Surrender To Beauty

        Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
                                                      --Rumi, poet

 

Morning meditation garden

Surrender      
     Every morning I get up, make a coffee, sit down, switch on my electric candle (symbolic, handy, economically sensible and besides I'm Aquarius rising), then deliberately surrender to beauty. Eyes right, a view beyond the small, lace curtained window appears and behold!     Chunky textures and shapes, a pink stone wall, cascading English ivy with deep green leafy variations, an endless expanse of golden sunrise.  Hello out there, you big old beautiful day!

Blue Wind, Tony Abeyta (tonyabeyta.com)

         Sun, lace, rocks, sky, plants? Oh please, I hear you say, this is nothing to get worked up about. No, no I insist, on the contrary, it's everything to get worked up about.  It is in this present moment that I am spoken to about beauty. I am breathing, I am safe, I am grateful and I am blessed. I know how to move into this optimistic and welcoming inner space because I've worked for it. Blood, sweat and tears kind of work (that, of course, is a whole other story and I've written about it elsewhere). Now, it's made easy for me, and I choose these words carefully and use the passive voice for a reason. I no longer try to force anything, an awareness and awakedness that comes in its own way, its own time. My part is to follow the blue winds, listen to the Saguaro cacti, speak to the gnarly old junipers, salute the soul stirring sunsets, marvel at the charming hummingbirds, and honor the magnetic red rocks turned into enchanted cairns living along well used hiking trails.

Hozho      

Surrender, Larry Yazzi

        Here in Arizona, I've become familiar with Hozho, a Navajo Beauty Way concept that means harmony, peace of mind, goodness, ideal family relationships, beauty in arts and crafts, and health of body and spirit. I am reminded of this when I see works like Navajo (Dine') sculptor Larry Yazzie's Surrender. He begins each new piece without knowing what it will turn out to be. He says the stone decides itself what it will be as the piece develops and that he feels like if you ever get to the place where you know what you're going to do then it's "just a job." turqtortsedona.com/Artists/yazzie_larry/index.htm

John Loring

         Maybe Hozho isn't everyone's idea of walking in beauty, but for those who understand the lure of nature and especially the charms of the desert, the mystery, harmony and call of the wild is magnetic and irresistible. Like John Loring, design director emeritus for New York City's world renowned jeweler Tiffany & Co. (www.tiffany.com) who grew up on a ranch in Cave Creek, Arizona. http://sagedillon.wordpress.com/writing-samples/silver-tea/) Now retired and in his seventies, he's said much of the inspiration for his design sensibilities came from the shapes, textures, smells, sounds and tastes of nature he'd experienced during his boyhood years. The above link is an interesting read about Loring's life.

Tiffany Flora & Fauna, edited by John Loring

Focus
            This focus on beauty takes patience and fortunately most of us past 50 have developed some by now. Courage too. I have the deepest admiration for people who fiercely and wholeheartedly devote their lives to the embrace and creation of beauty. The longer I live, the more I hunger for that because life is awash, just drowning in possibilities for walking the Beauty Way, for the sacred experience of Hozho, however you may find it or define it. I see not only the visual as a part of Beauty Way but also the intangible and spiritual: the wish for someone's well being, a sense of gratitude for comfort and safety, gladness for reconnecting with old friends, letting go of an old, tired, ugly thought. Purposely focusing on the present moment as a singular beauty in itself is a way to honor it for what it is now and for what it might become. Just as Larry Yazzi begins work on each new piece not knowing what it will turn out to be, so do I begin each day open to what it may become. I let the day itself decide  for me. My part is to wake up, pay attention and surrender to beauty. Life isn't a job, it's a work of art.

Your Hozho

1)    Describe a moment when you encountered something in nature so beautiful that it brought you close to tears with its near-perfection.  Don't forget the sensual details, sight, sound, taste, feel, smell.

2)    Create a short tribute for an inspirational person you admire (real person or fictional character) who first gave you a sense of beauty and awakened you to the possibility of being so present that life could be experienced on a higher, more creative and fulfilling plane of existence.

3)    Recall and write about a story (could be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, essay) that was so viscerally powerful that, after you’d finished reading it,  your life was changed forever in a positive way.

A Remarkable Meeting

Kituwah

A Remarkable Meeting

        Shortly after arriving in Sedona last year I joined the Sedona Visual Artists' Coalition, a vibrant and inclusive community of creative souls, nice folks, talented artists. The group's annual show in November featured a theme of "Who Am I?" and as you might imagine, there was great creativity and joie de vivre displayed by the artists whose interpretive artworks were shown. One in particular caught my eye and apparently a lot of other eyes too. The People's Choice Award went to  sculptor Tom Gebler for his bronze Kituwah, a Cherokee Native American. And though the sculpture itself is stunning, the really amazing story is why Gebler chose this piece to answer the question "Who Am I?"

 
A Timeless Tale
         I talked to Tom at the show and got the feeling I'd encountered a man on a mission, a sense reinforced when I heard the remarkable story of how this sculpture was created. The prize winning bronze represents Gebler's dogged determination to find the answer to a mystery that has haunted him for years. Tom's story is an inspiring tale of awakening, enlightenment and reparations, a story he describes as a journey to make peace with what he believes is a lost-and-found part of his own personal history as well as a quest to offer insights in to peacemaking among cultures. But the story that you're about to hear is probably not not what you may think.

Kituwah and sculptor Tom Gebler

The Story
          Tom says it all started when he was an art student back in 1981. Sitting in his dorm room one day minding his own business, he experienced an intense visual experience of a Native American man accompanied by a feeling of  visceral 'knowing.' He couldn't describe or explain what it was but the artist in him knew enough to quickly fashion a clay image of the bust of a young Cherokee man who Tom would one day know as Kituwah. Just before completing the piece, he had the compelling feeling that he could no longer work on it. He didn't know why but somehow it felt wrong to touch it. So he put it away and that was the end of it until 1993. He was working on a guided visualization with a healer which turned out to be an experience that provided further revelations for Tom and his relationship with the mysterious Indian he had encountered 12 years before. Tom describes it this way:
         "During that session she asked me to go to a place where I felt safe, I saw and described the apple orchard across the creek from my  (boyhood) cabin. Then she asked me where I felt powerful. In my mind I went from the apple orchard to the nearby rocky wash and described how it felt as I ascended the massive boulders. She then simply asked 'Who is there at the top?'  At that moment I saw the image of this Native American man and said the word 'Kituwah.'"  Tom recognized the image but again didn't follow up with any real intent to connect the dots. It was only when as a middle aged man in his mid-fifties, after he'd returned to live permanently in what had been his boyhood vacation cabin in Sedona's Oak Creek Canyon, that he felt a pull to revisit the other connections made all those years before. His story took a sharp twist when an event involving a potential life and death drama set him on the path he's now following. It turns out that the cliff above Oak Creek Canyon by his cabin  where he'd encountered Kituwah in his long ago guided visualization turned out to be the very same spot where he ended up initiating a rescue for a stranded hiker at serious risk. The grateful hiker later provided financial support for Tom to finish the original clay bust of Kituwah and to cast it in bronze. With the sculpture finished after languishing all those years, Tom began a serious investigation into who and what Kituwah might mean, for him and perhaps for others someday.

Site of Kituwah Mound near Bryson City, North Carolina

 A Sacred Site
        Through research Tom learned of a sacred site, the Kituwah Mound, nestled in the Smoky Mountains of Western North Carolina near a fork in the Tuckasegee river.  At one time the site held a structure which housed the sacred flame of the Cherokee,  kept burning at all times by a specially appointed leader who lived there. This flame was very much symbolic of the life of the Cherokee, and people from nearby villages routinely visited to light ceremonial fires with it. Today the site is seen as a reminder of unity amongst the Cherokee People. Ceremonies are being conducted at the mound, people are returning to pray and reconnect with their roots even as a debate rages about whether the site should be developed. Some say yes, while traditionalists say the site is off limits. The remainder of the mound is about nine miles from the Eastern Cherokee reservation, once as large as 36,000, now a population of around 12,000. The Kituwah site was almost  completely destroyed during the carnage wrought by Griffith Rutherford, a militia General who led an expedition against the Cherokee in 1776 at Kituwah Mound. The twist in this story is that Tom's personal ancestral lineage research uncovered the fact that he was related not to the Cherokee nation, but to General Rutherford himself. The knowledge that he was the eighth generation removed from the man who'd perpetrated a genocidal crime, shocked and bewildered him and made it even more difficult for him to let go of the story. What he chose to do was remarkable.

Lessons Learned

Cherokee Peace Flag

       Last year Tom bundled up a new casting of his sculpture and set off to meet with Cherokee leaders in North Carolina. He says he saw it as a way to offer what might be seen as reparations, apologies, amends. He presented his story along with his sculpture Kituwah to Cherokee leaders who politely accepted but told Tom that in Cherokee tradition "I'm sorry" was not the accepted protocol. Better to simply say "This is what happened and here is what I have learned." A rather humbling experience, one that's brought him full circle. What happens now, I asked Tom. He said he doesn't know, that he's not attached to whatever the outcome may be to the story of Kituwah, but he hopes his story will somehow bring inspiration to others learning to make peace.  

 Signs & Symbols
          Tom's travels with Kituwah reflect his growing belief that spiritual seekers have an expanded field of opportunities open to them if they can cultivate the detachment necessary for paying true attention to the signs, symbols, messages and wonders that are out there for everyone, available for discovery everywhere. "We simply have to learn to be open enough and clear enough and able to pay attention to and receive the lessons life brings, and then let go of any expectations around those lessons,' Tom says. "These are the two key things I've learned from this experience with Kituwah." Tom's put together a youtube video to help make sense of his journey...I think it's worth watching: (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx3gH1rl-Ak)            

    

Writing With Water

   

Everything on the earth bristled,
the bramble pricked and the green thread
nibbled away, the petal fell, falling
until the only flower was the falling itself. Water
 is another matter,
has no direction but its own bright grace,
runs through all imaginable colors,
takes limpid lessons from stone
 and in those functionings plays out the unrealized ambitions of the foam.                                                 --Pablo Neruda, Water

 

I enter the rainforest in Costa Rica....

         When we began traveling about five years ago I knew I would write about my travels and thought I might even make a book about my adventures at wisdom's edge. I asked myself some important questions: Do you think it's true that all serious writers and artists write and paint in order to make sense of things? Life? Death? The Mysteries?  Yes. Are writers and artists born knowing that inspiration can only come slowly and quietly in its own good time?  Probably. What part of this wide and beautiful world most reveals to me the answers to the mysteries and celebrates the wonders of life on earth? Water. And so I went in search of water in a rainforest in Costa Rica, on the North shore of Oahu, Hawaii, California's Pacific coast and at Sedona's Oak Creek. I went when I knew I was ready, after a very long period in the desert, when I was able to understand and appreciate what I found.

 

  Nature Beckons

Swan Lake at Buddhist Temple, Oahu

     On every journey the contemplation of nature, its shapes, textures, sounds, colors, sizes (qualities that make a work of art what it is) nudged me into connection with that inner place where an authentic creative voice has always resided. It took some courage to listen up because I was dimly aware of how it might turn out to be both a joy and a burden to tap into energies I thought were at worst non-existent or at best long gone. I drew inspiration from Anne Morrow Lindbergh's message in  Gift From the Sea: Honor the small still voice inside that urges us on to speak our truth, be it soft and sweet or passionate and bold. Her strong, clear voice is a testament to the power of retreat and return. She wrote her book over a period of time during visits to Sanibel Island and found that the water and imagery of shells spoke to her in a mysterious language that couldn't be transmitted any other way.

 

 Lankaster Gardens, Costa Rica

  Water Whispers

  

North Shore, Oahu

Water, the essential ingredient of every life form on earth, covers a huge percentage of the earth's surface and makes up seventy percent of the human body. This  element  symbolizes the feminine or lunar side of life, the side that calls attention to inner wisdom and healing. It makes sense to me that Lindbergh found her genius as a writer and power as a woman through communing with nature, conversing with the elements and surrendering to the sea. Her deliverance was through water, the reflective and luminescent substance often used as a means of divination, superb conductor of electricity that it is.  From an island off the coast of Florida this writer opened her heart, mind and hands to a big blue basin of salt water, and received messages brought to her by shells washed ashore from the bountiful, beautiful sea. What? You say you don’t think those shells were talking to her, whispering their secrets, spilling their stories?  But of course they were! Now whether or not what she heard spilling out of those shells came from the subconscious, the spirits or some other source entirely, well I don’t know and I couldn’t say. 

 

    

Self Realization Fellowship Meditation Garden
overlooking Pacific Ocean 

   

  Listen Inside

        What I do know is that as writers and artists we search for our own genius expressed as that still small voice and eye within. But often we feel the urge to resist listening to the messages all around us just waiting to point us inward. I say don’t do it, don't resist...be strong, open your heart and open your mind! Find yourself a patch of water, even if it’s only a tiny homemade pond of salt water poured into your best crystal bowl. Create an altar: Surround the bowl with a few shells and objects from nature. Surrender to the moment as you await your muse. Soon, in time and with a quiet, attentive, respectful repose, there will come the invitation to connect with the secrets that have the power to free your soul. And only then can you write the stories you hear and paint the pictures you see in the way they deserve to be created. 

 

Images Speak

 

5 Minutes. Find an image, take a photo or paint a picture. Then create a Spoken Image. Write about your image for five minutes  in a journal or diary using this image as focus. Keep it going, don’t edit, let it flow like water. 

Koi Pond at Buddhist Temple, Oahu

   

Take 2 minutes to review what you’ve just written, then single out a particular word, phrase or sentence that has special feeling or energy about it. Just one word or sentence that grabs you. Write it out on a page by itself.  For instance, I wrote about the photo above: "Orange. That color makes me feel so alive!"

"A room with a view in Escazu"
 Costa Rica

Take 10 minutes to write a page about the above. 
Write everything you know about what you chose to focus on from your image. Use any genre you like – memoir, poem, song, short story, novel, reportage. Begin to move deep, not wide, with a singleness of eye and pure intention. Move toward your one true voice by concentrating your  attention on this limited, clearly defined area as thought and energy converges into a single point of focus. 

For instance: 
"Orange. That color makes me feel so alive! I know they call those Koi large goldfish but they look orange to me. When I was a teenager I found an orange patterned shirt and capri pants outfit that made me feel like a million bucks every time I wore it. The pattern looked a lot like those swimming Koi fish. I don't know, maybe it's the call of the

wild or the activation of my second chakra (is that the same thing?) but sometimes, just to get  my orange on, I'll go to the grocery and buy a big fat O from the citrus section. I like looking at it and the juice so sweet and good, gives me solace and inspiration. The inside radials (I must remember to count,is it always the same number?) remind me of the happy rays of the sun. I think of days fat with promise and fun when I see an orange....I think next time I get one I'll cut the rind in to Koi shapes and swirl them in water, like tea leaves. Who knows what message I'll receive?") 

               

Sedona Hilton Hotel pool

A Spoken Image

Share.  Show and tell your intended audience (this can be an entirely fabricated individual or group…or a pet or the creek, the trees, a bird or some other special and beloved element in nature you feel communion with) which image and word/phrase/sentence you chose and why and then read aloud what you’ve written. If you have an actual, active listening partner, so much the better, although they will remain silent with no critique   required. The receiver of your message is there only to bear witness to your arrival at wisdom’s edge.

Oak Creek in Sedona

    

 

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