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| "The Continuity of Life" © 2003 ~ crayon drawing by Carol E. Fairbanks |
All is a circle within me,
I am ten thousand winters old.
I am as young as a newborn flower,
I am tree in bloom.
All is a circle within me.
I have seen the world through the eagle's eyes.
I have seen it though the gopher's hole.
I have seen the world on fire
And the sky without a moon.
All is a circle within me.
I have gone to the earth and out again.
I have gone to the edge of the sky.
Now all is at peace within me,
Now all has a place to come home.
~ Joan Halifax
The Fruitful Darkness
The Changeless Part of Me
Humankind, since the beginning of recorded time, has written about immortality of the soul. We can also view the art of earlier civilizations, like that of the Egyptians and other ancient near eastern people, and see how they symbolize their belief in the immortal aspect of each individual. The magnificent pyramids were built solely for the purpose of supporting that journey of the soul after death. Today, there are many books written about near death experiences that describe what happens in the realm of spirit when we leave our body. Is this just wishful thinking that there is a part of us that does not die? Or is there a Truth about our immortality that is revealed to us through our art, both visual and written?
Because I turned 71 years old last January, this is a topic that I have been contemplating lately. I really don't like the "when it's over, it's over" way of looking at death. I would much rather, transcend to a spiritual realm, but I do feel some resistance to even that idea, as it has so much unknown about it. In surveying a number of books written by people who claim to have experienced "heaven", I believe that the transcendent experience is a highly individual one. Maybe it has to do with the experience of the soul in this lifetime and the needs of the spiritual body when it makes that transition. Who really knows for sure?
I read somewhere in my transpersonal art books that the language of the soul is one of image. Finite words are inadequate when used to describe the Divine. Perhaps a way to move past the finite chatter that goes on in the brain, is to create imagery in a freed- up meditative state. I have found that just taking a brush dipping in into some color that looks luscious, and then "dancing" it across the paper, will connect you to place beyond those worries and judgements. There, in that state of creative play, you finally have the possibility of experiencing a Truth that is an expanded vision of who you really are. Barry Ebert, a neurosurgeon who wrote a book about his journey into the afterlife, believes that the brain functions as a filter of the consciousness as it manifests into human form. He says "In fact, consciousness gets dumbed down to almost a trickle, which is necessary in here and now in our lives surviving, in the Darwinian sense, on this planet." If that is true, our conscious mind can't be aware of of all of who we are. Maybe those created images that emerge from our intuitive imagination could expand our "vision".
Ebert meditates 2 hours every day, and I believe that is a very good way to touch those places in ourselves. But what if we take those images, whether "seen" in the mind's eye or just felt, and give them form and color....what wonderful things they could share with us. And that is how this powerful woman above was created. I had moved to Colorado with my two cats and thought I was going to have a wonderful life there. When I first lived in my beautiful apartment that gave me a fabulous view of two fourteeners, Long's Peak and Mount Meeker, I played the songs of John Denver, and danced around my Colorado home singing "Rocky Mountain High". I should have known when I drove on my cross country trip into Colorado the previous month and it was hailing baseball size ice balls and storm chasers were driving around looking for funnel clouds, that I was in for a rocky ride. So when I went through an experience similar to what St. John of the Cross described as a "dark night of the soul", I shouldn't have been surprised.
I was fairly experienced in doing a transpersonal approach to art through my art therapy group and art workshops, so I bought a journal and a deluxe box of crayons that any child would be thrilled with and started coloring. I let the crayons "talk" to me and help me make sense of the sadness and pain that was surfacing in me.
So I colored my feelings and created images that I journaled with. I completed two journals that year in Colorado, and it was a powerful time for exploring who I was beyond the drama and story of my life in Ohio. The images were sad, peaceful, powerful and helpless. They were as varied as my feelings and experiences that powerful year in Colorado. It was not to be that home for me that I was looking for, but Colorado certainly paved the way to Oregon. Maybe I had some growing to do before I came to Oregon and finally found that home connection I was looking for.
As I look at the confident woman above that "danced" out through my crayons when I lived that tumultuous year by the Rocky Mountains, I am sensing she is "telling" me some more about who I am at this time. She says, like Glinda from the Wizard of Oz told Dorothy, "You've had the power, you've always had the power." I think this image is referring to my soul...the part of me that never changes...that lives on forever. She tells me, "You are connected to that "Source" that created you. You can never be separated from that Power." She looks omniscient and immortal...maybe I am too. Maybe we all are.
Because I turned 71 years old last January, this is a topic that I have been contemplating lately. I really don't like the "when it's over, it's over" way of looking at death. I would much rather, transcend to a spiritual realm, but I do feel some resistance to even that idea, as it has so much unknown about it. In surveying a number of books written by people who claim to have experienced "heaven", I believe that the transcendent experience is a highly individual one. Maybe it has to do with the experience of the soul in this lifetime and the needs of the spiritual body when it makes that transition. Who really knows for sure?
I read somewhere in my transpersonal art books that the language of the soul is one of image. Finite words are inadequate when used to describe the Divine. Perhaps a way to move past the finite chatter that goes on in the brain, is to create imagery in a freed- up meditative state. I have found that just taking a brush dipping in into some color that looks luscious, and then "dancing" it across the paper, will connect you to place beyond those worries and judgements. There, in that state of creative play, you finally have the possibility of experiencing a Truth that is an expanded vision of who you really are. Barry Ebert, a neurosurgeon who wrote a book about his journey into the afterlife, believes that the brain functions as a filter of the consciousness as it manifests into human form. He says "In fact, consciousness gets dumbed down to almost a trickle, which is necessary in here and now in our lives surviving, in the Darwinian sense, on this planet." If that is true, our conscious mind can't be aware of of all of who we are. Maybe those created images that emerge from our intuitive imagination could expand our "vision".
Ebert meditates 2 hours every day, and I believe that is a very good way to touch those places in ourselves. But what if we take those images, whether "seen" in the mind's eye or just felt, and give them form and color....what wonderful things they could share with us. And that is how this powerful woman above was created. I had moved to Colorado with my two cats and thought I was going to have a wonderful life there. When I first lived in my beautiful apartment that gave me a fabulous view of two fourteeners, Long's Peak and Mount Meeker, I played the songs of John Denver, and danced around my Colorado home singing "Rocky Mountain High". I should have known when I drove on my cross country trip into Colorado the previous month and it was hailing baseball size ice balls and storm chasers were driving around looking for funnel clouds, that I was in for a rocky ride. So when I went through an experience similar to what St. John of the Cross described as a "dark night of the soul", I shouldn't have been surprised.
I was fairly experienced in doing a transpersonal approach to art through my art therapy group and art workshops, so I bought a journal and a deluxe box of crayons that any child would be thrilled with and started coloring. I let the crayons "talk" to me and help me make sense of the sadness and pain that was surfacing in me.
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| "Loneliness"© 2002 - crayon drawing |
So I colored my feelings and created images that I journaled with. I completed two journals that year in Colorado, and it was a powerful time for exploring who I was beyond the drama and story of my life in Ohio. The images were sad, peaceful, powerful and helpless. They were as varied as my feelings and experiences that powerful year in Colorado. It was not to be that home for me that I was looking for, but Colorado certainly paved the way to Oregon. Maybe I had some growing to do before I came to Oregon and finally found that home connection I was looking for.
As I look at the confident woman above that "danced" out through my crayons when I lived that tumultuous year by the Rocky Mountains, I am sensing she is "telling" me some more about who I am at this time. She says, like Glinda from the Wizard of Oz told Dorothy, "You've had the power, you've always had the power." I think this image is referring to my soul...the part of me that never changes...that lives on forever. She tells me, "You are connected to that "Source" that created you. You can never be separated from that Power." She looks omniscient and immortal...maybe I am too. Maybe we all are.
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