A Creative Universe - Thomas Berry

Empirical inquiry into the universe reveals that from its
beginnings in the galactic system to its earthly expression
in human consciousness the universe carries within itself
a spiritual as well as physical dimension.  Otherwise human
consciousness emerges out of nowhere.  In reality the human
activates the most profound dimension of the universe itself,
its capacity to reflect on and celebrate itself in conscious
self-awareness.

[we need to]...establish a deeper understanding of the spiritual
dynamics of the universe as revealed through our own empirical
insight into the mysteries of its functioning...

When we create, it is not purely out of ourselves, but out of
a continuation of the creativity of the universe...


Thomas Berry
From: Dream of the Earth

with thanks to Heron Dance

~

Intuition is the mainline to the Universe. It's how the
Universe communicates.  It's the flow of Awareness
that comes from the Universe...

my husband :)

~

Photo from the Internet

 

Waking up to your Aliveness - Elizabeth Gilbert

Creativity is the relationship between a human being and the
mysteries of inspiration...

We are all capable of brushing up against a sense of mystery and
inspiration.  We may be able to draw nearer to that source than we
think, being gently propelled by some force, something not "me."

"Creative living" is living a life that is driven more strongly by
curiosity than be fear. [But] you won't be able to create anything
interesting out of your life if you don't believe in "creative
entitlement."  This doesn't mean behaving like a princess, or acting
as though the world owes you anything.  "Creative entitlement"
simply means believing that you are allowed to be here, and that
merely by being here, you are allowed to have a voice, and a vision
of your own.

The poet David Whyte calls this sense of creative entitlement "the
arrogance of belonging", and claims that it is absolutely vital
to cultivate if you wish to interact more vividly with life.
Without this "arrogance of belonging", you will never be able to take
any creative risks, without it, you will never push yourself out of the
suffocating insulation of personal safety and into the frontiers of the
beautiful and the unexpected.

The "arrogance of belonging" is not about egotism or self-absorption.
In a strange way it is a divine force that will actually take you out of
yourself and allow you to engage more fully with life.  Because often
what keeps you from "creative living" is your self-absorption, i.e.
your self-doubt, your self-disgust, your self-judgment, your crushing
sense of self-protection.  The "arrogance of belonging" pulls you out
of the the darkest depths of self-hatred, not by saying "I am the
greatest!" but merely saying "I am here" -
the simple entitlement to exist and
express yourself.

Your soul will mobilize accordingly.  It will mobilize ecstatically,
because this is what your Soul [Being] was born for.  Your Soul
has been waiting for you to wake up to your own existence
[your Aliveness] for years. 
[Being wants to express ItSelf through you in creative ways.]

Elizabeth Gilbert
Author of Eat Pray Love

above excerpt from: Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear 

[brackets mine]

~

Photo - leaves on grass,
color digitally inverted

Spring Buds Mandala...

This is my latest mandala creation, using both compass and free form, expanding into something colorful for the Spring Equinox… I did not make a final circle around this one, but simply left it unconfined, leaving little openings for emergence and expansion – like Spring!   I will admit I am more of a monochromatic type person – liking to use different shades and gradients of the same color.  But hey, one needs to expand their horizons right! :)  I am experimenting with color and light, and some new techniques - feeling a bit stuck in the design process; probably due to a lack of imagination. :)  I feel like I have reached a "dead end" of sorts already, although I’m just beginning, not knowing where to go next, needing a cartographer/teacher to help fill in the gaps of my unknowing.  So I am attempting to learn from the many masters of mandalas by osmosis. :)  

Speaking of which, there is a wonderful website page of *beautifully* designed luminous mandalas by Prema.  Her work is a wonderful inspiration.  Another luminous mandala master is Judith Cornell – now deceased – relating mandalas to our spiritual path of awakening.  Her book, Mandala, arrived Monday – loaded with luminous mandalas.  I need to spend some time reading, and experimenting!   

Through this creative experience so far I am reminded that life, art, and the “spiritual path” are an ever unfolding awareness and expression of our Infinite Being within, only needing our willingness to be open - without preconception of where it “should” lead, or what it “should” look like.  That’s a hard one!  I have all kinds of ideas and images of what life and “the path” – and my art is *supposed*  to look like, and of course it doesn’t always turn out the way I had in mind. :) It’s more like the cycles of nature, we continuously rebirth a new consciousness, a new way of being, seeing, and creating - awakening to the Life *in* everything; allowing that bud of Light within to blossom and express its Aliveness…

”Now is the time
for you to compute the impossibility
that there is anything but Grace.

Now is the season to know
that everything…
is sacred.”

Hafiz

~

Other luminous masters of mandalas :)

Stacy Wills – A Magic Mom and Her Mandalas

The Illuminated Mandala

Guada’s Circle

Stone Balance...

“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile
the moment a single man (woman) contemplates it,
bearing within him the image of a cathedral.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

On Friday afternoon I decided to try this "rock balancing" experiment inspired by the work of Michael Grab, as I mentioned in my previous post on Focus as a Gateway.  The first one was fairly easy, taking about 20 mins, and obviously a fairly simple stack, much less precarious than the ones that Michael builds (see this wonderful YouTube video of him working). 

The second one was more challenging, taking about 30 minutes, but I managed the balance, after several fall-outs.  And 2 days later they are still standing, even after a dusting of snow, that I was sure was going to change the balance and topple it over. I built it in one of my flower tubs.  I have 6 more tubs!   I think I have a rock garden starting... :)

And here’s another angle…

I am sufficiently hooked that I want to keep building them J  I just need to find more rocks! So now I will go on rock expeditions.  I may need a little red wagon. J

It is true what Michael says about rock balancing:  “It becomes a therapeutic ritual, a poetic dance of form and energy.”  See his full explanation of why he does this and the affect it has on him here.  It shifted my mind state and frame of reference.  Later in the day, basking in the internal shift, I found myself feeling a little stoked realizing that when one is attuned, when one is internally connected, and deeply *aware*, there *is* a click, you feel the alignment of the stones taking place, as well as within yourself, you feel the gravity kick in, you feel the stones settling in, finding their place with each other, aligning the “gravity threads” as Michael calls it.   It’s truly amazing.  And I imagine this feeling is true for artists as well as “rock balancers” and “cathedral makers” J – there *is* something meditative about the creative process that brings a deeper sense of awareness *to* life, and living, and awakens an Aliveness within that can’t be explained… 

Creative Window

I started this collage about a month ago, and finished it before my “window sitting” practice began in early August. Interestingly it reveals another window of seeing, expressing what matters to me most – the whispers of the Heart that call to me - and that evidently wanted to be expressed creatively – in this case through art collage.

After setting the initial pieces of the collage out on plain poster board paper, I decided to dig out a piece of my “Fun Qi Art”™ that I did ages ago with Cray-Pas oil sticks and use that as background. I collected pieces of quotes and pictures from my “collage files” that spoke to me. Particularly there were 3 quotes that resonated. The first one, in the center with ripples around it, is an Emerson quote that became the central theme. It says:

“Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning, and under every deep a lower deep opens.”

The second quote, in the right upper figure of a meditator, is from Franz Kafka and says:

“Just become quiet, still, and solitary, and the world will offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

And the third – the little blurb under the little oval picture of sail boats on the ocean at the bottom - is from someone named Andre Gide that says:

“One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.”

In the finished collage there are themes of imagination, wonder, opening to life, movement, opening and listening to the Heart (and the stars :). There is a strong theme of deepening, and sitting in inner Stillness where Mukti – Freedom – lives – where the “truth” reveals itself – the “truth” about mySelf, the world, and Existence… There is a stargazer, a meditator, and maybe even an adventurer, although I don’t see myself that way. I have a hard time letting go of the shore :) Yet, there it is, the invitation to let go of the shore and discover new lands, new ways of being and seeing… There’s a big ocean curl wave with the words “primordial experience” in the center – symbolizing the pull of the Primordial Womb of Life – the deep Stillness of the inner Heart of Being.

There’s a woman sitting at the edge of the ocean, as viewed through a window (!), with the words: “Days that pass simply and quietly…” Ah yes… another whisper of my Heart – to let go of the complexity that I also create and come, sit and be joyfully still - just BE. And then there’s little picture of a small cabin in the woods, surrounded by water, pines and mountains with a fluid aurora borealis overhead. It found its way into the piece as another whisper calling to me – a call to living simply in Nature.

Underneath all of that are the squiggles of color that in some places appear entangled. At first they spoke to me of chaos, maybe an inner chaos, or a level of chaos underneath that keeps me entangled – as well as the emergence of creativity through chaos, and the presence of Stillness in chaos. Sometimes I also see these colorful, unending, interconnected lines underneath it all representing the thread of Beginnings and Endings that run through life, as well as the unbroken thread of the fluid Rhythm of Beingness that is the ground of all existence.

There are so many ways to look – to see through this creative window that offers a glimpse of what calls to my heart every night through “window sitting”: Imagine, Listen, Deepen, Let Go, Open, Stillness…. Freedom…

~*~

Life In Motion

I’ve been noticing this week that Life is always in motion. I know this may be a blinding flash of the obvious intellectually, yet actually *seeing* how Life moves, rising and falling, expanding and contracting, ebbing and flowing from day to day has made it a “knowing.” I have become more aware of how unaware I have been. I tend to look at life linearly, expecting, or projecting, that life will go a certain way, or get “better” one step at a time – but it’s all actually just Life in fluid motion: Pure Conscious Knowing Awareness moving in, through and *as* life experience – morphing into shapes, forms, colors, sounds, life circumstances and events. This has been an eye-opener, allowing a little more Light in – dazzling me with its brilliance.

*Everything* is in constant motion – everything - even those things that appear to be still. A tree is growing. Seeds are germinating. Snow is melting into another form. My simple cold turned into the “flu.” The intensity of the swell of love and emotion for my brother and anxiety over his circumstances diffused with the realization that Pure Consciousness is moving "him" through life - is moving *as* his life experience. Amongst these major movements and awarenesses, there are the smaller movements and awarenesses of the usual flow of life from day to day – whether I participate in them or not. This week it’s been mainly noticing and realizing how easy it is to engage in the emotional reactiveness that is still there – another movement; or the interpretations of what’s happening and the mental gymnastics about what to *do* about them – another movement - when in fact there was nothing I could *do* about most of it. It was just Life moving Itself. Consciousness, in its dynamic stillness, is fluidly moving as form and formlessness simultaneously. I’m now more aware of this movement of Consciousness Itself taking shape and form, color and texture, disguised as life experiences, thoughts and emotions.

From my noticing it appears that this Pure Consciousness is interactive in the way that it moves in and through life experience. It intermingles – never static, not separate - continuously moving with and as Itself – manifesting Itself *as* the manifest, in the experience. Like different paint colors coming together in a swirl – the same essence, yet different colors - morphing Itself into a new color; or like cosmic energy fields, swirling through space, morphing again and again, yet always in dynamic stillness…

It seems the way to get through the varied circumstances of life, then, is to move with Life – with Pure Consciousness Itself. Another blinding flash of the obvious. Yet, I so easily resist moving with this Conscious Creative Awareness. It’s like a dance really, using little nuances of movement, leaning into the movement of Life, letting it lead – making adjustments here and there, big or small, depending on the conditions. This week it appears it’s about seeing/feeling the movement more clearly, and adjusting to the Flow of Life, staying tuned to the subtle movements of Consciousness through being fluidly aware from moment to moment… Obviously more awareness is needed…

The little video above is music played to a visualizer. I am mesmerized by these. They are such a wonderful expression of the movement of life, the movement of Pure Consciousness, shape-shifting Itself continuously – Life in Motion. Enjoy!

It's only 1:52 long.

Video created by Christine

Music: "Beyond Words"
from: Music Bakery