The Memory of Stones 4

When I came back from the retreat, I painted a serie of 16 images – about what I felt in the tunnel, and generally at the retreat. The 16 paintings jumped onto paper one right after the other for 16 days!

Have you ever seen the prehistoric paintings of Lascaux or Altamira ? That is how I felt.

As I paint I am aware of doing a shamanic act, I feel so close to those unknown painters in the caves. I have been to the northern part of  Spain a month back (Asturias, Cantábria) and by chance Mika and I arrived to Altamira. At the neo-cave (a reproduction of the real cave), right at its entrance, there is the “place of the Artist”, where you can see some tools,  powders and charcoal. Again, I was moved to tears to feel the fellowship over Time, the great Chain of Life (The Fellowship of the Sacred Stones?), the sacredness of Art, of the artist being a bridge between worlds.

That was the exact feeling while I was painting my serie of 16. (Actually,  I did them for my Psychosynthesis Diploma Course, as a post-graduation exercise).

 

The Ficticious Journal

(Back cover, the proof!…, SG 08)

I love journals.They are like emotional treasure chests.

I mean, I love other people´s journals. I´m in awe of other people´s journals.

I tend to start my own by the front cover and at a crashing pace, but then not see the job through to the back cover! Also I don´t like recounting my experiences (which is a bit of a paradox for a journal writer, isn´t it?) – basta with living things once, re-telling it all, in details, bores me to tears…! Blogging is different, but, as you know by now, I prefer my entries short and nicely rounded, preferably with a nice image of my own creating ( they say that an image is worth a thousand words, haha).

OK – so I wanted to have at least one finished journal, and I did it, hooray!

Except. Mmm…It´s called The Ficticious Journal. I scribbled the text. It was wonderful! Like going…blah-blah-blah…The squiggles don´t mean a thing, but the journal is extremely satisfactory. Maybe I should restrict myself to visual art journals? Forget about diaries?…

It´s damn cold at the Sanctuary, but we have a nice pile of wood inside the house. Enough for a few nice evenings around the fire. When it´s that cold (we´re still without a central heating system, English castle- like!)I go into hibernation, especially when it rains, I hide in my bed with a woolen poncho, woolen socks , woolen-everything except…errr…well, you know.

About Leadership

(Image : Evolution, soul card 79, SG, 1998)

Just so that there should be no mistake about my ideas on Leadership among the thousands that are reading this blog out there, *smiley*, I will define them through two excerpts of a wonderful book that I just read, Synchronicity, The Inner Path of Leadership, by Joseph Jaworsky, Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc., 1996.

“Leadership is all about the release of human possibilities. One of the central requirements for good leadership is the capacity to inspire the people in the group : to move them and encourage them and pull them into the activity, and to help them get centered and focused and operating at peak capacity. A key element of this capacity to inspire is communicating to people that you believe they matter, that you know they have something important to give. The confidence you have in others will to some degree determine the confidence they have in themselves. John Gardner put it succinctly :

If one is leading, teaching, dealing with young people or engaged in any other activity that involves influencing, directing, guiding ,helping or nurturing, the whole tone of the relationship is conditioned by one´s faith in human possibilities. That is the generative element, the source of the current that gives life to the relationship.

Just being able to be there for others and to listen to them is one of the most important capacities a leader can have. It calls forth the best of people by allowing them to express what is within them. If someone listens to me say what I am feeling, then my feelings are given substance and direction, and I can act.” (page 66)

And the second :

“The conventional view of leadership emphasizes positional power and conspicuous accomplishment. But true leadership is about creating a domain in which we continually learn and become more capable of participating in our unfolding future. A true leader sets the stage on which predictable miracles, synchronistic in nature, can – and do – occur. The capacity to participate in our unfolding future has more to do with our being – our total orientation of character and consciousness – than with what we do. Leadership is about creating, day by day, a domain in which we and those around us continually deepen our understanding of reality and are able to participate in shaping the future. This, then, is the deeper territory of leadership – collectively “listening” to what is wanting to emerge in the world, and then having the courage to do what is required.” (page 182)

That´s exactly it. The leader should be the servant of the common good of a particular team, looking out that the whole group, one by one, is pulling through in whatever project is collectively undertaken. Ken Wilber would say that the leader is aligned to the “transpersonal”; the good leader is one who understands the deeper connections in reality, and thus promotes coherence and evolution for every one in the team, including, of course, him/herself.

“Where there is no vision, the people perish.”

 

 

The World Teacher and Yours Truly

(A true story)

Hello, young one. Do you want to hear a nice story about my younger days ? Yes?
OK. Then sit down by the fire, while I get you some thyme-and-sage tea with a good dollop of honey…
Here goes my story…
Once upon a time, when I was young…

…I was a follower of Krishnamurti. I was in my twenties then, with a rainbow heart, and a good brain. Every summer for six years I put up my tent in the camping place in the Swiss town of Saanen, to listen to one of the greatest teachers of all times : Krishnamurti.
We hippies always sat on the ground, with our coloured clothes and flowing hair (yes, guys too).
We sat at his feet, you understand, not on benches, not on chairs, we sat on the ground, because we were HIS children, and we knew that. He was a teacher for us, the young ones, the hippies, the flower-children. And we wanted to be as close as we only could to him. We knew, even then, that he was talking to us. For a time that was still to come, perhaps.
What I really want to tell you is the story of how he looked at me, once, and my life was changed forever.

You see, I had had the chance (…but is there “chance” in this universe??) to meet an intimate friend of his, in Geneva, my home town in Switzerland. Silviji, a dear old Romanian grandpa, was 85 when I met him. I don´t know exactly what he saw in me, it was a very unlikely friendship. Me with my blond tresses and my Afghan skirts, and he, already bent with old age. I think he felt his life ending, and needed to transmit his experience of having been close to Krishnaji and he chose me, perhaps because I was at that time, exceptionally open to Spirit.
We went for long walks in the countryside of my beloved Geneva, and he recounted to me all the details of Krishnaji´s early days, when Krishnaji started to talk about his enlightenment, and about The Beloved. About the Gatherings in Holland, and the Order of the Star.
Anyway, I read all the books, and that is how I came to be at Saanen, during six summers, with my little tent and my cooking gear, at the camping place, where  people gathered from all over the world every rainy month of July in the Swiss mountains.

So – that year – that fateful year, Krishnaji had ranted again against his “disciples” (he didn´t want “disciples”!), who all had their respective seats with their names on it, if you please! – in the front row of the audience. I remember, that last year I decided to not sit on the floor with the other “flower-children”.
I sat on the side, at the entrance of the giant tent where the “gatherings” took place. As I said, Krishnaji, old and bent – but with what dignity, ranting again…”You see, you would not be here if you were not neurotic. Go out, there, the world is aflame, bring a little water if you can.”
… Wow. That sounded really hard. I looked at the “disciples”, at their Hollywood star chairs…and I was so sad for this old man, this giant spirit, this oh so gentle soul – who, year after year, told them the same :”Dear Sirs… If you understand what I´m saying, you will not come back here, you will be in the WORLD doing what you can for the world”.
” See, just once, what I am talking about, and you will follow your own heart, not my words, not me!”
Anyway, – that year I decided not to sit with the hippies. I guess I wanted to grow up.
That year, Krishnamurti had to sit on his hands (he had Parkinson), and my heart almost broke to feel this great life offering itself to us, and the seeming callousness of the star disciples. I was so young then, you know, I couldn´t understand, then, what hard work it really is to stand up on your own and go out into the world.
After the talk he came down the stairs of the wooden platform where his chair was placed, and, to get out of the tent, came walking into my direction.
This time, I don´t know why, I had a good look at him, up close and personal. I was boiling inside, I guess what I wanted to scream out was “I listened, I REALLY listened!You are not alone!I listened! I know what you are talking about!”

For forty years he had told the same thing over and over again, “Bring water to the world, share your UNDERSTANDING of what I´m trying to say, this is what ¡s important, not my words, not ME – for pity´s sake!”
He passed me by, and for the fraction of a second, for the fraction of an entire eternity, he looked straight into my eyes.
Went out of the tent.
I cried for two solid hours. I couldn´t stop. It was as if I had been struck by lightning.

In his eyes I saw… Love, of such a magnitude…The very Love of God for His Creation, a vast compassion, – you understand ? A love for Humanity…

A love for us… A Love “among” us. Something absolutely out of the world that I knew at the time, yet “in” this world, “of” this world, like the beauty of the mountains and the song of the rivers.
From then on, I never went back to the camping place. And yes,  I went out into the world, I made my way in the world, trying to be a fountain, trying to still “the fire that the world is”, as Krishnaji had said. Where I could, when I could, remembering his Love.

I never saw him again in the flesh, and yet, even today, sitting at my computer looking over the Earth Sanctuary,  35 years later, I remember him, and I cry. The impact of his Love, the transmission of…what ? I don´t know. It has no name. No form. The energy that impacted me, that pushed me on, out of Saanen, out of books, out of mere intentions, GET OUT! DO SOMETHING FOR THE WORLD! DON´T COME BACK!
I understood. Dimly, at that time, I think.

I was twenty-four.

And my Path, from then on, has not stopped until I came to this valley, in Northern Spain, where I finally got the message of those eyes, where I finally understood what my mission really is, – what I have to do, where and how I am needed.

He died one year before I came to Spain, one year before the battle for the Earth Sanctuary started during the Harmonic Convergence, when 16 million people met, in sacred places all over the world, to declare TOGETHER that they wanted “a new heaven and a new earth”.

 

May the Kingdom come, the Kingdom that is (as Thomas the Apocryph said) “inside you and also around you”…

Yup. Those were the days…
Finish your tea now, and let´s go get some brambles out of the way!

 

 

 

 

 

Archaic? Who? Me?

(Image: Memories of Gavrinis, 2005, collage on paper) 

In one of the marathon workshops I am leading here in Spain, a lady once told me, in a down-her-nose sort of classy way : “What an archaic body you have!”
Besides being slightly miffed by her remark, – Gee lady, what´s on your mind ? Are you saying that I look old ? – I was quite intrigued by it, and later Googled the definition of “archaic”, just to be sure I had understood.
Lots of fascinating stuff came up. Like …”Archaic” (definition —>): Of, relating to, or characteristic of a much earlier, often more primitive period, especially one that develops into a classical stage of civilization: an archaic bronze statuette; Archaic Greece.
No longer current or applicable; antiquated: archaic laws. See Synonyms at “old”.
Of, relating to, or characteristic of words and language that were once in regular use but are now relatively rare and suggestive of an earlier style or period.
[Greek arkhaikos, old-fashioned, from arkhaios, ancient, from arkhein, to begin.]Ah so. Indeed ? I deciphered then that she meant that I wasn´t a modern scare-crow Picasso type – that being…err…round-shaped (with feminine curves, that is!) is considered by certain classy people as “no longer current or applicable, antiquated”, which miffed me even more!
Mmm… *Shakti, looking like she is going to spew some fire-bolt*
So the next time I saw her (she was a regular of my workshops) I asked her what would be the contrary for her of the word she had used, in the context that she had used it. She looked at me again (down her nose!), and said”Why, contemporary, of course!”
Which sent me right back to Google! (Bear with me, this is fun!)

Contemporary (definition —->):
adjective 1 living, occurring, or originating at the same time. 2 belonging to or occurring in the present, EXISTING NOW (emphasis mine). 3 modern in style or design (contemporary art, contemporary litterature)
• noun (pl. contemporaries) 1 a person or thing existing at the same time as another. 2 a person of roughly the same age as another.
Mmmm…(again) *more fire-bolts coming*

So I went right back to the group that day, asked for the Talking Stick, and said…
Lady, first of all, I don´t “have” a body, I AM my body, which cannot be “archaic”, it is contemporary, because it exists with me HERE AND NOW, since it is the temple of my immortal soul right here under your classy nose. Second – since we are roughly the same age, we actually are contemporaries. Your body, dear lady, is as “archaic” as mine, or, alternatively, as “contemporary” as mine! Which is it ?…
Then we all had a good laugh…and Pass the Cookies, if you please.

It took all my group leader´s inner discipline not to say out loud what really came to my mind. You see, the funniest thing of all is that the lady in question has a wooden leg.
And what I really wanted to answer her, when she made her original remark, was…
Oh ? Really ? And what is YOUR style, pray? Pirate-of-the-Caribbean? …  (*giggle*)

A bit late…but…done! (One less unfinished business to deal with.)