Join me on Saturday 17 June 2020 at HelMel Studios & Gallery for an afternoon of music, meditation and creative exploration.
There are only 30 spots, so be sure to register soon!
Thanks, and I can’t wait to explore with you all!
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I sit at the table
and time drifts by.
The weight of the pen is loose
in my fingers.
The paper
cool, and rough.
No matter how long I stare,
thought do not appear.
So I scatter words
across the page
Like bones
And wait
for the Oracle
to reveal
her Wisdom.
The open door caught my attention first as I walked by. With curiosity, I slowed down, and then to a stop. Sunlight streamed in and highlighted the kiln, which gave off a sense of heat. Stacks of pottery in organized chaos were laid out on a board nearby. In the back of the studio, behind a counter was a person working on a pot, The way their work light illuminated them, and the way they were wearing their knitted hat, took the whole scene out of time, if it weren’t for the modern kiln. I had come across a living chiaroscuro painting. It felt like magic.
The artist sensed me, and a hesitation came across their face. I moved on, glad I hadn’t followed my reflex to take out my phone and take a picture. Back before there were cameras in portable phones, I rarely took pictures. For me, it felt like I could either have the experience, or be an observers and document what was going on, but not feel like part of what was going on.
A few moments later, and down the road, a silver flash revealed someone sitting on their porch, playing the banjo. The person’s face had an expression of relaxed absorption in the moment. I walked down the sidewalk a ways, took out my phone, pointed it to the sidewalk and away from the person to record the sound, and they stopped playing. Right away I hoped they were simply pausing and that I hadn’t interrupted them, even with the distance. Porches are made for sitting on and playing music.
Sitting here now, I’m amazed how much detail my mind caught of the potter’s studio. The lighting, the colour palette, the whole energy of the scene. I credit it in part to the ease of my meditative practice. I find more and more how quickly I can enter a state of relaxed awareness and more fully experience where I am, or what I am doing. Or being. I’m so grateful to have found a way to more deeply connect my inner and outer worlds in a way that doesn’t require anything of me other that being open to follow where the essence of life leads.
The open door caught my attention first as I walked by. With human curiosity I slowed down, and then to a stop. Sunlight streamed in and highlighted the kiln, which gave off a sense of heat. Stacks of pottery in organized chaos were laid out on a board nearby. In the back of the studio, behind a counter was a person working on a pot, The way their work light illuminated them, and the way they were wearing their knitted hat, took the whole scene out of time, if it weren’t for the modern kiln. I had come across a living chiaroscuro painting.
The artist sensed me, and a hesitation came across their face. I moved on, glad I hadn’t followed my reflex to take out my phone and take a picture.
A few moments later, and down the road, a silver flash revealed someone sitting on their porch, playing the banjo. The person’s face had an expression of relaxed absorption in the moment. I walked down the sidewalk a ways, took out my phone, pointed it to the sidewalk and away from the person to record the sound, and they stopped playing. Right away I hoped they were simply pausing and that I hadn’t interrupted them, even with the distance. Porches are made for sitting on and playing music.
Sitting here now, I’m amazed how much detail my mind caught of the potter’s studio. The lighting, the colour palette, the whole energy of the scene. I credit it in part to the ease of my meditative practice. I find more and more how quickly I can enter a state of relaxed awareness and more fully experience where I am, or what I am doing. Or being. I’m so grateful to have found a way to more deeply connect my inner and outer worlds in a way that doesn’t require anything of me other that being open to follow where the essence of life leads.
And how now I have an intriguing potter’s studio I can visit at any time in my mind. I have found a way to both experience and document the world around me in a way that has opened me up to all sorts of possibilities and adventures.
Consider
The Soul is a chorus of all our experience.
A friend told me once that every sound made never disappears completely. It eventually becomes imperceptible, but is still there.
Every laugh
Every word of anger
Every musical note that’s been played or sung
Every lover’s sigh
Every cry of sorrow
Every mantra chanted
Every first inhale
Every last exhale.
Continually around us and reforming.
Our being is a dance of all existence.
Molecules and atoms vibrating.
Bouncing
Dancing with each other
Like the murmuration of birds-
One time an elipse folding in on itself
Another time a tree
Then a rock
Then you
Then me.
A continual dance of connectedness
We are
We are one
We are everything
We are
**************************
(You can read about Gugliemo Marconi’s theory of sound decay here https://www.americanscientist.org/article/viva-voce)
When I have the luxury of waking up naturally, I like to lay in my bed and follow the meanderings of my mind.
Today I woke up excited to choose a topic for meditation. I already had chosen a theme for the week- senses, from my reading in training to become a certified meditation teacher- and landed on movement. I like sometimes to choose a topic and tell my brain “today is… run with it”. I landed on the sense of movement for today.
I lay there for awhile stretching.. dancing with my hands, enjoying moving and noticing the flow and connection with my breath.
I thought of light, and sound, and how object are all vibrations of molecules. How in one way or another, all is light and sound. All is vibration.
My worth thinking paused, and I played mind movies of some of my favourite light and sound moments. The play of light and shadow on leaves. Music, The sound of a beloved person’s voice.
I thought of movement and stillness. About how the extremes impede growth. too much movement can become chaos or exhaustion. Too much stillness can become complacency or stagnation. I gave time to thinking about how I could present these concepts in a corporate mindfulness setting.
I thought about paper being a vibrational transformation of the plants it’s usually made from. How paper is both an offering and a sacrifice. Unless it’s 100% recycled, most paper in its origin was a plant that was sacrificed to become paper. It becomes an offering to be written on, created with, exchanged as a means of value, and so on.. Every time now when I use paper, I will take a moment to thank the trees.
I jumped more to thinking about vibrations; thinking about the vibration of thought itself. I thought of brain furrows and how they remind me of the plowed fields behind my house growing up.
Suddenly I;d found I’d made myself small. My kidhood self. Hooded jacked, rainboots… walking the fields/brain furrows. Stopping and bending down looking for treasure, which were I grew up was usually agates.
I thought of how I could use this image….. wandering the furrows of my brain… as a device to bring me deeper.
I wondered if my Mom still has a particular large agate. On I remember being as big as my hand, and to ask her to take a picture of it to send to me.
My brain gradually slowed until there was simply the process of waking, and thinking it was time to get out of bed.
I stretched and said out loud “Thank was beautiful. Thank you.”
There is no requirement to still the mind, or sit just so to meditate. It’s more about a deeper connection with Self. You can lay in your bed, sit in a chair, get up and dance, go for a hike, get lost in creating art, listening to music. Let your mind show you the adventure of the moment.
Ah! That was beautiful. Thank you!
craftingthespirit.com 