Nothing New Under the Sun
Poem by Seppo Kaarlo Odell
Nothing New Under the Sun
republican democratic
supersize s.u.v.
soccer den mothers!
Your thoughts are safe with me
imagination is just too scary for you!
the wise Woman
the ancient eyes that guide
buried
somewhere in your house.
Isis hides
between the pages of Town&Country,
culture has halted
stopped!
you know everything is connected!
bad breathing air
bad mothers’ milk
melting glaciers
dead forest
confused cells.
stir yourself up…pyramid Priestess!
Awaken your sons!
So busy creating
more
greed culture
frat house beers
on the lawn…
the date rape babes
graduating
asleep in the dorm
class after class
while the Earth turns into Mars.
Come on, Mom…!
John of God and My Story of Spiritual Healing
by Sheila Verily
In August 2008 I travelled to a small town in Brazil on a sort of pilgrimage. I was seeking whatever blessing may come of this journey and in particular relief from phobias related to food intolerances and cumulative personal stress. This had become a considerable problem in my life – an unlikely candidate or so I thought, but at times limited by fear - and although other healing modalities had helped, nothing had taken me back a few years to when the problem did not exist.
So I journeyed the 6,000 miles from Vancouver to see the Brazilian miracle man dubbed John of God [in Portuguese: João de Deus]. John of God is a trance medium through whom spirit healers perform their work. There is no charge to see him.
I have been interested in metaphysics, have studied spiritualism most of my life, and I was able to sense when the healing began. It began in the beautiful capital city of Brasilia even before reaching destination. Fortunately for me, my very capable guide Gary Walker (www.JohnOfGodHealing.com) knew just how to approach this journey for maximum benefit, and our first day of touring included three sacred sites before carrying on our way. The healing had begun!
What I would soon come to witness in the little town of John of God will be impossible to explain in this one brief story, but it was all nothing short of powerful and moving. Miracles have been known to happen there.
I briefly met with John of God.
Did I experience healing?
Yes, I certainly did – I have not felt phobic since my return, thank God.
Did others experience healing?
Yes, they have told me they have, some even from life-threatening conditions.
Some people sought physical healing and relief from serious or painful problems, while for others the trip was more about emotional healing.
I met people of all ages and from all around the world who had travelled to Abadiania, Brazil for help and in my opinion no-one leaves that precious little town without being changed for the better. Since returning home my meditations have been deeper and more meaningful and I look forward to doing them with regularity. Even my prayers and affirmations have a much sweeter feeling to them, as though they are coming from more deeply within and with even greater reverence.
What I experienced clairvoyantly, was another magnificent blessing. I wish that everyone had seen what I saw: Saints and other beneficent spirit beings. [I feel a duty to state here though that it is not necessary to be clairvoyant or to even believe in spiritual healing in order to experience benefit—a young New Jersey man on a return visit to Brazil confirmed that when he spontaneously shared his healing story with me. Ideally one is sincere, is interested in a quiet although fun retreat, and is simply open to possibility.]
John of God (born João Teixeira de Faria) has said: “I do not heal. God is the one who heals.”
I so look forward to returning to this marvellous little town in Brazil – a town where an abundance of lush papaya trees, gorgeous small green parrots, and a bounty of quartz crystals are all sights to behold amid the ever-warm Brazilian smiles.
If you have made such a journey or consider doing so, or simply care to share your thoughts with me, I would be delighted to hear from you.
Explore a little more. Click something interesting to you!
WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by Roy Tanck requires Flash Player 9 or better.
About Lee Van Patten
During the past 40 years, Lee Van Patten has studied Sufism, Hatha Yoga, Kundalini Yoga, and Chinese martial arts.
He has applied the knowledge and experience gained from these disciplines to the fields of health, business, and music production.
He is happily married to the woman of his dreams.
View video conversation with Lee
Transcript The Soul and Balanced Mastery
The Soul and Balanced Mastery
In my experience of myself as the soul I feel that my main purpose in the world is to create, and that’s where I get the most joy. That’s the feedback that comes to me from those higher levels. So it has nothing to do with being able to control other people or have power or money or influence or any of that, it’s just the sheer joy of creation.
Lee Van Patten talks with Carol Sill
C: Hi, I’m Carol Sill and I’m here in Vancouver talking with Lee Van Patten about spiritual life and inner development and how that expresses in the world. So maybe you could just tell us something about your path, and what you are involved with right now?
L: I’ll tell you a little about my path. I think I really got going in my spiritual life back in the ‘70s. I studied for a while with a man who was involved in Indian guruism that had to do with a Swami in India and he was carrying on that tradition. I kind of fell into it by happenstance, and I wasn’t really attracted to it and I became disillusioned with guruism in general. I could see how it was not a balanced system that created a lot of problems among the people that were following gurus.
But at that time I also read the Ouspensky material, about George Gurdjieff, so I became interested in Sufism. And then I read some Idries Shah stuff as well, so I learned a little more about Sufism. Then I met some Sufi people in Toronto and studied with them for a while but there were some things I didn’t like about organizations, spiritual organizations in general.
Over time I came to feel that any organization that has to exist for a long period of time, maybe it’s based on a charismatic leader. The charismatic leader passes away but the organization continues on. But in order to continue on it usually attracts people that are bureaucrats basically, who are there for their own self-interest, to have a career. And the organization begins to lose the essence of the spirit from which it originally came. So I moved away from that as well, but I continued my own inner process to the best of my ability.
I’m almost 60 years old and what I’d like to convey here is a couple of things I’ve learned along the way. One is that I believe it’s wrong to think of ourselves as having a soul. I think it’s kind of the other way around, that we’re actually the soul, and we are manifesting through a physical form.
That change in perspective is important, because if you think that you have a soul, that is your ego owning the soul and essentially controlling it. And when people think of their soul in that context they often think of a child-like kind of a semi-formed entity that has feelings but no real power. In actual fact, when we come from the soul perspective, we have a lot of power, and we have a lot of creative energy.
In my experience of myself as the soul I feel that my main purpose in the world is to create, and that’s where I get the most joy. That’s the feedback that comes to me from those higher levels. So it has nothing to do with being able to control other people or have power or money or influence or any of that, it’s just the sheer joy of creation. When you’re in that space I think you’re really well connected with your soul. The minute you try and own your artwork or own anybody’s anything then you begin to lose that feeling and you go into the ego.
The other thing that I’ve learned over the course of my life is what I call the Inner Family. And that is that people don’t really grow up, in the sense that we think of growing up in our society, where you develop from a child to an adolescent to an adult. I don’t think it’s really like that. I think it’s more like these are developmental layers that pile on top of each other. That child persona or aspect of ourselves doesn’t go away, nor does the adolescent.
So therefore in order to be a balanced person at the adult stage we need to have a balanced inner family. It is our adult that provides the stability and security for those earlier aspects of ourselves that are still present and are still expressing. If we don’t have a balanced inner family, if say there are unmet needs at the adolescent level, that adolescent’s going to keep rebelling in our lives in our internal life and in our external life, regardless of how strongly developed the adult level appears to be.
That’s important in the spiritual sense because in order to bring through the soul and have that soul be able to express in a balanced and productive way, all of those aspects of ourselves have to be happy, with each other. And then that’s going to express in a really positive way. Without that, I guess an example would be like a person who meditates for several hours a day, and yet in the rest of their life they’re not happy, things aren’t working out for them. Well, that’s because there’s an overabundance of focus on spiritual practice, but they haven’t done the inner work that’s necessary to bring all of that into harmony and bring it into expression.
And that, I think, is the essence of being a spiritual master. Mastery is not in the sense of control but in the sense of skillful use of everything that comes to you in your life, that you have all of those things well-lined up with each other, and you have that inner peace that allows the soul to express. Without that you haven’t really gotten there yet, no matter how adept you are at one spiritual path or another.
C: Beautiful. Thank you.
View the video of this conversation.
Medicine Wheel
..when you’re in the center of the circle, which is the place of creator in that system, you are the human being that’s at the cross-point between the life and death earth-walk and spiritual beings that can come through our experience of this earth walk; there is a point of integration of those two, and we can embody that.
Judy Evaski continues her conversation with Carol Sill on the Medicine Wheel Path
C: Hi, we’re continuing our conversation, this is Judy Evaski and I’m Carol Sill, and we’re here in Vancouver talking about Judy’s spiritual path and her relationship with nature. I think that’s our next topic, right?
J: Yes. I would add that when I was working with, and I’m still working with, the Native elder, one of the first teaching tools that was used with me, aside from offering tobacco, was the medicine wheel. I was able to construct a medicine wheel, with his guidance, and began to learn some of the basic teachings in that path through that vehicle.
It was a wonderful tool for me to integrate all the paths that I had been exposed to. I’d always had a strong link to nature, to the other creatures in nature, not just us two-leggeds, as we are called, but also with the winged ones in particular. Also with the stones and the rocks, which are called ancestors. What my goal was, I’ve come to realize, in pursuing that path, was to try and learn the manner of speaking to all my relations, which the Native path teaches.
There have been millennia of time that humans have understood their place in creation, their relationship to all the other beings that we share this time and space with. And so my deepening has been in learning the language that promotes communication between all my relations and two-leggeds.
And one of the most wonderful things in the medicine wheel that I began to learn, this is just a simple thing that I think it’s okay to share in this format, is that you have the crossed axis. You have the north-south axis and you have the east-west axis. And in that tradition, and probably in many others, such as the Christian with the cross symbol, the east-west path is often considered the spiritual path. And the north-south is actually the earth walk. So I’m just realizing as I speak that it’s maybe reversed in the Christian path, where I’ve heard the cross described as the horizontal is our outreaching to other beings, other humans, and the north-south or the up-down axis is our connection to spirit.
Anyway, the point is: when you’re in the center of the circle, which is the place of creator in that system, you are the human being that’s at the cross-point between the life and death earth-walk and spiritual beings that can come through our experience of this earth walk; that there is a point of integration of those two, and that we can embody that.
And I think that’s the purpose of the practice, and of all practices, is that we train ourselves to be more and more ready and more able to allow those energies that we can call divine sometimes, or we call inspiration, to flow through us and to stimulate us in some way to express what those divine energies are.
View the video of this conversation.
Varied Paths to the One Center
And so we in Edmonton, Alberta, did a ritual by a sacred spring that we were lucky enough to find. And that was all simultaneously done. There were people, I know, as far south as Patagonia in South America. There were people in England and Europe as well as North America simultaneously doing ceremonies, lighting sacred fires.
Judy Evaski talks with Carol Sill on Open Pathways
C: Hi this is Carol Sill and I’m here in Vancouver today talking with Judy Evaski about Open Source Spirit, and her spiritual path. Hi Judy.
J: Hi Carol.
C: You were talking a bit about how your path has been varied…
J: Yes, it’s a really interesting project, open source spirituality, and I notice that many people have chosen a path and developed it really fully. Often from starting on another path. I would say that my path is a little different, in that it’s been a sequential exploration, but with the same essential seed from the beginning.
C: So what would that sequence be? How did you start?
J: Well I started out as most North Americans did, in the Christian church, and then gradually got involved with the social movements, the social justice movement, the peace movement, and trying to make spiritual ideals into a reality.
And from there I was lucky enough to meet up with some of the North American Sufis, who actually I think contain or hold the essence or the seed that is in the center of most of the spiritual paths. And so it wasn’t a religion, per se, it was a spiritual philosophy that gave me tools and confidence and some basic techniques of meditation, as well as various spiritual paths. So that I became able to understand the language that was in each of the paths and to start to identify what were the common threads.
So many of us compare religions or philosophies by finding the essence of what’s different between them. And that’s kind of a western way of thinking. Although that’s evolving now, and I think that’s why a project like this can occur, because we are now more able, and we have a language. Many people have pursued spiritual paths other than the one that they began in, and so that’s why we’re seeing the blossoming of something like this, I believe.
C: So after your sufi involvement, you went into some other directions as well?
J: Yes, and it was more that life provided me with these experiences. I was very fortunate to have met a Tibetan lama who had escaped Tibet in ’54 (59?) with the Dalai Lama, and made his way to Alberta, where he began to become who he was before. And he was also, I would say, someone who had a sufic perspective: in terms of – he had a very formalized Tibetan Buddhist path, and we did practices with him in that path.
However he had a very well-developed heart which I believe is the essence of all of the religions. And all of the spiritual paths. And in fact all of the political paths. I understand now that people who are very involved politically are every bit as much on a spiritual path as others.
C: I know you’ve had experience in the Native tradition as well. How did that happen?
J: That was a wonderful thing. A sufi friend sent me an email about the Giant Medicine Wheel that was occurring in 2004, with its center based in the Grand Tetons in Yellowstone Park. Apparently every 500 years or so, it was a tradition that native communities from North America and South America possibly, certainly Central America, Mexico, would come together and they would share their rituals in a way that would affirm the stability of Mother Earth, of affirming our love for her, our understanding our place within the matrix of creation. And it appealed to me to be part of that medicine wheel ceremony, because although there was the center, they also had the 12 sites around the perimeter, about 500 miles out from the center.
And so we in Edmonton, Alberta, did a ritual by a sacred spring that we were lucky enough to find. And that was all simultaneously done. There were people, I know, as far south as Patagonia in South America. There were people in England and Europe as well as North America simultaneously doing ceremonies, lighting sacred fires.
It was a time of great sharing from the Native tradition from the elders to those of us who were not, but had a spiritual leaning. There was a lot of special teachings released for us at this time.
So out of that I met the current elder that I’ve been working with. He was a Seneca elder, from Six Nations, although living off reserve. And he was mixed blood, which I am as well. I discovered not that long ago that I have Basque blood. I was adopted, so I didn’t know that. The fact that he was mixed blood and able to speak of it was already a resonance. I grew up in that area, and I had always wanted to connect with the old spirits of that land, and I didn’t have a context in which to do that, other than through the Native path.
So luckily this man was willing to strike up an email correspondence, again something that’s very unusual and outside of the norm of that culture. And yet, we’re all adapting, which is why you can do a project like this now, whereas a few years ago you probably couldn’t. Many of the sacred teachings wouldn’t be spoken of in a technological framework.
Similarly, if I were to speak of Native teachings, it would be expected that I would do some smudging, like with some sweetgrass or sage. And it’s just a very wonderful tradition that they have that creates a sacred space to talk about sacred things.
C: That’s beautiful. Thanks.
View the video of this conversation.
Light in the Darkness
…its just happening. It has nothing to do with my muscles or my cleverness, it has to do with so-called grace of God. Like the ripening of the apple on the tree. Nothing to do with human cleverness.
Andrew Jordan in conversation with Carol Sill
C: Hi Andrew, glad we can have another conversation here in Vancouver. It’s a rainy day today. And we’re talking about having a lot on your mind. You know, as we get into the fall and September happens and everybody’s getting anxious and getting started again, let’s talk about what happens when you’ve got too much going on or too much on your mind. What are some of the ways that you think about handling that?
A: Well, I’m aware that people around me .. in a sense of a mirror.. are complaining – it’s my complaints too, but I put it in their mouths. Friends and acquaintances complain that there’s too much on their minds, the to do lists are too long, and I hear comments like “I’m overwhelmed,” “I’m panicking” “Too much too much” “Time is too short” “Things are speeding up.” The reason I’m mentioning it is because I identify with it. So really it’s one way of talking about myself.
So indeed that’s the case. That predicament. Too much on the mind. Too much on the to do list. Now what do we do?
C: Right.
A: It’s crazy-making.
C: You know a couple of talks back we were talking about authenticity and being authentic in the moment. How is it possible to find that moment while everything is whirling around you? What do you do about that? I can hear, even now, sounds in the background at your place, where we’re talking, I know, we’re all enmeshed in our lives. What are some of the strategies that you use, if there are any? How do you sort yourself out?
A: I actually built myself a meditation room in a crawlspace in my house. Putting cushions, carpet, candles, even a sound system. So I can go there, and I do, I haven’t been there today, or yesterday I somehow missed it, but later today I will go there because I need it for my sanity. So I close the door in this crawlspace, I made it comfortable and cozy. Maybe I’ll light a candle, maybe I’ll sit in darkness, and I’ll do a meditation for about 20 minutes. And remind myself that all the noise, the craziness, the to do list (the to do list has validity for sure), and yet I need to tune into, find the place that has a higher validity than the high to do list. Because if the to do list is left till tomorrow most of the items will wait, even though it seems like they won’t, but they do. So should I be sick or have some legitimate reason for not attending to the to do list, seems like no big deal. Certainly there are deadlines and so on that have to be attended to.
But I do find this meditation room, which can be a corner or a cushion to sit on, and that’s an oasis, an escape from the madness that seems to be happening around me.
C: And then by going in there you then re-center, and you’re able to come out and actually engage more fully in your life in the world. It’s not just that you escape, and then wait for the next time you can escape. Right?
A: Right. I guess somebody might drink and get drunk to escape and then come back and find their problems have not decreased – quite the opposite. No, this is different. It is different from getting drunk or avoiding through a method like that. I think it’s almost like retreating to set the priorities straight. Because once I find myself in a state that seems like madness, that’s not good. Madness is not good for me.
C: How do you define madness? Madness is being at the farthest away from the center that you can be? Or – how do you sense that?
A: I’m okay with being busy. I don’t mind having a long list. I mind that feeling of panic that I can’t handle it. I don’t like that. That’s crazy. So that’s the signal to stop, look and choose. One method is to go and meditate, to get my priorities straight. And then I can come back, typically, and prioritize my list and do what I need to do. And that’s sane. And what I can’t do, I cannot do. But the difference between a panicky state and a calm, efficient state ..[phone rings] It may ring again, and there’s a busy household behind that wall..
C: So you were talking about the difference between an efficient state, and a state when it gets out of control. We all know that it gets out of control. And if you’re a spiritual person you might think, “Oh no, I might not be on the path if all this stuff is happening to me and I’m finding more difficulty coping.” But don’t you feel that your additional sensitivity takes you to another level so you’re always required to learn more about incorporating peace of mind into your daily life.
A: Initially, the increased sensitivity seems to cause more trouble than not. More sensitivity, initially in myself and I noticed with others who I meet, gives almost the sense that I was better off before I was sensitive. Not that it’s a choice. Initially increased sensitivity causes trouble. Typically.
C: And then?
A: And then we pray. And then we pray because then it’s a question of taking responsibility for my state of mind. No more complaining, no more blaming. Taking responsibility which is easy for me to tell you, it’s hard for me to do it myself. And yet there is no choice, than the one choice, which is to choose to say yes to the responsibility. I am responsible for my state of equanimity as opposed to panic. Because initially with increased sensitivity panic increases. The propensity for panic increases.
C: I think that’s true. I know that, and that’s why people rely heavily on traditional methods: the meditations, the teachings, the following of maybe the scriptures, or something, anything to hold on to so that you can retain both that open sensitivity and the ability to still function in the world. Because it can get somewhat jarring sometimes and you have the sense that you should completely retreat. And yet it’s not necessarily the way to give the gifts to the world. It’s something to be reconciled. Yearning for the cave, when in actuality maybe you have to give something in the physical. And when you have a family, that’s obvious – there is duty there, there’s dharma, right?
A: Yes. I wonder… I think this topic relates to this concept of death and rebirth. To die to the old paradigm, which is very hard to do, and to be reborn in the new paradigm which is a blessing, but that’s heavy duty process. I think that we hear metaphors like the caterpillar, cocoon and then emerging as the butterfly, so there is this amazing transformation happening which is dying as a caterpillar and being reborn as a butterfly. …..this metaphor keeps repeating, coming up. […]
C: And when that happens, there is the pupa stage. When the caterpillar goes into the pupa, and doesn’t relate to anything and the transformation is occurring, without any contact, it’s like suspended animation, and while that’s happening transformation happens inside. And then, coming out as a butterfly. That’s actually very beautiful metaphor. But how..we..
A: You can say that ..
C: We think, but we don’t know how it actually feels. We can look at it from a distance, but I think it’s probably painful all the way through.
A: And it appears like there’s no end to it. It looks like pain forever. Until it changes. And indeed the pupa … death. And its just happening. It has nothing to do with my muscles or my cleverness, it has to do with so-called grace of God. Like the ripening of the apple on the tree. Nothing to do with human cleverness. That transformation has a mind of its own. Maybe that would take us to the topic of faith. [phone rings] “Emuna “ is the word in Hebrew for it,
C; Could you spell that for me?
A: In English I would spell it EMUNNA – but of course it’s spelled with a different alphabet. And in Sanskrit there is something similar, I don’t know the word right now, it’s faith. That deep knowledge that “Its Okay.” The apple will ripen on the tree, under the right conditions, the pupa will transform. And this is what I have to remember should I find myself in a painful place, where I cannot go back – much as I would like to in my ignorance, and fear. I know too much to go back and not enough to go forward. That’s a painful place.
C: I think that applying this way of thinking to busyness that can take us into a spin is really helpful. Because everything is part of our transformation, all these vortexes around us are part of our transformation, and our ability to handle greater and greater energy fields, and to allow God to handle greater and greater energy fields through us, and through our lives.
A: That sounds beautiful.
C: I think that would be a way to help understand a busy time as it starts arising.
A: Yes, and it looks like it’s an increasing complaint in the general world, in the collective I find myself in. And the reason I’m even talking about it or mentioning it, is because, should it happen to any one of us, we might think that I’m the only fool in town. Everybody else has got their acts together, only I am a disaster inside, under my masks. And it may not be so. It may be just part of the evolutionary process. And it’s a tough one. We cannot look at our grandparents and say, I’m going to do what my grandfather did, which was the case, say, a few generations back., because of safety, and that helped sanity. It was clear, my father and grandfathers were carpenters, that’s what I’ll be doing. Or shoemakers. There’s no question, here – we have to invent, reinvent, we don’t know.
C: And so we have to be in touch with our intuition, we have to understand who we are a little bit, or at least be able to follow our inner guidance so we have clues as to what to do, because it is all new in the moment, isn’t it? We are involved, on another level, not just personal, in a time of transformation – socially, politically, in every way.
A: I think we are finding ourselves … the demand on us is to upgrade in a new world. And we are not ready. We don’t have the background, typically. That’s were we suffer. So what I’m addressing right now is that transformation is an ordeal, and what I want to suggest is perhaps it’s okay. Yes ordeal, and it’s okay. Doesn’t mean that I have to commit suicide, doesn’t mean that I have to rush to antidepressant drugs because there is a cost to it that I maybe do not want to pay, in terms of giving up my sensitivity. I’m sure it‘s right for some people under some conditions, but as an obvious solution, that could be wrong. So just to think that yes it’s tough, and it’s part of the territory, and it’s okay.
C: Right. And that you can learn to navigate and find your way. And if you have a retreat or a meditation space, a place that you’ve created for that particular attunement, it does help you. Over time going to the same place helps with the resonance of that place, doesn’t it?
A: Yes.
C: And I think many of us have personal spaces in our homes that we use for meditation purposes or just for quiet contemplation. It’s an important part of life. Or a personal altar, whatever it is, a place in your garden maybe.
A: The Buddhists call it a refuge, so to have a refuge is crucial. ….I have a refuge, it’s almost like I have secret, I’m not totally at the whims of…
C: So you can be a strong human being, no matter what the elements are doing around you.
A: I know that I have a place to retreat to. I have a place where I can be invulnerable. That is a good first step. Another step is to find like-minded colleagues, tribespeople, that’s how I define “tribe”. … to remember that I’m not the only lost fool, because I think there is some tendency to think that I’m a total mess-up. So retreat, and friends, so there are others like me. So that I’m not the only crazy person, hopeless, like my mother always suggested - or whatever, or my teacher or somebody… So we find ourselves in difficult places, it’s not necessarily a disaster. It may be okay. To even consider that okayness is possible in the midst of a painful place, that’s the beginning. That’s the beginning of the light. In the darkness.
C: That’s like in the Buddhist images, in iconography there is always a Buddha in absolutely every realm. When you see the Tibetan Wheel of Life, and all the realms are outlined, there is a Buddha in each one of them. So it’s always there.
A: Even in the darkest dark. So there must be a seed of light even in the darkest dark. So to bring it to my table: should I find myself in a dark place psychologically I can remember and trust that it’s okay, there is okayness in there somewhere, just to allow for okayness in the midst of the darkness – that’s the beginning of that light. To remember. So if I was speaking to a friend I would say, “Consider that okayness, a tiny bit of okayness in the midst of the darkness.” And if they get it, on some resonance level even if it doesn’t feel like it, that’s the beginning of the light. Which – even a little bit is enough.
C: Well I think that’s great, and as the season changes and we go into more darkness, it’s really good to think about that light that’s in there, and we know that as the seasons change, it’s all okay. It does make a transformation. It’s a cycle that we recognize, so we can harmonize with that and recognize that we’re involved in a natural process.
A: To stick to, anchor in that okayness, even if it doesn’t feel like that. That’s faith, and I think it’s valuable.
See the video of this conversation.
About Judy Evaski
Judy Evaski studied psychology at the University Of Toronto and became Registered as a Clinical Child Psychologist in Alberta in 1981. She has worked equally in education, social services and mental health, is a Playtherapist and has designed and delivered treatment programs in rural, urban and reserve settings.
Along with learning to appreciate other people’s minds, she has been a student of her own, through the help of teachers from the traditions of North American Sufism, Tibetan Buddhism and the Red Road.
She offers Thanksgiving to all her teachers and her “dharma buddies” along the way who have shared with her the humility of the Slug and the grandeur of the tallest Fir.
Nya:weh.
Video Conversations with Judy:
Transcript of Open Pathways: Varied Paths to the One Center
Transcript of Medicine Wheel Path: Medicine Wheel
About Paula Jardine
Paula Jardine is one of Canada’s foremost community artists. Through a career spanning four decades, she has worked with the concept of “Public Dreams.” Jardine creates images and events that integrate artists, performers and the public with ritual, celebration and activism. Her approach fosters relationships between individual and community, between conscious and unconscious elements in contemporary culture, and between ephemeral communications and enduring archetypes.
Jardine explores the ways in which human culture emerges from and gives back to natural systems. Choreographing gigantic spectacles of image, science, archetype and interaction, her work creates new spaces and possibilities for art. Crafting myth and sacred space for irreligious and culturally diverse publics, she shows how art can build community identity and create capacities for community action.
She has been creating and animating community events, spectacles and celebrations for over 20 years.
Paula is one of the founders of Vancouver’s Public Dreams Society. With her colleagues at Public Dreams she introduced community based celebration theatre events to Vancouver audience, including Illuminares which has spawned countless lantern festivals across the province. Paula’s work has focused on integrating performers and the public with ritual, celebration and activism. Engaging diverse communities in equally diverse contexts, she has been a leader in demonstrating how art can build community identity and capacities for community action.
As the founding artistic director of the Public Dreams Society, Ms. Jardine’s most visible achievement is the introduction of Lantern Processions as a community art form in Canada. She is best known for her initiation of the Illuminares Evening Lantern Procession, and the Parade of the Lost Souls, both popular annual events held in East Vancouver, involving hundreds of volunteers and artists, and attended by thousands.
Island Institute: more about Paula Jardine
Video conversation with Paula:
The Night for All Souls: Honoring the Dead
We consider ourselves hosts, and that our job is to create a sanctuary, and we call it “A sanctuary of beauty for tender feelings,” that’s how we think of it. This past week, we’ve just completed the fourth year of this event, our mantra was, “Beauty is the bottom line.”
Paula Jardine talks with Carol Sill on Honoring the Dead
C: I’m talking today with Paula Jardine, at the Mountainview Cemetery in Vancouver, BC Canada and Paula is the Artist in Residence here.
P: That’s right. We’re in the Celebration Hall at Mountainview Cemetery. Mountainvew is a city-run facility, and I’m a city employee, which is pretty radical. We began this project and I worked very closely with a woman named Marina Szijarto, an artist who is responsible for the visual elements of the event that we do here, which is called The Night for All Souls.
It developed as an opportunity for people to remember their dead, people who in particular we were thinking of people who don’t have a strong religious or cultural tradition to carry them through mourning and grief. So that was the impetus behind the project. I approached the manager. I was looking for a venue for a show of artist-made caskets and shrouds, and at the time they didn’t have a venue: this building didn’t exist. But he was interested in the work that I was doing and we talked for about two hours, and at the end of that two hours we decided that we would go ahead and do an event a week before Halloween honoring the dead. We chose those dates for two reasons. One is that universally – not universally, but in many cultures, this time of year is dedicated to remembering the dead and cleaning graves and bringing family together. And also, around Halloween is when cemeteries are under the most pressure. We felt that by having a strong sacred presence in the cemetery it would protect the cemetery a little bit from hooligans.
C: So as an artist, how do you evoke the sacred in this work?
P: Well, we begin with light. The act of lighting a light in the darkness is a very human impulse, and speaks to the core in all of us. So we began there. And then, I guess, by the way we do things and by being mindful in every aspect of what we do while we’re setting up the evening to invite the public. We consider ourselves hosts, and that our job is to create a sanctuary, and we call it “A sanctuary of beauty for tender feelings,” that’s how we think of it. This past week, we’ve just completed the fourth year of this event, our mantra was, “Beauty is the bottom line.”
And this year, because we have this beautiful building that we can host people in, we’ve extended the event to last for the whole week. I have always kept the candles lit for the whole week but now we feel that we can truly invite the public to come and maintain this sacred space for the entire week.
C: When I was at the event on Saturday I noticed that there were a lot of children.
P: Isn’t that wonderful? I just think that… Well, this is a very traditional thing to do, what we’re doing here. And it seems to be something that our predecessors forgot to bring with them. That’s how I feel anyway. My background ancestrally is Polish-Romanian-Ukrainian, Eastern Europe. And this is very traditional in that, but it’s never been part of my life. But I’ve always felt the desire to have this. And especially for the children, it’s an opportunity for parents to talk to children about death during a time when there is, perhaps, less trauma. It’s not at a funeral, or somebody in the family hasn’t just died.
So we’re here in this gentle atmosphere, and it also instills in the children the importance of remembering who you are because of where you came from. Who has made you who you are. Remember your grandpa, your great-grandpa, your great-great-grandmothers. And the ancestors are with us all the time because of who we are and our memories and stories, and for so many reasons. But to have a time, especially if you don’t have a family tradition in having a time to remember the dead is really valuable. And it just makes me so happy that we have succeeded in creating an atmosphere and a place where people feel comfortable and even inspired to bring their children.
C: There were so many candles. And music. Can you tell me more about that music and how it comes about?
P: The music is very important to me. When I speak to the musicians I’m very clear with them: this is not a performance. We’re inviting you to come and the sound creates the space, as much as the light and the physical objects. The sound creates a cushion, in a way, and also uplifts us, with the playing. And I believe that we’re playing for the dead as well as for the living. I think that – well, this is something that my mother’s instilled in me, that the dead like us to be in the cemetery, or wherever they are buried or laid to rest, because they like to be reminded that life goes on.
C: And when you had the tea gathering here, in this hall, when it was filled with people, and children, and beautiful cups of tea – all different kinds of cups, all different kinds of teapots, and the projection of water – there was a wonderful feeling of life, a strong affirmation of life.
P: Yes. And I think it’s important for us to be together in a social situation, we hold and take care of each other by being together. And the tea… Brian Mulvahill and Ian Willie were serving tea that night, and they’re two artists who have devoted their lives to tea. And especially for Ian Willie it was important. His grandmother was buried here anonymously. She died on the Downtown East Side, and for him serving tea in her honor was a way to honor her and serving tea to all of these people and all of us being here…. I’m getting all of those “shivers of truth” up and down my legs right now… Yes, it’s a lot of deep deep feeling and conscientious action on the part of all of the artists who work on the project.
C: Thank you.
View the video of this conversation.
About Peter Fenner
Peter Fenner, Ph.D. is the founder and developer of the Radiant Mind course in nondual awareness. He is an Australian currently living in France, who travels the world teaching the Radiant Mind program, a synthesis of Asian nondual approaches. He studied as a monk for nine years with many notable Buddhist lamas, including Thubten Yeshe and Sogyal Rinpoche. He is founder of the Center for Timeless Wisdom, and author of numerous books, including Reasoning into Reality and The Edge of Certainty.
His most recent book is Radiant Mind, Awakening Unconditioned Awareness, is described as follows:
Whether it is called enlightenment, pure awareness, or the “unconditioned mind,” there exists an awakened state of pure liberation that is at the heart of every contemplative tradition. Yet, according to Peter Fenner, this experience of boundless consciousness does not have to exist separately from our day-to-day, “conditioned” existence. Rather, we can learn to exist as unique individuals at the same time as we rest in a unified expanse of oneness with all existence–in a state he calls “Radiant Mind.”
In Radiant Mind, Peter Fenner shares the insights, techniques, and exercises he has developed in teaching the thousands of students who have attended his sold-out workshops, including:
- How to observe and dissolve fixations, to live in the here and now without being controlled by our desires
- Listening and speaking in a way that moves us toward pure openness–and lets us share this experience with others
- Tools for identifying our conscious and unconscious sources of suffering–and learning to transcend those patterns
“As extraordinary as unconditioned mind may sound,” teaches Peter Fenner, “it isn’t distant from our everyday life; it’s always readily available to us.” Now, this respected authority on both Eastern spirituality and Western psychology introduces readers to a set of practices available to anyone open to the complete possibilities of their spiritual evolution–and to the experience of the unconstrained bliss of Radiant Mind.
A master of nondual spirituality teaches practices for integrating the liberated state of unconditioned awareness into your everyday life.
Video conversations with Peter Fenner:
Alchemy TV #2
About Elke Babicki
Elke Babicki is a former clinical therapist with a Masters degree from the University of Toronto. She has led workshops in Europe and Canada and has helped thousands to claim more power in their lives.
Elke is an intuitive who has had numerous clairvoyant dreams and experiences that inspired the writing of her current book. With the foundation as a clinically trained psychotherapist, Elke has learned the value of multi-sensory ways of receiving information, intuition and synchronicity. Her personal stories offer clear and compelling evidence for the power of perceiving reality in this extended way.
Originally from a small historic town called Straubing, in Bavaria and growing up in Europe, she had explored many European countries & at the age of seventeen, spent six weeks in Israel. She explored New York, Toronto & Montreal. In Greece, on the next vacation, she decided to take a leap & come back to Canada.
Elke always felt most at home using her intuition. In May 2004, for a period of about one year, she had numerous dreams out of the ordinary. She could not explain them logically but they were very clear messages. She turned her experience into a manuscript – Making the Connections - Live The Life You Really Want. She recorded the dreams & others also witnessed them, so she could see the predictive nature of many of them. She discovered she had in fact followed her clairvoyant great grandmother’s footsteps. Her book serves as a documentary of a journey to a much more rewarding universe.
Her book is an accessible, powerful step-by-step guide to breaking out of old patterns and claiming your intuition and sensitivity. You will learn to tap into the underlying network that connects all things and to trust and listen to your own intuition.
“I help people to live with the same richness and passion I have discovered. I have come to see that this is not only a gift for ourselves as individuals, it is our best hope for the future of humanity.” – Elke Babicki
More on Elke and her book: www.elkebabicki.com
Video conversations with Elke:
About Forest Shomer
Forest Shomer is the owner of Inside Passage Seeds in Port Townsend, Washington.
Founder and director of Abundant Life Seed Foundation until 1992, he has grown and collected seed from over 400 kinds of plants and traded seeds internationally for two decades.
Since 1973 he has been completely devoted to producing, distributing, and educating about the seeds of native and adapted Pacific Northwest plant species.
Since 1996 he serves as coordinator of Ziraat (nature symbology) activity for the Sufi Ruhaniat International, teaching in North America, South America, and Europe.
Video conversations with Forest
- Forest Shomer: Zoroaster, the First Farmer
- Agriculture and the Ancient Ways
- Ancestors and the Weather
- Master Seedman, Forest Shomer
About Karen Murphy and Matthew Spears
Karen Murphy is a professional channel and a writer. She is the voice of Polaris, a loving being who brings us encouraging messages of empowerment—real tools we can use to live more joyful and connected lives. Karen writes several columns for online magazines around the internet, including at Literary Mama, and she’s also Reiki Master and a shamanic healer. Karen is available for private channeling sessions both in-person and by phone, and Karen and Matthew give workshops all over North America.
Matthew Spears, though less-seen and less-audible when it comes to channeling Polaris, is nevertheless an integral part of the channeling team that is Polaris, Karen, and Matthew. In other words, it wouldn’t happen without him! Also an energy healer, Matthew has a Masters degree in Computing Science, has a theatre background, and is also a writer.
Channeling Site
Video conversations with Karen and Matthew:
Ceremonies and Life’s Journey
“So those things are forgotten, but I can kind of remember them still, though I was just a little boy. I used to just sit behind my grandmother. All those old people from the different tribes, they’d all be sitting around the teepee and they’d be singing and the ceremonies would go on then.”
Lee Crowchild in Conversation with Carol Sill
C: Hi Lee, glad you can be here and talk with us today. And I think today we’re going to talk a little bit about spirituality and what your point of view is on that, and tell us a little bit about your world view.
L: It’s kind of an open question too. Maybe there’s something that’s interesting you that you kind of want clarification on?
C: I wonder… Let’s talk a bit about how the spiritual life…when did you first find out about the unseen life?
L: Well, I’d have to go all the way back to when I was born, I think. Because when I was born, when I got to six months old… my grandparents invited my other grandparents from Montana – because on my grandmother’s side we’re Sioux, Dakota Sioux. And my old grandpa [….] told them to come up there, and they told my parents, “Bring over your son. Bring Lee over because we’re going to have a little ceremony, naming ceremony.” And so they came. We lived in an old shack that time, just an old wood stove with my grandparents and that, small little kitchen.
They came in. And so my grandpa, he held me in his arms, he started singing and they started dancing around, him and his wife, dancing around and singing these songs, and that. And then they handed me back to my mum and dad. And he said: this man, or this little baby, we’re gonna call him Wakinyan Duuta, which in translation means simply Red Thunder.
See, Wakinyan Duuta he was a war chief back in the old days. He was a chief that, when they went to war, everybody followed him. But his ways were kind of different. People had a hard time understanding the things that he did. And then they told my parents and my grandparents, they said this boy’s going to be a little bit like that. He’s going to be chasing his spirit for a long time, for a lot of years, and he’s going to become a leader. But people will have a hard time understanding his ways and that.
That was when the spirituality first started, you talked about the spirituality. And from that time on my grandparents would take me to ceremonies, wherever they went to a ceremony they would take me. Mind you they both grew up within the church, in the Anglican church, so they were pretty strong Anglicans then.
The difference was they still had a tie to the old traditional ways so they would take me to these ceremonies. I remember when I was young ceremonies that they don’t do anymore, because I’ve asked questions about what was this ceremony, what was it about, because this is what I saw, and […] says Oh I don’t know, that was a long time ago.
So those things are forgotten, but I can kind of remember them still, though I was just a little boy. I used to just sit behind my grandmother. All those old people from the different tribes, they’d all be sitting around the teepee and they’d be singing and the ceremonies would go on then. So that’s kind of how that started.
I was always aware, anyways, when I was growing up in the late ‘60s, early ‘70s when this big renaissance, I guess, towards being native again, being cultural. Because you know we’re starting to understand that those residential schools were not really good things to do.
And so in my own ways I chose to, at that time grow your hair long. When you were native at that time and you grew your hair long, that was a sign of rebellion too. My dad at that time was pretty straight cut, but my grandparents they kind of saved me, “Just let him be.” My dad wanted me to go into law, and my grandparents thought, “No he’s not going to go into law.” He wants me to go to residential school, my grandparents said, “No, he’s not going there either. “ So I was kept away from those things. I guess in the end it was probably the best thing.
And then out of high school I traveled around the world for a year and a half. Just from experiences, lived experiences, meeting healers. Not meaning to, just meeting them and talking, exchanging ideas with other cultures and that. When you’re young you just want to explore, and that’s what I did. I learned a lot that way, and so when I came back, rather than just being home and working on the farm, I thought I’d go to school because that was really interesting at that point. That’s what I did.
All along there my ties to traditions and that were getting stronger and stronger. I ran a dance company that was within that same spirit: we may have lost a lot of what we know, and a lot of it was taken away from us, but whatever little we have, we have to hold on to and treat it as precious.
It’s taken me a lot of years to kind of at least have a bit of understanding of what that spirituality is. You ask me that question and I can’t answer it directly. But this is my long way of addressing it, to a point where I finally did my own fasting so in my way I started that real spiritual journey.
I’ve been involved with sundance for a lot of years, to the point where I’m one of the helpers, when you go to sundance. Now I’m the main fire-keeper, which I quite enjoy. That’s where I kind of see I fit.
And in that, in those experiences I’m able to pass on to people, and people ask me about spirituality. It’s not this is the formula for getting enlightenment or closer to God and the Creator and that… this is part of the journey, you know.
And for young men that’s really important. I fear for young men a lot because – from what I’ve learned is if you don’t go through the ceremony to become a man then our mind stays that of a young boy. Even though we feel the physical features of a man, and everything, our mind is still that of a young boy. And when you’re a young boy you don’t know right from wrong, you’re just impulsive – you do things…
So the ceremony is to tell your mind that now you’ve got to think like a man. Even if you’re a young man start thinking like a man. And that’s where you start to learn your responsibilities. But until that happens, you’re a young boy, you can just do whatever.
And I had this discussion with this man, his name was Arvol Looking Horse, and he’s the 18th generation Pipe Holder of the White Buffalo Calf Pipe. And those in the Native world that are familiar with that know what I’m talking about. One time here at UBC we were talking, and for some reason we were talking about rights of passage of young men, so he was telling me about this. And he was saying, you know all of these men who become pedophiles, and that. Sometimes, I was telling him, they didn’t go through that ceremony, they still think they’re young boys and can’t tell right from wrong. So he was suggesting, maybe they need to do that ceremony, to get their minds in the right spot again. I remember him telling me that. Just the two of us…we were walking across campus that time, you know, and he was telling me that. So that was an interesting time, and then I’ve always thought about that for young boys…
And then I see it, when I’m talking with young boys, or watch them in how they behave towards young women and that. I think, Gee they really need to have that ceremony for themselves. Go away and fast for a few days and really get to know themselves a little bit more.
Because when you lay it all out there, and you’re at that point when you say “I can’t do it alone” that’s when the Creator talks through a lot of these spirits who’ll come and visit you, and you kind of get a vision of what your life is going to be. I can’t speak for that for women, because I’m not a woman.
That’s all I know.
C: Thanks
See the video of this conversation.
Alchemy TV
A spiritual comic
Michael Shandler: Journey to Non-Dual Buddhism
“And often I’d find I began to rest in pure awareness…. I wasn’t trying to concentrate, I wasn’t trying to achieve anything, I wasn’t trying to go anywhere. And after a while this began to feel very very natural.”
Michael Shandler in conversation with Carol Sill
C: Hi, I’m Carol here in Vancouver.
M: I’m Michael Shandler, and I’m here at Amherst, Massachusetts.
C: And so today we’re going to be talking with each other about Radiant Mind, and about some of your interest and history. What would you like to start with?
M: Well, would you like to know a little bit more about Radiant Mind?
C: Let’s do that first, sure.
M: I came across Radiant Mind about four years ago when I met Peter Fenner. Peter Fenner is an Australian guy who is a professor, a PhD in Buddhist studies, and I heard about a course that he was offering called the Radiant Mind, which is a 9 month long course. And I was interested in steeping myself deeply, more deeply, in non-dual Buddhism.
So I thought this was a great opportunity to learn more, and little did I know when I signed up for this course, what I was actually in for. So I went through the 9 month long course and I learned a tremendous amount. It was not an intellectual pursuit, though, so much as an experiential .. as an experience, really. And after that was done, Peter asked me if I wanted to continue working with him, and in fact to become a Radiant Mind coach and trainer, which since that time I’ve been actively doing.
C: Well, you were deeply involved in a spiritual life well before then, weren’t you?
M: I was, and I have been. I started actually, and I was thinking about it today – I think my first pursuit was when I lived on a Kibbutz in Israel in 1967. There weren’t very many books to read but I came across a book – I’m struggling to find the name right now, but – it had to do with games people play. I think that in fact was it’s name. Games people play about, you know, being a parent to child, or being adult to adult, or speaking child to adult or child to parent, and so on. I found it very very intriguing. It was really my first exposure, as a 20 year old, to psychology. And I really got into it, and I realized for the first time in my life I was interested in psychology and in spiritual things. So that’s how I got started.
And from there I actually came to North America and I went through the whole kind of hippie revolution, if you will, with taking psychedelics and blowing my mind. But perhaps paradoxically that was how I came to have a deeper appreciation of the spiritual realm.
C: How was that?
M: Well, I was exposed to an experience which was just beyond my rational mind, beyond anything that I’d ever experienced before. And it opened me up to the possibility of realms beyond my normal consciousness.
After that I became very interested in yoga and meditation , and I met Ram Dass. I heard a recording of his and I was so moved by it that I wrote him a letter and asked him if he would come to - I was actually in Montreal at that time for a 3 month period - if he would come to Montreal to maybe give a speech. He wrote back and he said: Great, I’ll come.
And indeed, he showed up about a month and a half later, and he and I went on the radio together, we were chanting and doing all these sort of weird things – at least in those days they were still pretty weird for me. And the next day was the talk. 5,000 people showed up, and we only had space for about 2. So he said to me: Do you think we could get another hall for tomorrow night? I’ll stay longer. And I said: Well I’ll make something happen. And I went out there and I found another large hall, and this time we crammed the place again. That started a kind of a very intense relationship with him, and I became his road manager.
And he introduced me to Baba Hari Dass who became a very serious teacher of mine for about 20 years. I got deeply into what’s called Ashtanga Yoga or Eight-Limbed Yoga and that was my path for a long while.
I did take some, how can I say, maybe not deviations but some side trips let’s say, into other things. I spent a year and a half during that time working as an Arica trainer in New York City with Oscar Ichazo. And sat zazen, and had a number of other… went through the whole human growth potential EST kind of thing, but remained very true to my meditation.
And even after I went back to Vancouver to help found a community there called Dharma Sara which is still going today. And in fact they host a community on Salt Spring Island called the Salt Spring Centre, which to this day is still very active.
C: I’ve heard of that.
M: So that’s a little bit of my background.
C: So, I don’t know how to ask you this, but…You were strongly in that yoga path, and yet you took some side routes here and there, focusing back into your meditation. So how do you relate to that now, in your practice now? What would you say is the change? Or is there a change?
M: Well I think that a really big change has occurred. I think the change can be summed up very succinctly …I think that this was caused a lot by my involvement in the experimentation with the psychedelics, in that every time I took them I would be transported very rapidly into another realm. And so I found myself constantly wanting to go back into that realm. So you could say that I very powerfully was inducted into the search. And so everything became about the search. When I met with Peter Fenner, I had already gotten very tired of the search and found, like wow, this is a search that maybe will never end.
C: Right.
M: What happened with Peter was he said: Why not start from the result that you want here and now? You don’t have to do anything, you don’t have to do any particular practices. And I know this is going to sound heretical to a lot of people, and it was certainly very difficult for me at the time.
But basically what it did was it oriented me to working in the present. In the here and now, particularly with attraction and aversion, which as the Buddha said are the so-called core fixations. You either basically say: I want this experience that I’m having right now and I want it to go on, or you say: I don’t want this experience, I want it to stop, I want something else. Or you’re caught up in some kind of mixture of those two. And usually it’s a complex mixture, particularly if you’re fixated in a heavy kind of way.
So learning how to work in the here and now, rather than in a progressive way where I was doing meditation to get somewhere. I began to work in the here and now and to learn how to just be present, how to just be present. And often I’d find I began to rest in pure awareness, without trying to make anything…. I wasn’t trying to concentrate, I wasn’t trying to achieve anything, I wasn’t trying to go anywhere. And after a while this began to feel very very natural. That has become, again paradoxically, the practice. Because there are lots of biases and conditioning that we have that unconsciously come into our experience and take us away from the natural way of being.
C: Well that is a great start for us.
End of Part 1
View the video of this conversation.
About Michael Shandler
Michael Shandler has been a life coach, therapist and spiritual guide for over twenty five years. He is a certified Radiant Mind coach and teaches workshops in the Radiant Mind process in cities across North America. He has also served as a change-management consultant and leadership development coach in organizations internationally.
He is the author of six books in the human relations field, ranging from the The Marriage and Family Book: A Spiritual Guide to Vroom! - a graphic comic about collaboration and teamwork. He has studied intensively with numerous psycho-spirtual teachers including Ram Dass, Baba Hari Dass, Adyashanti, Peter Fenner, Genpo Roshi and others. He holds a Masters degree in Counseling (1981) and a Doctorate in Leadership and Group Psychology (1983) from the University of Massachusetts.
Shandler1008@comcast.net
www.spaciousmindcoaching.com
www.radiantmind.net
Video conversations with Michael:
Retrieving the Ancient
“We, the artists, have to appreciate that our materials already come with their own languages embedded inside of them. So our materials are already expressing themselves. So the artist interfaces with the being of the material.”
Retrieving the Ancient – James talks to Carol Sill about art.
C: Hi James. We’re sitting up here on the roof, and last night you gave your talk, an artist talk called “Is there Anything Old Here?” and just now you were mentioning that we have to retrieve the ancient. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
J: What I said was: we have to put the brakes on and retrieve the ancient before we go forward.
C: What do you mean “we”? Who is doing this?
J: In culture. There’s a lot of energy in the direction of the new, and I’m kind of tired of it. What I want to do is make the old new, rather than make the new new.
C: And you do that in your painting work….
J: Yeah, I think there are aspects in my work that go backward rather than forward. Some observers of my work think that that’s not worthwhile but they’re just looking for the new – period. There’s so much more to perceive than the new.
C: So how do you perceive the ancient?
J: Well, you have to do your research. That’s a really good question. Where do we find the ancient? I guess one answer would be in the aspects of life that never change. Such as, the boring, banal and simple. The boring, banal and simple, I bet, is the same across time. And the thing is, that’s where the metaphysical truths are hiding in plain sight. That’s also the message of Pop Art. The Warhol soup cans, the Screen Tests that he did; there are some good lessons in Pop Art for all of us.
… is wrapped up in learning of language. I think there are only two languages to learn. One is the language of awakening, and the other is the language of materiality which artists know very well.
So on one hand we’ve got spiritual people, working hard, there. And on the other hand we’ve got cultural workers who are working hard where they are. It’s rare that those two worlds come together, and they need to come together.
C: What is the artist’s path? What is that?
J: What do I think the artist’s role is?
C: The artist’s path.
J: From what perspective?
C: Well, let’s say you were an artist and you wanted to take that way as a way of self-development and as a way of understanding the universe. What would that way be? How would you go there?
J: We have to - we: the artists, have to appreciate that our materials already come with their own languages embedded inside of them. So our materials are already expressing themselves. So the artist interfaces with the being of the material. That’s number one.
C: And things are discovered through that?
J: Well then the play begins, because you’re in play with the invisible, in a sense.
C: Would you say it’s kind of like alchemy?
J: I think so, yes. How is it that our materials, plywood, stone, canvas, paint, whatever, how is it that these materials can be as alive before we even touch them, as we are ourselves?
So when you’re making art, you’re not in it alone. The cosmos wants to play.
C: When you say you’re not really alone, are you talking about guiding spirits, that kind of thing?
J: Of course. It’s a good idea to give these guiding spirits form, and to acknowledge that that’s what you’re doing when you’re making art. In the end, you’ve given guiding spirits form. And you’ve collaborated. And they’ve chosen you, in that moment.
C: Is this like the muse, or is it past the idea of the muse?
J: It’s probably past the idea of the muse, but “the muse” will do.
C: Now some people say that everybody’s creative, and everyone has a creative ability somehow, in their life or in their work. What do you think about that?
J: Usually those statements are uninformed and misguided because on the one hand we are all striving to be artists, either in this life or the next or the one after that. At some point …
C: So you believe in the supremacy of “Art” with a capital A?
J: I believe in the supremacy of the creative process. But not everybody’s an artist – there’s no way. Let’s see your art, if you call yourself an artist. Where’s your art?
C: Can people use art as a way of awakening?
J: Well that’s what has to happen. That’s what it’s for.
C: There is some art that doesn’t seem to be referencing anything to do with awakening…
J: That’s because that art isn’t about anything. I don’t know what other reason to make art for other than to give form to the… what did you call them? Guiding spirits. If your creativity doesn’t do that, then what are you doing?
C: What would you say to somebody who is an artist but feels they’re in a bit of a box, they can’t find their way, you know, they’re caught somewhere. What kind of advice would you give somebody?
J: Where are they caught?
C: Well, maybe in themselves or in some idea of what art is or should be.
J: What would I say? …I guess try it on. If anybody wants to try on the idea that everything is will, then give it a try. I don’t think you will succeed very long. In other words, what gives our creativity its longevity? Only that depth of the infinite. If your work doesn’t have that depth then it has no longevity, and it can only have that depth if it’s in collaboration with the infinite.
C: And how do people find their way to do that?
J: Well, that’s what we’re all up against. If you’re an artist or even not an artist, we’re all looking for truth. And truth exists. And there are strategies and methods already expressed, there are clues everywhere. Artists are doing that. Read Marshall McLuhan: it’s all there. McLuhan understood the patterns of how to get there.
C: So how does being an artist change your perception of the world?
J: Well, I don’t know. I’m not sure how to answer that. How do artists see differently from non-artists?
If I’m finding answers in the boring, banal and simple, I know there aren’t very many other people doing that. That’s perception.
C: When you were talking last night, I think you were trying to help people learn to see. And that’s really difficult, to understand that language of art if you’re not an artist yourself. Is there any way that… I mean, what do you suggest to help people learn to see? To see what art is doing, or what art means.
J: I would say if you’re serious about perceiving then you’ll find the way. You just have to be serious about it. And you have to not be afraid to look bad. And not be afraid to isolate yourself as a result.
Somewhere… I read somewhere in a book about Judaism a quote from what I think was the Bible, that said: God says, “Make me known to you.” And that’s what the artist engages in. Should be, anyway. Make God known to you. Make truth known to you. Find it. Try it on. Hunt it down. Name it.
View the video of this conversation.