Aspiring Bodhisattvas

"Tradition holds that the giving of alms is the first of the ten perfections required of a future Buddha. ... there was no limit to the number of existences in which Gautama Buddha became perfect in almsgiving, but the height of his perfection was reached during a lifetime in which he was a rabbit,
the Wise Hare".

~ Lewis Hyde, The Gift, pp. 75-76

I was not aware of this tradition or of the story at all at the time I painted the above painting, The Hare and the Moon, in 2008. In fact, the story of how the image for the painting came about is a very interesting one, the composition having come together under pressure within a period of a few hours. What I find interesting is, given my long pursuit of spiritual understanding, that these images of the hare and the moon, not to mention my title for the piece, arose not from study but from intuition and openness to what I could create when it seemed as though I had no ideas available to me.

To have come across this story just a few weeks ago, 3 years after painting the piece, in Hyde's brilliant masterpiece, The Gift, validates the assumption that when we are present to the Silence and listening for an inspired muse of an idea, we do truly tap into Infinite Intelligence, which generously articulates Itself through us in alignment with our own developed capacities.

We do not have to be cognitively aware, rather simply open to "hearing" or "seeing" something new. We are creating through our own unique perspective from that which is equally-everywhere-present. We are I think actually not "creating", but rather formulating from what is infinitely already created. We need not be scholars as there are whole worlds available to us that if we listen deeply enough we may catch snippets and thus find inspired expression connected to archetypes and tomes of wisdom.

"'Wise Hare,' said Sakka [ruler of the heaven of sensual pleasure disguised as a Brahman to test the rabbit's sincerity], 'let your virtue be proclaimed to the end of this world-cycle.' And taking a mountain in his hand, he squeezed it and, with the juice, drew the outline of a hare on the disc of the moon."

~ Lewis Hyde, The Gift, p.77

~ ten thousand blessings to you ~

Happy Mother's Day!

"Our mothers and grandmothers,
some of them:
moving to music not yet written."

~ Alice Walker

Above is a photo of my children. As most every mother knows, in her decisions she thinks twice about everything - once for herself and once for her children. Our children's happiness brings not only joy but also peace of mind. That their life is fulfilling honors a mother's life, and validates a job well done.

I think there is a music to nurturing and caring for and mentoring. Unwritten music from which we take our cues for loving each other. We all have it as a capacity, maybe lying dormant, maybe fully expressed.

Celebrating the capacity of mothering within, wishing us all a
Happy Mothers Day!

~ ten thousand blessings to you ~

Power or Force?

" Reclaiming the authentic self and developing character are essential tasks in the second half of life. Congruence within our nature fosters authenticity. Acting with integrity is the practice that brings us into alignment and congruence."



~ Angeles Arrien, The Second Half of Life

For so long I was afraid to really know my own power, afraid that expressing it or even showing it was dangerous, that something unsafe would happen to me or that I would lose those closest to me. But power is a realm. And we breathe it in all the time; it permeates the ethers. Yet when we are afraid of that which is equally everywhere present, we try to control it through some fabrication of our own thinking. When we do this with power, it becomes force.

Force can express as domination, but also as withdrawal or shyness or aquiescence - any form of manipulation. The force can be expressed externally or directed more internally, when we inhibit ourselves from true and authentic expression.

When we stand in the psychological vantage point of power, we stand in the clarity of our compassionate commitment to humanity, unthreatened by another's perspective. We radiate impersonal centeredness from this source of our own integrity. We become magnets for other's integrity, and power - through us - elicits clarity from others, where before confusion lived.

The realm of power is actually the safest place to stand.

Force is rigid, brittle, and therefore an expression of weakness.

True power is formidable in its gentleness and therefore irresistable, an expression of strength.

Force is fear.
Power is Love.

~ ten thousand blessings to you ~

What Does the Naked Eye See?

One thing I have learned is that any enlightenment I have attained is not so much the result of noble pursuit as it is waking up to the fact that my face has been in the dirt for a long time and maybe I don't really know what I'm doing and it's time to get up, brush myself off and have the wherewithal to listen for what I don't know.

Were we to suspend our personal perspective, or at least our attachment to our personal perspective, a good question to ask might be: "What does the naked eye see?" With this question we enter the world of symbolism. As we simply be with what is in our midst, from the stance of the naked eye, we would not bring evaluation or assessment, we would bring curiousity and simple interest, synonyms for "not-knowing". This would allow for seeing something new. The artist must develop a tolerance for the discomfort of not-knowing, because as she exhausts her known ways of creating and the piece is still not working, she must allow the muse of creativity to educate her as to the next step, the next brushstroke, the next note. She is basically listening for the next choice, the answer to: how to proceed?

Listening from this realm of not-knowing, with mental attention turned away from the noise of the stored data of the intellect, and turned toward listening simply through the silence of the "naked eye", insight emerges. New possibility is heard and brilliance radiates: "Life is always singing" (B. Regnier). Inspiration unfolds, taking the form necessary for the fulfillment of the creation: painting to be expressed, words to be written or spoken, parenting to be done, business plan to be developed, patient to be healed. New realities and new realms emerge from the Source of everything and no thing. Empty and meaningless morph into what is needed, according to the character of the thought of the need. We become the conduit through which the creative Source forms Itself. We allow transformation to express through us into our worlds.

~ excerpted from the paper, "The Creative Process: A Portal to Not-Knowing as the Non-Verbal Language of Transformation", © 2010 Laura Basha, PhD

~ ten thousand blessings to you ~

Chaos: Where Brilliant Dreams are Born

"Before the beginning of great brilliance, there must be Chaos.

Before a brilliant person begins something great, they must look foolish to the crowd."

~ Yunn Pann

Ah the Fool!

The fool dances between the realms of the conscious and the unconscious, getting ready to take a leap of faith into the unknown, leaving the world of chaos with all possible choice from that realm.

Trusting that out of the chaos will emerge a focused new form, new expression, new concept, the artist needs chaos to authentically and joyfully create. There has to be the confusion inherent in chaos to eliminate assumption. The true artist becomes facile in and with the morass of chaotic effluvium that is Creativity.

"Flaky" is sometimes substituted for "foolish". Do we look "foolish to the crowd"? Does our creation sometimes look foolish to the crowd? Of course, because in listening for Creativity's song we step outside the obvious, the familiar, the expected. In doing so we build on the familiar, expanding it to the unfamiliar, until what was unfamiliar becomes obvious and inculcated into the consciousness of humanity's acceptance.

Be brilliant. The true leader never turns around to see if anyone is following.

And if they laugh, you just might be onto something ...

~ ten thousand blessings to you ~

A Good Artist or a Great One?

If any of you have ventured into the world of creating art, or creating anything for that matter, as it is the process of creating that is the issue, not the resulting form (please download from my website and read my free award-winning paper on "The Creative Process"), then I think you will relate to the brilliance of the great poet and Sufi Master Hafiz, as he writes on the distinction between the good artist and the great one.

As you read please also think on the process of regenerating yourself to be the human being you honorably choose yourself to be, or would empower others to be.
Such process is not much different than creating art.

Happy Enlightenment!



The Vintage Man


The
difference
Between a good artist
And a great one

Is:

The novice
Will often lay down his tool
Or brush

Then pick up an invisible club
On the mind's table

And helplessly smash the easels and the
Jade.

Whereas the vintage man
No longer hurts himself or anyone

And keeps on
Sculpting

Light.


~• ten thousand blessings to you •~

"What Do You Count on Me For?"

I am in a year long course that meets on a weekend every other month. It is part of my own ongoing growth and development, which I feel is essential for the integrity of my professional capacity if I am going to put myself in the privileged position of being another person's coach. The title of this musing is the question I have been inspired to ask some of the people who are most dear to me in my life.

Of course when the moment comes to ask this question of my significant others, all sorts of invalidating conversations that have been lying happily dormant in the quiet recesses of my memory bank, suddenly clamor for my attention. I know you have inside of your verbally unexpressed thinking some version of these hecklers. We all do. It's part of the make-up of being a human being. But that's another musing ...

In any case, they vie for my attention and I listen to them for some time. But I'm actually more interested - thankfully - in the answer to the question, because I really do want the important people in my life to experience me as someone they can count on in ways that they want to. The risk of course, if I listen to that internal nonverbal invalidating commentary, the risk is that I will find out I have woefully failed the people I love, not measured up to their expectations, have them laugh in my face or maybe even sneer
(those internal critical hecklers pull out all the stops!).

Well, I asked. I asked them all.

What I found out, to the chagrin of my own personal booing crowd but to the joy of my authentic essence, is that the things I most want to bring to people, that I have worked very hard to make present in our lives together, actually was their experience of me! And for the most part, their comments exceeded my hopes. What a gift! Several of my appreciative peeps thanked me for the opportunity to be able to express to me how much I meant to them in their life, and so themselves got to be moved and real and honest about how much they cared and valued what we had together. We became more and more related as
I reciprocated and shared with each of them what I count on them for.
We gave each other the gift of gratitude and acknowledgement and appreciation.
In a word: Love.

I invite you to ask your precious community the question: "For what do you count on me?",
and bring what you're looking for.



~ ten thousand blessings to you ~