The Universe Is Smiling: Fountain of Youth

Monika's weekly inner voice drawings:
Q: What is today's wisdom?
A: "There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age."
- Sophia Loren
Posted by Unknown at Monday, November 14, 2011
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2 comments:

  1. Paul LichtenbergNovember 16, 2011 at 8:11 AM

    “Desire for the false and fear of the true.” – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

    Ornamentation is the rub of duality. Ornamentation refers to “trappings,” that, and the ways we adorn ourselves. This new drawing, `Fountain of Youth,’ is very very deep and playfully so. “Mirror mirror on the wall, why is it that we split at all.” But, I guess we can leave that question to the theists. Instead, we are interested in the how we split awareness into consciousness of. Because the how is the very mechanism of suffering. Yes, we need to accept that the world is, as it is, with all its mirrors and, more importantly, mirroring. Even those exquisite chakra-like spirals-- the conches within—are mirrors. In this case, reminders of a body and a mind that are inseparable and so not-two. I love these little scavenger hunts in life, the seeking of clues for the true. That’s why I love Monika’s drawings: they’re coy, evocative and even provocative! Monika is the fool’s fool. We rarely think of mirroring (of light) as having different aspects: absorption, reflection, refraction, and diffraction. These are the properties of light, but the light, as the mystic Massimo Scaligero, calls “the dying out of the true Light.” We simple call it manifestation. Manifestation is ornamentation: the perceptual and conceptual adorning and thus contorting of the world. Though this speaks to ignorance, the not-knowing, it is never a judgment of ignorance, for ignorance just is, as it is. I’m merely stating that, metaphorically speaking—can we speak any other way?—there is always a beyond the ruse of ornamentation, the true Light of awareness, the realization of which, undoes the suffering that this llama-like creature (homophone intentional!) points to.

    I am certain that everyone who glances upon this drawing immediately is drawn to the right where all the action (ornamentation) is: this is mind. Why Monika calls this drawing `Fountain of Youth’ is most interesting. My fantasy is that she knows that the fountain of youth is a metaphor for the fountain of light, the light that is beyond age because it is beyond time and space, and so, eternally “youthful.” This is the way we find the Way: on our reflected little islands of self-existence- the “I-am-in-the-body” experience-- absorbing, reflecting, refracting, and diffracting, until, through the grace and discipleship of disciplining mind, like the llama, we look back in gratitude with the deepest, most loving and compassionate eyes, lower our heads in humility, smile, and whisper, in calm elation, “liberation is never of the person, it is from the person.” Om mani padme hum

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  2. UnknownNovember 20, 2011 at 6:53 PM

    The fountain reminded me of Rome; Rome reminded me of our Greek/Roman cultural ancestry; and the OLD is juxtaposed the NEW, the young Llama, which shares his outline with the basin of the fountain. Therefore the old and the new are connected and while the Llama seems to grow out of the old fountain, they seem to stand on a revolving isle, which -once turned- will flip the image such, that the fountain grows out of the Llama.

    The mirror is a great symbol of the question of "illusion" vs. "truth", while we experience your well coined "rub of duality" :)

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