The Tenaciously Sane Adventures of a Noman - Toc Fetch
Chaper One - Another Piece - V3 No1 Page 1 - Yes

 

My Ritual of Yes
(at the beginnings)

Yes! Yes is the essential feeling your VerySelf radiates. Yes has modes of feeling, sometimes it feels like peace, sometimes like joy, sometimes like an omni-directional love, and sometimes it feels like an effortless intuitive knowing - a being-ness. The subtle feeling of Yes is therefore your guide towards your VerySelf (as in follow your heart). Every experience is an opportunity towards yes. Since "the world is because you are" (because perception is a prerequisite for experience) then all things that come to you are exactly what you need to move forward towards Yes - towards your Self.
The idea that your suffering is your greatest teacher - has been handed down by the worlds great Seers for more than five thousand years. To live is the practice of untangling your identity. This practice eventually leads to fewer and fewer lines of identity until eventually all that is left is a single ... Yes (lashavidya). And that Yes is a complete and loving surrender to what is.

In art we do just this (sifting for Yes) all day everyday. Every mark is the question: is this me (or is that I? or is it Yes?) But the answer is always: no. This always-no is painful, but in the world of form we know what is yes by knowing what is not yes. This ancient pattern of questioning, (netineti [not-this-not-that]) that always leads to no, is a way of backing up towards the ineffability of Yes. The next question (for the artist) is; what isn't I? (about this mark or these marks). The question comes in a negative form because that is the nature of the mind. It is the nature of the mind to compare, to delineate, to limit, to label, to judge. An important part of the work is to bring the mind into alignment with its true function as a tool and remove it as the tyrant of identity. Most workers realize early in this practice that the "I" (or Yes) that is being looked for can not be held as an object in the mind (it can not be looked for). Yes is not a thing. ("What is perceived can not be the perceiver" - Nisargadatta). Anyone who thinks he can state who he is - is doing just that; thinking, and art is about feeling. Feeling is the one thing that can not be taught - it is the truest thread towards who you are. Art is then the practice of feeling your way blindly deep down into your Very Self - a kind of spelunking.

The work begins with an inspiration that arrives - from beyond the mind - from your Very Self. Then you must brave the endless No with patient love for that living Inspiration that has come to you. The Inspiration is trusting you to make for it a home in the world. The more innate No that you suffer in the work the better the result for both you and the Inspiration.

But eventually, if you are honest about the limited nature of the physical materials you are working on you have to accept that the limits of the materials will begin to corrupt your research, and degrade the experience. This tells you the work is done, and it is time to begin on a new page (this also depends on the amount of OCD in your blood - hoho). Besides Inspirations are backed up out the door, down the road and out of site, and as holy as the work is, you've still got to do your laundry and love your friends. Hi-ho.