The Mystery of Beauty

Seek, all of you, after the Light, so that the power of your Soul that is in you may live. Do not desist from seeking by day and by night, until you find the purifying mysteries of the Light which refine the body of matter and make it a pure Light very refined. Do to all men who come to you and believe in you and listen to your words what is worthy of the mysteries of the Light, give the mysteries of the Light and do not hide them from them. For he who shall give life to a single soul and liberate it, besides the Light that is in his own soul, he shall receive other glory in return for the soul he has liberated.

- Book of Sophia

and a soundtrack to go along with it...



... that's all.

"The Gnostic Road"

Everything below is taken completely and with gratitude from Jordan Stratford's blog Ecclesia Gnostica in Nova Albion from the Section Gnosticism 102. I am deeply grateful for this site, since it seems to resonate with my own understandings of things, in that, I am always trying to see how the pieces of religion fit together. Gnosticism seems to resonate with ideas in the Vedanta tradition, Buddhism, Qabalah, Greek Philosophy and Egyptian Hermetic understandings. In other Words, it has it all. And...I thought the following would be of benefit to share.

"What follows is sometimes called "The Gnostic Road", and relates to the personal process of becoming a Gnostic.

1) Aporia ("roadlessness"). A feeling of disorientation or exclusion from the accepted conventions of the world, and a sense that "this is not the deal". The certainty that something is wrong with the universe, and creeping paranoia that a) this is not the real world and b) that the forces in charge of this world are hiding something secret, something powerful.

2) Epiphany ("shining above"). The big light bulb over the head, the primal "Aha!" that reveals the glowing spark of divinity in all things. A perception of real and immediate and undeniable TRUTH in art and life and joy and beauty and the sacred real.

3)Agon ("struggle"). This is where things get ugly. The problem is, the Opposition is real, organized, and thoroughly pissed off at your recent epiphany. You're suddenly a lightning rod for "bad luck" in the form of THE SYSTEM - parking tickets, tax audits, bank charges, mechanical failures, illness, miscommunication. People are "worried about you". This is where most people either give up and deny their epiphany, or go crazy and talk to themselves on the bus. The real struggle is in finding equilibrium - knowing what you know, and continuing to live in the world. Rendering unto Caesar. Sitting down with the Archons and negotiating some kind of truce.

4) Gnosis ("knowledge"). Equivalent to the satori of Zen or the nirvana of Hinduism, this is personally-negotiated spiritual enlightenment. A first-hand experience of divinity as real and present. Tag, you're it.

5) Charis ("grace"). This is Sainthood, the ability to radiate your own gnosis to others, and overcome the limitations imposed on you by the Archons."

This is a symbol of the Pistis Sophia... I want this on my car!!

So, Neo... Choose.

The Matrix

Two Weeks & Past Loves

I have now been to two Still Life Classes and one figure in graphite class here in town at the CCA. I don't know how I went so long without doing this...maybe a little background is in order.

My history with art goes back to age 2 when I, having gotten hold of a box of crayons, managed to draw a squiggly mural all over a white wall in my parent's first house, the entire length of the wall and as high as I could jump. It also (probably rightly so) garnered me my first spanking. I was forced to find smaller mediums to channel my creativity. **smile**

I began taking art classes, privately at the age of seven or eight. First grade I think. I did local art day camps in the summers and private study in the fall and winter (apart from bi-weekly art classes in school). I can still remember learning how to draw glass, candlesticks, light from a candle. Seeing reflections. I owe her my ability to compose still-life's and my eye, basketweaving, and pinch pots, gingerbread houses and putting Parmesan on my popcorn.

By age twelve I was in group classes with a local woman who had a large backyard and horses next door. There, I learned color study, aesthetics, oil painting and pen and ink. And continued there for three years, during the school year. until my family moved away from Iowa to Wyoming.

I was also studying weekly with local art teacher and the mother of a friend of mine in the class ahead of me. I wanted to be an Artist. I always wanted to be an artist. I even spent 6 weeks of my summer at the NCSA (North Carolina School of the Arts).

It wasn't until I was in college in Arizona that I realized I was detesting my studio classes but falling fast for Art History. When I transfered to Colorado, it would end with a Humanities major with emphases in Literature and Art History/Fine Arts. I think that part of the stall of my affair with studio was due tot he fact that Arizona wouldn't let me portfolio out of the Foundation classes. I had done drawing and color theory since I was nine. But they were of "we all start down here" mentality... which (to be honest) looking back at it, was fine. And probably needed, you can always need more practice drawing. I was just an arrogant little poop and thought I was above it. My art profs were either jerks or confused at what I could actually accomplish in texture and color with just a box of prismacolor colored pencils.

Anyway, long story short. I stopped drawing, period. I started focusing on photography in college. Which was fine, but I lost my hand-eye coordination...

This past October I took a fundamentals drawing class and despite my fear and my anxiety (what if I'd lost it and could never get it back? what if I was never ever meant to be an artist...etc. etc.), when I stood in front of the easel, despite my mind's loop-de-loops, my hand and body and heart knew how to proceed. I wasn't as polished as I'd been at 15 or 16 years old when I went to NCSA... but somehow, the body remembered all the training it had gotten beginning almost twenty years ago, and abandoned nigh-on completely seven years ago... don't be timid, just start putting something down. Focus the eye, soften the gaze. Squint if you have to. And time disappeared for 6 weeks, and I fell in love with this feeling again. It was magical. And so very needed when I was just barely treading water in my MA, grades were fine, but my Soul just wasn't in it. And it's been two weeks and I don't miss being in school like I was a month ago. At all.

Who knows where this will go, but I can promise myself that I will never let myself put art aside again. It is like life-blood. It is somatic and moving. Don't get me wrong, I still worry that I won't be good enough (I am highly competitive and a notorious perfectionist. But, I am beginning again and returning to an old love. It's subtle and thrilling. More later, of course...

The Forest Garden

This is evidence again at the simple wonders of permaculture. And shows (again) how the natural world can teach us exactly how to behave in a symbiotic relationship, versus our dominate-devour mentality.

I keep thinking about the earliest writings of the American puritans, like John Winthrop's "city on a hill" speech... believing that the US continent was a forgotten place of darkness, that God had given them a land to lay under his dominion. To save it from darkness, remove it from chaos by organizing the world into gardens (like the English and French) and create order, and thereby: goodness. The fear of the wilderness and the wild frontiers of an "unpopulated" land was overwhelming and demonic and filled with savages and the lost. (Hmm, they must've been reading Milton at some point, right?) I wonder if this mentality has really led to the agricultural practices that have becoming ubiquitous today... this desire to tame the wild Nation? But then I think of John Muir, Thoreau and Emerson (the Transcendentalist movement in general) and I am infatuated with their views. Take Emerson, who, when walking, notices the many farmers who each carve and foster fields and call the land: "theirs," but, he says, with wonder, that none own the landscape they create collectively... the view that he is witness to, belongs to everyone. No one can lay claim to it.

I don't quite know where I am going with this, but I guess I am just too much of an optimist, to much a reveler in the natural world, even if I am just really beginning to learn and love its complexity. It is snowing again, very lightly in the mountains... Yoga has been wonderful, and humbling and difficult, but good, overall I feel. I went again this morning and will go again tomorrow evening. But again, this is off topic: So may the forest garden bring growth, or ideas of growth into your day and may you go looking for landscapes that belong to the eye and the mind of those smart enough and brave enough to seek them, and open enough to see them for the beauty and not just a dark chaos.

It Goes Lalalala

It's always good to end the day with a bit of music, I feel.

glen hansard and markéta irglová @ Sundance last february

The Choice

I know this is old, and I'm sure many of you have already seen it, but I just think this is still so spot on -- and as I see Hilary Clinton starting to sweep up some campaign markers into the trunk of her tour bus -- I find this is even more appropriate.

"It's not about curing illness -- it's about being healthy"

Another Reason to Be Vegetarian

This has just been passed, the FDA, according to CNN and New York Times, has okay-ed the meat and milk of cloned animals for human consumption. And since we have a corrupt system, there will be no labeling of which milk and meat is from such animals. Remember, your hamburger is made from the ground meat of approximately 1000 animals, as it is.

They say that they want to clone prize winning bulls, etc. for butchering. Are they wanting to completely overhaul the cattle industry? So eventually we will just have cloned animals and no natural born creatures anymore? If this isn't playing God, I don't know what is.

I don't eat meat, and as of now, I only eat raw homemade yogurt and raw cheeses (maybe 1-2x/wk). But the FDA doesn't understand that nutrition is not just about protein and carbs and fat. It's about minerals, vitamins and life-source, i.e. natural God-given life. So if you haven't given up meat and conventional dairy yet, maybe now is the time to start.

The Life School

So. yesterday was my first official day of non-school. In that, yesterday spring semester classes began, and I was not a part of them. Instead I went to yoga during my lunch hour, and had a still-life drawing class in the evening. And I don't feel guilty or regretful or sad at all.

It was a bit difficult to let it all go though. At first, what was so interesting was watching every little negative thought come up -- "What will people think??" That I wasn't smart enough? That I couldn't hack it? I mean every manipulative ego trip that could be dragged out, every self-esteem lowering, cowardly, fearful judgment rose up for me to contend with. My usual action is to try and "think" my way out of it. Give my mind a "reason" that I was doing what I was doing, logically. I was justifying my decisions to myself!! Who do I think I am?? This time, due to some helpful advice from Dad, I just sat with all those uncomfortable feelings, I didn't try to sate them, or reason them away -- It was all very zen -- I allowed them to be, I noticed them, but did not provide them any other place to go and did not offer any other way for them to garner more power or feed them with more fear -- I just let them spin themselves out quietly.

What has happened because of this is a sudden shift in perspective. Once all the fear went away, it was only peace and blue skies. My Dad has been telling me this for years, about the Flip. Let me explain: because nothing in the world is actually linear, not time, not space, etc. It is always (100% of the time) connected with its opposite. Love, Hate, Fear, are the main ones that every other emotion stems from. When one does not try to run the other emotion off, but sits with it all the way through, without judgment of trying to reason with it... but just being aware of it and its Illusive nature -- eventually you will hit that part of the connectivity, where the emotion Flips, or at least your perspective of the experience does. And that's what happened: I rode that wave of fear all the way to the beaches of tranquility.

There is so much more I need to be doing right now. The world is going through massive upheaval and it is only going to intensify. I need to (like all other human beings incarnate right now) is rebuild and consecrate my relationship with my own divinities and also, the planet.

When I dropped all pretenses about what I would fill my time with now that I was leaving school, my little mind did a bit of a fear-flight and was racing to find things "to do" but what I am coming to understand, and would be helpful for everyone to consider sincerely, is that you don't have to "do" anything -- you just have "to be" and do so with intention and grace and presence. And everything else just works itself out from there... because we are all children of the same Father-Mother-Creator (wherever your theology guides you). Fear is at the root of separation. Every action comes back to Love, Hate, Fear.

And Love really is all there is, every other emotion is in response to lack, or judgment about, but it all comes back. For instance, hate and anger are often useful together. But hate is usually much more localized then we tend to use it. We don't usually hate someone, but we hate (or have intense anger about) something they did or said.

So let's say, a little boy runs into the street, into traffic -- he doesn't get hurt, but when the Mother drags him back out of danger she is very very angry (she hates what he just did) and she yells: "Don't you ever do that again! Ever!"

Why is she angry at her son? She is angry because she was scared. Anger often comes out of fear... and why was she scared? Because she loves him and was afraid she would lose him. Anger, from fear, from lack of love. See?

This is just a roundabout way of saying -- stop trying to DO things to justify your existence. Just learn how to be and all will be well. Remember -- You can have whatever it is you want. You are the mover-shaker-maker -- and you create your own world of experience -- so what world do you want to live in?

I have posted that little film about Permaculture and Greening the Desert in the past. This is my next step ( I mean I have lots of things I want to do but), this is what I want to put my energy towards. It is such an amazing and beautiful thing, and funny-enough, it actually combines all of my interests, all of my past studies: it is the perfect flowering of seeds I had planted long ago not knowing their variety. I want to help others re-learn what it means to be human. Part of this truth is becoming reconnected with the landbase and with their bodies and unplug them from a civilization that is crumbling. Not that civilization itself is a bad thing, but ours has been "sick" for a very very long time.

That is is my philosophizing for the morning; I am off to drink some nettle leaf tea.

Permaculture

This is a somewhat old, but wonderful video. This is what I have been into recently and am looking for ways to learn more about it, become certified. This seems so much more important than my Masters in Literature -- there will only be stories to talk about if civilization doesn't destroy itself. The more I look at things like this, the more I realize how much we have f#$^ed up in our relationship with the planet...

Please, enjoy this explanation of Permaculture with the Man who Began it: Bill Mollison

The Geometry of Light

The Avenue of the Giants, Redwood National Park: August 2007

Once Upon a January

I know I have been neglecting the blog recently. I am decompressing. I begin yoga this coming week. And as I become more accustomed to my body, I'm sure I'll have things to talk about.

But happy January! I'm doing wonderfully. I will return soon.