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

Rich

Abundance, fabrics, 12x15" (?) '91(?)

Sandy has long followed a family and cultural tradition of reviling the wealthy--people who "don't have to work for a living." She knows a woman named Anne who owns mansions and horses. When Anne complained that she broke a fingernail cleaning the kitchen on her housekeeper's day off, Sandy fumed behind fake politeness. It made a great story to share with other have-nots or have-to's (work-for-a-living) who enjoy eye-rolling and saying, "Oh, geez, tough life! my heart bleeds!"

Hating the rich is a popular sport. I have one friend who works 80 hour weeks and has something highly disparaging and comic to say about "Trust Fund Babies" almost every time I see him--his sense of humor is a priceless asset of his. Today I heard someone else spout off with vigorous (apparently humorless) judgment on "these trust-funders--hedonists who take and take and never give back." Neither of these people would probably want to question their treasured opinions.

Byron Katie sometimes asks, "Do you really want to know the truth?" because her Work only works when done with an open mind. Sandy did really want to know her own deeper truth about this. Nothing blocks real creativity, not to mention abundance, like resentment. Maybe there was a connection between the persistence of her painful idea that she and her successes are not ever enough for her, and the envy she channels into rich-bashing jokes. So she brought the belief "Anne shouldn't complain about not having enough" to the process of self-inquiry of The Work.

What she found surprised her. She saw how stressful it actually is for her to hold this belief, how she reacts to it with frustration, tension, and alienation, feeling cut off and artificial around Anne and separate even from herself when she attaches to it. And she saw that her complaint about Anne's complaint could not lessen the amount complaining on the planet, much less bring about economic justice.

Sandy asked herself what, if anything, this story really does for her. What would she lose if she didn't believe it? Suddenly she saw: "This blows my whole gig! It pops my bubble of believing that if you have everything, you'll be happy. I want her to stop complaining so I can keep my illusion that getting more, more money, more time off, more anything, will give me peace." And how could she safely accept the abundance she does want in her life, if she's busy thinking having means deserving to be hated and envied?

Without the belief, she saw Anne as an equal, a person she in fact likes; and she felt herself expanding in gratitude out of the tiny victim-suit she'd stuffed herself into with the idea that she "has to" work so hard for her money. In reality, she doesn't actually want mansions or horses. She wants her own abundant, free, life. She's the one who shouldn't complain about not having enough--because she sees that she actually does have enough, in the present, in reality. As it happens, none of her fingernails are even broken.

Katie says, "Reality is always kinder than our story about it." And she invites us not to take her word for this, but to test it for ourselves. Read Loving What Is by Byron Katie with Stephen Mitchell, and go to www.thework.com, to learn how to do The Work for yourself.

Abundance Bag, fabrics 6x10" '93(?)

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I was tangled up about a business decision recently. I heard this wisdom from the incredible Molly Gordon, coach to Accidental Entrepreneurs, whose newsletter and blog are a treasure trove: "Either way, you'll be happy and rich!"

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I went through a phase of making Abundance Bags--little purses with moneyish designs that were supposed to magically make you rich--in color at least--even if you had nothing to put in them. Naturally, I tried to sell them. And one of my favorites was stolen. Sometimes those cosmic jokes can get a bit heavy-handed, no?

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