Dissolving Into Being

                        “First, flashes of lightning

          From an unknown horizon, 

                    Then rays of light

                            Showing the path ahead,

               Finally, light all around,

                     The brilliance revealed

                             Only to those who

                                   Turn their senses within.”

                        -Al-Qushayri

       Through Women Inspirit I share aspects of my spiritual life with truths that resonate with me personally; Nature my greatest teacher; my love for the Divine Feminine; Women who have inspired me along the path; but mostly ‘my intuitive wisdom’ garnered from my own experiences, all of which has led to a deeper knowing of myself which is really our ultimate goal, to find and see our own divine light. 

     It has been a couple of months since I created a collage based on a Sufi pathway and I felt it calling to me. I have been deeply involved in beginning a new book and tightening up the first one yet again. I tend to immerse myself which results in other things going by the wayside temporarily. It was some years ago that I decided to ‘create my way’ through Neil Douglas- Klotz’s book “The Sufi Book of Life-99 Pathways to the Heart” by creating a collage for each path. I had been using the book as a tool in my daily spiritual practice for a couple of years when I had the inspiration that I may glean a deeper understanding of each path if I explored it through the expression of art. 

     I love the process and expression of collage; combing through magazines until an image strikes me and before you know it the piece starts to take shape. For this collage the colors were the starting point. The paper in the background with its muted lavender, purple, mauve and grey colors struck me as restful. I saw the colors reflected in the sky above Mono Lake from an old calendar and Mono Lake, one of my most favorite places in the US,  was a place on more than one occasion that I had profound experiences of connection.  It lies in the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains, a large salt water lake, a magical place. The scene is at sunset, a time when the light and color distort the view of land, water and sky, making it difficult to discern where one starts and the other begins. 

     In contemplating this pathway “Dissolving Chains” pathway 32,  which is about those moments in life when you enter into an expanded state of awareness and as a result your perception changes. You may have a sudden flash of clarity, an epiphany which as a result leads you to new understanding. It may also be one of those moments while in nature when you experience an overwhelming feeling of interconnectedness. Either experience is an opportunity to walk through a new door. A moment that suddenly lifts the tension and dissolves the knots that you have been holding within your physical, emotional, psychic or mental body, enabling you to relax into yourself. It frees you from who you think you are, an unlearning. And really isn’t it another step on the road to self realization? As  the author writes “something that passes away may be just as valuable as what remains.”

     I’ve had other dramatic epiphanies but the one that was most life changing came.during the most difficult time of my life, the day my mother died. The trigger is no longer relevant but it’s force shattered the illusions that I had built around myself for years. It was like watching as a mirror shattered and the jagged shards laid in piles at my feet. Within each shard a reflection of a fear or judgment which had kept me bound for years to a soul sucking job, to a false sense of security and identity and to playing it safe, something I had never done before. In that moment I knew there was no going back. For the first time in years I felt a tremendous weight lift from my shoulders (which I will add is where I held the tension and my shoulders gave me such physical pain back then!) no longer!

     In the foreground the muddy bank represents the grief, the hardships I had been stuck in, the mire that had blocked me. Yet there is even beauty here in the texture and pattern created by water, and mud draws out impurities. So again there is value to the experience. A doorway framing a part of the scene offers an alternative way, it beckons for me to pass through. Above the door it says “Abandon tension all ye who enter here.” The doorway foundation is made of brick and mortar, solid foundation. Above the mountains in the distance eyes look over the landscape, and reflect the light of a new clear vision. All is calm. Your eyes as well as your Being are uplifted just as the clouds in the sky above. Relax into Being.