job, the studio assistant.  Little jeffy was not happy with that job in the beginning - tedious, repetitive work requiring intense concentration.  To make matters worse, little jeffy's mind tends to wander as he worries about common mundane things like paying the rent, or what groceries to buy, or whether lentil soup is best with or without tomato sauce.   In other words, the common, mundane world tends to follow him around, even in the studio.

But little jeffy is the problem solver, and solve it he did.  The solution came in the form of an audio CD called 'Shamanic Drumming', which consists of two tracks, the first a recording of one drummer on an indigenous drum of some sort pounding out a steady, flat rhythm - dum dum dum dum dum dum - for 30 minutes, much like one would hear in a shamanic ritual performed by an indigenous tribe.  The second track is two drums, same flat rhythm at a similar speed of about 120 beats per minute, which apparently is the range used by indigenous tribes around the globe.  The idea is to induce a kind of concentrated trance.  Little jeffy turns on the CD, takes to his little saw and cuts the tiny slits in pace with the drumming, about one cut per 2 beats.  In a few minutes he's in a trance, and Voila!  We have a ritual.

Big Jeff has his own rituals, though they are oriented toward aiding him in reaching dimensions of mystery where he plays his creative alchemy.  One of the rituals I've developed for him consists of a small altar just inside the door of my working studio.  Central to the altar is a Tibetan singing bowl, one with a rich sound  and long period of resonance.  Next to it is a hand-wrought wooden handle wrapped at the end with fabric, for the purpose of striking the bowl.  Arranged in front of the bowl are three images on postcards of artworks of mine, each image representing for me one of the three holons that make up the holarchy of my self-sense - little jeffy; Big Jeff; The Unborn.  When I've settled into my studio for a day of work, before any creative activity begins, I perform a benediction of sorts - I first place a hand on the image representing little jeffy, acknowledge his place in the holarchy and the value he brings, then I strike the bowl, focusing intently on the reverberating sound as it slowly fades.  Then I follow suit with Big Jeff, and follow that with The Unborn.  Finally I strike the bowl and stretch both hands over all of the images, acknowledging the holarchy of my self-sense and its structure that holds it all together.  All of this is a very centering, very calming ritualistic start to my creative day.

I recently found a new use for my singing bowl altar, and here is where my tale begins:

Lately, in my guise as little jeffy, I have been going through a tough period in the common, mundane world - several rejections for possible exhibitions; a big art installation job vanishing with no explanation; a colleague getting extremely upset with me over an imagined insult; and on, and on, and on.  One of those periods we all go through from time to time when it seems the universe is piling it on.  Mostly we just tough it out and things pass, but one incident got to me, the proverbial straw on the camel's back.

I was working on an art installation job in a new apartment complex with 3 other fellows.  I've worked with these guys in the past and we've gotten along fine together.  I don't know them real well but I've considered them decent folk and good workers, which I respect, though they are not the types I would likely befriend outside work.  As is usual out in the field we went to lunch together, and while sitting at the restaurant the talk turned to politics and recent events.  And that's when the camel's back broke.  But that will have to wait till next time.

To be continued...

My Significant Other is the Kosmos - Darker Than Any Mystery, Part 8: Ya Gotta Have... First Movement

First Movement

When the COVID lock-down descended upon us I had a curious reaction bubble up into my consciousness - it occurred to me that this was an excellent opportunity for introspection, and I welcomed it.  Suddenly there was nowhere I had to be, nothing I had to do, and for an indefinite period of time.  So I simply watched as automobile traffic went away, heavily polluted cites world wide became sparkling gems in the clearing air, and the biggest hole ever in the ozone layer completely vanished within thirty days.  I simply watched all of this, and as I turned inward I found myself in a profound state of prolonged relaxation.

Eventually it dawned on me that another opportunity was being presented to all of us.  We had entered, as it came to be said, the 'new normal', which really meant 'normal' had been completely jettisoned.  Many of our notions of what defined our lives went out the window.  Solid pillars that had propped up our habitual day-to-day functions and expectations now lay around in crumbled heaps at our feet.  And I welcomed it.  This was an opportunity being presented to us, an opportunity to look at everything with fresh eyes, unmuddied by both conscious and subconscious assumptions and habits.

This new situation had an eerily familiar feel for me.  You might remember my writing in a previous posting of the existential crisis I passed through when my own personal self-construction collapsed like so many propped up domino pieces.  It wasn't pleasant.  In fact, it was downright painful, and it left me in a rather terrifying void, unanchored and with nothing visible on the horizon.  It could be said that this current COVID crisis is a macro-cosmic reflection of that personal micro-cosmic situation I found myself in years ago.  And you might remember that something astonishing and completely unexpected rushed into this void I had been thrust into, something which over time has remade me.  This suggests to me that there is an opportunity here and now for something equally astonishing to fill our mutual void which has been presented to us on the macro level of society and culture by the COVID crisis.  We can remake ourselves in ways big and small.

But ya gotta have faith...

I have a tale to tell, and I want to anticipate it by making a distinction between two commonly used terms: belief and faith.  In my dictionary at home there is essentially no distinction made; the terms are, generally speaking, interchangeable. But I do want to clarify a distinction in my own mind because I think it's important, and because it is a more subtle approach than the typical use of those terms.  You can take it or leave it, of course. 

I see belief as the acceptance of a truth without proof or direct experience.  This truth usually comes from an exterior source, say our parents, or an authority figure outside the family.  It can be based on religious texts such as the Bible or Koran; Buddhism's Four Noble Truths; the Sutras of Patanjali.  These truths, greater or lesser, are simply accepted, simply believed without question.  I used to see here and there a bumper sticker that read "The Bible says so, I believe it, and that's that!"  Pretty much sums up what I mean by belief.

Faith is a little different in my book.  I was surprised several years ago, while exploring the ins and outs of Buddhism through various readings, to find more than one source stating that a fundamental tenet of Buddhism was the necessity of faith.  At that time I equated faith with belief, and was intrigued to see this emphasis on faith/belief, especially since I didn't interpret Buddhism as being an especially dogmatic orientation - it has always seemed to me more open-ended, less rigid, less insistent on belief than most of the major religious doctrines around the world.  And so I asked "What does a Buddhist have faith in?"  An answer might be Enlightenment, or Buddha Nature, or simply the end of suffering.  But these are rather vague, ambiguously fuzzy terms to those of us who have not achieved these states, whatever they be.  Which is to say, fuzzy to most of us.  Including most Buddhists.

So what does Buddhist philosophy mean by faith?  They don't say belief;  in fact, the Buddha himself flatly stated one should believe nothing - as the saying goes, if you see the Buddha on the road, kill him.  Here's where I think faith is different from belief.  Belief is a statement.  Belief is solid.  Belief is defining.  Faith, on the other hand, is a feeling.  Faith is a quality.  Faith is a yearning.  You don't believe in Buddha Nature, you don't even really know exactly what it is.  But you yearn for it, you desire it, you have eros for it.  You can't state it, you can't define it, you can't picture it.  But you want it.  Faith is, quite simply, yearning itself.

And that is what I mean when I suggest that there's an opportunity for us amid this COVID crisis to remake ourselves, and to do that you gotta have faith, you gotta have a yearning.  Ya gotta want it.  It's in that context that I will spin for you my little tale...but not now.  Still some groundwork to lay out.

To be continued...

My Significant Other is the Kosmos - Darker than any Mystery, Part 7 continued: Three, Then Three Again...Then Again, Three

Third Movement

In my previous posting I identified, within the general field of my psyche, two groupings, each with three elements within my experience; identified them by simply witnessing them and recognizing distinctions.  The first grouping is composed of the three worlds I inhabit - the common, mundane world; the world of Alchemical Creativity; the world of Mysterious Rapture.  I've discussed each of these as well as I can within my limited abilities, and in fact it's by going through the process of clarifying them in this blog that the distinctions of each have been made clearer to me, as I hope they have for the reader.  I've also described the three aspects of my psyche (as well as I am able) that inhabit each world, that speak its language - little jeffy; Big Jeff; and what I labeled in the previous posting as The Unnamed.  Since that last posting I've come up with a tentative, perhaps temporary new name for this third inhabitant of the world of Mysterious Rapture - The Unborn.  The Unborn has been conceived, is an embryo in utero kicking its feet so to speak, therefore can be identified even if still in a quasi-formless state.

Reflecting upon the experience of these three separate aspects of myself inhabiting three separate worlds, it occurred to me a potential problem arises.  Is my psyche fracturing, splitting off into three aspects that can never merge, as in parallel lines?  Three worlds in three separate locations, three separate dimensions?  That is certainly how it feels at times, especially when there is a language barrier involved, which might suggest the potential for a disassociating, for a pathological splitting off of the personality into independent entities.   Yet I don't feel fractured; on the contrary, I feel more whole than I ever have.  Let's look at this a little more closely.

These aspects of my personality have a common characteristic in that each world/inhabitant is a whole that stands alone in some sense - little jeffy has his world of work and play, joys and anxieties, problems and problem solving, which to him is complete, is a whole.  Big Jeff has his own whole world of intuition, of a kind of magical alchemy, which little jeffy can't penetrate - he doesn't speak the language.  Yet Big Jeff can include little jeffy's world in his awareness; in fact he uses little jeffy's reasoning powers and physical skills to work the Creative Alchemical world in ways impossible for the little guy to manage on his own.  He not only includes little jeffy, he transcends him. 

You might recognize that concept, transcend and include.  One whole (little jeffy and his mundane world) is transcended by a higher whole (Big Jeff and his Alchemical Creative world) while still being included  within the higher whole.  It happens in nature all the time, in fact can be seen from one perspective as the very structure of nature.  A simple example can be seen in some of the basic elements within nature. Sub-atomic particles like electrons and protons are in some sense wholes that can and do exist independently of each other.  If you fuse one electron to one proton a new whole emerges - an atom, hydrogen, which is now a more complex entity, a whole that transcends the independent particles but includes them in its wholeness, in fact could not exist without them.  Take another step, say fuse a two hydrogen atoms to an oxygen atom.  Voila, you now have a molecule, water, that is more complex than each of the atoms, transcends the atoms yet includes them in its own wholeness - and of course could not exist without them.

This type of hierarchical structure was identified in the 20th Century by a fellow named Arthur Koestler.  He labeled each of the wholes at any level as holons, and the hierarchical structural relationship between them as a holarchy - wholes within higher holes within still higher wholes, something like nested Russian dolls.  This relationship between individual holons, this structure we can now label a holarchy, is the binding force that holds them together, that prevents fracturing.  In my case the three worlds/inhabitants of my psyche are members of the holarchy that is the entirety of my Individual Self (with a very big S!).  Big Jeff is a higher holon than little jeffy, but could not exist without him (who would pay the rent?).  The Unborn is an even higher holon - Big Jeff does not yet speak the language of its world, can't penetrate that world.  However, it's my sense that, at least in my case, The Unborn would never have been conceived without Big Jeff's explorations of the deeper intuitions in the Alchemical Creative world.  And certainly The Unborn cannot come to birth (if it ever will) without little jeffy's frantic efforts to keep everyone's shit together in the common, mundane world.

To take it even further, this Individual Self holarchy is itself a holon!  And that holon, that Individual Self,  is within another holarchy, maybe even a few.  Let's explore one. The Individual Self holon can exist within a group of friends who meet together for deep conversation, say a book club or a philosophical discussion group.  In the course of the conversation some ideas appear that none of the individual holons attending had come up with on their own, ideas that are more complex, that transcend the ideas each of the individuals might have generated on their own.  These new ideas live within a new holon - call it a We holon.  There you have it, a holarchy!  The We holon transcends and includes the various Individual Self holons.  And of course that We holon is transcended and included by a still higher holon - say, the holon peopled by all the book clubs in the world reading that same particular book, each contributing through some kind of telepathic communication or morphic resonance to a still higher understanding.

There's a story perhaps founded in a time and a place far away, say pre-literate China.  In this story, an ancient king calls on his wisest sage to answer a question that has been vexing him.  The king asks his sage  "Wise sage, what is holding the earth up in  the sky?"  The sage answers "Dear king, the earth is resting on the back of a great lion."  The king, perplexed, then asks 'Oh wise sage, what is the lion standing on?"  The sage ponders for a moment, then answers "The lion is standing on the back of  an elephant." Still perplexed, the king asks "OK wise sage, then what is the elephant standing on?", to which the sage responds, "On the back of an enormous turtle."  Now the king is getting frustrated, and furrowing his brow, he questions the wise sage one more time "Well then, what is the turtle standing on?", and the sage, contemplating deeply, replies "Your majesty, it's turtles all the way down!"

And so it is, holons all the way down...and BTW, all the way up as well.

To be continued...

My Significant Other is the Kosmos - Darker Than Any Mystery, Part 7: Three, Then Three Again...

First Movement

I wrote in my previous posting here of living in the two worlds.  I imagine one might think it strange to live in two worlds running in parallel motion but never merging - on the one hand normal, even mundane life, much like everyone else in this time and place with its worries and concerns both petty and profound, its joys and delights, its dark confusions interspersed with moments of sparkling clarity. On the other hand right alongside all of that, the mysterious and indescribable transformation going on in my private interior, ignited by the awakening of mysterious energies in the body.  This second world is seemingly a personal process that does not lend itself to interpersonal dialogue, to webs of interlocution.  I do attempt a direct approach of communication from time to time concerning this world, this blog itself being one vehicle of that effort; one that, unfortunately, leaves many scratching their heads wondering what I'm talking about.  And of course the experience leaks into my artwork, though I doubt many see it.  So it can indeed be strange living in the two worlds.

Yet, even stranger is that it's all further complicated by a distinct third world I live in, the world of creative process.  This is also in many ways a private world, a personal interior process.  But unlike the interior world of energetic transformation, this is one that interacts with and is highly influenced by the environment I live in, the environment composed not so much by its physical surroundings, the physiosphere and biosphere, as by that invisible aspect of the Kosmos sometimes referred to as the noosphere, the sphere of thought and culture, of interpersonal interaction - what I call webs of interlocution.

Because the noosphere is invisible, is non-quantifiable, its effects on the creative process are a little tough to pin down.  Let me try to paint a picture of how it works.  I read (a lot).  I engage in interesting, deep conversations (a lot).  I observe intelligent news on TV and radio, following discussions around politics and social analysis.  I absorb culture through the many art forms, be they musical, poetical, visual.  All of this then seems to hover around me in the back of my consciousness, dancing in a vibrant cloud.  When I go to my studio to work, to put my hands on the material world with the intent of creating something worth bringing into existence, the cloud (or web, if you will) follows me, hovers around me.  It's out of this background cloud that I somehow - sometimes consciously, often subconsciously - pull out formative ideas and intuitions.  Then I leave it to my hands, give them a shove and off I go on an alchemical exploration, destination unnamed but surely felt.

So there it is, three worlds that I inhabit - The mundane, common day-to-day world; the world of creative alchemy; the world of Mysterious Rapture.  One moment I'm in the grocery store, worried about contracting corona virus and wondering if my favorite lentil soup recipe is better with or without the indicated tomato sauce.  An hour later I'm in my studio playing sorcerer's apprentice with thread, traveling a magical mystery tour.  Later that evening I'm on my back on the floor at home being ravaged by God.

What's a fella to make of all this????

Second Movement

It occurred to me that the key to answering this question might lie in finding out who this fella is.  Does the same fella inhabit each of the three worlds?  Or, does it take different fellas to speak the language of each world?  As you might imagine, the answer is a bit ambiguous.

Let's take the first world, the world of day-to-day, functional, mostly mundane life - the world we all inhabit in common.  This is the world of survival, of relationships, of doing.  This is also the world of our conditioning, our habits, our reactions, often in relation to our five senses.  Importantly, it is also the world of our emotions, feelings, sentiments, likes and dislikes. It's a very, very big world stretching far and wide - but not very deep.

So who's the fella (or gal) that inhabits that world, that speaks its language?  Basically, it's our personality - the sum of our conditioning, our experiences, our reactions; the persona or mask we put on every day to interact with that world (BTW, some would call this the ego, but that word is so muddled by its myriad and ill-defined uses that I tend to avoid it.  I don't think I've used the term even once on this blog site...until now).

For many, if not most, this is the only fella/gal they are or ever will be aware of.  This was certainly the case for me for most of my life.  When referring to this personality fella/gal some use the term self (lower case), as opposed to a posited Self (upper case).   In that spirit here I'll use the term 'little jeffy' to identify my personality working in that first world.  One of the hallmarks of little jeffy is that he evolves over time, he develops.  From zygote to embryo to infant to child to teenager to adult, always developing, always changing.  If lucky, this development continues to the death bed, though it appears most get stuck at middle age, or even sooner.

But does little jeffy speak the language of the alchemical creative world?  Certainly art school could and did verse him in the shallow aspects of that language, the cliches that riddle the art world.  But there is a deeper, more complex aspect to the process of alchemical creativity that little jeffy cannot even possibly understand and articulate.  Disappointingly, art school was not capable of delivering this depth language, nor was it capable of understanding it at all.  It's only by diving into the vast chasm of the psyche in search of the basis of creativity and meaning that one can acquire that language.  There one discovers a bigger Self - I'll just call him'"Big Jeff' for now.  Big Jeff is the one who reaches into that hovering cloud vibrating with webs of interlocution and plucks out the formative ideas and intuitions, presenting them to the hands and setting them off on the alchemical journey.

To little jeffy, this all feels like a dream.  He doesn't speak the language.  However, he's grown wise enough to go along for the ride.  At times when an artwork is finished he simply steps back and asks, "Where the fuck did that come from??"  But little jeffy also knows enough to get out of the way when needed, to empty himself out of the process; or, as they say, to let go.  This is Big Jeff's world, this is his language, this is where the alchemy happens.  Besides, little jeffy has a buddy now.  Big Jeff may not always be there for him, he may disappear for months at a time, though his absences have become shorter and less frequent as the two get more comfortable with each other.  For his part, Big Jeff knows he can't do anything at all without the little guy; after all, little jeffy pays the rent, drives him to the studio, negotiates all the wacky complexities of this 21st century world.  And, he makes a killer lentil soup!

Which now leaves the question of who exactly is that fella operating in the world of Mysterious Rapture, the one who is regularly ravished by God?  It seems this fella has no name, at least none that I can identify.  Perhaps that is because, for now even after nearly twelve years, I simply haven't become fluent in the language of that world.  Without a doubt little jeffy is along for the ride - regular 20 minute whole body orgasms are quite enough to keep him smiling.  Big Jeff is there as well, though rather than smiling he is simply astonished.  And intuition being his strong suit, Big Jeff also has the sense that this third fella is still in utero, still an embryo slowly developing toward a new birth.  At which point, perhaps a christening will be in order?

To be continued...