“Ascent”
It isn’t just a matter of contrast like black and white across the landscape but the awareness that the air tastes different in the valley than it does on the top of a mountain and to stand there and feel the wind press against skin and sing and aspire to absorb this taste and awareness and return to the valley below of humans and family and share this knowingness because there’s the old timeline phrase that it has to be exotic to be real because we can’t make sense out of daily transitions in the same way that people really never change their lives until something traumatic comes along and shakes them up for a bit and makes them realize that life is slipping away with each passing or as the old blues line goes “you don’t miss the water until the well runs dry” like there’s nothing to miss as long as there’s water there to be had and it feels like its some sort of entitlement instead of a blessing so when it all goes away and suddenly life is valued in the losing instead of in the having is when it all turns around and there we are at the summit and having traversed the ascent past fear and debilitating ego constraints out of a desire to transcend the mundane but we can’t talk about it that way because the whole challenge of spiritual advancement is to eliminate desires and expectations from the mind and that’s where it all falls apart just like saying that we have to let go of ego in order to attain spiritual bliss but that isn’t true as we are animals and in being human animals the ego is tied into the drive to survive so when someone starts talking to me about becoming “ego-less” I know that what they’re trying to say is that one should have less ego and the ego that needs to be trimmed back is the part that is selfish and directed towards attaining selfish desires and attempting to get others to meet selfish expectations but that isn’t stated as such and it makes me shudder because it needs to be in there or it sounds like I need to stop having an ego (ie. the will to survive) and I look over my shoulder to see what is gaining on me in that moment because that’s what that school of thought makes me think in the perverted manner with which someone will take a little smattering of spirituality and turn it into a way to control and manipulate others which is the total opposite of what we are supposed to be learning and teaching each other but that is part of their need to feel spiritually superior to others in that spiritual ego function that is a very dangerous place to arrive at so I stand at the summit and sing and shout my liberation but then I have to return to the valley below and walk amongst others in this world but not “of this world” as it was related once in some other language in some other land long ago but that doesn’t matter now because I am just another person amongst people and that’s who we all are no matter what but my voice doesn’t count in the mix of exotic words from exotic lands as a prophet is never appreciated in his own land but that’s not my curse or cross to bear so I keep working with what I have to work with knowing that even with a small piece of paper and a dime’s worth of ink I can illustrate the journey and path from here to the ascent where one is free of selfish desire and expectations while continuing to embrace the “self-less” desire to help others because there are no limitations beyond this physical world which allows us to transcend these limitations through non-physical experiences that come through spiritual discipline wherein the challenge arises to show the invisible unseen realm like an artist trying to do a painting of a windy landscape such that there is no recourse but to show the effects of the wind on the physically visible world and these marks these marks how they fall into the cracks and crevices of the very grain of the paper and hide in the shadows as I attempt to show the whiteness of the snow blowing off the distant ridgeline with black ink marks from a brush and there over there at nine o’clock half way from center to the left hand side of the drawing are four pilgrims starting the ascent up the side of some nearby peak while down there in the valley below amongst the fields pools of water and fields lie the markings of self-imposed boundaries that reinvest the human mind into limitations filled with fear lust jealousy greed desire but we did all that already and we did that already as we taste the air at the summit and wonder at some point in the future as others stand and marvel at the unknown world that they can only dream of because of that familiar process of clinging to the mundane like it defines their identity the same way fractures in a diamond make it real but in the end we are still human and perfection isn’t a physical aspiration anyway but no one talks about it in the manner of simple style so we can all understand it so it gets lost in the exotic and I’m still standing here wondering if I should point to that point and say in a quiet voice so all can appreciate but then I know it isn’t appropriate so my voice remains silent even if I have been there because they don’t want to know because they don’t want to know that they could actually achieve this also but they don’t want to do what they would have to do in order to follow the Path and discard the comforts of pain because it makes them “real” in the illusion of selfish victim reality
“Ascent”
Ink
3.5 x 5 inches
January 3, 2012
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| (closeup) snow blowing over ridgeline at top right |
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| (closeup) boundaries in valley |
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| (closeup) four pilgrams |
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