I Am With You

When the rain begins to fall and the rainbows paint the sky, I will dance with you. When the winter creeps, I'll stand beside you and watch as the snowflakes fall like poetry upon the boughs. When the rays of summer's sun kiss our skin, I will hold your hand and lie with you in the grass making pictures in the clouds. And when the night falls upon us, I will dream with you.

When we are apart, just look around, you will always be able to find me in small and beautiful things: the leaves of fall as sunlight passes through, footprints in the snow, the song of windchimes, springtime flowers, April rains and the stars at night. You will find me in those places and in your memory, and above all, in every song that brings peace to your heart.

Scales

Reality exists on all scales at all times, from the subatomic levels to the galactic, even universal levels. Likewise we exist on all scales at all times, we are pieces of the cohesive whole that is existence, it is only our ignorance and a dependence on our finite senses that keep us shrouded behind a veil of illusion. This shroud over our minds is more ephemeral than smoke but can be absolutely opaque, keeping us ignorant of the true nature of our existence.

In much the same way that the philosophy of cyclic existence can be seen as a metaphor for the various states of mind that humans live their lives in, this multitude of scales ranging from the cosmic to the quantum can help us to understand the multileveled nature of consciousness. Just as I can focus my attention on the very real conception of my body as a collection of cells, molecules, or even atoms or my existence within the bigger picture of our earth, solar system or galaxy - all exiting simultaneously, so too can I direct my mind to varying levels of consciousness from being hyper-focused internally on my body or upon my surroundings, to daydreaming about the future and calling up memories of the past, from the foggy semi-attention that we spend the majority of our lives living in to the deepest meditative levels at which we become aware of the interconnectedness of all things.

Meditation is not a process that connects us to certain object like two cords being plugged into one another, we are always connected to things, to everything, at all times. Meditation merely allows us to access the levels of consciousness necessary to recognize this scale, the truest plane of existence. Like virtually anything we do in life, this process can becomes easier to complete through patient practice of meditation. This enlightenment through practice can be seen as another analogy, this one of the gradual enlightenment we each work to attain as we move across time, from one life to the next. Perhaps this is why humankind is living in an unprecedented state of enlightenment, technology, and social liberalism, we are carried forward as each new generation is born, slightly more enlightened than the one before.

Remember

From as far back as I can remember one of my deepest feelings was that I did not belong to this world, that the reality society perceived was not reality at all. Even my very senses seemed to be in flux, at times more like a surreal painting than a photograph. Light, color and dimension rippled like the waters of a pond. Smells and tastes held worlds of their own, opening like new dimensions before me.

Persistent was an overwhelming longing to return to someplace other than the everyday world we move about in. While most people fall asleep and have unreal and confusing dreams or experience altered realities under an intense fever, the surreal realm of the dreamscape was where I felt most at peace. I spent my childhood in meditation, pushing aside the layers of delusion that keep our minds eye chained to the day to day world, and escaping back to the deeper realm I called home.

Space and time come unraveled, colors come into being that had never existed, ideas fall from the sky like drops of rain, and the laws of this reality hold no sway. In this world you are not trapped within the confines of your body, it becomes inconsequential. You recognize that you are intrinsically connected to everyone and everything that ever has been and ever will be.

Remember that you are not really here.

Remember where you must be.
Your eyes are about to tell you something that your mouth already knows.
Your ears are about to tell you something your feet already know.
Remember that you've never really been here.
Remember that you have never really been here.
Your nose picks up a fragrance and lets it go.
Your mouth picks up a taste,
and lets it swallow itself up into the very oceans of your body.
Remember you have not really ever, ever been here.
~ pulled from my mind by Alex Caldiero

Perfection

I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem;

I whisper with my lips close to your ear,
I have loved many, but I love none better than you.

I have been dilatory and dumb;
I should have made my way straight to you long ago;
I should have talked of nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but you.

I will leave all, and come and make the hymns of you;
None have understood you, but I understand you;
None have done justice to you—you have not done justice to yourself;
None have found you perfect—I only find no imperfection in you;
Some seek to subordinate you—I only am she who will never consent to subordinate you; I only am she who places over you no master, owner, better, God, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself.

I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!
You have not known what you are—you have slumbered upon yourself all your life; Your eye-lids have been the same as closed most of the time.

Underneath you, and within you, I see you.
I pursue you where none else has pursued you;
Silence, the flippant expression, the accustomed routine, if these conceal you from others, or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me.

I give nothing to any one, except I give the like carefully to you;
I sing the songs of the glory of none, sooner than I sing the songs of the glory of you.

The Space Between...

The creative process, so far as we are able to follow it at all, consists in the unconscious activation of an archetypal image and elaborating and shaping the image into the finished work. By giving it shape, the artist translates it into the language of the present and so makes it possible for us to find our way back to the deepest springs of life." - Carl Jung

From the Dada activities of World War I, Surrealism was formed. The cultural hub of the movement was Paris in the 1920s, but it's influence quickly spread around the globe. Poet and critic André Breton has long been considered the major spokesman for the Surrealism movement. In his 1924 work "The Surrealist Manifesto" Breton proclaimed that Surrealism was a means of reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely, that the world of dream and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world in "an absolute reality, a surreality."

Joan Miro , a Spanish artist is recognized as one of the most important of the Surrealists. He created fantasy worlds that lacked realism and challenged reason, as in" Hirondelle Amour", 1933-34, oil on canvas. Notice the elements of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur.

Another artist who painted in the surrealist style was the Belgian painter Rene' Magritte. Her paintings force the viewer to reconsider what is real and what is not, for example the "Les Promendades d' Euclide ", 1955, oil on canvas. The work seems to show a room with a painting mounted on an easel. A window just behind the easel displays a view of a city. Yet a longer look raises a question Is the object on the easel really a painting or the scene behind it? Why is the shape of the tower identical to that of the street? Magritte offers no answers to these questions but instead, leaves us to ponder a picture that makes as much sense as a dream. Surrealism created new styles and techniques that inspired artists to go beyond their dreams with new ideas, new creations and a new world.

Surrealist writers and artists wanted to drive out reason, they were looking for states in which what is deep down in our minds may come to surface. I love the strange confusion between dream and reality, I call this place home, it is freedom in its truest form. I believe in the reality of our dreams and yes Dali... you read my mind.

Glósóli: Glowing Sun

The rhythmatic, underwater beat of the drum makes me feel as if I am dreaming, searching and progressing toward an enlightened new day.

When the low notes empathize,
And the high notes inspire me,
Where the enigma enchants me,
The beats put forth motion,
Which my heart commands,
There lies a boundless existence,
That can exist without dimensions or words,
Within my mind.

Key To My Heart

When I was a little girl my grandmother had, what seemed to me, a thousand antique treasures. Their unique shapes and mysterious origins held my young imagination captivate for hours on end. By far my favorite of Grandma's wondrous trinkets was a small brass key that she had laid reverently upon the scarlet velvet interior of her Grandmother's Dutch jewelry box, painted white with blue windmills across its surface. Whenever I would ask her what this little key was made to unlock, and why it held such a reverent place, my grandmother would bend close to my ear and, in a hushed whisper, she would tell me
"That is the key to the world of the fairies."

The winter I turned nine my parents let me fly out to see my grandma. On the morning of my birthday I woke up to find only one small present laid out on her round wooden table, a little white box tied up with a pink bow. My excitement grew because grandma had a saying that the best things in life came in small packages. My delight turned to surprise as I opened the box and found the magic key that I had been admiring for so many years.

In vain I searched everywhere I could think of for the door that would lead me to the fairy land. I carried the key with me wherever I went and tried it against the locks of every door, cupboard and box I came across, but I never found it's home. As I grew older I came to believe that the world of fairies must be locked away inside of our hearts, and that my Grandmother's key was crafted to magically unlock mine.

Ever since then I have kept the key to my heart tucked safely away where I would never lose it. On days that life feels especially wondrous I take it out to admire it the same as I did when I was little. A reminder to myself of the magic that holds our universe together.