Archive for Mysticism
On Perfection and Judgment
Perfection is not the elimination of imperfection. That’s our Western either/or, need-to-control thinking. Perfection, rather, is the ability to incorporate imperfection! There’s no other way to live: You either incorporate imperfection, or you fall into denial. That’s how the Spirit moves in or out of our lives. – Richard Rohr, Radical Grace: Daily Meditations, p. 228, day 237
Imagine how many more people would make art as a regular practice if they felt this way? How many people have judged themselves into abandoning a loved occupation?
This happens because art often becomes about the finished product, not the process. This is process:
Midnight, no waves,
no wind, the empty boat
is flooded with moonlight.
-Dogen
Watch this funny video “Everything’s Amazing, Nobody’s Happy” (it won’t embed) for the results of our judgments on our own creative process.
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Just for fun, a dream of mine: future….
Meinrad Craighead
Meinrad Craighead is an amazing spiritual artist and mystic who articulates a brilliant vision of the artist’s work in this world. Here is her first mystical experience:
Years before the Goddess movement got underway, artist Meinrad Craighead first encountered “God the Mother” as a child. Lying with her dog beneath blue hydrangea bushes in her grandmother’s garden in North Little Rock, Arkansas, she had heard “a rush of water” deep within her. “I listened to the sound of the water inside and I understood; ‘this is God.’ “Thus, it is no surprise that she now lives and paints near the Rio Grande River, the watery guide she describes as the “natural, metaphysical, archetypal symbol which has ruled my life.” from Soul Sisters, The Five Sacred Qualities of a Woman’s Soul by Pythia Peay
Her first mystical connection to God was through the Earth. Artists have an implicit connection to the material world because it is our task to join matter and spirit in a work of art. Artists must have a fundamental respect for the raw stuff of matter and the Earth which supports and connects us. Craighead understand this fully. Here is how she describes the creative process:
As an artist, I’m the first to see the treasure which has never existed before. But the treasure is never for yourself. You are just the agent to receive it and bring it back.” The creative process, she says, is endlessly regenerative…. an artist is a transformer; transformation is what our work is about. It’s the work in the cauldron; you throw in anything and it all comes together as something delicious. It’s like there’s centrifugal force in us, and everything that comes in each day is spun around. Most is flung off, but the rich stuff drops right down to the bottom. You know what a compost heap is like; it seethes, makes noises, stinks, bubbles, and emits gasses. All of that is transformation. So when your imagination gets in there, it’s growing in the most incredible, rich earth. No wonder the images come out; they’ve been trapped in there. The work of the spirit is in each of us. All we’ve got to do is just do it. That is the incarnation, that is making the invisible visible.- Meinrad Craighead
It makes you want to run out and create, right? The video below is a preview of a documentary about her life. She is amazing.
I’ll only touch on a couple things that struck me because there is just too much here. I love how she describes “the Divine gaze” which holds us in existence. We exist because the Divine perceives us. How validating is that? The Divine chooses us to be filled with Creative energy, to be used us as channel to transform the material world. I am also moved by her portrayal of the feminine aspect of the Divine. There is great courage in her work. She gently expands our conception of what is possible and creates more space for the Divine in this world. In our minds, the Divine is no longer just the narrow definition of “God”, the Divine now has a “Goddess” face as well. God becomes as Tim Victor, a blogger I follow, says “Godde”. By doing so, Craighead brings more balance into the world. Her work heals and transforms our world. She is a true artist and a true partner with the Divine Artist.
Art and Facing Darkness
Last night A.R. Rahman won an Oscar for Best Original Song and this is what he said:
All my life I have had a choice of hate and love. I chose love and I’m here.
This is a powerful statement on many levels. Today I’ll focus on just one: every time an artist sits down to work they choose love. Even if they are expressing pain or anger or darkness they are facilitating the presence of the Divine Artist on Earth. They tap into the fecund well of Divine Creativity and allow it to flow into the world.
Matthew Fox, founder of creation spirituality, describes the same thing slightly differently:
The artist names holy “isness” in all its forms—joyful and beautiful, sad and tragic. We need the artist to name our common experience of “isness” —to tell us when “isness” has just passed by and to assist us in expressing our gratitude.
The artist opens the door to the present moment which is the only place to truly experience of the Divine. It is silly to try and pretend that darkness does not exist in the world, that we could exist without sadness, anger or pain. Artists help us to name and experience these emotions, this is what Fox means when he says “isness”- to locate these feelings in the universal experience. Their part in the never-ending upward spiral toward the Universal Maker which snakes from light to dark and back again.
Art helps us to stop resisting our emotions and the present moment. When standing in front of a work of art, we breath and absorb the moment. We experience our feelings. We project our personal issues and see them reflected back safely. This process allows us to move forward out of darkness instead of being stuck there. By experiencing the darkness in our lives we are released from it, by resisting it we are trapped. A work of art can help us face our darkness and this is an act of love. Art acts a loving midwife to the soul urging us onward in our spiritual development.
A.R. Rahman:
The Spaciousness of Time
Abbey of the Artist has an amazing post on photography as a sacred practice.
We are moved when we touch the eternal and timeless. There is a sense of spaciousness in moments. Art and spiritual practice are how we find this moment of eternity, or even better, how we allow the moment to find us. There are many moments waiting for us each day, prodding at our consciousness, inviting us to abandon our carefully constructed plans and defenses.
The task of the artist is to cultivate the ability to see these eternal moments again and again. In this way, we are all invited to become artists.
It’s a beautiful and moving piece of writing. Checkout the whole post here. What struck me most was the line “There is a sense of spaciousness in moments.” The conventional notion of time always seems lacking to me. The whole “tyranny of time marching forward” must be more elastic than we are lead to believe.
Our sense of time is constricted by our lack of connection to the present moment. We live in our judgments about how things are going and what we wanted to happen instead of in what is actually is. The heaviness of our judgments create a narrow canyon for time to pass through. Just as when a river is forced to narrow it rushes by at an alarming pace, so to does time. As we release our judgments and attachments, there is more space for us to breathe and act, and more connection to what is. Time spills out like a wide, meandering river on a summer’s day.
Image source: Ken Corbett (Thanks!)
Making art requires us to enter this present moment and that is why it is such a gift to be an artist. We cannot get away with ignoring the present and still allow our creativity to flood the world. We are blessed with awareness and cursed by resistance.
Update: The photo above turns out the be of Ken Corbett on the St. Francis River! Not a coincidence I think…
Creation Spirituality
I just joined an interesting group, a kind of a Facebook for Creation Spirituality. Creation Spirituality is something I’ve become increasingly interested in as I explore my artistic process through this blog. I don’t agree with Matthew Fox, the founder of CS on everything, but he usually hits the nail right on the head when it comes to the creative process.
I wholeheartedly agree that art is a form of meditation and process is more important that product. It’s great that he talks about making art as entering into relationship with the Earth. It is also about entering into relationship with Spirit. The artist, consciously or not, seeks to merge Spirit and matter to create a greater whole.
Fox says the artist will have no peace until they express their creativity. I have absolutely found this to be true in my own life. I love the line “If your creativity is not busy about healthy things, it’s going to be busy about making you neurotic.” He quotes Otto Rank*, after a failed suicide attempt saying, “I must give birth everyday or die.” This is an amazing statement, but one I think is true for artists. Fox takes it a step further by telling us that everyone is an artist and everything we do can be an art if it is done with heart. If we connect to our soul and not just our minds we connect to the protective and healing properties of making art. I recently spoke about how art protects one from descent into fear. Fox understands that art is balm against many forms of disabling mental distress.
For more posts on Fox look here and here.
* Updated with name of Otto Rank. Thanks Matt!
Max Beckmann on the Artist and Danger
Max Beckmann is one of my favorite artists. I grew up a few blocks from the LA County Art Museum and there was an utterly stunning Beckmann show at some point during my childhood. Such a revelation! I sensed something in those paintings, a deep connectedness that I yearned for in my own life. As a child I felt these paintings were holding my hand leading me someplace I dearly wanted to go. Beckmann describes his work this way:
What I want to show in my work is the idea which hides itself behind so-called reality. I am seeking for the bridge which leads from the visible to the invisible, like the famous Cabbalist who once said:’If you wish to get hold of the invisible, you must penetrate as deeply as possible into the visible.” To penetrate is to go through. (p. 94)
This quote is from a wonderful book, Max Beckmann and the Self by Wendy Beckett. Another quote which struck me forcibly is:
[drawing] protects one against death and danger. (p.28)
Of course, and thankfully, there is no escape from physical death, but death by failure to live and danger are another matter. The idea that making art can protect the artist rings true to me. Certainly drawing helped be battle a fear which was over powering my life.
When an artist isn’t creating they loose their connection to the Divine and their connection to the physical word. They their life force and the resulting fear and /or depression deprive the artist of the their ability to act. For the artist, there is only a shadow life without art. Their life becomes about damming up the Divine creative wellspring instead being a channel for it to flow through. The artist loses their trust in the world, their ability to see and act for their own higher good. This ultimately drives them to make poor choices and poor choices bring danger.
If the artist does their work, they form as Beckmann puts it, a bridge, a deep connection between heaven and earth. This happens in the present moment, a mystical space which is always here for us to tap into:
O living always, always dying!
O the burials of me past and present,
O me while I stride ahead, material, visible, imperious as ever;
O me, what I was for years, now dead, (I lament not, I am content;)
O to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which I turn and
look at where I cast them,
To pass on, (O living! always living!) and leave the corpses behind.
Walt Whitman
This is the state where art is created, sacred space and in which we are connected to our true Home. A sense of trust and goodness permeates us. All is right with the world. Connection to this state allows us to make clear decisions for our own highest good. It allow us to travel uncharted paths safely and this the artist true job: to chart the uncharted. Although it may feel more dangerous actually leads us out of danger.
Doing Battle with Myself
It has been quite a while since I posted. My life has been in such an uproar and this is the first time I have found enough clarity to share my journey with you.
Here’s the background: I uprooted my whole life, moved thousands of miles, left my community, my garden, and my routine behind.
The reason: I am learning to listen rather than to dictate and control.
My heart episode taught me that it is better to put myself in Divine hands that my own. So I committed myself to following the energetic path laid for me, and not fighting with the world to get my way. I followed where I was being guided even though I didn’t want to go. I’ve heard this called the ‘path of least resistance’ and this is my first time on it. Wow, what was I doing fighting all these years? Everything fell into place so easily that it was impossible not to see the hand of the Divine in it.
This move was the first time I have ever experienced a major life event that went perfectly smoothly. In the past, I would have set a goal and forced it to happen. It would have been complicated and there would have been tremendous stress and difficulty. It was almost shocking, how simple this seemingly complicated move was. We sold our house, most of our junk, packed everything, found a new home, drove for 3 days and for an entire 3 months, everything went like clock work.
Now that I am here in my new home, I have found the simplicity and silence I have been searching for many years, but the silence is defining- a howling roar. It is the complete absence of everything I valued, structure, friends, purpose. It is tremendously painful, but it is what convinces me that the Divine hand is in this. The great mystics teach us that God is to be found in silence. I believe I was sent here to be laid open, to unclog my well and be scraped clean of any resistance to God so that I maybe more fully devoted to making art.
My purpose and the purpose of most artists, is to be a conduit for creative energy from Above to enter into below. Like adding compost to soil, enriching the earth we live in and preparing the ground for beautiful things to grow. In my old life, a thousand things interfered with my work: endless volunteer projects, friends, a massive garden, a Victorian house. Here, there is nothing to interfere except myself. God has exposed me as the source of my own blockages. And yet my well is still clogged. This is part of the pain. There is nowhere to run or hide, finally I can make no excuses. This is between me and my Creator and my Creator requires me to create. Now as I wait for an energetic path to reveal my next move, I do battle with my own darkness, those places, I have willfully declined to let the fecund stream of Divine creativity flow.
I will post some new work soon.
Dreaming of Death: When Art Changes Life
To what shore would you cross, O my heart? there is no traveler
before you, there is no road:
Where is the movement, where is the rest, on that shore?
There is no water; no boat, no boatman, is there;
There is not so much as a rope to tow the boat, nor a man to draw
it.
No earth, no sky, no time, no thing, is there: no shore, no ford!
There, there is neither body nor mind: and where is the place
that shall still the thirst of the soul? You shall find naught
in that emptiness.
Be strong, and enter into your own body: for there your foothold
is firm. Consider it well, O my heart! go not elsewhere,
Kabîr says: “Put all imaginations away, and stand fast in that
which you are.”
Songs of Kabir Vol. II: XX
It has been quite a while since I have written here. The spiritual changes that took place during my trip to St. Thomas have sent a tidal wave through my life and art work. Perhaps I should say, instead, that the act of making art in St. Thomas, my complete surrender to my process without control has transformed my life dramatically. It seems to be my path that everything that happens in my life is dramatic and I am beginning to make peace with that and enjoy it.
I will take me several posts to explain why my life has peeled apart like an onion, but let me start at the beginning with dreaming of death. (Don’t worry, my health is better than it has been in years.)
Shortly after my return I had 3 dreams:
1) I was in a large stone church. It was just at dawn and cool and damp inside. In front of me was a heavy stone door. I was told that if I opened the door I would die. I can still here the grinding of stone door against stone floor. I turned away without opening the door and entered into a large room with an open hole in the roof (like the Palladium in Rome). I was told I could go that way too (through the hole) and I hid. When I awoke I was scared.
2) A couple weeks later, I dreamed I was racing up, up into the sky, faster and faster. The stars became more and more intense and beautiful. Finally the beauty and speed was so overwhelming I became tearful. Then an opening in the shape of a door appeared in the sky. It was an intense white light against the dark, bejeweled sky. I said to myself, “Ah, I know what that is, but not yet…” Then I slowed down and returned to earth. This time I awoke feeling great with no fear.
3) A man whose face I couldn’t see handed me a pocket watch. I looked the face and it was so beautiful, it seemed to encompass the whole sky I had seen in my other dream. I began to get choked up. He said, “You can stay or go, it’s your choice, but I think you should stay and enjoy yourself.” So, I did.
From these dreams, I understand that it is my choice to be here and, more importantly, that I have accomplished everything I need to in this life. The keys words are everything “I need” to accomplish. There maybe more for me to do here, but these tasks will come through guidance, not will.
When I allowed my art to lead me completely on St. Thomas, I opened my body to the Divine in a way I never had before. I emptied myself of the need to control. This created vacuum which filled me with Self. Although I have had direct experience of Divine love, most of my connection to God has existed outside of my physical body. Now my connection is integrated into my body and my life. I don’t need anything, I am simply waiting and listening for direction.
It is surprising how effective waiting and listening can be. Our culture tells us to go out and push make things happen, “be a go getter”, etc. I am astounded how much more effective listening without an agenda can be.
In one short month, the Universe aligned such that my family & I are moving to Florida, we received an offer on our house and secured a new home down south. In my next post I’ll talk more about the ease and grace we have felt during this process and how it was that my life began to peal apart like an onion in the first place. Now that I truly understand surrender and am learning trust. I’ll also have so new pictures of artwork to post.
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3 things I’m grateful for today: My garden, the hot day, some time to myself.
Amazing Video
This is really worth watching all the way through. It’s a woman speaking about her spiritual awakening during a stroke.
On Prayer & Making Art
My Silence
My silence bridges the gulf between my life’s success
and my life’s failure.
My silence does not magnify my defects.
Nor does it connive at them.
My silence transforms my defects into strength indomitable.My silence is a climbing flame that warms my world of despair.
My silence is my inner light.
No problem of mine can defy solution.
My silence is a selfless distributor of joy to ever-widening horizons.In my silence I become a man of sterling character,
a prolific writer, a voracious reader, a divine lover,
a profound inspirer and a triumphant liberator.In my deep silence I never become a victim to ignorance,
the greatest calamity that can befall any human being.
In my growing silence I am convinced that even as a man on this earth I shall be able to reach heights, transcendental, divine.
My glowing silence alone can accelerate my
Godward march.My spreading silence makes me see, feel and possess satisfaction,
unalloyed satisfaction.
No more have I to let loose a tirade of tenebrous dissatisfaction.In activity and vitality I proudly and wrongly feel that
I shall have to take care of the whole world.
In the heart of silence I humbly and unmistakably realise
That it is the Divinity within the world that took care,
takes care and shall for ever take care of the entire world.Silence is my unceasing petition.
Silence is my unreserved preparation.
Silence is my unlimited realisation.
Silence is the unfathomable fount of my life here on earth, there in Heaven.What God’s Silence is . . .
is the Eternal Truth.
What God’s Silence serves is the Eternal Purpose.
What God’s Silence becomes is the inevitable Fulfilment.
-Sri Chinmoy
My as I said in my last post, my entire trip was about plugging into the present moment. I experienced the freedom and energy that gives. This first began to happen when I was drawing. I would begin a drawing with energy. My hand flowed easily in its work but at a certain point the ease would be gone. It wasn’t clear to me what to do next. Typically I would have pushed through this sensation to complete my drawing. Instead I listened to what my energy was telling me. I honored my internal clock and set the drawing aside until I was moved again to work. When I picked up the drawing again, my energy restored, it felt as if the drawing completed itself. All my struggle in the process of creation evaporated with my surrender to following the energy.
I believe that internal rhythm, the ebb and flow of energy, is the direct voice of the Divine. The Divine voice is too often drowned out by the external pressures of our everyday obligations, our busyness, and the internal pressures of our self imposed expectations. This is why silence is sacred. It allows us the space to hear and engage the One.
As I began to honor this Divine rhythm within during drawing, I began to understand viscerally something I have known intellectually for a very long time. Time does not exist anywhere but on Earth. The Divine world is not impacted by time and thus to really pray effectively to the Divine I knew I needed to remove time from the equation. Now instead of praying for things to come, for example, “Dear God, please give me the patience I need” I now pray, “Dear God/All That Is, I am patient.” The first prayer brings me situations in which to become more patient, the second calls the Divine into present time, connects me with God without future or past as God is, pure Being, without future or past, beginning or end. That’s when I realized that everything that I do in present time is a prayer: my art, my time with my family, even sitting in traffic or expressing anger.
Prayer is the interface between the Self-Knowing Divine, what we would call “God,” and humanity, the unconscious Divine. Since, as mystics tell us, there is nothing which is not God, it is merely our lack of consciousness which denies Divine presence in every moment and in everything. To experience the present moment is to strengthen our consciousness of the beloved One. When we listen in that moment, we hear the Divine and we are at prayer. Every moment of this type of prayer floods the world with more Light. I believe this is the real reason for creating art whatever anyone’s intellectual ideas about it may be. Making art is the soul’s way of reaching out and connecting with the Divine, it is the artist’s prayer.
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3 things I’m grateful for today:
1) Being able to go grocery shopping
2) Writing this blog entry
3) Finding scarlet runner bean seeds
On Not Filling the Vacuum
Ancient clay vessel
I am the one You created from dust,
A handful of dust moving at Your wish.
You planted this seed,
This growth is obeying that command.
-Abu-Saeed Abil-Kheir
I haven’t posted for a few days, but not for health reasons. I’m recovering well. The reason is, I’m holding my life open, trying to remain empty. A major cycle in my life has ended and this creates a vacuum. What I am doing now is stepping aside to let that space be filled by God and not by my own habits or ideas about what I should be doing.
This is very different for me. I’m used to charging forward with plan and making it happen. If there is one thing the last few years have taught me, my plan is nothing more than a worthless scrap of paper. I’ve been like a wild horse that has been broken. I am ready to serve so I am quietly waiting for the Divine to fill my vacuum. Holding that space open is drawing most of my energy right now. Operations are easy. This is more of a task!
Eckhart says:
If people find themselves in this way in pure nothingness, is it not better for them to do something to drive away the darkness and the abandonment? Should such people not somehow pray, read, listen to a sermon, or carry out other works that are virtuous so as to help themselves? No! Understand this truly that remaining quite still and for as long at a time as possible is the best thing you can do.
I guess again, I am seeking to be a vessel, but this time by surrendering in my life and not just during the process of creating art.
Thanks everyone who has though of me and kept me their prayers. It’s beautiful to remember how connected everyone on earth is and how we can help each other without ever leaving our homes.
Via Creativa?
More from Fakhruddin ‘Iraqi
Many and disparate waves do not make the sea a multiplicity; no more do the Names make the Named more than One. When the sea breathes they call it mist; when mist piles up they call it clouds. It falls again, they name it rain; it gathers itself and rejoins the sea. And it is now the same sea it ever was.
So Ocean is Ocean
As it was in Eternity,
Contingent beings
But its waves and currents.
Do not let the ripples
And mists of the worlds
Veil you from Him
Who takes form within these veils. (Jandi)Beginninglessness is the depth unfathomed, Endlessness the shores of this Ocean.
….
Listen, riffraff:
Do you want to be ALL?
Then go,
Go and become NOTHING (p.78)
Amazing via negativa poetry. Until yesterday, the via negativa was my dearest desire. But I have been watching a number of Matthew Fox videos on youtube and he has opened my eyes to a new idea: the via creativa. Fox sees the via creativa as a path to the One through creative acts, which, is the whole topic of this blog! He sees the via positiva (also sometimes called the affirmative way) and the via negativa as building blocks to the via creativa. It’s a fascinating idea and I do feel the beauty in the world and the emptiness both while making art.
I will sit with this and perhaps I may embark upon a new path? Or perhaps this is the path I am already on…
New Look, New Find & Mary
I thought the new year could do with some color. I am an artist after all! So I’ve updated my blog’s look. I welcome any comments you have & ideas on how to improve it.
I have discovered (actually she discovered me first…) an amazing new blogger Epiphany Girl. You’ve got to check her out. She writes so beautifully about spirituality!
Epiphany girl pointed out to me that the poem about Mary in my post about the feminine and the Divine has a dig at women in it. Hildegard gives it to Eve pretty strongly. I have a lot to say about Eve, but I’m still working up a full post. In the meantime I decided that there must be some Christian poetry somewhere that captures the beauty of the feminine nature of the Divine in a way that really speaks to me without putting women down. I was lucky to happen across Steve who told me about the Liturgy of St Basil which is used twelve times a year in Orthodox Churches:
All of creation rejoices in you, O Full of Grace, the assembly of angels and the race of men. O Sanctified Temple and Spiritual Paradise, the Glory of Virgins, from whom God was incarnate and became a child, our God before the ages. He made your body into a throne, and your womb He made more spacious than the heavens. All of creation rejoices in you, O Full of Grace. Glory to you!
This is so amazing!
Happy New Year from Art of the Spirit
The Fountain
How well I know that flowing spring
in black of night.The eternal fountain is unseen.
How well I know where she has been
in black of night.I do not know her origin.
None. Yet in her all things begin
in black of night.I know that nothing is so fair
and earth and firmament drink there
in black of night.I know that none can wade inside
to find her bright bottomless tide
in black of night.Her shining never has a blur;
I know that all light comes from her
in black of night.I know her streams converge and swell
and nourish people, skies and hell
in black of night.The stream whose birth is in this source
I know has a gigantic force
in black of night.The stream from but these two proceeds
yet neither one, I know, precedes
in black of night.The eternal fountain is unseen
in living bread that gives us being
in black of night.She calls on all mankind to start
to drink her water, though in dark,
for black is night.O living fountain that I crave,
in bread of life I see her flame
in black of night.
-St. John of the Cross
Wow!
I leave you with the beautiful poem describing the fecund stream of Divine Creativity. (And he describes it in feminine terms!)
My wish for you for the New Year: May you be blessed with deep connection to this stream, may your life and work abound with creativity, growth and love.
Thanks for reading this year. See you in 2008!
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I don’t believe in luck, but I’m going with this anyway! 8 is considered an extremely lucky number in China so this is going to be a very lucky year. (Every little bit helps, right?)
Thanks for reading my blog.
