Sacred Geometry: Patterns of Awakening

The beauty of sacred geometry is

it unfolds within itself.

Circles overlap circles,

discovering intersections, revealing patterns,

no measuring, no calculations.

Knowledge of how one form evolves into another

is contained within the circle.

An exquisite precision of shapes

emerge through developing relationships.

They do not confine life,

but open it beyond form

to what cannot be confined.

Sacred geometry doesn't present codes

the mind can crack,

solving the problems of life.

It offers portals

for entering the mystery of creation,

cracking the mind open

to the wonders of being and becoming.

Through these portals,

made of nothing more than lines,

the circle of each life

encompasses the totality of life.

Sculpting the Edges of Infinity

I love moments when an object cracks its boundaries and reveals a hyper-reality words cannot hope to describe. Such objects are rare and usually occupy honored places in museums. Yet, I take special delight in stumbling across powerful works of art in unexpected places. It happened the other day in Carmel when I passed the tree pictured above. I almost missed it, hidden in a passage off the main street. But the shape of the trunk and leaves against the gleaming stucco walls framing it were at once so real, surreal and unreal that it stopped me in my tracks. I have no idea who the gardener/artist is. I have no idea if he/she works consciously with this tree to sculpt the edges of infinity. However it happened, this alchemy of nature, imagination and design hovers between the familiar and the abstract, the known and the unknown. It cracks open the world to reveal a priceless gem to whomever has the eyes to notice.

The Love We Overlook

Around Valentines Day we check our love balance. The mind can't resist measuring the fullness or emptiness of the heart. Except for a few golden moments, the mind finds a love deficit. Our lives can be filled with loving people, but the mind persists in finding some lack. One day, I saw through all that. In an unexpected place, I saw that there's never a shortage of love.

My connecting flight was delayed. Stuck in the United Airlines O'Hare terminal, I took a seat at one end of one of the long glass and steel arcades framing the space. Instead of burying myself in a book or busying my mind with work, I simply gazed down the gallery. Through the light-filled space passengers hurried toward departure gates and sauntered from arrivals. As they moved across the black and white checkerboard floor their steps took on the qualities of an everyday ballet. Some unseen choreographer guided the intricate patterns of action. No passenger crashed into another. Each step beautifully expressed the individual character of the person moving across the floor. The structure of the terminal was integral to this dance. Each element of the exposed steel frame worked with the other elements to shape an arcing space that embraced and encouraged harmony of movement.

My attention was drawn passed the surface forms of people and architecture. It traveled through the physical forces animating the gestures of legs and arms. My consciousness penetrated the structural forces holding up the building. Then I saw it. What created, activated and harmonized this place was love. It held together and fostered the countless whirling atoms of the floor, walls and roof. Love brought together and nurtured the hearts, minds and bodies of every passenger anxiously racing to catch a flight. It didn't matter if anyone noticed. Love constantly, skillfully and wisely caressed every detail in endless supply.

A voice echoed through the space announcing the boarding of my flight. I entered the ballet and re-entered the mind-stream of hopes and fears, breakthroughs and frustrations. When I recall that layover, I notice the scene in front of me and see the overlooked force bringing it all together: Love.

Architecture Reaches Beyond Shelter

Architecture opens beyond shelter. It does more than shed rain, mark cozy nests and provide square footage for office space. Architecture establishes a place in the world. It roots human beings in the living, breathing Earth while stretching toward the rotations of the stars. Architecture turns the functions of a kitchen into an alchemical studio for transforming raw materials into the food that embodies families and cultures. Its turns a hole in a wall into a portal marking the passages of life or a window framing the unnamable mysteries of space.

In the wrestling dance of spirit and matter architecture reveals the hidden characters of both. A granite stone and an oak tree are totalities within themselves. Yet, becoming participants in the span or an arch or a well-crafted roof beam, the stone and the wood realize dormant powers and forms that change the world by being expressed.

If you're lucky enough to encounter a building today that points beyond its form to a consciousness that eludes description, stop of a moment; appreciate what can come from the desire to reach beyond shelter; sense the connection between your life journey and the journey of those who created this place; sense the long tradition of architects and builders it embodies; and go on your way renewed by what others have created for you and what you might create for other.