A Ramble of Stuff. 09

My granddaughter Kattyboo (a fine young killer just like her dad)

BLACK is Toc-ward.
GREEN is AreBear's words.
RED is quotes. And RED as Tree
BLUE is the dated who-what-when-where

________________________

The following is a letter to my pal Ish and his love Roseanna who invited Tree and I out to Seattle. Isham is my Brother rbear's son who I grew up with back when we were all kids (although I was in my twenties while he was in his single digits). Back in the day we all had many-many names and in one aspect of his character Isham was known as Sparky Greenblossom and my son was Bucky Brahman, and they were in a world of their own. One single sighting of their intensity was enough to keep me happy in the work for days.

Now Isham makes extraordinary comics that he doesn't publish. He can't seem to care about getting them out into the world, and seeing that - I don't know why I care, it makes it difficult to argue for it. Hi-ho. We are all hoping that Roseanna will just ...do it - she has all this amazing silence in her that just feels like she gets things done. She is going to pose for both Tree and my new Works; she has the most beautiful face - that Tree and I have to catch, in the forever of the work, before she gets too old like us. Ho-ho.

We also met pal Wendyfriend out there, that rbear has know for years - and now we love her too. Hurray!

Dear pals

Thank you for your generous home that was so unexpectedly sweet, we actually really enjoyed ourselves. It was so surprising to be away from the Work and yet …be happy. I quote Tree, as we landed in Albany, saying, "We could do that again."

Thank you.

I guess I am addressing the following ramble to Roseanna's question about meditation. I was too flip and random in my answer, and roughly apologetic, which is really a kind of defensive condescension, a poor habit in which I pretend you could not really be interested, and therefore what would be the point of carefully delineating this precise truth that holds my heart. I apologize for that, it has become a habit - because the illusion of the world is so powerful that to speak the truth about what is Real sounds fairly mad.

So I would like to start again, and tell you why we meditate (as I know it). In this, I am telling you what I Know to be the absolute greatest thing that Reality has to offer - which is the experience of its Self (my Self - The Self). This is the most precious thing I Know, (in the presence of which the best of my art [all of art] has barely a pale shadow of worth), and to not take the time to offer it precisely to you (who we love) is an offence against the heart. I am Isham's Uncle-Atrocity, I have adored him since he was a kid, thus his love is naturally my love, and now that we have gotten to know you even just a little - it is so obvious to love you for your self. Isham is a lucky creature (but of course). Anyway, it is wrong not to offer you, in all seriousness, the careful truth, as you deserve.

So let us imagine that one day a Voice inside you demand to know …who you really are. (It is usually the nearness of Death that awakens this Voice). And you begin to desire with the full force of your heart to know the truth of Reality. To know something that does not change. Because that is the definition of the Real - the Real is only that which does not change. The only thing that you can look to, the only thing constant in every question about the changing world …is you. The world only exists if you perceive it (all else is hear-say). So to find what is Real and unchanging you would naturally have to turn inward. (And because the world has a million changing answers to every question - that is the most obvious clue that it does not know. Agnes Martin used to say that you can always tell what is the truth because It is without choice.)

First I would tell you to read I AM THAT by Nisargadatta, which my beloved rbear has most carefully planted among Isham's books - just waiting for him (no-hurry). Nisargadatta is one of the greatest intellects of all time, there is not one single word out of place or untrue when he speaks. The absolute precision of his words is a clue to his achieved grok of Reality. The more you know the more he will amaze you. The precision of his words is very like a mathematics of poetry, in which each word has exact necessity. So if you read him do not pass-by a single sentence without understanding it - it is all there, and you are capable by virtue of your Awareness of understanding and experiencing every word he speaks. True-true.

I am an atheist - an animist-atheist - because that is the nature of my relationship to Reality, there is no God but what I project - god is a concept - in a sense (because we are anthropomorphic by nature) god is the final concept - smiling. I tell you this because I want you to understand that Nisargadatta (or as we call his understanding here in the west: Non-dualism) is NOT a belief system, it is an experience of the truth realized through the simple self-investigation of your own awareness. Non-dualism is the simple question; "Who am I?" - followed to its origin. With eyes closed or eyes open (or both) - simply inquire "Who am I?" ("Inquire to the source of I," says Holybean son of PapaWolf). By inquiring inward, and consistently eliminating who you are NOT (the body - the mind - thoughts - memories - images - concepts - precepts - etcetera) an experience of the most basic reality of your own identity ("I-AM") is the only thing that can Not be eliminated - it is immoveable and unchanging, it is the one thing that can not be eliminated as unreal*. It is a kind of doorway to the Real. Dwelling on this experience of I-AM, is the source of Self Realization (enlightenment). It is so simple it is laughable. Effortlessly (EFFORTLESSLY!) dwelling on the I-AM and consistently recognizing and letting-go all concepts that arise from the mind, opens your consciousness to the best that the Universe has to offer.

(Now the reason this experience is called Non-dualism is because the Universe is made of only One …thing, and that one thing is Consciousness. Everything is made of Consciousness. Of course Shankara and Buddha and a long line of extremely brilliant humans have been achieving this realization long before the glaciers receded and the mammoths stopped singing - but here in the west physicists are finally achieving enough subtlety of perception to getting-it, as evidenced by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and Schrödinger living/dead cat and many other observation. This is what is really meant by that jokey phrase; Being-One-with-the-Universe. When you tap into that most basic reality of your own identity, that I-AM of Awareness, you are plugging into the essence of the Universe which is pure-consciousness, and which is contained in-full in every tiniest part of the Universe.
"Out of an infinitesimal seed grows the magnificent tree.")

Now the best that the Universe has to offer Conscious-Consciousness comes in three aspects (three gifts as it were) called in Sanskrit: Sat-Chit-Ananda. In my own personal interpretation - Sat means existance experienced as clarity of truth in purpose-action-thinking - Chit is intelligence based on perfect intuition - and Ananda means bliss (love), which is not to be confused with happiness, bliss is a happiness that does not come from the mind, it is independent of the minds suffering or pleasure. Bliss is the very nature of the Universe that radiates through the open doorway of I-Am.

But truly the best that the Universe has to offer is full Self Realization (which is to finally let-go of the endlessly-problematic-domination-of-your-tiny-individual-ego (full of its fears and endless desires and general-worrying-mind-noise) and thereby become the Universe its Self - the Walking-Talking-Universe. "Hello."

This is why we meditate. What rbear, Tree and I began back when we were kids will take each of us home …soon (we laugh about who will be first - [Tree with rbear neck-and-neck, and me dragging in their slipstream]).

Once you have tasted the Real, coming through the doorway of I-Am, the world becomes …thinner of value, and you become less and less bound to all of its endless hyper silliness. The world is a mutual illusion of mind - a serious and deadly illusion full of horror and suffering and sweetness - but an illusion all the same; it has always been that way and will always continue that way. The only thing that is Real, and therefore True and thereby of Value, is to be found inside your Self. And most importantly you must understand that it is already there in you, just waiting for you to Realize it. Self-Realization is realizing who you already are, and always have been. And the best you can do for the world is to bring what is Real into the world, into every moment and every interaction. Spread the wealth!

So we sit on the bed together to meditate, so utterly happy to be so close to another open door, to feel the true glow of agape coming from anOther doing this Work. We'd probably walk around all holding hands if it didn't look so idiotic. To be together like that is a thing in its Self; in Sanskrit it is call Satsang (which means to be among noble company). I don't know about noble company but I do know what feels deep in the Good. And to be with you and Isham was to be in noble company as well, you two are noble company just by the glow of your love for each other. True-true.

I know that Isham will read this, is reading this. But I would not have written this to him (no need). And he would not have asked the question. He is so obviously one of those lucky creatures to whom things just come. He will naturally come around to solving this most basic Q in his own most Sparky Greenblossom sort of way, (he and Bucky Brahman both, dogs of a feather). And it seems that you are also one of those Creatures to which luck gathers, because you have Ishams fully focused love, and …
you asked the Question.

With love
And admiration

Toc

________________________

Dear C

Biofeedback is a little like going out naked looking for clothes and coming back with a refrigerator box on - I mean …you are covered - but the esthetics and mobility are so poor. There are so many ancient and much more simple fundamental ways of accessing Samadhi, and realizing the non-dual reality of your Self, that it seems a shame for me not to mention a little.
There are some wonderful books by a guy named Eckhart Tolle: The Power of Now, and The New World in which he describes meditations - I think he is the best of the best - he's a wonderful talker - very funny. Basic non-dualism in our western idium - very sweet - but true-on.
The best beginning mediation I know of (in the spiritual market place) is Transcendental Meditation, but only, if after you are initiated, you avoid having anything to do with their "Centers." TM Centers contain some of the worse kind of hyper-spiritual-materialist, and their rap is a gobble-de-gooped commercialized packaging of non-dualism (sloppy and full of pretend secrets [there are no secrets]). Their organization is Yucky - but the meditation is The Real Thing from WAY back.
TM is hugely expensive now - (about $2000 to learn [?]). Learning only really takes about 3 or 4 one hour sessions with a teacher and then you are on your own forever, and that is how it should be.
If you are really interested, I know a truly great man who will teach you for free - though you would have to go to where he lives and hang out there for 3 days. (He would teach you for free because some of us believe strongly that such things should be given freely and all secrets are lies - The Spiritual-Proletariat-Underground! Ah...up the revolution... and such stuff.)
TM is a, 20 minutes twice a day, eyes closed mantra meditation - simple - easy and works True.
Buddhism, as I have learned from ODSeeus, is an eyes open meditation that dwells on the formlessness beneath the mind. Buddhism is pretty good stuff - basic non-dualism - it seems a bit more tricky in that it takes some serious concepts to just get to the place where you realize you have to deconstruct all your concepts (kind of like sawing off the limb you're on) - though it is a religion and full of dry centuries of dogmatic language along with the tedious trappings of spiritual hierarchies which are …just more lies.
"I live therefore I-AM," (says Pope Joey). He means that You are the Dali Lama - You are the Pope - You are the Christ - You are the Shankaracharya - You are the SadGuru, and nothing standings between you and your fully realized Self …accept you.

Tree and I began meditating way-the-hell-back when we were kids in the early seventies. We began with TM but have long ago moved out of all forms - what we do now just comes …naturally. We are the American mutts - full of our spiritual independence - "Don't Tread On Me".
Tree and I were recently invited to Seattle to visit my sons best friend who lived with us on and off while they were kids (when we were all kids) - his name is Isham and his loves name is Roseanna. One night Roseanna ask us what is meditation? We somewhat blew-off her question at the time, and late I wrote the (proceeding) letter to answer her. (And here you might ask why Isham never learn to meditate having grown up around people who meditate, and the simple answer is that he never asked - you understand that the desire to know is very important as the beginning. And has to be there! It is only the fact that you mentioned Biofeedback that has allow me to ramble-on about meditation.)

Pal …research into your Self is your first Work, the gallery or whatever else is your second and so on.

All meditations are aimed at the realization of your Self, and they all trace there origins from the most ancient form of experiential realization named (at some point) Advaita. I imagine some of the tribal Shaman’s of the Steppes (50,000 BC) while following the hunt of great red and wooly Mammoths handed down their methods of Self Realization to their chosen apprentice (and those apprentices chose themselves by their need to know). It is a very long line of research that finally entered oral history with the great Sage Vashishtha. Both Hinduism and Buddhism in all their thousand varied schools of thought – were all born out of Advaita (what is called here in the west Non-dualism). And all the thousand schools of Advaita are based on one man’s or one woman’s realization of their true nature. Then, based on how they achieved their Self Realization, a new school is born. The experience of the Self is always the same – it is the constant and that is why it can not be lost because it is just the innate mechanics of our own Awareness that presents its Self in a silent mind. But the method of achieving it varies endlessly. One of the most basic method is direct self inquiry into the question: “Who Am I?” Eliminating all that is not the Self, effortlessly negating all concepts, precepts, ideas, images, forms, sensations and thoughts that attempt to hold you – that try to define you. Without these things there is just …Being. (I recognize that this sounds complex - but that is only when you are thinking about it - in the doing, it is as subtle and briefly felt as cognition - and really has nothing to do with thinking). It is important to understand here that what is perceived can not be the perceiver. If it can be perceived it can not be you – your Self. This is so simple it is almost impossible to grok – it is the simplest things that are the hardest to experience – and the mind will not let go its control without a fight. And that …is where meditations come in. A good meditation lulls your mind into accepting and experiencing its own subtler depths, and then …every-once-in-a-while it becomes so lulled that your awareness falls out of mind entirely …into Samadhi – into pure awareness - the transcendent experience of your Self.

In a Mantra Meditation (like TM) the Mantra is first and foremost a vibratory sound that lulls the mind. And I imagine it was eventually perceived as a name for the form of the sound, a persona of perfection – a Goddess or God - but that is just a way of adoring what the sound can do for the mind. Remember all forms are limited - and the last form is the one we call: God. Of course I believe (I project) that originally in the cognitions of the early Seers the mantra was realized to be a key for opening Awareness, like a doorway that opens into Samadhi (so says the pre-theist animist in me).

I do a couple of variable pranayamas before each meditation. Some schools claim pranayama as their most direct method - but its all soup to me – try anything or everything that calls to you - only be-true be-earnest and never stop.

Spiritually speaking; being an American; and thus being a mutt opens everything to you. E. E. Cummings once said, “Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not yet buried imagination.” You are born free of the limitations of traditions. Even the few things I have told you here - to have heard them in the old traditions would have cost you dearly in life and time (of course there is value in that method within its tradition), but we are the mutts, so you can ignore my words or feast on them. The freedom of a mutt, free to listen-to and follow your heart.

To me …that is the glory of the time we live in, we are at a great feast of experience, and the most important of all thing to bring to this feast (said Nisargadatta), is Earnestness.

You know what they say about mutts – that they are the smartest and truest dog-friends that you could ever find. To-True.

Hi Ray!

I wrote this for Roger's proposal about the new Comic Show at some art-fair(?) for Ethan and I (and another guy). I know the fair is just a money-thing and no one really cares about ideas - but I'm so in love with comics that I don't care that no one care - HI-ho! Anyway I love the idea of this new moment in art where the narrative page jumps up and laughs at itself like a stowaway on the Titanic. Hurray!

Pal
Toc

There is something quietly happen to the aspect of Time in art that has come to the forefront in drawing. Something that began with the futurist and has now resurfaced in drawing. Though now, it is much more conscious of itself, much more in control of its own speed – it’s Timing as it were. And funnily enough its realizations first arrived from Comic books.

There is a phenomenal subconscious event that occurs in the gap between two panels in formal proximity as found in Comics. Its is an almost hypnotic demand on the part of the viewer’s subconscious to supply the information between panels – and kids have been doing it for fifty years. Bridging the gap between panels in the Comic format is an automatic leap of time and space (a leap of intuition that makes the Lorentz Contraction look like ...kid stuff). And yet it is a quiet interactive relationship with the viewer that naturally respects the viewers own personal pacing outside of time. Each panel is in effect a node of forever that require (a subconscious amount of) time to cross.

In the last few years the unique characteristics of Comic books have found there way into art. The (here-and-now) immediate voice of the word bubble, derived from comics, has merged two languages into a new medium - in which the words and the images on the page - dialogue with each other. And in the best of this the image doesn't simply illustrate the words and the words don't just reinforce or explain the picture, the two components of each panel are like twin vectors, each pointing from a different but related point of view at something else entirely, something more. And at this point the interaction with the viewer steps up a notch.

It is a natural evolution that fits our time, the viewer demands not only beauty but the complete environment of its life in time. How does it live? How do I live? The viewer wants greater totalities of cognition, longer and deeper emersions, an art that moves at a speed equal to our sense Now. The viewer now demands of art, as Joseph Campbell once said, the pedagogical aspect. This is the empty nitch that Comic’s are evolving into. This silent storytelling is a dialogue between the artist and the willing subconscious of the viewer that takes place at the viewer's individual pacing and carries very personal elements of the viewers interpretation.

Ok ...so page 14 of V6.3. Letters from the Front Line sold through what I hope is my new gallery in LA: Obsolete Inc. (222 Main St. Venice Ca. 90291 [www.obsoleteinc.com]). Tree and I will have a show together there this coming June or July.
Come see.
Obsolete is run by Ray, an astoundingly dapper and hansom guy who carries an air of luck like an avatar of the Puranas. Tree and I met him in Miami at the Scope show and liked him immediately - he is a connoisseur of the dry-mock - and the very exact cut of his clothes makes him seem ...heroic.

So the following is a letter first to Ray that then it turned into a letter to the man who took home Page 14.

I debated whether to send you the following email I wrote to Ray. I was concerned that I not mess with your relationship to the Work (Page 14). My pal Tree is very strong about keeping her own reading of her own Works quiet - since it is in no way more valid than the story that the viewer brings to it. Of course I agree, but then since you are a Teacher that makes you a Storyteller - like us - so you must have made your peace with words a long time ago. And do you remember when Lee says to Cal in East of Eden, "When the first innocence goes you can't stop unless you're a hypocrite or a fool." With storytellers there is no end to story.

I also want to say that you are the exact person I made that piece for. I say that in perfect confidence, glad not to have to explain it - knowing that it rests on a deep supposition that hovers sweetly above Nothing (a friendly Nothing).

So - on my website I sell my comics - one of my comic sells for a hundred bucks - a thin 16 page black-and-white - it is a comic that I produced for my first show at Ricco/Maresca (I'm sure I must have given you a copy?)
Having the money at the time was a fluke, even so I could only afford to print 250 books, digital-water printing was a new idea - very expensive.
I usually do a search on the name of anyone who has the cheek to buy one of them - a hundred bucks is still a whole lot of money to me (which probably dates me) so it fascinates me to peek at who might be that willing. The latest was a person named ____ (the name of a once-upon-a-time Chippewa Chief). My search told me that _____ wrote a book (along with ______ ) called "__________." It is according to the search a very scholarly analysis of (some) pre________ mythology.
Very cool! Seeing as Tree and I live on myth soup - we love such devotes who give their hearts to an old image to wake them up - Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell, Marie Louise Von Franz, Robert Bly, (early) James Hillman, Edgar Herzog, Alain Danielou, Gioia Timpanelli - all of our favorites, and heroes all).
So anyway, I then assumed that ______, as a tangent to his work, must have come across the origin stories of one of the characters that has been a very strong part of my personal pantheon of Voices from when I was a kid, and since I was a kid - The Striped Man - who I later found exactly among the Hopi people of the south west in a character call the Koshari. (Before discovering the Koshari I had assumed that The Striped Man had escaped from one of the chain-gangs I saw every summer in the south as a kid. Born in Brooklyn every summer my parents would take us south to Elberton George to my Uncle-Johnny's-farm, on the way, on the back roads we would come across chain-gangs doing road work, always as we slowed down and drove by one or two of the men on the line dressed in The Stripes would look up and stare hard at us - and I think one of them must have winked.)
The Striped Man was my own tricky-fool. He taught me some strong things as a kid - but he was not to be trusted - he was always funniest at the exact wrong moment. How many times did he make me smile into the face of an angry teacher - more then once he made me stand up alone smart-mouthed against a gang and get my ass very kicked - you get the pattern? He'd make you laugh in the face serious. He'd point out the spinach in the teeth of the bully while he's staring you down or make you rip a loud fart while a teacher is yelling at you. With perfect timing.

So… in my story V6.3. Kids of Lower Utopia: Letters from the Front Lines, I am the woman River Scout Finnagain - of course, it's my story - or she is the hero of my Self - and funnily enough The Striped Man first shows up in V6.3 on page 14 - the big page you had. On that page the very importance of the moment has made The Striped Man into a child. (I think it is because a child is allowed to be innocent - innocents, having nothing to do with good or bad, we thus never blame innocents for laughing at serious moments [I should have prefixed all this by saying that The Seeing comes first in its totality and then the introductions and explanations hurry behind looking dazed and amazed - this is how it is for both Tree and I - the stories we tell come untouched by thinking - and that is how we recognize them. But then, after they have settled-in, we think them into little pieces and eat them.])
So The Striped Man first arrives on page 14 and is now just a kid wearing the dangerous stripes of a sudden laugh (the sudden joy - ready) - he is the guide that follows - and in this most sacred of dreams he must be present for it to be True.

Anyway, I sent a print of page 14 along with the comic, Softdoor, to the Mythologist ____, and wrote on the back, "Do you recognize this fellow?" (Indicating The Stripped Boy). I was thinking he would easily recognize echoes of the Koshari of the Hopi. I also sent him a print of Page 24 in which River is talking to the huge dead wild-dog who is also wearing The Stripes, (wearing The Stripes is the only way he can talk - being dead), and wrote on the back of that, "Here he is again."

You understand I didn't know that _____ was the man who took home page 14 - and that is what makes this all fit so sweet.

Thanks for sending the comic I ordered so quickly, and thanks much, much more for including the other comics and single pictures.

I didn't tell you when I ordered the comic that I was doing that because I had just bought, brought home, and hung your drawing Never Alone from Ray at Obsolete. The minute I saw it, I knew that I had to have it for reasons that are far too complex to go into here, and now that I have all the comics and have explored the website I realize that "my" drawing is the focal point (for me) of a very large experience (your work) that parallels both my own work as a writer and teacher and my own life. Amazingly, since I knew nothing of you or your work when I bought Never Alone, it is one of only two or three of your works that could have moved me so. And it is the one I saw.

So …Big thanks Ray, for making that happen, for finding Page 14 the perfect home. And I know it is just a beautiful accident (at least that is how my mind reads it). And - I also know that there are no accidents.

The Stripped Man is for me independent of history as all archetypal personas are - only it seems to me the Hopi saw him most clearly - as who he is. He is the rebel - the sacred irreverent - the happy trickster - the wild card - the virtual photon that keeps things stirred up so that experience can lead to wisdom.
I have often thought that the stripes are a visual metaphor for humor - humor is a sudden transition of awareness from one linear plane of thought to a sudden other, and the leap through the space between is a leap through the realm of No-thought. Of course the nature of No-thought is bliss - and a sudden flood of bliss = laughter - like black suddenly turning white - like stripes.