This is excerpt of a paper that I wrote for a class called "Process Painting and Meditation."   The paper explored the connections between meditation, painting, the therapeutic process and other creative processes.


The experience of this energy, without being able to explain it with words, pointed out to me another commonality between painting and meditation: the experience of what is. In some way, the presence and awareness that we bring to these processes is our greatest creativity. For me this insight was a relief, the discovery that I do not have to do anything to be creative but that I am innately a creative being. In fact, I have spent most of my life suppressing what is naturally there inside, wanting to be expressed. All that I have to do to be creative is to breathe and see what comes. As Frank Lloyd Wright
said: "Space is the breath of art."
        It is this idea of space, the empty white page, the blank canvas, that brought my thoughts back to how these experiences will be useful in the therapeutic process. I thought of the empty white page and the Buddhist concept of heaven. Heaven is that moment, (in life and in art), before you fill in the space and just experience the openness, fear, excitement and the endless possibility. Next comes the moment you paint your first stroke; this is earth. This moment between heaven and earth, before contact, of not knowing what will be produced reminded me of this same experience between client and therapist. If, as with painting, I can come to the canvas of my client with no expectations and no agenda, anything will be possible.
         One of the greatest lessons here is to see how agenda prevents real and genuine presence, awareness, and contact. I can not see what "is" if I am holding on to what I would like to see. 
       The parallels between meditation and painting have presented me with new ways of understanding the polarity between mind and no- mind. I have also gained greater clarity in the recognition that much of what I am holding on to, is already disappearing or gone as I am trying to hold on tighter. Whether it be a thought, a feeling, a person, or an image- before I have even begun to understand it is already in the process of transforming. Art like life is not about capturing something in its unreal, permanent state, but instead about producing a state of energy, motion, and impermanence that is always changing. Some wise teacher once said to me, you're not the same person that you were yesterday. "We should not complain about impermanence, because without impermanence, nothing is possible." Thich Nhat Hanh

Scarcity mentality

can I try it?

can I have it?

can I buy it?

can I own it?

Abundant tragedy

when we find the answer

when we feel the loss

when we feed and starve

when we fear and grieve

Spacious breaths

offered up in devotion

open and raw

outcast and wounded

old and withered

Aged love

I have been thinking a great deal about what attachment is and whether it is "good" or "bad." In Western developmental psychology, we learn that in order for an infant to develop basic trust in his/her world and feel a sense of safety, he/she must develop a healthy attachment with his/her mother or some similar figure. The first thing that stands out to me is this notion of "healthy attachment," after years of studying Buddhism, I am trying to make sense of it all. Is there such a thing as healthy attachment? For that matter, is there such a thing as unhealthy attachment? What is attachment anyway? Is it a physical need? A chemical need? A biochemical dependence? Does a newborn infant need to develop an addiction to mom in order to be deemed healthy? Or is this health once again a Western concept completely wrapped up in the notion that "an individual" needs to develop a healthy, concrete, solid ego, in order to function "normally."

Then a few decades pass and infant has passed through toddler-hood, pre-pubescence, teenage-hood, and slowly makes their way into adulthood. As they make these transitions, health is signified by the ability to no longer be so attached, to break away, and to stand on ones own two feet. I am starting to wonder if we, in Western psychological understanding, all haven't been duped with a bunch of double messages. Now you reach adulthood, you are married, in intimate relationship, and you are working with two seemingly opposing models of how to be in the world and in relationship: you want to feed your healthy attachment/addiction? and you want to break away and be independent. No wonder that we have so many people that don't know how to function in relationship. Well that's a start....then throw in the idea or feeling of love and things get even more complicated....any ideas?

Unwaiting
for the sun will
rise and set
Study the angles
of your discontent

sit in silence

Unknown
sadness and pleasure
sing inside
a clear blue sky
closing in on dusk

I wrote this a few years back and it somehow feels like it has more to say to me again....it is a reminder of what we already know and seem to always forget about what it means to be spiritual beings trying to make sense of the material world in which we find ourselves living.

translucent time
waves and rhymes
thoughts get caught on webs and grime
what's the crime
you can't read my mind
bending and soaring
folding and roaring
singing and beating
a drum, a door
what is it all for?
to move your mind
through space and time
to calm your thoughts
and find your soul
to lose yourself
and find your space
a space of peace
a case of dis-ease
a hunger so deep
no food could ever reach
walking in wind
speaking in tongues
we can't comprehend
give me your hand
hold on to your hat
where we are going you
can never come back
past the heart
and into the part
that has no name
to somehow reclaim
proclamation emancipation
devastation and utilization

Use the breathe
to find the beat
use the beat
to find the heat
the hot
the not
that is
that was
that self
less than before
you never knew
never you
but just a body
carrying you through
thoughts like long lost reports
an opera in the mind
singing to be embraced
stop the voices
make no choices
just stop and listen
static and we automatically
change the station
when this broadcast has the greatest
elation
concentration - lotus and notice
focus and fire
kundalini crying out with desire
satisfy the serpent with a pose
of tranquility
living out your life of humility
simple gestures
reveal long lost treasures
a breath, a beat
calm the mind and settle the spirit
sing with silence
and walk in retreat
you have lost and the song has begun
let it sing while you listen and watch the sun
feel the heat, see the flame
but always remain without a name
for you and it are one in the same.