Chiaroscuro

 When learning the visual arts, you see that darker tones recede and the brighter tones advance towards the eye. Painters, photographers and designers use this basic reality to their creative advantage. Chiaroscuro (Italian word meaning....light dark) is an oil painting technique that uses strong tonal contrasts of light to dramatic effect.

I am mulling over the receding bliss of awakeness that recently engulfed me. To sit in the joyful being of awareness is what I have longed for. As an I, I learned, that this felt awakeness is absent while "I" am present. (There is too much bandwidth used maintaining the framework of a personal life.) When I serendipitously recedes into the darkness, the shining aliveness advances.....comes to the forefront. But I cannot make it happen, like a painter can deliberately load titanium white on a brush.

 
I struggle with this....used to thinking that I can do (more or less) as I please, assuming intended results would (more or less) manifest. (Throw another rocket of desire into your vortex, baby! Create your own reality!) "I" cannot awaken, yet the light of awareness is always present. Lapsing back into the mid ground of the painting...aware that the dance of light and dark is Mary V in this world....I feel lost. Intellectually I cannot grasp the paradox as much as I try. I think this lost-ness may be valuable in some way. I is hopeful like that.

What to do when the mind drapes its mantle back around your shoulders? Jac O'Keeffe advises that you put your attention in the back half of your head/body....activating the right brain holistic consciousness that you naturally have. When this technique comes to mind, I assume this relaxed mind position. There is a receptivity and backing away from mind chatter. I feel closer to the awake aliveness within the never-ending moment that was felt many weeks ago.

I am less afraid of the darkness these days and feel a growing kinship to emptiness; I see it everywhere in everything! As an artistic soul, the objective world has always been my focus. How does a materialist welcome dissolution? Glimpses of the utter unreality of the world have shocked me to the core. Void….can anyone be comfortable in the presence of this word? Annihilation…..even worse!

The master painters knew that light and darkness need each other to exist. The resulting drama is the known universe of life. But before that.......? The play of creation is held by what? May Grace reveal the un-revealable mystery.