Valentine

Beach (fabrics) 10x23in

Here, cupped within the brimming horizon,
held with the same yearning gravity
that spins planets courting suns

Innocence Mandala, fabrics, 9in diameter


now, while whirlygig galaxies
bloom on all sides equally infinite




Constellation (detail) fabrics


as lush within your intimate cells,
the DNA couples again,
its patient twining fingers
stroking the braille of wholeness




Zinnias (detail) fabrics


while you scratch, or fart, or sigh, forsaken,
you matter, you are spirit-matter,

the very center of everything,




Moment (fabrics) 16x18 in (available)


the vast spaciousness inside the atoms,
the zinging quarks never in one place-time
to call here and now at once;

you, that huge a trueness,

private, particular and first-time-ever,

Scorpio Rose, detail, fabrics, '97

all the way out and all the way in:

you are made of love.
Love can never leave you.




Jump for Joy (detail) fabrics

A Walk

(A version of this post appeared in Jen Louden's Savor and Serve Cafe program).

Jen Louden wrote this wonderful post asking us to walk with her in considering, "with lightness and love and curiosity," our own use of resources, bearing in mind the potent statistic that if everyone alive consumed at the rate of Americans, we'd need 8 more planets. Along with more than 100 others, I commented; Jen asked me to write a guest post expanding on what I'd said.

I got abashed and tongue-tied. I boinked my head, hard, against my tedious old writer's blocks. I so wanted to say something positive and real, something from the unified Field "out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing" that Rumi talks about.

But all that came was a brain tangle about brain tangles. The writing floundered like an oil-slicked bird with a plastic 6-pack ring round its neck. I wasn't much feeling the lightness, love and curiosity.

The Best Thing I Could Do At The Time

So I decided to go for a literal walk, to do a practice I call The Oracle of You.

Here's how it goes: You start with a question that you're willing to stop seeking answers to. Then look around and find some thing or scene that attracts your attention. You might ask this thing that tugged on your awareness your question, and listen. Or you can interpret what you saw like dream imagery, by identifying with different aspects of it and exploring personal definitions and associations about what you noticed.

My question was about how to write the piece. I let go of trying to solve it.

Do it Right and the Listener

I walked around the park, where there were many sights to see. Soon I'd forgotten all about The Oracle and my question.

Passing the basketball court, I heard a middle-aged man jeering at a teenaged boy with shoulders bunched up around a short neck. The older guy was probably a father or uncle, had a similar body type. He seemed to feel he was doing a great job of mentoring the sullen kid. He crowed, "I am now going to prove to you that you just don't have it!" as he rushed in for a basket.

Nearby, I saw a graceful younger boy sitting poised on a basketball, listening alertly to a man speaking to him from the driver's seat of an idling car through the open passenger-side window.

As I passed, I heard the man saying, "…so she just took off. That was the best thing she could do at the time…"

Around the curve of the path I could still hear the man on the court, repeating loudly to the teen, now attempting a free-throw, "Not like that! Do it like you did the other time! More control! More control! NO!"

Bright Being

Further along, a small boy appeared, sitting on a ball, smack dab in the middle of the path, with a happy, boisterous family playing nearby.

Wait. There had been another boy sitting on a ball earlier! This must be part of my answer, I thought, remembering the Oracle, which had come up with this second boy-on-a-ball as a nudge.

He saw me seeing him, as if he recognized and shyly welcomed me. I was no longer an invisible observer, a non-participant passing through.

When I got near, he picked his feet up off the ground and tried to balance on the ball for a second, his eyes twinkling. As he tipped and caught himself with the toe of one sneaker, he gave hint of a quirky smile, smaller and more filled with delight than Mona Lisa's. It transmitted a bursting happiness.

As I walked around him, I said in a gooey adult voice, "That's a neat trick!" His face fell just a little, and immediately I was sorry. I felt keenly how the reflex of praising him had interrupted a moment of communion full of acute joy with this little guru.

Out of habit, I had pretended he was showing off, seeking my approval. But really he had just invited me to join in an ordinary instant of love meeting itself--as we balance and tip, or sit in stillness, on this amazing ball of a planet together.

Waking Dream Interpretation

It was easy to see myself, with a wince, in the mirror of the Do It Right guy heckling the kid he was trying to teach. When I'm pushing myself with criticism to do the "right" thing--about what I consume or what I write about that--the motive is something about seeking "More control!" --especially over how I see myself. And I usually wind up proving to myself that I "just don't have it!"

I'm likely then to take off, to find some way to escape from the whole overwhelming mess. But I'm also that Quiet Listener--the first boy-on-a-ball--so centered, taking in the compassion of acceptance and forgiveness in "that was the best thing she could do at the time."

Seeing myself in the mirror of the second balancing boy was harder somehow. That sparkle in his eyes felt blindingly bright to fall into. It shows me a closeness, an open tenderness within myself that I fear even as I long for it.

What the Oracle Said

I took some notes about what I heard from the Oracle:

Listen very alertly to the kind voice that tells you about the best thing you could do at the time, even though you're in earshot of a voice pushing you to do better by having more control.

Trust the little complicit smile of the child balancing on the ball and enjoying falling off center. Give up on finding a formula for balance. We are always falling, always failing, and that's the play, the practice.

Don't interrupt the delight of communion and recognition by evaluating performance and offering praise, much less blame. Praise and blame are the same coin of separation.

(Am I doing this right or wrong? Well or badly? Am I doing/being enough? These questions don't serve me.)

You can accept this welcome to be here, exactly as you are. You can brave opening to full union now, being this intimate with your own beloved Self, with your whole round Planet, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health.

What do you really want?

There's an ever-renewing resource of creative intelligence found, through practice, or grace, in the Field of our own innocent wholeness. It leads us beside still waters and restores us to sanity.

This intelligence moves us into fresh, useful action with the power of unresisted aliveness. It leads us into the exact next steps that harmonize our individual part in the great dance.

The old ways, of DoItRight, of individual ego blame and praise, can they meet the need we see all around us for a rapid, creative, evolutionary change of consciousness and the action that follows from it?

Let's meet ourselves in this Field, now, where the world is so full, and walk along considering together from here.

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The Oracle of You is one of the potent practices for reconnecting with creative wisdom that we'll explore in the next MysteryMind Course in Creating program.People on my Insightments mailing list will be the first to hear when enrollment opens! (Top of right column to sign up).

Unconditional

.

Double Portrait of Buddy, oil painting 8x18" '02

See the world as yourself
Have faith in the way things are
Love the world as yourself
Then you can care for all things.

--Tao de Ching , Stephen Mitchell, trans.

Fred, fabrics, 30x33 '91

Fred was three legged golden with a big heart. His person talked about him as a true mirror of God (dog spelled backwards); she found it inspiring that Fred had no idea that there was anything lacking in having 3 instead of 4 legs. It was obvious that his essence was love, he had faith in the way things are and could care for all things.We kind of expect a dog to be a mirror--knowing the cliché of people looking like their dogs--but sometimes we might forget the compliment to the human implied in that.

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Sam, the boatyard dog, was part of the same family later on. The painting was commissioned as a surprise gift, and the only photo that could be spirited away without notice was this wonderful black and white one (below) that I worked from; (Sam had died and we'd never met). A friend snuck in and stole a color snapshot off the fridge, replacing it with a color xerox, so I could study it for color hints.

Sammy, oil painting, 28x35(?) '03

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A client who loves dogs has never felt able to live with one. She said she just couldn't handle taking in that much unconditional love, it made her feel unworthy and also over-responsible somehow. And she thought she could never recover from the loss of a dog, that her heart, once opened, could simply shatter. There were other conflicts she projected on dogs, too, like seeing powerful people as "top dogs" and herself submissively slinking off with tail between legs.

She took my suggestion to watch some Dog Whisperer videos. (I see Cesar Millan as a profound spiritual teacher, almost as much so as the dogs he works with.) She was entertained by the shows, and she found some good applications of Cesar's much-repeated advice to remain calm and assertive--with herself and other people, if not with a canine. But a breakthrough came much later, by surprise.

Ayla (detail) fabrics '91?

On a trip to Mexico, at a sacred site, she was approached by a thin mother dog, with hanging teats and ribs showing.

"I was instantly afraid; if I opened to loving her there would be a whole rescue project, shots and red tape and trying to bring her back to the States," she said.

"But I couldn't close my heart. So I shared my crackers with her. Maybe I should have been scared that being a wild dog she'd bite my hand off. But at the time I didn't think of that.

She took each cracker with great delicacy. She was so present receiving them, as if she were taking communion. She enjoyed every sacred crumb. And then she gave me one grateful look in the eyes and just...left!

Later I saw her working some other tourists for their crackers. And I got it. There was no guilt trip, no rescue mission, no obligation. She knows what to do. She's held. She's fine! So I got to know what unconditional means, I got to meet it in myself."

Jingles, fabrics '90?

Later, she was working on her food issues, berating herself for eating a whole bowl of chocolate pudding.

"What would your Mexican-mother-dog-guru tell you about that?" I asked.

"She'd show me to enjoy every lick. She'd tell me that how ever much I'd had was the exact right amount. And you know, I did enjoy every morsel of that pudding. I curled up on the couch with the bowl and ate it slowly and just savoured it. It's not true that I shouldn't have!"

Holly, fabrics, '88?

Since then, Mexican-mother-dog-guru has been shortened to the obvious holy name of Dog-Ma. Dear DogMa, Bless our food. Teach us gratitude. Mirror the unconditional in our hearts. Show us Enough, here and now.

Why Do You Ask?
for Donald Hall

I can't make
any story
about my life

tonight. The house
is like an overturned
wastebasket;

the radio
is predicting
more snow.

I ask my dog
to tell me
a story, and she

never hesitates.
"Once upon
a time," she says,

"A woman lived
with a simply
wonderful dog..." and

she stops talking.
"Is that all?"
I ask her.

"Yes," she says
"Why do you ask?
Isn't it enough?"

--Kate Barnes

If you like your unconditional love in feline guise, check out Cat Love and Wilda, where I admit I gush.

And if you want more dog-love, read about Lady, the Canine Creative Life Coach

LadyStick With Love fabrics, pastel, paint 14x17" '05 (available)

Looking

Just looking, really looking, can make you rich in an instant. In first love, you gazed into your Beloved's eyes, seeing their beauty so clearly, seeing beyond their beauty to their Essence. After a time, maybe you don't see them as freshly; you're not so undefended, so receptive and full of wonder--do you barely glance now, satisfied with familiarity, instead of a Mystery, the miracle that is still here this moment?

Often what we really see is our handy handle for people and things--their name, the words and concepts we attach to them, our stories and memories and associations about them--not the direct reality of things-in-themselves. It's a vital, creative skill of the mind, to label this way, to identify and name things: egg, house, friend, tiger--run! We attach these word-handles to things so we can pick them up and play with them and move them around, inside or outside of our minds, for our purposes, for our survival and comfort. And so we objectify them. They flatten and become uniform to us--an example of a category. We take them for granted. We don't look deeply.

When learning to draw, we run into this flattening, generalizing mind-habit as an obstacle to realism. When we're mostly drawing a concept, we create a lifeless stereotype. You have to see from just where you are, the unique view from here and now, and look in, to the vitality of the thing. If you labor to make it "look like" a representative specimen of its named kind, it dies on the page. In truth, it's never been seen or known before, completely new in this unique, already changing light, viewed from this exact perspective through your eyes. It was just born.

Left-brain says, "Flowers! got it, let's go! OK, ok, I know! azaleas--satisfied?" but right-brain, face to face with spotted flagrant pink open-mouthed reality, has to commune and worship. It's a different kind of attention.

You can look with that kind of in-love openness for an instant at anything, at everything--it doesn't have to be "pretty" like a flower. A bottle cap shining on the ground, the rich brown hieroglyphics and warm yellows of a rotting banana--it doesn't matter what, when you look past your label and your preferences and see, through to the wordless truth.

My Sweetie and I will celebrate our 10th anniversary on winter solstice. This is a rose (by any other name) I made for her the first week we were together. Well, maybe a rotting banana wouldn't have looked like it smelled quite so sweet....

Scorpio Rose, detail, fabrics, '97