ARTICLES & POETRY
Blessed Be by Leonard M. Thornton
Blessed be the light that sparkles in your eyes.
Happy be the thoughts that fill your mind.
Strong be the arms that enfold you.
True be the hearts which love you.
Blessed be the dawn that greets you.
Fulfilling be the day that awaits you.
Joyful be the friends who greet you.
Warm be the sunshine which lights your way.
Blessed be the night that calls you.
Sweet be the memories that close your eyes.
Loving be the light which embraces you.
Eternal be the peace that enfolds you.
INTUITIVE PORTRAITURE by David J. Nagy
I draw with an eye patch over my left eye. It isn’t that there’s something wrong with my sight in that eye; it’s that there’s something ‘right’ with it…
When I was a kid - as open as we are as kids - I saw images when the lights were low… faces, mostly. I grew up in a tiny community with one television channel and forest for visual input; the images that materialized before me were of things I’d never seen myself. They scared the hell out of me (at the time). I did everything I could to push them away so that I could fall asleep.
In trying to make rational sense of what it was that I was ‘seeing’, I thought that I was simply melding the ‘snow’ of darkness (like the snow of a television screen) into imaginative patterns and shapes. Being a practical fellow, I could never understand what the ‘point’ of these images was. I’ve come to realize now that they were other people’s images.
Since I started calling myself an artist (in my early twenties), I’d pretty much always worked intuitively. Self-portraits would often reveal characters and events that would later materialize (this usually happens only in self-portraits). Three years ago, I did a drawing for the woman who is now my wife. Images came up in her portrait that referenced things that she hadn’t told me about… about how her mother mistreated her when she was a young girl, about the death of her father when she was twelve. There was even an image that I later came to realize was representative of myself as a bird with a birdhouse (~home) on her float (~in her life) (portrait images mostly present symbolically, as dream images do).
I tried doing more portraits for other people. At first, I experienced a lot of anxiety when producing them; my rational mind kept telling me that what was taking place wasn’t possible. I was really sheepish about telling people what I did as an artist because I didn’t quite believe it myself.
I thought to myself that there seemed to be a similarity between the images that were presenting in people’s portraits and the images that I had seen as a child (although rarely are they as upsetting). I tried to focus on them again; having suppressed them for so long, it took a while to get past my filters. Now, I found the images entirely fascinating (although I wondered whose images it was that I was seeing as a child that had so frightened me).
Another aspect of my life that I had left behind was my work in forestry (even from an early age I’d had the idea that the harvesting that was taking place was not amenable to a healthy living environment). An on-line stumble about a year ago had me looking at stereoscopic images (as I’d done so many times in forestry work)… if you relax your eyes slightly when looking at two adjacent aerial photographs, you can see them as one image in 3-D. I tried it with my drawing… one eye looking at the drawing surface, the other darkened over with an eye patch so that I could see my low-light images. It works really well; although I don’t see the image in its finished form, it gives me options for how aspects of it might present, in ways that I couldn’t imagine given the limits of my own life experience. And because – ultimately - the images I end up drawing are representative of someone else’s life experience, it helps to minimize the influence of the more rational aspects of my brain that tells me I can’t imagine something I haven’t in some fashion seen personally (it upsets my right-brain/left-brain balance). (One drawback though: it makes me really sleepy. All those nights of blocking the images out… I guess I’d trained myself to fall asleep as quickly as I could when I saw them!)
I don’t know where my portrait work will take me. They seem to have been quite helpful for people who haven’t been able to dream properly due to insomnia or other ‘blockages’. They’ve provided a visual journal of subjects’ life challenges and triumphs. I’ve wondered whether they might be useful for other applications, such as helping patients (and – perhaps more so - families of patients) with memory loss/Alzheimer’s. Since I learned that I can do portraits from recordings of persons, I’m even thinking that perhaps it might be of use in finding missing persons. In the interest of being of service, I’m looking forward to (eventually) teaching what it is that I do.
Personally, I’ve learned a lot from the portrait work I’ve been doing. A big one for me is that people are incredibly fascinating. I’ve learned a lot about the discrepancies between the scenarios we develop when we interpret visual information and what that information actually represents. And I’ve learned a huge amount about how immense the amount of information is that’s available to us at any given time, because we’re all putting information out there all the time, even when we’re not aware of it. If I can illustrate these things for other people through my work, I think I can be content that I’ve accomplished something worthwhile with it.
Website: www.intuitiveportraiture.com
The Initiation by Angela Tongue
This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First, to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet. -Rumi
I was interested in dissolving the veils of illusion that perpetuate the concept of separation...this was the wall that I was seeking to break down. And so, the first seminar in LA took me to a place of stillness beyond the five senses, the sixth sense and bliss, which are all distractions to the ever-present awareness that I AM. In France, at an Abbey named St. Antoine, I continued this inquiry by asking who is it that is seeking? Who Am I? And by asking this question, the "I" dissolved into the ocean of awareness. "I" as Angela no longer existed. This body, the waves of thought and emotion, of identity and labels all dissolved away. This voice stated "I am soluble in the vast ocean of conscious awareness." But wasn't sure of my readiness to completely let go...
FEAR came up for me during this first week, as I dangled on the precipice of my-self. "If I let go now, I will no longer exist" feared my ego, my little "self." This "self" cried, physically, as my ego held me down kicking and screaming. "How will I ever be able to relate to others or another again?"
As I connected with the big "Self," existence itself, the small "self" shrunk to a minuscule atom, the body disappeared into nothing/timelessness/on-goingness, everything that I had identified my-self with was no longer.
"No-Thing is the building block of the Universe."
- A. J. Wheeler
When this occurred and I let go, there was an expansion the small "I" expanded beyond the form, so that it could feel outside: the tickles of the ant's feet as it walked across a leaf, the fragrance of the flower wafting in the soft, warm breeze, the cloud as it is ever-changing. This wave that "I am" in the ocean of awareness, became aware of itself, for the first time. And so, this wave dissolved back down into that ocean. As it did, there were galaxies in the awareness, vast Universes, multiple dimensions of thought, miraculous creation. And LOVE, so much Love.
At the following workshop, near Narbonne in the south of France, the fear was all gone, the drama and the emotions, what was left was open awareness and joy. As we worked together engaged left eye to left eye, we spoke from our heart space: "Please tell me what is love to you?" "Please tell me who am I to you?" "Please tell me what is arising in awareness in this moment?" As we continued in this process, the "I" again dissolved away, and the people that I may have once deemed complex, full of past-lives and other injuries, disappeared as well. First just the eye remained, until they completely dissolved as well. So this aware witness that is always present behind this eye, this "I" that is seeing was no longer, the "You" or other was no longer, what was left was absolute stillness, without subject or object, without thought, or emotion, or attachment, without identity!
So from this place, where no-thing, nothing and everything exist, the next question came from Len: "what object is arising in awareness in this moment" - and there was nothing left - silence, stillness, peace, there were no more words....and the laugh came. A laugh that only a few can identify. A laugh that is the cosmic joke...what everyone is seeking is nothing!!! It is so simple, the most simple moment of this life. No great light, no great image, no shocking revelation, but absolute simplicity. And the laugh continued, and a laugh that this body has never laughed erupted....it is a trick question, because there is no object, if there is no subject. And the LIGHT in the room was blinding...and everything was NEW....and familiar.
This has been The Initiation. The Ascension.
So when I came back to reality, everything has changed, relations to people, objects, animals, experiences have changed. Even the relationship to the past and future is different. It is only the ego, small-self that goes there. When "I" relate now, there is no "I" to take anything personally, just grace and gratitude to have this new perspective.
This awareness is looking out of new eyes.
It is the loving awareness in "you" that "I" am now writing to, it is that grace and light that "I" address. Knowing that I am you and you are me, having had the visceral experience in this body, there is only unconditioned LOVE!!
Unconditioned ACCEPTANCE.
The Invitation - Oriah Mountain Dreamer
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love for your dream for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon...
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain mine or your own without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy mine or your own if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful to be realistic to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithful to yourself and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from ITs presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure yours and mine and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes.”
It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
Yin Yang by Merina Rael
