In some peoples’ lives, a contemplative practice becomes the still axis around which all else revolves. They eagerly await the time set aside for contemplation.

Or, something deep and still comes upon them unbidden when in nature (or in a crowded room). This is contemplation too, for the intention is there to walk in the dark land. And meditation itself can offer images and visions of ways forward, of natural places that could and do themselves become future loci of further deepening.

The contemplative truly becomes the “pilgrim of eternity” when he or she gives high priority to this deepening. There’s no conflict here with worldly priorities, even with the priorities of love and intimate relationships, because paradoxically to closely hug the practice in one’s heart means all others in that life are also closely hugged.

Yet contemplation requires will, resilience, commitment. An experience of the presence of eternity is not guaranteed, and many mystical writers have spoken of the tracts of desolation that can be encountered. It’s then that the words of these mystical writers are valuable, as way marks and humbling references. We may never attain the states of which they speak, and that’s of no matter. By their words we are encouraged to keep walking.

Here’s George William Russell (known as AE) on the subject, speaking of when he was still a boy:

I began to be astonished with myself, for, walking along country roads, intense and passionate imaginations of another world, of an interior nature began to overpower me. They were like strangers who suddenly enter a house, who brush aside the doorkeeper, and who will not be denied. Soon I knew they were the rightful owners and heirs of the house of the body, and the doorkeeper was only one who was for a time in charge, who had neglected his duty, and who had pretended ownership. The boy who existed before was an alien. He hid himself when the pilgrim of eternity took up his abode in the dwelling. (AE, The Candle of Eternity)

Michael Brien
Sermon on the Mount

An image search for “Sermon on the Mount” in Google returns lots of drapery and grand gestures. Here’s another view, one I find very appealing. Here Michael Brien succeeds in depicting the very qualities espoused in the Sermon (especially in the Beatitudes; those of simplicity, poverty, humility) with naïve honesty.

These qualities are finally about our internal state rather than our material world. And they are hugely topical qualities (especially given the recent predictions of a Global Financial Crisis Mark 2).

What does it mean to be meek in such a scenario? Or to be poor in spirit? These are old ideas yet they contain eternal, inner truths; ideas that are entry points into the depths of the psyche:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Of course some of the words are a little wonky, even repellent to many. What is “heaven” in contemporary language? What’s the “earth” (those swathes of green in the painting) that could be inherited? Meister Eckhart gave us a clue:

I have spoken at times of a light in the soul, a light that is uncreated and uncreatable… to the extent that we can deny ourselves and turn away from created things, we shall find our unity and blessing in that little spark in the soul, which neither space nor time touches…

And Robert Adams was another relentless sermoniser in the same direction:

The wise person, therefore, does really not look to change anything. They become quiet. They have patience. They work on themselves. They watch their thoughts, watch their actions and observe themselves getting angry, observe themselves getting depressed, observe themselves getting jealous and envious and the rest of it. Little by little they realize, “That’s not me. That’s hypnosis. That’s a lie.” They do not react to their condition. To the extent that they do not react to their conditions, to that extent do they become free. They no longer care what anybody else is doing. They compare themselves with no one. They compete with no one. They simply watch themselves. They observe themselves. They see the mental confusion.

There are listeners in this work of Brien’s, little people prepared to open their arms, people arrayed upon the slopes. These are our internal people too. Briens’ work can be taken as a map of a psychic landscape, a potentiality for transformation through true simplicity.

Sacral
(Pen and colour pencil on paper)

Belly (Pen and colour pencil on paper)

Someone emailed me recently asking if I knew of any writings that integrate narrative therapy with mindfulness practices. (If anyone knows of such writings, please let me know.)

I wasn’t really able to help him but I liked the question and it’s made me think more about what “mindfulness” means and about what “contemplative therapy” means for me.

The word mindfulness is charged with many meanings. (See, for example, this Wikipedia article.) In a psychological context, the Wikipedia Mindfulness (psychology) article also has lots of good stuff. (I notice the Gestalt section is fairly scant!) However, I guess because I didn’t come to my approach thorough these practices I do not use this word.

For me, contemplative therapy is an inner process that’s discovered, rather than taught, with and for each client. It aims to be true to the uniqueness of each client; and to remain open to what is revealed. It’s a process in some ways akin to the incubation practices in ancient Western cultures.

Contemplative therapy is an ongoing practice for me as well; one I’ve been involved in for many years, and one that reveals ever deeper levels of truth and understanding. I doubt I’ll ever be finished.

My experience is that there’s an ongoing deepening of connection to, and understanding of, the truth that all the answers we need are, and have always been, inside ourselves. The master is within, a deeply intimate and ever-to-be-trusted guide.

The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins (1822) by William Blake

I’ve been reflecting recently on oil, rich natural olive oil, and its importance in the Mediterranean diet and culture. (This possibly has something to do with a planned trip to Italy and Greece next year!) And going further, the symbolism of oil for our souls, for the deep centre of us that knows of the possibility of transformation; that is, in a word, creative.

Here’s Eckhart Tolle in a recent essay, Eckhart on Creativity:

There’s a particular dimension where creativity arises. It’s a little bit like the wick burning the flame, and its sustenance is the oil – it’s in an oil lamp, and you are the flame. All the analogies, by the way, are very deficient, but it’s just a distant approximation to get you into a sense of what that place is. So you are the flame, and you feel your way into the very source – down the wick into where the oil is, inside yourself. That’s the place, the source, so if anything is new, creative, then it has a fragrance of the source.

William Blake deeply understood the New Testament Parable of the Ten Virgins, rich in the symbolism of oil. (Look at the energy in his painting!) This beautiful parable is, for me, about being prepared for huge change – the change of heart. “Watch therefore, for you do not know the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming”, as the scripture says.

And Hubert Benoit, in Zen and the Psychology of Transformation had something interesting to say about this parable in relation to Zen practice:

The sleep of the virgins symbolises the identification of my egotistical life with all the dreams of my hopes and of my fears. The oil symbolises the expectation of the unimaginable, of satori. As long as I have not this oil in me, this new expectation born of understanding, I am the foolish virgin who cannot receive the bridegroom.

My take on this is that we have not failed if we never have the Zen satori. Oil is about the place of waiting, about the acceptance of the expectation. In the waiting, to live, to as much as we are able, in Presence; and that is what we are asked to do in the scripture (“Watch”).

It’s this place of watching that is itself transformative; the place of the heart. It’s where the universe wants us to be!

Tragedy heals self-righteous people; it humbles them back down into their hearts. Comedy heals self-wrongeous people by lifting them back up into their hearts. Nature knows this; the divine order uses both humiliating and pride-building circumstances to make sure you don’t stray too far from your heart. (John DeMartini, The Breakthrough Experience.)

The Sun Never Says

Even after all this time,
the sun never says to the earth,
“You owe me.”

Look what happens with a love like that,
It lights the whole sky.

Sydney Harbour from McKell Park, Yesterday

From the Course in Miracles:

Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is done to you. Acknowledge but that you have been mistaken, and all effects of your mistakes will disappear. (A Course in Miracles, T-21.II.2:6-7)

And from Eckhart Tolle:

The purpose of the world is for you to be lost in it, ultimately. The purpose of the world is for you to suffer, to create the suffering that seems to be what is needed for the awakening to happen. And then once the awakening happens, with it comes the realization that suffering is unnecessary now. You have reached the end of suffering because you have transcended the world. It is the place that is free of suffering.

… It’s welcoming this moment, embracing this moment, and that is the state of surrender. That is really all that’s needed. The only difference between a Master and a non-Master is that the Master embraces what is, totally. When there is nonresistance to what is, there comes a peace. The portal is open; the unmanifested is there. That is the most powerful way. We can’t call it practice because there’s no time in it.

… the way I perceive the world is like ripples on the surface of being. Underneath the world of sense perceptions and the world of mind activity, there is the vastness of being … There’s a vast stillness and there’s a little ripple activity on the surface, which isn’t separate, just like the ripples are not separate from the ocean.

(Eckhart Tolle, from Ripples on the Surface of Being)

Tibetan Skull Crown
Human bone, fabric, cotton thread (1800s, AGNSW)

At the Art Gallery of NSW (AGNSW) I recently saw this new acquisition and was impressed by its power of conveying the urgency and importance of the process of transformation and transcendence of our habitual ego-defended state (further intensified by its use of human bone). From the label accompanying the work:

Crowns are integral to Vajrayana ritual practice. Lamas wear crowns (and other bone ornaments) during meditation for assistance in transforming their consciousness into a fully awakened state. The five skulls that constitute this crown represent the five insights (panca-jnanas) that constitute enlightenment, and the five Buddhas that embody those wisdoms. The flames issuing from the crania and moths of the skulls symbolise the purification of the body, speech and mind. The terrifying aspect of the imagery indicates the strength necessary to defeat the forces of evil and ignorance.

These “forces of evil and ignorance” speak to me of ego, of the carapace that prevents us knowing our real place, our true home. There’s nothing, of course, really wrong with ego – we need this carapace for survival in the world. The problem comes about when we think that’s who we are. And then ego becomes that which actively prevents us from finding out who we in fact authentically are; some would put it “why we actually came here”.

On this subject I like Christiane Northrup‘s acronym for the delusion associated with ego: E.G.O. = Everything Good is Outside (thanks Jeff Belyea).

A beautiful word that doesn’t get much air-play is entelechy (“enTELici”) – literally “to have or realise the goal” (the telos). And that’s really our axis, our interest, in contemplative therapy.

Sure, these two are talking at cross-purposes, but Marlon Brando’s understanding of our moment-to-moment constructions of identity is keen.

This week in Sydney two mothers unintentionally ran over their children in their 4-wheel drive vehicles (SUVs). I’ve found myself reflecting on the wasteland of unimaginable grief in which those two mothers must now be journeying. I imagine they will be feeling that it’s without end.

I have a Facebook friend, Vicki Woodyard, who has travelled through such a dark wasteland, following the death of both her daughter and her husband. Here’s Vicki, speaking of herself:

I am following the trail of Vicki as she recovered from her daughter’s death at the age of 7. She was 35. Why do I speak of her in the third person? As my grandmother said to me, “One day it will all feel like a dream.” She had buried two boys, each aged two, so she knew whereof she spoke. She was dying at the same time as my daughter. I did not attend her funeral fifteen months after my daughter died; I could not summon the energy. For grief is physically exhausting.

I found myself wondering how these Sydney mothers will get to this place of “One day it will all feel like a dream”. Only through long and relentless travel into the living hell of trauma that won’t listen to the cognitive mind but which has a foreign life seemingly of its own.

In Peter Levine’s view, trauma is related to mobilised energy that has not been able to complete itself. When we are in a traumatic situation in which fight or flight is not possible, we freeze, and the energy becomes stuck in the nervous system. The energy becomes bound up with overwhelming emotional states of terror, rage and helplessness and does not become discharged. The ways we attempt to control this energy are the symptoms of trauma.

I’ll post more in the future on a contemplative approach to working with trauma. Enough to say in this post that the way through is for this energy to be released. And (related to this) to see that beneath all the torture is something bigger, something more essential and elemental that is us. We can discover, or rediscover, the infused, embracing Love that is known as that from which all arises (including trauma). Paraphrasing Byron Katie, we then see that “things happen for us, not to us”.

Vicki Woodyard’s intimate and honest account of her journey through grief and trauma is LIFE WITH A HOLE IN IT: That’s How the Light Gets In – The Wisdom of an Awakened Heart. Highly recommended.

Vernon Howard, by many accounts, was a ruthless teacher and some were unable to handle his onslaughts. But here’s a more gentle quote from him:

Place the truth that you know before the desire that you feel.

(The Power of your Supermind, Chap. 12, p. 156)

For me this speaks of the power of a contemplative approach; about when we begin to really know something, something other than what’s mediated by the senses.

So then, while it’s still true that we should feel our feelings and tell the truth about them (as we often say in therapy), something else can now operate.

I use the metaphor of the Deep Pool. Here is the place we can find ourselves in contemplation; it’s the fount of all knowledge, the dark bottomless source of truth.

Once we have an experience of this, we know that it’s truer, deeper than all the feelings, all the thoughts that inhabit our waking lives. The knowledge of the Deep Pool underpins these thoughts and feelings; we can now place the truth we know before their constant demands; can live from the sense of well-being with which the Deep Pool infuses us.

Early in the day it was whispered that we should sail in a boat, only thou and I, and never a soul in the world would know of this our pilgrimage to no country and to no end.

In that shoreless ocean, at thy silently listening smile my songs would swell in melodies, free as waves, free from all bondage of words.

Is the time not come yet? Are there works still to do? Lo, the evening has come down upon the shore and in the fading light the seabirds come flying to their nests.

Who knows when the chains will be off, and the boat, like the last glimmer of sunset, vanish into the night?

Gitanjali, Rabindranath Tagore, #42.

crone

wraps the shawl around her
in a way of saying

i’m enough –

sits in front of our block
her old bones chilled –

warming now, us seeing her

knowing we want her,
the wise crone in our lives

Kevin Meagher, Blood Kali Change

Here’s another energetic work by Kevin Meagher, from his recent show at Callan Park Gallery; a work dripping with death, time and transformation. From the Kali entry in Wikipedia:

The figure of Kali conveys death, destruction, and the consuming aspects of reality. As such, she is also a “forbidden thing”, or even death itself. In the Pancatattva ritual, the sadhaka boldly seeks to confront Kali, and thereby assimilates and transforms her into a vehicle of salvation.

Meagher’s work is, for me, a Yantra, a refined instrument of analysis, a conception of how Blood becomes Kevin becomes Blood, how Jesus / Kali /Venus / Mars is the facilitator for a deep and necessary internal reorganisation that must take place: a matter of life and death for the artist. Or it’s something else! Something so mysterious that we’re returned finally to the work itself as carrier of archetypal content that has no other means of exposition.

W hen I was a child I was fascinated by mirrors. My mother had a bedroom dresser with wing mirrors, and it was endlessly interesting to tilt the mirrors so that they reflected each other – creating an infinite cool-blue recursion of reflections that flipped my mind. Interspersing my head into that zone of recursion and seeing myself, a pale kid, somehow involved in, but not understanding, this mystery, was one thing; removing my head but wanting, at the same time, to know what was happening while I was absent (the recursion now presumably spotless) was quite other ache.

Mark West, at his regular Thursday night meeting in the Cross, was on fire last night. I felt for a couple of new arrivals, who (my concern only) might have been struggling with the breadth of material on offer.

Back to mirrors again, and Mark was last night demonstratiing (without mirror) Douglas Harding’s Mirror Experiment (Looking for Yourself):

I find no face here confronting the face in the mirror. I am space here for my appearance there. I am capacity for my face in the mirror.

Over there behind the glass is my human appearance; here this side of the glass is my divine reality. I am both. I have that face and I am this reality. My face there is an appearance of the One I really am – here. (One of my many appearances.)

Mark made a statement, in passing but with absolute certainty, about that head in the mirror, a statement which has stayed with me. Paraphrasing:

We’ve let that head [the one in the mirror] crawl up our arm and sit where we are, and that’s suicide!

This, to me, is a disturbing and true statement about our collective misidentification with who we are, about our construction and virtually constant maintenance of a false “I”, a sad act of continual substitution of the lie for the actually of who we are, of Awareness, of Presence.

What to do about this? As Mark said last night (in response to a great question from one of the new-comers), referring to the simple fact of awareness, to the undeniable fact of our own existence: just “Be warm towards This”. There’s something in the “warmth” that’s for me immediately curative – it’s in our myth of individuality that the warmth is lost, that we live our lives way too cool.

In May, Callan Park Gallery hosted an energetic exhibition of ceramics and works on paper by Kevin Meagher, an Outsider who’s been hospitalised for some time and who has developed his practice through the Pioneer Clubhouse in Balgowlah. He’s also taken an Artist in Residence role at Macquarie Hospital in North Ryde.

Kevin’s work is brimming with mythological and spiritual associations – and there is a real experience here of someone struggling to find where he fits into the vast staggering schemes of Norse, Greek, Slavic, Hindu, Christian and Egyptian myth. And the inquiry is conducted with an urgency that conveys its importance to him, and sucks the viewer in to his worlds.

(Left, Neal Hawke, and right, Ben and Tim at War.)

For me, Kevin is involved in the classic “Who Am I?” question, with a fury and commitedness brought on by obviously distressing and bewildering personal states. I love his disregard for artistic style, and also for his daring iconoclasm – I’ll post some more of his intriguing works over the next few weeks.

(Works on paper in the top image are Shiva the Bee, Jewel Tree and Super Bella; ceramics are Ra Uranus, Iris Mary, Dianna Venus, Neptune Lir and Ganga Ocean. )

Some beautiful pieces from around about.

Not Findable but Undeniable – Randall Friend:

The subject of any and all experiences is empty – it is not locatable – it has no attributes… That subject is not a thing from which you are knowing – it is the knowing – it is like an open space or capacity. It is a mysterious, unexplainable, indescribable presence by which the world, body and mind are known… there is no light which can illuminate the subject – it cannot become objectified.

Finding Our True Home – Tracy Cochran:

…the word [nostalgia] is a learned formation of Greek compounds, consisting of “nostos,” meaning “returning home,” a Homeric word, and “algos,” “pain” or “ache.” Anyone with even a glancing knowledge of Homer’s tales knows that the desire to return home is the most powerful and galvanizing of all longings. According to this great teacher [Jeanne de Salzmann], we humans wish for Being the way Odysseus yearned to see his wife and house and homeland again.

Questions and ‘Answers’ about Nonduality – Nicholas Powiull:

Thoughts cannot be identified with, they are a conditioning taught to us from a small age. Nothing really ever identifies with thought other than thought. So nobody is really thinking those thoughts. They are completely connected to what unfolds in the environment. As a way of saying it, you could say they are the environment thoughts, for without the environment no thoughts would be stimulated.

Introduction to Emptiness: As Taught in Tsong-kha-pa’s Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path – Guy Newland:

We suffer unnecessarily because we do not know ourselves. Like addicts fiercely clinging to a drug, we cannot let go of the sense that we are substantial, solid, independent, and autonomous. We lay schemes large and small to acquire and to harm—all grounded in this false apprehension of how we exist, who we are as living beings. On behalf of this exaggerated self, with fear, anger, and pride, we harm others. To nurture and to satisfy each passing whim of this exaggerated self, we build up our greed. Yet the path of greed and harm does not at all lead us toward happiness; it is samsara, the cyclic path of dissatisfaction and misery. Over and over again, moment after moment, we fall into this trap we have unwittingly built for ourselves. Like an addict’s drug, the false notion of an independently existing self is the source of great misery for ourselves and others.

Here’s the entry from my Outsider Art calender for June – and having enjoyed the work just about every day this month I can attest to its power and, somewhat surprisingly to me, its sense of serenity.

Paraphrasing from the calendar notes: “Eddie Arning grew up on his father’s farm in Germania, Texas. Bouts of depression and anger eventually culminated in an attack on his strict Lutheran mother. His hospitalisation for dementia praecox lasted for about 30 years. He was encouraged to draw by nursing staff. He was finally asked to leave his nursing home and went to live with his widowed sister, however, he never drew again.”

Eddie Arning
Woman with White Dog
Cray-Pas on paper, 63 x 48 cm (approx)

* Dogen, Genjo Koan

Unpacking some books from storage after our recent renovation, I chanced upon Jessie Tatlock’s Greek and Roman Mythology, a primer in the subject and a first edition from 1917. (You can find on-line, PDF and other versions of this beautiful little book here.)

The book has lots of lovely black and white photographs of statuary, friezes and vases – then (and probably still) held in a wide variety of collections. I particlarly enjoyed a small plate (Fig 42) of Cybele and her Car and was pleased to see, on a Google search, that this impresive work is still held by the Metropolitan Museum. Here she is (her “car” has now become a “cart” – makes sense in today’s language) and here is what Tatlock says of her:

Rhea, the mother of the gods,was also an earth-goddess. The people of Asia Minor knew her as Cybele or the Great Mother, and represented her crowned with a turreted crown like the wall of a city; for she was the bringer of civilization, the protectress of cities. Lions drew her chariot, and about her were the Corybantes, who acclaimed her with shouts and the clashing of cymbals, and led her worship with wild dances.

Quite a woman! And whoever the maker was, quite a sculptor! I don’t believe such a work could come into existence without that maker truly being immersed in the reality of Cybele; the Great Mother was not just a concept, rather, was a truly lived experience (that in turn energised the art-making).

So turning now to the Gulf oil spill, here’s a powerful critique of this situation by Naomi Klein:

In the arc of human history, the notion that nature is a machine for us to re-engineer at will is a relatively recent conceit. In her ground-breaking 1980 book The Death of Nature, the environmental historian Carolyn Merchant reminded readers that up until the 1600s, the Earth was alive, usually taking the form of a mother. Europeans – like indigenous people the world over – believed the planet to be a living organism, full of life-giving powers but also wrathful tempers. There were, for this reason, strong taboos against actions that would deform and desecrate “the mother”, including mining.

This, for me, is what we’ve now lost: the lived, experiential reality of the Great Mother archetype, that, if collectively experienced, could be a natural restrainer to our heroic desires for exploitation of the earth. Cybele cries out for this, and the Corybantes clash their cymbals.

(Left, another depiction of Cybele, imbued with mystery, with the living energy of the golden earth – such gold to be revered where it lies, rather than being exploited mercilessly in commerce.)

Saw a nice photo sequence recently at The Guardian on The demolition of the Market Estate which had me wondering: What is the space in the room, the space we’ve inhabited, become fully habituated to (possibly for a very long time), once the demolition crews arrive? And afterwards, how has that space changed?

Said an ex-resident:

It’s just overwhelming. Everything we’ve seen and done here comes to this end. It’s very moving.

And said two sages:

That which permeates all, which nothing transcends and which, like the universal space around us, fills everything completely from within and without, that Supreme non-dual Brahman –that thou are. (Shankara)

The person merely appears to be, like the space within the pot appears to have the shape and volume and smell of the pot. (Nisargadatta Maharaj)

bird

i read that the body is a depression
and wanted you more.

and walking to the car
weary from the waiting

thinking of the day to come

a single bird
voiced what i’d yearned to grasp

wanted to have
translated into form.

Ron Dowd
Hyperthyroidic Field #5
Coloured pencil and ink on paper, 26 x 19 (approx)

Leo Cussen
Untitled (Dr Who’s Tardis),2005
Pastel on paper, 56 x38cm

Another work in the recent exhibition at Callan Park of a selection from Pearls of Arts Project Australia, a collection of works by Arts Project Australia (APA) artists that the collector, Stuart Purves, is giving to STOARC. This one’s an energetic pastel by Leo Cussen.

Quoting from the recent Home Sweet Home exhibition blurb (National Gallery of Australia):

It is has been remarked that Cussen has a deep fascination with aspects of popular culture including the ‘Dr Who’ character from the television series of the same name and has produced a strong series of works based on this theme: ‘His work has an obsessive quality resulting from repeated use of words or phrases or in his intensive use of media. ’

I love the energetic text and the insistent working of the windows in this piece. I wanna know what’s in that tardis!