Monika's weekly inner voice drawings:
Q: What is today's wisdom?
A: "You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn't exist anywhere except in the mind."
- Dale Carnegie
"Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears."
- Les Brown
Posts
If we could choose a drawing to be our own, this would be mine. I recall consistently selecting from the major arcana of tarot those cards depicting images of the sun: The Fool (my favorite), the lovers, the sun, the moon; and even the hanged man. I am heliotropic; I bend towards the light. In pre-classical Greek, phaos was the word for both “light” and “eye.” The eyes are the metaphoric gateway to the light. The eyes bring us (in)sight. Even in loss there is light. I remember my mother’s dying was a dying out of only the light we visually see; her death made way for the true light of awareness.
ReplyDeleteI find the light in my mother’s
frail eyes
In the uncertainty of her touch
In her awareness of death
That she one day will no longer walk along
The beach’s foamy rim under the setting sun.
I find the light in all loss, in all change
In the downy flakes of snow seeping
Into the dark earth
And into the seed’s softening coat
And the memories of its past lives
and future longings
The new worlds it will enter
The many lips it will touch
All the fields it will feed
Through the flights of its seed
Across the winds and fiery flames.
The light will burn again and again
Breaking open the shells
Of ignorance
Releasing the memories
Against heavy-closing eyes
And walks along the salty rim.
------------------
Of course, we are all beings of light. And it is the light of awareness that sets us free from suffering, that conquers fear. Fear is the primary afflictive emotion that engenders all other emotions. When the veil of fear is lifted, all will be revealed. In Monika’s drawing, the figure is centered in the sun, not in a solipsistic or egocentric way, but just the opposite—in a selfless way. Self is not the center, light is. Self is merely individual consciousness making its way like a fish up the stream of conventional reality towards awareness. The two-sided coextended figure attached to her right leg is what Buddhism, for example, might call the 3 poisons: fear, anger, and ignorance. The attachment to the leg itself is the ignorance. The turquoise ocean is the illusory center of conventional reality: that in which we exist, or reside in. It is pleasure-seeking ONLY and thus that which creates the addictive mind. Notice the small red flag inside the shark’s (anger) mouth. It’s a splash of blood, which reminds us that anger begets anger, violence begets violence. It also speaks to impermanence, that the self and things we cling are determined by the laws of nature to change. It doesn’t mean that we don’t enjoy the self or the reality of convention that causes suffering. In fact, it’s just the opposite: it is what it is, as it is. The light of awareness could not exist without the shadows of suffering. It is all there to learn. And what could be more fun and playful than learning?
I hadn't looked at it this way, but the 3 mind poisons definitely make sense in this drawing.
ReplyDeleteBesides interpreting the yellow round as the sun, I also saw a second image: a full blown parachute, seen from below, that is lifting the figure out of fear. "Parachuting yourself out of fear" - a new workshop theme :)