prophecy

WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW!!!!!

Just finished watching the fantastic, mesmerizing, incredible, mind-blowing, spirit-stimulating, libido-teasing "Holy Mountain" by Alexandro Jodorowsky.

For me, the movie was a revelation, a portal, a third eye-opening visual orgasm.

I'd never heard of Jodorowsky before.  He was a little before my time, I suppose.  The movie (made in 1973--when I was three) was financed by John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

It combines magic, sex, spirituality, the Tarot, religion, surrealism, alchemy, and violence in a powerful cinematic transmutation.

The rich ritual magic symbolism from western occult traditions resonated deeply with my own passions.  I just kept laughing and clapping throughout the movie at the sheer, opulent spectacle of it all.

It seems as I continue on this new spiritual journey, doors open and pathways are revealed that show me the way to go.  I felt after seeing this movie like I did after visiting Bob Morgan's house.  It's a sensation like coming home and seeing the ocean for the first time.

I have always been drawn to symbol, to surrealism, to visual language, and the power of paradox.  I was amused (and not at all surprised) to learn that Jodorowsky officiated at the civil union ceremony of Marilyn Manson.

[From Wikipedia] "After the marriage dissolved, Jodorowsky stated in an interview : "I told Marilyn Manson: 'You are a performance. I do not know you without make-up, no one knows you without make-up.' He married this girl, she is also a performer and when he married it was performance. When reality comes after it is not possible for them. Now he is with a girl with humanity."  Manson has also stated that Jodorowsky influenced his entire visual style."

I am fascinated by the idea of identity as symbol, of life as myth.  The Jodorowsky-Mason connection made me consider the self-installation who is Amanda Lepore:

These individuals are unto themselves axes mundi, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy, the sacred and the profane, the narcissistic and the transcendent.

The more I learn to let go of fear in my own life, to open my heart unconditionally and with acceptance to the whole roiling, outrageous phenomenon that is life, the more astonishing it becomes.  Daily, I am more and more a celebrant of some grand, infinite mass.  Each step becomes more happy, joyous, and free.

The universe is an undulating love song, an intricate, pulsing poem written through time and space.  I am learning one day at a time, not to try to edit, to censor, to "add or subtract one word".  Rather, by staying present, I enter into the heart of a conscious contact with my higher power.  I am moved by beauty, transformed by art, and touched to the core by love.

Passion, beauty, and love, folks--24 hours at a time...

collected works

This Thanksgiving was particularly enjoyable.  I had a good time visiting with friends and family, and I ate very well.  Most importantly, though, I was in the holiday spirit.  My day was filled with gratitude from beginning to end...

It's amazing the quantum leaps my life has made in the past six or so months.  Even if external aspects seem to have remained the same, my internal psycho-spiritual geography has shifted. 

This morning, rummaging through plastic bins filled with old documents, hunting for an important piece of paper, I came across my journals.  To my astonishment, I have a nearly unbroken line of writings stretching back twenty years--to my junior year in high school.  Essays, meditations, poetry, plays, short stories, even the starts of a couple of novels.

It amazes me no matter how far I have wandered, no matter how self-centered or self-destructive I have been over the years, a deep creative force continuously moves through me whether I choose to be conscious of it or not.

That force is my direct connection to a higher power.  It's time for me to pay a little more attention, honor that bond a little more mindfully. 

Great things are happening to me right now--and I mean great in the original sense of the word. 

I feel the unfolding of giant wings, the rush of wind, the wheeling of stars, and the whisper of flame in the ribs of the fire.

Life makes sense as poetry.  For that I am truly grateful.

Passion, beauty, and love, folks--24 hours at a time...

balance

The weeks keep slipping by.  Leaves turn and fall.  My driveway is a carpet of wet yellow. 

With each 24 hours that passes, I note little markers of spiritual growth as well as glimpses that remind me I ain't seen nothin' yet.

The last several days have been a circuitous lesson in balance.  I tend to veer off easily into the deep end, making mayhem out of mole hills and complicating the simple.  Part of my inherent craziness is believing things are more difficult than they really are--insisting on commanding center stage in an operatic drama of my own creation, which no one else is paying any attention to...

I recently read a definition that says humility is about being "right sized," about "getting real."  Humility is responding honestly and openly to life without exagerrating or diminshing our role and importance in the grand scheme of things.  For a theater-trained Leo who loves to gild and embelish, this is a daunting premise... 

Nevertheless, I see how easy it is for me to lose my balance, to mistake the glitter for gold, the sparkle for diamonds, and then become visciously critical when I find I'm mistaken.

What's important for me these days is to maintain an attitude of acceptance and gratitude.  This helps me see how distorted and selfish my approach to the world tends to be.  And I'm not trying to be particularly beatific in this observation.  It's just I see how much suffering I cause myself when I shut myself up in my head alone with my thoughts.  I separate myself from life.  I don't reach out to the people I care about.  I shut down at the base level of my humanity.

By maintaining a semblance of balance, by doggedly returning to my center and affirming my attention to dwell in the sweet spot--plugged into the Source of my higher power--I can live more or less in a serene state.  I still get sidetracked by fantasies of revenge and delusions of grandeur, but more and more, it's like hopping up-and-down with a net after butterflies rather than running with wild dogs.

Balance for me is tied up in "the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference."  Balance for me comes from remembering I am not my own higher power.

Passion, beauty, and love, folks--24 hours at a time...

full circle

"Follow Your Bliss..."

That used to be my motto, my guiding principle, handed down from none other than the great Joseph Campbell himself.

It was on my refrigerator.  It was a doorway, an invitation...

It reminded me on a daily basis that art is a journey.  Art must be woven into the fabric of life.  It is the thread of story, the thread of mystery, that brings our own personal myths to life.

When I first saw The Power of Myth, more than 15 years ago in a comparative religion class, it changed my life forever.  It ripped down temple curtains, it tore away veils, it cracked my cornerstone.

In the past few days I've been reawakened, reminded, reinvigorated--to the power of art, to the power of myth, to the power of story and claiming our own.

It's good to drink water when you've been in the desert for a long, long time.

It's good to click your heels and find yourself home.

Or rather, it's good to stumble out of the undergrowth and pick back up with the Yellow Brick Road.

Passion, beauty, and love, folks--24 hours at a time...

working it

"No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true." - Nathaniel Hawthorne

Read this quote on Alan's blog. (A new project is coming, too!)  It hit home.

Last night I had the fantastic experience of visiting the home of Bob Morgan.  Bob is a local Lexington artist (and legend, why not pile on the accolades?)  His house is every inch an ecstatic, exuberant, passionate expression of his creativity.  It made me catch my breath.  It made me remember.  It re-awoke something in me--a deep desire to start again creating art.

I realized, as I wandered the surreal baroque landscape of Bob's house, that in all my years of drinking I always talked about being an artist, always fantasized about the art I would create, always amused myself with ideas of how extraordinary my work would be.  Instead of creating art, however, I'd just have another drink and enjoy my delusions.  Looking back on the periods of my life when I have been most creative, those were the times when I was drinking the least.  To really accomplish a major work, or even a minor painting here or there, I couldn't be under the influence.

Drinking fuels thinking.  That's why the juicy bits of the Big Book are in the chapter called "Into Action."

My sponsor then lent me a movie to watch, Shortcut to Nirvana, about the Kumbh Mela festival where 70 million Hindus descend on a particular spot in India once every 12 years to dip their toes in the great Ganges River.  The documentary was an in-depth look into the permutations of Hinduism--all the strange penis-wrapping, pit buried, nail-sitting gurus; all their clapping, flower bearing, smoke swinging disciples; and the general pressing, crushing noisy mass that is the Kumbh Mela festival.  As intriquing an exploration of Hinduism as the film was, I was most moved by a coment made in the outtakes.  A young man, fascinated by Asian philosophies and spiritual traditions, noted he had returned from the festival only to find himself becoming more and more "Jewish", his native faith.

I believe we all have a spiritual 'note' with which our souls find harmony in the Song of the Universe.  Exploring spiritual traditions, like traveling, opens doorways of understanding, leads you deeper into the truth of yourself.  Creating art is a passionate, impulsive response to the love song of Life, to the intricate, incomprehensible, awful, spectacular beauty of the Universe.

Ultimately, the lesson I take from these things is that I have to live.  I have to create.  I have to move beyond my head and the movie in my mind and re-claim my spot on the road. 

As I write this, I realize how much I hide in my head.  How much distance I keep between my 'true self" and the world.  How disconnected I am with my body, my emotions.

I am grateful for the path of twelve steps that is slowly leading me back to authentic experience.  

I am grateful to have reconnected--even though sometimes reluctantly and petulantly--with my higher power.

It's good not to spend ALL my time resisting life and the Way Things Are.  Maybe soon I'll pick up a more interesting and enjoyable hobby!

Passion, beauty, and love, folks--24 hours at a time...