Art of the Spirit

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.

This is really worth watching all the way through. It’s a woman speaking about her spiritual awakening during a stroke.

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

My beach in St. Thomas

Happy first day of spring! I am back! My trip was amazing. I learned so much and have so much to say that I’m really not sure where to start. Perhaps I will start with my plane ride home from St. Thomas and work backwards from there.

I believe that plane ride was one of the most important times in my life. My entire time on the island was about disconnecting from mundane time and entering into Divine time. Because I was completely removed from all my daily concerns, I learned to feel my internal rhythms and to trust them. I felt true Divine guidance in these cherished private rhythms, true charity and love. A knew a degree of safety in their embrace which I have rarely felt.

Armed with these new experiences, I boarded a plane home. After the door closed for our 4 hour flight, before we even took off, the pilot came on the warn us that he was expecting severe to moderate turbulence during the flight and would at times be asking the flight attendants to sit down.

This is the sort of thing that would have in the past caused me great anxiety. But I felt- “here in this moment everything is fine”. I experienced the moment as now, not the possible fearful future. About an hour and ½ into the flight the pilot turned on the fasten seat belt sign and said it would be rough for the rest of the trip. Still, I felt my internal self, I felt in the “nowness” of the moment that I was fine and did not worry.

I felt connected with the power and pulse of life and the present moment engulfed me. I felt that power shift something deep within me. I cannot say if it was a shedding of old skin, a polishing of a dirty mirror or perhaps more an expansion to be able to hold more consciousness of the pulse of life on every level.

The fasten seat belt light went off to everyone’s surprise and relief. Before I knew it, we were descending. The pilot came on and said, again, that for the last ½ hour of the flight it would be extremely rough, especially the landing, but that we would land one hour early! The flight attendants were seated.

Miraculously, there was not a bump, not one, the entire last ½ of the flight. What started out as a scary, rough flight had turned into a quick smooth ride home. I physically understood that power of unhooking from the future. I emerged from that flight feeling great. If I had worried and would have poured my energy out, wasted it like spilled milk. It would have changed nothing to worry except my ability to be present and serve the Light. It is not possible to serve in this physical world without energy.

My job now is to enter back into my life, reserving my energy where unneeded and allowing it to flow and blossom according to the Divine guidance of my internal clock. That flight created stronger, palpable connection to my Source. I am so grateful for that flight.

It’s good to be back! My trip put my health back on track. I painted and drew everyday. (I will post some work soon.)Thank for your messaging checking in on me while I was gone. I’m looking forward to sharing more of my trip and catching up on reading everyone else’s blogs.

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Three things I’m grateful for today:
1) The first day of spring
2) My Iris reticulata is blooming
3) I enjoyed my day

I finally got this one fired:

Next post from the tropics!

The Snowman
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
-Wallace Stevens

Right now I am in winter. I have experienced an enormous growth over two difficult years that included closing a business of 15 years and significant health issues. It has been a difficult yet beautiful and amazing time which bore much fruit. I feel there is very little about me that has not shifted in someway closer to God because of what I have gone through. That took everything I had. Now I am the ground that rests during winter in order to prepare for spring. I am embracing my own internal winter even as I prepare to leave the external winter for the endless summer of St. Thomas.

My suitcase is overflowing with canvas and paint. Images are flowing into my mind. What will happen? I do not know… It is a beautiful thing.

Sonnets to Orpheus XIII
Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were
behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.
For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter
that only by wintering through it all will your heart survive.

Be forever dead in Eurydice-more gladly arise
into the seamless life proclaimed in your song.
Here, in the realm of decline, among momentary days,
be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang.

Be-and yet know the great void where all things begin,
the infinite source of your own most intense vibration,
so that, this once, you may give it your perfect assent.

To all that is used-up, and to all the muffled and dumb
creatures in the world’s full reserve, the unsayable sums,
joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count.

- Rilke Maria Rainer (trans. Stephan Mitchell)

The dark night has at last ended
I have now seen You.
Inside the depth of my heart.
I do not know what magic abides
Inside me.
Around me is the desert,
Yet I am not parched with thirst.
-Sri Chimnoy

Today I received more instruction on detachment and following Divine will. I had planned to go on a day trip with family and friends. It was a one time deal, and something that had been planned for several months. I couldn’t because of the cold. I felt really devastated about it. I was overwhelmed with sadness.

My experience of the Divine is one of infinite kindness & I have been amply prepared to deal with grief. So I cried and cried. I embraced my sadness because I will not allow grief to stop up my well. I cried it out, I emptied myself and was still. In stillness I found the Divine again.

You might ask how this is kind? There is nothing my heart desires so strongly as closeness and service to the One. I know that the Divine is giving me my instruction in the kindest possible way that I am able to hear. In my early work, none of my figures had ears. I could not hear and my lessons were severe only because I wasn’t listening. Hence 11 shocks to my heart! Now all the figures in my art have ears. I do listen and my lessons have become easier. I am learning to trust, today was a lesson in detaching from my own will and trusting the Divine.

Early work without ears

Recent work with ears

Say not in grief that she is no more
but say in thankfulness that she was
A death is not the extinguishing of a light,
but the putting out of the lamp
because the dawn has come.
-Tagore

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Today I am grateful for:
1) My friend Miriam
2) A good dinner
3) My dogs

OK, here’s the drawing I promised yesterday. It’s just a quick self-portrait to get my juices flowing… I’m not going to judge it, it is just a doorway back onto my creative path.

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3 things I’m grateful for today:

1) My time drawing
2) I felt good good when I woke up
3) My family

One day seven years ago I found myself saying to myself — I can’t live where I want to — I can’t go where I want to go–I can’t do what I want to — I can’t even say what I want to –….I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.
-Georgia O’Keeffe

I haven’t posted this week because I’ve been feeling at a bit of a loss. I’ve finished a major cycle in my life. I have a wonderful trip coming up, but for these 2 weeks, I’m stuck in my home. Basically, I can’t go out because it’s so cold. It’s felt like a prison and I’ve been fed up like I’ve had enough. I’m turning 40 later this year and my life is nothing like what I imagined it would be.

Then I realized that I’m expecting my external world to change and make it all better. I’ve spent about 18 years of my life moving every year or two, always searching for a new situation that would make things better for me. It took illness to knock me flat on my back and stop me from running. I was forced to engage my interior world and I saw that my problems stayed the same in each move, only their faces changed. But my illness could not be changed by running, so I had to shift myself to meet it otherwise I could not have gone on with my life. I know I would have died years ago.

Now I’m back in the same place: the fact of winter, at least for now, can not be changed. I’m here with two precious weeks and all I can think of is getting away from the cold. I’ve stopped painting and writing and lost sight of the fact that this is Divine will; this time is a Divine gift. I must turn inward to mine for the gold. By shifting within myself, I can find the joy here even in what feels like a (temporary) prison.

I haven’t made any art since my operation so tonight I’m picking up my pen again. Tomorrow I’ll post a photo of my work. Who knows what it will be? See I’ve already found some adventure in my own home…. I live for adventure. It is my joy.

Work cures everything.
-Matisse

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A new practice: I will end each post with 3 things I am grateful for on this day:

1) My husband
2) It was a sunny day
3) I finally saw the Divine message in my situation

I leave next week for St. Thomas. I thought I would be staying with a friend, but someone just offered us a free apartment. The power of waiting is amazing! In the passed, I would have pushed to get this all set up months ago. We would have paid more than was wise for a much shorter time. My body really can’t tolerate the cold as it once did, so knew that I something would happen to help me and I waited. Really it can together at the very last moment. Part of me still can’t believe my good fortune! I am extremely grateful!

What I love about St. Thomas is the intensity of the light. It fills you like glass is filled with water. You become infused with the sun. When mystics speak of seeing the light of God, they are not speaking of the light of the sun. And yet, in St. Thomas it becomes clearer that the two lights are one and it is only our eyes and minds which divide them.

I have not felt the desire to paint for quite a while. I have focused on drawing, etching & sculpture. Color is nothing more than reflected light and perhaps knowing the intensity of light I shall soon encounter, I begin to feel the colors of my painting again. Its a bit like seeing something out of the corner of your eye. You sense it’s there but you can’t understand it fully. I won’t think of what I will paint; that I will let flow through me when the time arrives. But it seems clear that I will be painting.

Yes, I know, this is nothing but thy love, O beloved of
my heart- this golden light that dances upon the leaves, these
idle clouds sailing across the sky, this passing breeze leaving its
coolness upon my forehead.
This morning light has flooded my eyes- this is thy
message to my heart. Thy face is bent above, they eyes look
doen on my eyes, and my heart has touched thy feet.
-Tagore (Gitanjali #59)

So today I’m allowed to lift my arm for the first time in a week. I still have to wait to lift it above my shoulder, but this is a happy day nonetheless! I also feel new energy and purpose.

Yesterday I spoke about holding the space open for the Divine to enter. It’s interesting, more happens when I wait and things that were unclear become clear. My family & I have thought for sometime of being away for part of the winter. Nothing was coming together so I sat back and waited. Now something wonderful has entered into that open space. It is a one month trip to sunny St. Thomas which I am going to use as an artist’s retreat. I’ll be packing a small bag of clothes, a large trunk of art supplies and my laptop.

Where I live just outside of New York City, I often feel disconnected from nature. Illness works on many levels it is most definitely spiritual direction on a personal level. But I have often wondered if it is something more too. Our bodies are the Earth. Creation stories from many peoples Apache , China, Aboriginal , African and of course the biblical story of Adam to name a few describe humanity as being created out of Earth. I have always felt that on some level my illness reflects the illness and decay of our planet. I firmly believe in the alchemical principle “As above, so below”. If we are pale reflections, echoes of our Creator, as physical creatures we must also be the echo of creation itself. Our blatant disregard for our own flesh must be on some level both manifestation and cause of the current plight of our dear planet.

So I will take my time in the lush tropical greenery of St. Thomas to enter into the act of creation through my art and writing, but also to envelope my body in its physical source, nature. Like a child estranged from its parent, my body will find healing in the Earth’s loving arms.

I have learned that I cannot control the illness in my body, greater forces than I can understand have plans for me for which I gladly wait. But I take heart. I believe physical healing is possible. I have always believed it and will continue my belief whether or not physical healing becomes part of my own path. What small steps I can take like resting, using my energy wisely, eating well or nurturing myself do have an effect. I must treat myself as if I were my own garden and this in turn must effect the Earth. My flesh is the land, it is Earth and the two cannot be separated except as an illusion in the human mind. My flesh is but a small grain of sand, but as I have said before, sand does have a way of piling up. The small ways in which we heal ourselves will begin the process of healing our planet.

Hail Mary

enter my hands

Full of Grace

fill me

Blessed art thou among women

flesh joined with spirit, Earth

oh endless Divine Womb

Blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus

perfected jewel of creation present in every moment

Holy Mary mother of God

ancient well, connect me to Your eternal stream

Pray for us sinners now

let us heal the connection that has been sundered

and at the time

circle upon circle

of our death.

bring us lasting rebirth: flesh at with one spirit

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.

So, I’m back home. Everything went great. I’m still a bit hung-over from the anesthesia, but otherwise feeling well. Amazingly, so many of the people (the nurses, techs, anesthesiologist, & etc.) remembered me from a year ago. A little strange, but wonderful. I felt really well taken care of!

I’m brewing a posting about emptiness and new beginnings but I don’t think I should post anything substantial until I’m sure my mind is back to normal! Probably tomorrow…

Singing Image of Fire
A hand moves, and the fire’s whirling takes different shapes:
All thing change when we do.
The first word,”Ah,” blossoms into all others.
Each of them is true.
- Kukai

Detail of one of my paintings

Tomorrow, January 9th, I’m going in for minor heart surgery. I will be discharged on January 10th. I know the Divine is involved here because on January 10th last year I went into the hospital with a serious heart issue. I will be leaving the hospital the very same day I entered it 1 year ago. No person could plan that.

This year has been an intense transformational journey for me. Last year I had an episode of ventricular tachycardia. It was very dramatic. I went into the hospital with a heart rate of 223 beats per minute. They called code blue, 10 people descended on me, just like ER.

Well, I have to tell you that it was one of the most beautiful experiences I’ve ever had. In that moment, the first moment in my entire life, I surrendered completely to God. I had not one instant of fear. Every person treated me with beauty and I was carried through to safety. I believe my absolute calm and trust dramatically impacted this situation were I was mere seconds from death.

I spent 9 days in the cardiac ICU while they tested me in every way possible. In the end, they fitted me with an implanted cardiac defibrillator. When I left the hospital everything returned to normal except that the Divine hadn’t finished teaching me yet.

In March I got the stomach flu. The usual thing, I threw up for about 24 hours. When I got up the next day, I was walking down the stairs and I heard a pop. The only other time I had ever heard that sound was when I experienced a flash of Divine light. I realized my defibrillator had gone off. It continued to fire 11 more times in the next 5 minutes. If you don’t know what that means, I’m sure you’ve seen on TV doctor drama doctors administering a shock to a person with paddles. Well this is the same thing only delivered directly to your heart. It is excruciatingly painful.

The ambulance shuttled me off to the hospital where I found that my cardiologist had set my device too low. My heart rate was completely normal, fast because of the flu but normal. The machine went off because the programming was wrong.

I was completely traumatized by this. I jumped at every noise. I had nightmares of it going off again. I was afraid to walk down the stairs. Sometimes, I was so consumed with fear, I was literally afraid to move. I know it sounds terrible, but it turned out to be one of the most important experiences of my entire life. It is no mistake that I heard the same sound as in my vision.

Dealing with this has changed my relationship to fear. I never knew that most of my decisions were made out of fear. That fear regulated everything I did. This experience has liberated me from fear. I learned how to be with fear and still act, how sitting with fear instead of resisting it transforms it.

I learned to deal with my fear so well that when, I was faced with another truly fearful situation, I was ok. In September, I found out that part of my device had been recalled for delivering inappropriate shock (one woman had, I believe 58 shocks, in 1 hour) I did freak out for a day, but then I handled it. I took my time gathered all the appropriate information and 3 ½ months later I am acting. Not out of fear, but out of the knowledge that I am making the best decision for myself and my family.

People often think of fear in the context of what it stops us from doing, perhaps flying to an exotic local, changing or job, etc. But my experience is that we are so deeply unconscious of our fears that we actually think we like doing what we have always done. See Jan on this. I don’t do half of what I used to. It’s not because I’m sick. It’s because I won’t waste my energy on doing things just to please other people when they rob me of my life force. I never realized how terrified I was of disappointing someone or making them angry.

I could never have started this blog before because I would have fear what people would say. Why do we hold back and resist change? We only get our mirrors dusty so they can’t properly reflect the One.

This cycle is done. On the 10th I will leave the hospital and I’ll be on to bigger and better things. I hope it is more art, but that’s not up to me, that is in the hands of the One.

I send you blessings. Thank you for reading.