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 Wisdom of Eating Duality

My last post of the image I called "The Blissful Serpent" stirred some passionate responses. The photo, gleaned from the Madonna Portal at Notre Dame Cathedral, depicts the snake who tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden. In this case, the wily serpent is portrayed as a radiant, sensual woman. Jo Braun, an artist in Seattle, pointed out a much overlooked detail in the story: the God character is the only one in the narrative who lies. God deceives Adam and Eve by telling them that eating from the tree at the center of the garden will kill them. But, the first couple ignore the warning label and bite into the fruit. Instead of dropping dead, "their eyes were opened."

What is the lie that doesn't kill you and opens your eyes? The carving in the photo above depicts the moment when Eve eats the apple. Around the left side of the pillar is another carving portraying God warning Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit of the tree. Around the right side of the pillar, a third carving shows God expelling Adam and Eve from the Garden. Warning, Partaking and Excluding appear to be the gestures of deception that reveals Truth.

The central figure in all these images is the serpent. Her movement animates the story. She also reveals the key to understanding the deception that uncovers Truth. Here's what I see. The serpent embodies the flow of consciousness becoming aware of itself. When the unified field of awareness appears to split into the awarenesses of the Perceiver and the Perceived, the wholeness of life appears to break into opposites: good and evil, light and dark, love and hate. Believing that these opposites are the only reality of life is ignorance. Believing these opposites will kill us the big lie. Stuck in the belief that we as Perceivers are separate from what we Perceive, we forget that we are already whole. We turn life into a pursuit for objects that will complete us. Attempting to heal a life that appears broken, but is actually whole, reinforces the lie and sends us on an endless round of chasing our own tails. As long as we believe this lie, we live in fear that we will never be whole again.

Yet this lie reveals a core truth. The opposites may appear separate, but they are actually one. By appearing to stand apart, opposites frame a gate through which creative energy flows from latent potential into vivid manifestation. Through this gate, the world sees unity behind the forms of duality.

In the story of Eden, God's lie allows Adam and Eve to engage the full spectrum of life's possibilities. The one-dimensional harmony of blind ignorance offers no place for the creative powers of life to flow. The joy of birth cannot radiate without the poignancy of death. The beauties of light cannot shine without shades of darkness.

The serpent is actually the hero in the story. Despite God's warning not to eat the fruit of duality, the serpent still urges the first couple to taste the sweet juice. By swallowing duality Adam and Eve awaken to a magnified unity, a oneness that includes all possibilities. After that awakening, the one dimensional Eden was no longer their true home.

The tale of rediscovering primal unity carries Adam and Eve out of Eden. Their exile represents the work of applying a magnified unity to daily life. Discovering unity within new and unexpected pairs of opposites works the vital mysteries of creation deeper into the bones. It presses the awakening of unity further into the earth. Like I imagine the Adam and Eve characters doing again and again, we can weave duality into the field of unity, perceiving astonishing patterns and possibilities emerge. With weaving we can engage the fluid energies of the serpent and find her radiant joy and beauty filling the already full world.

The Blissful Serpent

I've been trying to write a blog about this photo for a few days. It's taken from one of the portals at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. It depicts the serpent tempting Adam and Eve to eat the apple in the Garden of Eden. When I discovered this image, it was love at first sight. I was astonished by the figure's sensual joy. This wasn't the sleazy lounge lizard usually described in the story of the fall. Instead, it presented a whole different story. Rather than posting a long-winded analysis, I'll just introduce her to you and let you have a dialogue. I'm very interested in hearing what you see.

Visionary Encounters with Trees

Yesterday I collected images of trees as seen by various artists from different times and different places. Looking at these images I don't see trees. I see the minds of the artists. How can Giotto's tree be so different from Cezanne's tree which is different from Georgia O'Keefe's tree and Van Gogh's tree? I think its two things: 1) they each had a direct encounter with a tree (vision of it) that broke through their preconceived (cultural) ideas about the tree, and 2) each artist expressed that vision through the unique viewpoint of their individuality. In other words, they broke through the essential being, the universal tree-ness, of what they saw and then had the courage to express that vision honestly.

This is the power and gift of art. It's a call from one one human being to others that says, "Hey, your life isn't as limited as you think. Just open your eyes, really open them, and see what's in front of you. See through your fears, through your been there done that boredom, through your I'm too busy confusion, through your I'm too important self righteousness and behold the miracle of energy and matter shimmering right here, right now. Then tell someone what you actually saw; not what your supposed to have seen, nor what you would have like to see, nor the meaning of what you saw. Just put into what cannot fit into words, put into brush strokes what cannot fit into brush strokes, put into music what cannot fit into music. Then maybe one day, your work will hang in a museum. More importantly, you will live and spark the creative light in others.

Feel the Tug of the Heavens in Your Hands

Last Saturday on Marina Green in San Francisco, the community celebrated Family Kite Day. Hundreds of people of all ages and styles stood on the field by the bay holding strings and gazing skyward as their kites of all designs fluttered in the breeze. Some flyers guided their kites through intricate swoops and soars, dancing their kites to the music blasting from speakers positioned along the sidelines. Others simply felt the tug of the heavens from their place on earth. The sight was joyous and freeing. How great it is when we can feel the heavens tugging in our hands as we stand on the solid earth.

View From the Threshold of Death

On Saturday, I went to an exhibit called The Way of the Samurai. It described the principle of bushido, which includes living each moment as if looking back from the moment of death. Rather than being morbid or scary, this viewpoint opened my mind and senses to the richness of the here and now with a power I hadn't quit experienced before. The world became both more vivid and dreamlike, more intimate and universal, more engaging and freeing. What I do with my days mattered more, but without the pressure of grasping each grain of time. Facing death openly sparked the life forces within me.

Later I asked, "What dies?" Some would say the body and not the soul. Some would say nothing dies; they only change form. I couldn't honestly answer the question. I realized that wanting to pin life down would be like wanting to pin down the wind or the ocean. And that would really be death. Instead, I just perched on the threshold of life and peered into the dreamlike reality of living each moment.

When Your Road Forks

This road sign signals one of the new roundabouts the city of Santa Rosa, California installed to mange the flow of traffic. I love its energy and wild spirit. It's so different from STOP, YIELD, DEAD END. Instead, this sign invites movement and choice. It leaves behind mechanical ONE WAY highways and suggests roads of organic possibilities. It screams, "Yeah, Baby. Let's crank up the tunes and drive." But this is not about a petal to the metal kind of road trip. This is about moving the way water moves, surrendering to the pull of gravity and finding its shape in relation to the objects and events it encounters. Where most road signs demand that we stay in the box, this one points the ways out of the box. There's music in it. Maybe, whoever designed this sign understood what others only laughed at. Maybe he or she understood what that great American sage Yogi Berra meant when he said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

Hunter-Artists in the 21st Century

I once read that the Bushmen of the Kalahari have two possessions: a hunting spear and a paint set. Whether this is true or not, I love the archetypal image it presents. One tool is used to feed the body. The other feeds the soul. It struck me that it didn't make a difference if we inhabited a desert, forest or city. We still need to hunt for food. The basic necessity that gets overlooked is art. Without the nourishment of beauty, connection, emotion and mystery sparked by art our humanity starves and dies.

The arrow and the brush share a more essential symbiotic relationship. Both are needed for obtaining food and making art. All types of hunting, from catching trout and picking snap peas to gathering a paycheck involves finesse and artful skill. Powerful creation and appreciation of art requires keene senses and the courage to enter unknown territory.

Our ability to integrate the arrow and the brush determines whether each action we make regenerates the world or destroys it. In business, do we use our arrow of choice to pierce the task at hand in an object oriented way that wounds the earth and shatters the heart? Or, do we wield the arrows of technology and information with the adeptness that re-weaves the world again and again?

Modern society doesn't present many examples of how to live as a hunter-artist; a person attuned to the nature of the body, the nature of the soul and the nature of the world. Yet, to live a human life, it would be helpful to find ways of using both our arrows and our brushes to ways appropriate to the digital world we are in.