A Miksang Moment

The other day I was sitting on the front steps of my partner's house. She was gardening and I was sitting down because of a back injury. It was sunny and hot and I was relaxing where I was. My mind emptied and I sat there taking in what was happening around me. At first I noticed the small reddish brown ants scurrying back and forth amongst the sidewalk bricks. Then a bird flew overhead. My eyes drifted down to the right and landed on a small patch of bachelors buttons in bloom at the bottom corner of the steps. I noticed their colour first-a cobalt  blue fringe with a white body on each petal and a grape coloured centre. I felt my body soften and my heart began to open in curiosity. As I gazed at the flowers I noticed some small insects hovering around the flowers. Now and then they would dart in and land for a few seconds sipping something from the centre of the flower. Next a few bees came buzzing in moving slowly from one flower to  the other gathering pollen. As I continued to watch a few ants climbed carefully up the stems of the plant inspecting the flowers at the top. Then they would walk back down and go up another stem. By this time I was quite fascinated by what was going in this little patch of flowers. And then to add to my amazement a brown beetle and then a greenish beetle with a triangular shaped body climbed into the bottom of the plants.

I became aware that time had virtually stood still as I sat there engrossed with what was happening near me. Listening quietly to myself I sensed a lightness in my body and heart. I felt a quiet kind of joy in my whole being, my back pain had diminished. Here was something on the surface so mundane, so insignificant and yet so deeply moving. This was a profound moment for me. As I sat there contemplating all of this it moved me to consider how I had opened myself to an experience of nature as part of me, as part of my inner experience. I realized that this was a relationship, that I had opened myself to "be" with nature. Or was it the other way round, or both?

Here was a felt resonance between a human being and nature. It was like a waking dream perhaps foretelling in a way how we might invite nature into our own inner family. Imagine for a moment if we could be in relationship like this always. Could we treat what has touched our core, our heart, our soul in this way as we have before? I can't, not now. To include nature as an important part of our inner family requires us to see in a different way, to open ourselves to experiences that are like dreams yet we are awake.

In my heart I now understand that if we can see and appreciate nature in this way, in the deepest parts of ourselves, the part of ourselves we barely talk to, that we couldn't do what we do to the world, to nature, to ourselves.

Bachelor Buttons and My Heart

Broadening the Definition of Family

It's been quite a while since I wrote for this blog. Since that time my heart and soul have called me to change my life. I have closed my Pilates studio and sold my house. Over the next year I will embark on a journey to explore my own artists soul. In my heart I feel this  action is freeing myself from the oppression of the culture that I live in.

There are two themes that have become clear for me over the last year or so. The first is the need for the  development of a gift based society rather than one based on self-interest. The second theme is to begin changing our view of nature as separate from humanity. This blog will focus on the theme of our separaton from nature and imagining something different.

Our industrial technological society  separates us from our roots in the natural world.  With more and more technological gadgets and growing urbanization in our lives the pace of separation is increasing. Without an understanding  that this is happening it is very difficult to convey to individuals the serious nature of what is going on.  I realized what we might consider is an idea of the potential feeling we can have when we think of members of our family. What do you feel in your heart when you imagine a loved one being injured, is missing, has been abused or dies. Does it bring up difficult emotions or a reaction to not even go there because it is too upsetting. Why should we consider this difficult kind of imagining?

The natural world, the beautiful intricate ecosystems that form it both living and non living are the basis for all human life. All that we use to survive and thrive in one form or another comes from the natural world.  Yet we have developed a global economic system that is devouring and destroying the natural world in pursuit of profit. The market and corporations in particular have no heart, no conscience, no morality other than greed and money. Since most of the checks  against their rapaciousness have been removed there is little to stop the basis for all human life being turned into fodder for the maw of the  corporate machine.  It is souless and as such  is the antithesis of life, it is evil.

The very thing that breathes life into our bodies, our lives, is soul. It  also breathes life into the natural world and is called anima mundi, the soul of the world. We humans through corporate globalization are in the process of destroying the very soul of our world.

We are all complicit in this killing and this is why I bring up imagining  a loved family member being hurt . I am making the heart based case for considering that nature the very basis of human life is actually a member of each and everyone of our families.

Of Bees and Synchronicity- A Goethian Tale

I've always been fascinated by insects that pollinate plants especially bees. I sit quietly outside by some of my roses and wait. Soon a bee will come buzzing around and land. The activity that happens is almost erotic. The bee rubs the pollen all over itself moving it down to where it is carried in smooth golden blobs on its legs. The it buzzes over to another flower and the same rubbing happens again. A spider might be waiting in hiding for the bee but not today. I like the colour and shape of bees, the way they seem to float up and over and then down to another erotic grotto of pollen. Then fully laden they zoom away in a curving flight to hive and home.

A long time ago when I first started recording my dreams I had dreams of bees and hives. I was asked in one of the dreams to tend some hives. On occasion I have had the impulse to become (pun) a bee keeper. A very ancient skill.

I want to tell you about my further adventures in reconnecting to nature along the lines I have written about in earlier blogs. From what I have just written you must know it's a story about bees.

At the beginning of October I decided to fly out to Castlegar, British Columbia. I rented a car and then drove the 100+ kilometers to a cabin owned by my mother in New Denver. A small town of 500 souls New Denver is split in two by Carpenter Creek. The cabin sits at the end of a road near the busy creek. It was once owned by a man who made saddles and as we found out was haunted. After resting a few days I began to take photographs in the way that I have mentioned earlier. I simply feel an impulse to walk in a certain direction and then I remain open to something that speaks to me from what I see or sense in a more general way. To me it's like my soul is leading me, desiring something. I feel she is waiting for her true love to spring forth from the surroundings and in their meeting is a love, a joy that nourishes one beyond measure. In this moment of union, of connection I take a picture. I create. I minimize technique and focus on seeing the depth of what is initially visible. I may stay if that is what my heart and soul want, if not I move on. Some days I find it hard to be in this way especially if I begin to focus on looking for certain things. If this happens I pull back maybe reconnect with my body in a different way and wait a bit. Then I go out again and usually something new will spring forth to meet me and the process begins anew.

This was the situation that I was in perhaps a week in to my stay. I was feeling frustrated and blocked. At the rear of the cabin is what our family call "the back porch". It is an old wooden covered porch with a few steps down to the ground. Sitting at the end one can see Slocan lake and the Valhalla range of mountains on the other side of the lake. In the early evening 10 years ago I could sit on the porch and feel the cold air flow over me from the New Denver glacier atop the mountain directly across the lake. The setting sun would illuminate the blue ice. It was magical. No more, the glacier is all but melted.

This day the sun was warm. I got up after deciding to get an apple to help me in my contemplation. As I went inside the back door to the kitchen I asked the Universe/ God/Gods/Nature to help me with a sign of some sort. With apple in hand I sat back down on the porch was about to start eating the apple (Ambrosia) when I felt something down near the ground on my right. I can't say what it was, an energy shift, a presence. I looked down. Sitting on a piece of old wood are two bees joined at the tips of their abdomens. They are at right angles to each other. At first I think my God they are fighting, stinging each other but they are perfectly still.Then I realize that they are copulating and maybe warming up in the sun. Looking more closely I see that one bee is somewhat larger that the other and has a different shape and size of the head. I realize that this must be a queen and she is mating with a drone before the queen goes to ground for the winter. I thought only ants did this. I quietly got up to get my camera because I knew this was the sign. When I came back they were gone. I felt disappointed and thrilled all at the same time. I ate my apple taking this in in a quiet way and then I took my camera down to an old log I had been photographing a few days earlier in the dry stream bed of the creek. After taking a few pictures perhaps 20 minutes after the bee incident I feel that same presence down on my right. I look down and sitting on a piece of old wood is the queen bee. Now some people might not be able to take this in but it was the same bee. I knew this instinctively. Another sign. To me this is a form of synchronicity which I will speak about a bit later. I thought about taking a picture but something in me said don't, that this action would defile what was being given to me. So I didn't. These two experiences had a profound effect on me.

Wait there is a third part to this tale.

After returning home it was near the end of October and I was walking along the river bank beside Keillor Road. I decided to turn south where Whitemud Creek flows into the river. The trail passes through some old growth poplar and spruce winding it's way beside the creek occasionally crossing over it on curved bridges. Where I usually turn off  to do some cardiovascular exercise is a wide path part of an oil pipeline that travels steeply up to the top of the river valley system. At the top I turn right and walk about 20 meters to a place where I can sit and look back down into the creek valley. The top is covered in wild grasses and this day they were all in seed. Their heads flowed back and forth like waves in the wind. Down below were thick stands of young trembling aspen. I like to sit quietly here and reflect on what might be bubbling me at the time. It was a cool day 10 C and no insects were flying around because there had been several frosts. Suddenly I hear the buzzing sound of an approaching bee from behind. It lands right behind my heart on the left side of my upper back. I think holy shit what is going on here. Instantly the images from New Denver come to me. The bee is large, really large. I feel it slowly crawling up my back. I start to feel the edge of anxiety. Can it sting me? Will it? Do I have the nerve to let it go where it wants. No I don't and I shake myself lightly and it takes off. I can see it fly off down the the valley to my left. Then the strangest thing happens. I have the sense whether real or imagined that I am the bee and I can see where it is flying in long graceful curves. Then it disappears. This experience really shook me up and moved me.

For the past month the images from these experiences have resonated within me. I had read an article earlier of an interview with Russell Lockhart PhD., titled "What do Dream Animals Want of Us?". Within the interview Russell speaks about how a personal dream of a tiger led him to the experience of a second tiger within himself. He described this second tiger as a resonant presence separate from yet connected to the dream tiger. There is a tension which develops Russell suggests between the pull of finding meaning in one's life of the dream tiger and staying with the resonant presence of the second tiger. This tension is different than ones first intention (finding meaning) and has a different structure and imminence "something like a supersaturated solution at just the moment before precipitating solid out of a clear liquid." He speaks about how the precipitate is often a synchronistic event. In one instance after he made some connections with the first dream tiger  the resonant presence of the second tiger welled up in him and he began to look about himself with different eyes seeking something, desiring something. His eyes landed on a coffee stain on some desk top papers and what he saw there was not a tiger but a monkey. From here came photography of found animals in oil stains on the street, bark of trees, etc. He states that "the resonant presence of the tiger gave birth to the future in the form of a project that engages me and causes me to 'take in the world' with new eyes."

I have also experienced a bee resonance in myself  which has continued unabated. This has also led to some art work which is ongoing. The biggest gift I received from these bee experiences was a confirmation of the subjectivity of nature. That nature has a voice if we were to but listen. It is not a bunch of matter that we can use for our own ends and is not from a scientific viewpoint dead and therefore open to manipulation.  Think about the huge number of people in our culture suffering from depression medicated or not. If one were to consider depression as a symbolic manifestation of something missing in our culture and individual lives rather than just a biochemical imbalance what might that look like. To depress is to go down, down to the ground, to nature, to what matters after all. From my experience with depression it is a call to listen to our own souls, to go down into our own depths and discover a new way of seeing and being in the world. To create a different future.

Mandalas Are Everywhere

The image of the mandala has been with me for quite a while now. When I am walking along the river trail I can see a mandala in so many things. The dark centre in the picture reminds me of the mystery of wholeness where a descent into our own inner depths is required to remember the parts of ourselves we have never known or forgotten. There is a curious spiraling in towards the centre and out again as we live our lives in this conscious way. The rings on the tree remind me of this spiraling and of the time it takes to grow towards being more whole. So when I walk on the trail and I see these mandalas I am left with an impression, a resonance in myself of something in nature trying to speak to me. I can sense very faintly within this resonance an immenseness, a deep, intense, organic and spiritual feeling of my connectedness to nature and to this planet. It is faint because my ego's senses have been dulled by the kind of culture I live in. I could go on a rant here about the effects of growth oriented economics on the environment and the impact of technology causing us to be more and more controlled by what we think we control. To what end? All this does is get us polarized, angry and we stop seeing and hearing what we really need to. Just imagine, you could go out and simply see nature with different eyes, with different senses in general. In my heart that immenseness, that lost connection to our organic primordial spiritual selves is out there we just have to slow down to find it.

Can We Imagine

There are many facts that I could put down about what is happening to nature, to the planet that supports us.And I'm sure I would have lots of arguments refuting them. In the end I have come to know in my own heart and in my soul that the way we live must drastically change or there may be nothing left for us to survive with. Perhaps there will be pockets, some remnants of what once flourished on the earth and something inside me says why would I want to live in a world that is so diminished.

I believe fear of what will happen, guilt about what we are doing to our own home and a sense of powerlessness leave many of us unable to respond in a meaningful way to this crisis. It seems that life has become so complex, so full of structures that don't want to give up power or change that it seems impossible to know where to start. That's certainly how I have felt for a number of years.

As I have walked along the river valley trail I have contemplated what I might do. Slowly I realized that the answer was around me. It was just that my eyes had to see differently, they had to see with my heart. And so I began to notice things in a different way, that the place would speak to me, to show me it's own soul. I started to record these moments with my camera. I began to feel excitement and a deep sense of joy that I had never experienced before. It was if something out there was speaking to me, wanting to be noticed but not in an acquisitive way.

Keillor Road, Edmonton

When I was a child I used to play in a forested area that was part of a bank of the North Saskatchewan River in Edmonton. Keillor Road descended gradually from the top through the forest and ended up at a farm on the old flood plain near the river. There was an old stone fence parts of which still survive and behind it Scot's pine trees and the old homestead. I would play on the trails that criss-crossed the area later riding my first bike on them. On Sunday's my family would drive toWhitemud Creek Park at the end of the road for a picnic or for a skate in the winter. I've lived in Edmonton for most of my 55 years and I love this place in the city. For the past ten years I have walked down the trail to the road and then along it to Whitemud Creek and beyond. There is a wonderful trail that runs right along the river that I sometimes take. I often come near dusk walking back up out of the river valley in the dark.  I do this walk almost every day of the year.  This blog will be about my experiences of this place and how the walking led to some simple personal revelations and a connection to my art.