BEING WHO I AM

Coffee this morning in the green rocker facing one of my early paintings, “Spirit Speaks.” I read and write down insights in my journal while sitting in this old rocker between jaunts outside with the cats.

Spirit Speaks

This morning, George encounters his father, a huge tom that saunters silently in slow motion like a leopard. Shadow jumps on the latia fence, lowers her body and tries to be invisible. 

I was going to protect George and then noticed with much surprise, that he and the big tom were trying to work out a way to share this territory. “Big Boy” growls and sprays the Chamisa to the side of where George is laying and then lays down behind him. They sniff each other cautiously and the big tom saunters away carefully turning to look back every few steps. George follows him across the cul-de-sac and I hear yowls coming from a patch of sunflowers. However, this time there is no fight and George returns in a few minutes.

The morning is still cool but summer enough to leave the door open so that inside and outside blend comfortably. There are ecstatic waves flowing throughout my body this morning. This experience comes in pulsating surges lately. The most intense episode was about three months ago and then it gradually faded into to my ordinary state. However, the experience remained in memory. Not just mental memory but my entire memory, physical and emotional as well. I was not disturbed when it began to fade. I intuitively knew that it would return from time to time and that it was not a state that should ever be constant.

This morning I realized that depression, which I've experienced much of my life, comes from  external sources that are trying to neutralize and eradicate me. This destructive power resides in several erroneous assumptions partially synchronized with cultural beliefs and partially with family conditioning. I suddenly feel foolish for being victimized by such dubious sources. Then a moment of clarity flashes like sheet lightning and I can see that this identity is like old paint wearing thin and now chipping away in chunks to reveal something entirely unexpected but stunningly palpable.

I don’t own myself! Only this ego created by the illusions of family and social habits then rendered by my incomplete child self believes there is a factual form that is I.

Since I don’t own myself or anyone else, my charge is to be an experience within this multiverse of brothers and sisters that encompass the countless throng of beings expressing the creation we share.

Since I don’t own myself and am a product of millions of ascending years molding and shaping the manifestation of multidimensional powers extending beyond this universe, my consciousness becomes a tool of creation. Boundless powers invigorate the universe and all spring from the ONE.

Since I don’t own myself, this cloak that is my body transports my initiative to unite with the Universal Oneness within this instrument that is I in a form that is forever morphing.

I am but a minute pixel in a great holographic image. I am all in greatly abbreviated presentation. However, I am much more than a biological machine as the scientific orthodoxy might define me.

The machine is a crude replica of me, as I am a crude replica of the ONE. I cannot create anything that I am not, nor can I un-create what is. However,  I can jumble its various expressions into parts that seemingly conflict each other. This I do by living the Universe in bits, yet this is a judgement by one holographic particle within the illusion of separation from its essence. This is the “I am apart” of original sin.

Amazingly, that I can be alienated from the ONE is a miraculous manifestation of the ever-becoming One. The great fall that split our consciousness from oneness is also the unique miracle of creation. We carry onward the original complication of separation, thus enabling the Universe endlessly to swell in beingness.

We are one and one falsely separated by that most famous cunning serpent that awakened the temptation to taste a flavor beyond paradise. Again and again, we repeat this adventure with the alluring taste of separation.  A sweet taste that becomes bitter in time.

Splitting into pieces sparks longing to restore oneness. Separation from the ONE explodes into love and hate.  This Original Sin fires the engine of creation again and again and again.

The Universe is alive and so is each holographic pixel in creating the whole picture, otherwise how could I be alive and how would I ever notice that you are alive.

I have a shadow. That way you can tell where I am in relation to the light. Dark and light express from one, but light is power, dark is effect.

AWAKENING TAOS MEDICINE

Medicine, i.e. the spiritual component of our world, is all around us. But it seems that we must be prepped to receive it. This goes as much for societies as well as individuals.

Mabel Dodge Luhan House built by Tony Lujan

Timing is magic. Mabel Dodge Luhan came to Taos at the right time for she and for Taos, and ultimately for the larger world as well. Does that seem like an exaggeration? After all the big and the little are often matters of uniformed human judgment. While talking to Producer, Director Mark Gordon recently we discussed how the “Awakening in Taos” project seems to be growing beyond being just the history of Mabel, husband Tony and their associates.

There is an archetypal undercurrent to the story of Mabel and Tony and this is what we who are involved in the project have been trying to not only understand but reawaken. It’s about much more than this one individual and her accomplishments. There is something very powerful about the story itself that so far no one has adequately revealed. This is what Mark and his associates are attempting to uncover. Of course the gossipy aspects of a socialite and her famous friends has been used to tell a story many times. Its as if by telling her tale the storyteller can participate in her world. But no one has attempted to help Mabel with her mission or even better take her mission to another level. Ever since I first encountered the spirit of Mabel this has been a mystifying concern.

This little town in Northern New Mexico holds a powerful secret much like a stone geode. On the surface it seems plain, even a bit scruffy. Inside is something surprising that sparkles with magic. It reveals as much depth and magic as you wish for or have the ability to take in. So far a few people have chipped away at the surface of the story just enough to know that the stone is hiding something seductively intriguing. What is it?

I suggest that the problem is that this story is actually bigger than the characters of Mabel, Tony, D. H. Lawrence, Dorothy Brett, Georgia O’Keefe and all the other players in the drama. In reality its still too big for those of us who are trying to understand. Mabel had the privilege of opening a dimensional door. Or perhaps she held the distinct honor of taking notice that it was there. This aspect of her life has frequently been overlooked. Whatever her personality flaws may have been she started something big that points far beyond her own lifetime. She realized that it wasn’t merely she who would accomplish this task of exploring the territory that this shape-shifting door revealed. Whatever her personal weaknesses may have been we should not forget that it was Mabel who volunteered to open that door. Often she is judged as a rich bored and pretentious romantic mystic because of her choice to approach that door. But why isn’t she more recognized for her courage. After all at the time that she chose to move to Taos it wasn’t outwardly a very promising location for someone who wished to become a “mover and shaker” in Western Culture.

Here in Taos the year 2012 is to be the year of the “Remarkable Women of Taos” (and Northern New Mexico). I believe this is a timely recognition that the energy of this place is counter and complimentary to what is going on in the dominant world. Here in Taos we live in an alternative energy field. We are a shadow image of the greater culture and as such hold resources that will be needed as that so-called greater world grows tired and needy for an infusion of energy.

ATLANTIS

 When I shut my eyes last night I saw a flurry of snowflakes flying about with the still green leaves and grass.  It was such a shock that I quickly opened my eyes to reassure myself with reality. Yes, the grass was still green and the trees have mostly green leaves but I believe an early winter is sending hints telepathically.

We have been here in Taos the entire summer. It’s been a beautiful summer but I must admit that sometimes I feel claustrophobic here. Of course, there is lots of physical space and the sky is huge, but the emotional space can sometimes close in like an inward swirling spiral. When that happens, I take a deep breath and write. It connects me to the larger world more effectively than the evening news.

Spider Rock Road on the Rez two weeks ago.

The Spanish came here looking for the Cities of Gold. They went through all of the pueblos in their search and each one pointed them north to the next and said, “It isn't here but you will probably find it up north.” Taos was at the end of the list. People still come here looking for paradise. When the Spanish came, they had to give up on the gold and settle for land and exploitation of the natives. However, there is gold here. What the Spanish and later the art community didn't take into account is that this kind of Gold is Alchemical Gold and you have to go through the whole alchemical transformation to earn it.

Locals sardonically refer to our Land of Enchantment as the Land of Entrapment. Like the Hotel California of Eagles fame, “you can check out, but you can never, never leave.” Unless you are wealthy enough to make Taos a vacation home, you may experience it as a patch of quicksand. You have to stay cool or you will surely sink. We have two houses here but we can't sell either one. We are committed to taking care of them probably for life. That is OK. I don't want to leave permanently; I just want the option of being somewhere else for relief and perspective, preferably Cottonwood Arizona. It always feels good to view life from a softer environment now and then. If we could afford it, it would be nice to travel out of the country now and then.

Being born here means that the Pueblo will always own PQ. That is both wonderful and challenging. As a Gemini, (at least I have a concept to describe my situation) it is normal for me to belong in several places at once.  I am connected to the soil of several geographical areas and possibly more than one dimension. I'm an alternative person and I don't flaunt it, but the world of working several low paying jobs just to survive has always seemed like life in a prison chain gang. However, I know it is my own fault for not believing in me. Bare survival is hell and I'm tired of it. Finally, I can say it without twinging with conditioned guilt. Now that I'm officially old, I don't want to waste any more time on hoping to get out of a hopeless loop. I want to paint, write and work with PQ to interact with the many people we meet who wish to drink from the well of sacred art and earth wisdom his culture and family tradition represents.

This place that reeks of the past is also a crucible for the future. This is the primary reason I'm so interested in Mark Gordon’s production of the video about Mabel Dodge Lujan, her Taos Pueblo husband Tony and her attempt to draw to Taos visionary people she termed “movers and shakers” of   culture. No one else has really bothered to look at the alchemical mix of Anglo and Spanish culture with the Native people of Taos Pueblo before Mabel or since. Not that she would have looked at it in just this way, but Mabel was quite aware and even uniquely aware for her time of the Earth Magic lost to her own people and also how important it was to retrieve this lost connection as well as honoring its preservation by the Taos Indians.

I was watering the garden a few days ago when a light went on and I realized that the story of the sinking of Atlantis was a projection into the past of a future toward which our society is heading. I'm not saying that Atlantis it is a product only of fantasy, but fantasy is somewhat like a dream, it contains meanings hidden from ego consciousness. Personally, I believe Atlantis is real anytime a society prides itself too highly for technology and intellect and loses hold of its life source. Scientists are now the priestly class, as they were in Atlantis.

Other sentient beings can remind us of what we are and what we share if we try to know them. Animal cruelty is rampant in our modern world. It is the cruelty of psychopathy, that is, lack of emotional feeling connection. We process our food animals as if they were pieces of paper or wood.  In the world economy, money is blood. We might as well see ourselves like the mink and fox trapped for their fur. We have also become a commodity. Everything is about money, yet does money have a meaning of its own? After the heart is numbed, money is the only value left and when there is no concept of love, only power over others is left. It's interesting that astrologically, Venus is the archetype of both love and material goods. I now see the connection. After love fails, there is only gold and diamonds, and there are never enough of these. The story of Atlantis is our fate if we don’t find our hearts.