Tag Archives: ground of being

… thoughts on deep perception …

Be it music, dance, poems, novels, painting, photography, film, architecture, sculpture, weaving … I reckon that listeners, readers, image and film connoisseurs, shape huggers, textile lovers … many of us … occasionally perceive the deep emotional significance of what is conveyed, though sometimes even artists themselves may only faintly sense the deeper underlying symbolic essence of their work, where superficial layers of seeing sink away to the bottom of the Akashic ocean, from where original creativity emerges.

That’s just how it is, except maybe for some universally powerful masterpieces of the arts, old and new. So I wonder, were these masters aware of the emotional depth from which they expressed their art? Were they conscious of their mastery? Or, to put it in another way – is consciousness a factor in conveying deep levels in their most powerful way.

Or, like most of us, including many artists, do we grow only slowly into our depth, connecting us with our own symbolic essence, and through such recognition affect our collective reality?

My occasional deep seeing surprises, and shocks me alive, in pleasant or unpleasant ways.

Deep seeing can seem like the invasion of a psychopomp, in a Jungian sense – a mediator between conscious and unconscious content. It could come from an item on the virtual web, from an image, from a wise being, spirit, or animal – whatever rattles my comfortable ignorance. I may feel embarrassed when discerning a deeper truth, as if I had long failed a task my psyche suggested, or, physically, it may feel like hitting a sore tense point in a muscle.

At times I notice that when my body is tense I can fall into some weird associations, interspersed with trickery. The associations and the meanings I discern may be useful, or not, or outright confusing, as if the wavelength of a familiar radio station is crackling.

In my experience, when I’m contemplating an idea, a project, I tend to attract, like a magnet, tiny messages from anywhere. But what orders these messages into cohesion.

Instead of projecting invaders, why  don’t I assume my relaxed self being in tune with my diverse inner crowd, and my soul’s angel … with that extra PSI sense that awakens all the other senses, and a sane inner voice,  my normal crazy, which on and off I am asleep to, or intentionally avoid.

Meanwhile, every instance my body recovers from accumulated tension is a birthday, and a day of fresh unlearning, a new unknown.

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… letting go of letting go & duende …

An apple doesn’t drop by itself before it’s ripe. And unless fate delivers us a hard blow natural ripeness applies equally to experience. Experts are quick to tell us, or we tell ourselves, to let go of whatever – an attachment, a fear, a grievance, an addiction, a desire, melancholy, sadness, the ego, and so on, while we are enmeshed with our life and its phenomena. The best chance of ripening towards a possible potential lies in keeping one’s balance on the tightrope of contradictions, that is, the fine line between the particle state and the wave state – as in Blake’s ‘Kiss the joy while flies.’

Natural letting go happens every second. We breathe, well, we are breathed, though we mainly notice when the rhythm of our breath is disrupted – through pain, exhaustion, anger, anxiety, anger or sheer exasperation, when anyone uttering, ‘Calm down,’ deserves a punch.

(Thanks Joe Linker for the great doodle)

Emotional balance wavers from day to day, but when self-blame knots up our muscles it makes sense to focus on the body. There are plenty of ways to relax: exercise, sex, music, singing, mantras, doodling, magnesium, weed, pills, wine … or to imagine brilliant light circling through the breath, like the basic drone of a reed harmonium or a tanpura holding up multiple sounds. Everything in nature has an essential frequency, which tends to flush out what obstructs its flow, even if it takes earthquakes, storms and floods. To right imbalances of the planet is beyond individuals, we can however bring a clear intention towards balancing our body’s frequency. Try this:

Inhale through your nose – draw brilliant light from head the chest – counting to 7   

Exhale through your mouth – let the light flow to your feet and out – counting to 11

Imagine the out breath taking along the tensions held in your muscles. A few rounds of this ritual should calm the heartbeat for a while. Being in resonance with your body draws the shy soul closer, bringing a sense of oneness – satiating our thirst for belonging. And it makes us aware that beauty is not in things, but in the soul of things, even the tiniest thing has soul.

Enjoy the circular sound by the wonderful mantra singer Hein Braat.

However, a constant sense of oneness is not what evolution is about. In a time and space structured cosmos we cannot cage harmony. Reality is the result of contradiction.

Our struggle for balance can be intense. But each of us has the chance to live with zest, inspired by the earth spirit and its dark power for spontaneous creation born of sadness and pain. Garcia Frederico-Lorca talked about art being inspired in three ways: by muses of the past, angelic visons of the future, and by duende – inspiration of the present. Duende springs from the core of one’s being in direct confrontation with death. You can read Lorca’s remarkable speech here: ‘Theory and Play of the Duende.’  

… You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves …  from – Mary Oliver, ‘Wild Geese’

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