Mandala of Loss 4

Waves

The confusion that accompanies loss is for me the inability to understand what happened to that life force and spirit. Going to the beach alone was something I needed to face before the year was out since my nervousness about going there now could grow into something bigger if I waited until next spring. Being with the ocean at sunrise is the most healing thing I’ve ever done. It gave me dynamic imagery to reflect on the metaphor that I am the water not the wave. Every wave seems briefly to be an individual before returning to the ocean. The water didn’t really go anywhere just dipped back under the surface. When I think of consciousness as being a continuous field with a multitude of portals, the image of ocean and waves is useful. The same water is still there, part of the whole and can emerge in other waves. Ram Dass suggests that life force and consciousness have been evolving for all time. To praise the ancestors is to praise the developing humanity that emerged in us. In Thich Nhat Hanh’s translation of the Heart Sutra his commentary describes how the interdependence of everything in the universe shows there is no separate self. We are all interbeing. He creates mental images that describe how much everything depends on everything else. What’s invisible is part of what’s happening. Not the tall grass waving, but the wind moving the tall grass in the sunshine on a blue sky. Focusing on things leaves out relationships. The meaning of anything shifts with the circumstance. These images help me think of Michael as everywhere, not gone. His wave has risen and crashed but the essence that made the wave and is part of everything remains and was there all along. I like the term cosmic reality because I see it as the fusion of spiritual and quantum reality. Where it’s all waves, the metaphors of quantum physics offer an outstanding lens to think of relationships beyond the visible. Quantum entanglement offers connection across distances, what’s connected stays connected so I like to think that in the unmanifest level of reality we are still interconnected there. Finding the right image feels like understanding. One of the foremost philosophers of art, Susanne Langer said it simply. “Art looks like feelings feel.” I’ve always used my work as a mirror to my emotional weather. With the heavy weather I’ve been experiencing over most of the past year, my images also provide a structure for my thoughts to better see the whole of what ‘s happening to me. Finding images that resonate does the same thing. It starts with the feeling and feelings will stimulate relevant associations. Visual art depends on relationships and tunes our sense of the meaning in wholes. In a time when some would drown us in labels and separateness, pictures tell a larger truth and reinforce our ability to see the truth of the whole ourselves.