David J. Bookbinder: January 2008 Archives

Illustration from William Blake's The Book of Job, "When the morning stars sang together..."

This is a call, to you from me, for art (in the broadest sense of the term -- visual, literary, popular, 3-D, multimedia, musical, performing, etc.) that has strongly affected you in a healing, transformative, or spiritual way.

By way of example, I offer the image above, from the British Romantic poet William Blake's The Book of Job. This book, as well as Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Songs of Innocence and Experience, and some of his longer works, powerfully affected me when I was 18. Blake's influence was, I think, the very beginning of a spiritual and artistic journey I've been on ever since that time.

This particular image depicts Blake's vison of the fourfold human nature: Job and his family enclosed by clouds (the body), the Moon goddess Diana (the heart), the Sun god Apollo (the intellect), and above the clouds a choir of angels (the Divine Imagination). Body, heart, intellect, imagination.

At 18, I was a young engineering student at Cornell University. It was the autumn of 1969, an autumn of rock and roll, flower children, and, as well, of major protests against the Vietnam War. It was, for me, the beginning of my own fourfold exploration of what it truly means to be alive, and Blake played a big part in that exploration, pointing out for the first time that there was more to life, and to me, than science and reason. Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell became a handbook of how to live differently, and his Book of Job a allegorical map for the arc of the life I believed I was to live, one in which my faith in my path would continuously be challenged, my losses would be great, and my eventual spiritual and artistic gains even greater.

Send me images, links, and personal descriptions of works of art that have affected you. You can add them directly to the discussion thread noted below or you can e-mail them to me and I'll add them to the thread. Eventually, I'll either post them on the Flower Mandalas blog or link to a web page I'll create of art works that have affected this community, along with your descriptions of how these works of art have affected each of you.

Thanks! I'm looking forward to seeing what's out there, and inside you.

More anon,
- David
David J. Bookbinder, LMHC

Discussion:
Call for Healing/Transformative/Spiritual Art discussion thread
Art, Healing, and Transformation group
Flower Mandalas Project group

© 2008, David J. Bookbinder

Bud

Howard Gardner describes the early years of our childhoods as the Golden Age of Creativity. He observes that a five to seven year old child "sings while drawing, dances while singing, tells stories while playing." Some of us maintain this creative mode throughout our lifetimes, others discover it anew later in life, and still others have lost track of it but yearn for something missing. Much of what I do as a therapist and coach is aimed at helping people cultivate that creative mode, both in their overtly creative activities (making art of some kind) and in their envisioning and enacting their own lives. Quite often, the two go hand in hand, as rekindling the creative fire in us unleashes powerful, life-affirming energies. "Be bold," Goethe once said, "and powerful forces will come to your aid."

We are all artists at heart, whether we practice some form of expressive art form or hold our creativity in our dreams. The Cultivating Your Creative Self workshops I do use a deceptively simple set of techniques to help you imagine how you'd like your creative life to be, and then uses the power of the group to help you get there. Whether you are a practicing artist who senses you could do more with the work itself or with your artistic career, or someone who feels a creative itch you can't quite scratch, or a hobbyist who wants art to take a more prominent place in your life, working through the process can help you envision what you'd like to be doing differently and get you moving in the right direction.

Here is one of those techniques.

Liked, Like, Might Like
One place to begin, if you have a sense that you'd like to be doing something that feels creative, is to make three lists:
- Everything you have ever Liked to do
- Everything you Like to do now
- Everything you Might Like to do

Spend some time with these concepts. Allocate some time each day, for three days in a row, to ponder and to jot down what occurs to you. Here are some prompts.

Liked to Do list:
Make the list as complete as you can. Let it include any work you've done, any hobbies, any recreational activities. Let it take in the various qualities of your interactions with friends, colleagues, family, strangers. Most important, let it call up your memories of childhood play: what was the most fun you had, both with others and when by yourself. Be detailed.

Like to Do list
Again, aim for completeness. Look at everything you do, and note the things that bring you pleasure, joy, excitement, or that simply occupy your positive attention.

Might Like to Do list:
Be outrageous. Let money, time, space, and perceived talent be no object. This is a place to daydream, to take imaginary chances (and chances in your imagination). Don't leave anything out!

Once you have your lists, sift through them in your mind. It will help to share them with at least one other person and notice, as you talk about the items on the list, which ones make your heart give a little start, or your inner artist a flicker of recognition. You are on a mission, and these starts and flickers are the trail markers.

After you've identified the items on your lists that create those starts and flickers, think about what they have in common. Some, though probably not all, will fit relatively neatly into broad categories. For example, I used this exercise to help me figure out that psychotherapy and photography were where, if I were to focus on them, I would find my joy. Most of the items on my lists had something to do with seeing (literally or metaphorically) and helping others. Although it was a while before I translated these themes into becoming a therapist and to really embracing photography, this filtering process was a vital component in my own path to creative self-actualization.

An Offer You Can't Refuse
I'm happy to work with anyone who cares to, in the Art, Healing, and Transformation group, to sift through your lists and to see what emerges. Then we can take the next step on this adventure into cultivating your creative self.

Be bold!

More anon,
- David
David J. Bookbinder, LMHC

Discussion:
Cultivating Your Creative Self #1
Art, Healing, and Transformation group
Flower Mandalas Project group

© 2008, David J. Bookbinder

Pink Fall Rose I

Rose Wearing Ragged

Rose
wearing ragged
round the edges, your petals
dingy, brown
mottled and pocked,
do not grieve your lost
beauty and perfection
for truly your sullied shell
your outer ring of decay
and death is soon to be
whirled away by the wind and
wrenched to the ground by the rain.

Unblemished
again
fresh petals
uncurling from
your coiled heart
you will proudly preen,
graciously accept tribute --
renewed in radiance
restored
wholly beautiful
at perfect peace.

As blood flows
from the womb and
tears from the eyes
as the snake sheds
its skin and the
soul its disguise
so all that is
unneeded and outgrown dies;
so all excess
of feeling
of love
of pain
is gathered up
and released
again and again.

by Cynthia Kiteley Lee

About the Author
Cynthia Lee is director of the Mystical Order of the White Rose, an emerging multi-faith cyber-community for people interested in or actively involved with traditional and/or post-modern, new expressions of mysticism, monasticism and contemplative living. Daily Devotionals and profiles of artists and activists are published every two weeks. To request a sample issue of the free newsletter or to contact Lee, send an email to mysticalwhiterose@gmail.com

Contact information:
website: Mystical Order of the White Rose
snail mail: P.O. Box 774, Siloam Springs, AR 72761
phone: 479-228-2716 (CST)

Discussion:
Pink Fall Rose I and Cynthia Lee's poem
Art, Healing, and Transformation group
Flower Mandalas Project group

"Rose Wearing Ragged" copyright 2008 - All Rights Reserved
"Pink Fall Rose I" copyright 2008 - All Rights Reserved

White Lily III

A year ago, an online magazine called Science Creative Quarterly, physically located at the University of British Columbia, ran a contest using 12 of my flower mandala images, one for each month of the new year. Readers were instructed to create something in response to one or more of them. The response the judges determined to be of the greatest interest would receive a prize.

We expected poems, brief essays, and other pieces of writing, and that's what we got -- except for the contest winner, James M. Johnson, who composed this musical accompaniment. I present it here with his permission.

Click here to listen to or download James M. Johnson's "White Lily III"
(NOTE: This may take a few minutes -- it's a 10MB file)

Here's what James had to say about the way he went about composing his piece:

I based this composition upon a tonal row consisting of six diatonic notes, using familiar serial composition techniques which allow only strict variations of the tone row (direct, retrograde, inversion, and retrograde inversion). The composition was originally scored as a twelve-bar, twelve voice sketch in the Finale program, then exported via MIDI to Reason 2.5, where the various rowforms were cut, pasted and fed to synthesizers for arrangement and manipulation. The only instrumental exception to this scheme is that I allowed myself the luxury of importing a finger cymbal sample, in order to provide rhythmic propulsion at specific times. The finger cymbals felt idiomatically appropriate for the piece.

In addition to the strict melodic rules, I imposed a strict hierarchy of rhythmic subdivisions as well. The row is represented in sixteenth, eighth, quarter, half and whole note phrases. Again, I allowed for one luxury, in the form of a melody which, based on the tone row, asserts rhythmic freedom. For me, the hierarchy of the repetitive subdivisions reflects the fractal nature and symmetry of the image of the white lily. During the arranging and mixing of the work, I allowed the animated sixteenth-note parts to emerge and submerge, much the way one's eye tends to roam across the symmetry of the flower, focusing briefly on one pattern, then the next, then attempting to encompass the form as a whole.

I would like to add that it has been a joyful experience for me to create this piece.

James M. Johnson

Since this contest, James and I have talked about collaborating on a mixed-media presentation (which is likely to debut in this space). I'm looking forward to it. Much art-making is a solitary activity, it need not be. Collaboration, at least in my experience, has been perhaps the most rewarding form of art-making I've engaged in. Whether done in person or at a distance, it can produce work in which the whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts.

How many of you out in cyberspace have had the rich experience of collaborating on some form of creative work? How have you found it to be different than working alone? Share your experiences of collaboration in the discussion group post referenced below.

More anon,
David

Discussion:
White Lily III, the Diatonic Scale, and Artistic Collaboration
Art, Healing, and Transformation group
Flower Mandalas Project group

White Lily III image © 2007, David J. Bookbinder
White Lily III musical composition © 2007, James M. Johnson

The following is another in a series of guest articles by artists on their work with art in a healing or transformative context.

Lightship

Marjorie Kaye is an artist residing in Cambridge, Massachusetts who graduated from Syracuse University in 1979 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting cum laude. She is also the owner and operator of the on-line Caladan Gallery, which exhibits artists from around the world, as well as the director of Gallery 181 in Lawrence, MA, a contemporary, alternative space. Her work is influenced by nature, geometry, music, and the artwork of many ancient cultures. Her pieces, while they stem from the symmetrical perfection of the traditional mandala, diverge considerably from that form. They are injected with a subtle shift of content and direction that throws them off-center in their own revolution.

Marjorie says she feels the opportunity for spiritual manifestation through art is limitless. “Art is life celebrated in matter.”

Marjorie's work also has been influenced by and includes images she has called “Social Surrealism,” in which she attends to the “little sticks in our pathways -- and sometimes the boulders!”

Marjorie has exhibited her work in many exhibitions both nationally and locally. Here, Marjorie speaks about the relationship between sacred geometry and mandalas, as well as her own discoveries in working with the mandala form.

Night Moon

Sacred Geometry and the Mandala

Mandalas are the formations and organizations of Sacred Geometry.

Sacred Geometry has been utilized by humanity since thought became structured and used as a tool for survival. The ancients assigned importance to simple shapes, as well as their more complex factors, as this is what faced them upon opening the eyes at dawn. Without the clutter and complexity of our combinations of energies, i.e. TV, Electronics, Weather Prediction, this is what surrounded the first of humanity. Even what we perceive as common and ordinary, such as paper goods, plastic containers, microwavable meals, clutter our perception of the basic energies of life. Not so for our remote ancestors. What else existed for them but the morning call of the birds (awaken); the running of the water (drink); the wind rustling in the trees (pleasure); the roar of a lion (danger); the sparkling of the stars at night (wonder)?

We start with a circle, the universal life force. Present in nature, giver of life, the circle is the most fundamental of geometrical shapes. It is the organic, breathing entity that is also symbolic of the womb, the sun, and the ever-lasting. We come to the square. Elemental and opposite forces uniting to create structure. The microcosmic balance made crystalline. The manifestation of life. The triangle is movement. It is the flow outward, represented in growth and communication. It is reflected in the reaching of the leaf towards the sun, an arrow towards the sky, and also embedded in the consciousness as the outflowing of ideas. These are the three basic elemental geometrical shapes utilized in the mandala to create and portray the meditative energies and power within the image.

Most mandalas are a combination of these three energies. Each mandala is a snapshot in time. There are as many combinations of geometrical pattern as there are breaths taken by all of us, or moments in time. The mandala represents the beauty and complexity of the universe around us. If we were to layer mandala over mandala, eventually the patterns would combine, merge to form One – pure energy and light. We are all mandalas, countless in the Universe.

The mandala form, as with all art, comes from inspiration. The mandala form came to me about 15 years ago. I have been an artist for as long as I have been alive, but I had never investigated mandalas until they literally popped into my consciousness! I had been doing many abstract paintings and drawings at the time, when I felt the urge to work in this certain way stop abruptly. I started making very small pen and ink drawings which were radiating from the center. At this time, my mandalas were much more symmetrical than they are now! I can’t tell you what it was that inspired the mandala form at this time. It is something mysterious in the heart of me that awakened. I do know that as my spiritual practice and consciousness became more refined, the mandala appeared in my work. My spiritual practice is Zen Buddhism. As the world appeared in more clarity to me, this clarity was reflected in the mandala.

When I sit down to begin a mandala, I start with a simple gray-colored pencil (with an eraser!). I let the shapes and forms come to me. I feel as if I am a receptacle for creative energy. I let go of any interrupting thoughts about what is right and what is wrong and let the energy flow through me to create the underlying geometrical diagram. As a graduate of Syracuse University’s Bachelor of Fine Arts program in Painting, I have been made aware of certain thought patterns that come naturally from being taught. It is a wonderful thing, as it creates a vehicle for one’s self-expression! However, these formulas of art-making can linger in the mind’s eye and actually get in the way of the spiritual energy trying to come forth from one’s inner heart It is important, when making art, to allow the truth of it to come to the surface. The mechanics of making the work becomes automatic after a while.

I then use sequences of color, tint, and hue to bring energy and direction to the underlying shapes. The addition of color to the mandalas brings to mind, for me, the blossoming of a mathematical truth, or listening to a Bach cantata. There is an order to it that I discover as I apply the sequential color to it. I feel that by allowing the spiritual energy through to the surface in the mandala in this way, the color is always right. If I were to use other colors, it would simply be a different mandala! When the color is applied, the finishing touch of shading each individual shape is done. This is truly a spiritual practice! It is an exercise in patience! The works take many months to do. They are always a meditative experience, guiding me deep within my inner being.

Eye of Dune

When considering the origin of the mandala, it is important to realize that mandalas are already present in Nature. Humankind is not the ultimate creator of the divine cosmic geometry – we are here to become unified with it through its understanding. We as a people have been attesting to this divine resonance through the construction and awareness of perfect order in the mandala. This perfect order does not come about without the existence of chaos, however. The symmetry used in most mandala forms is indicative of our desire for and outreach to what we perceive as perfection. In nature, the symmetry is rarely perfect – rather, it is the tiniest flaw in the snowflake, the differentiation in the pattern made by a drop of water that gives rise to the materialization of the world in the first place! Perfect symmetry is existence looking back on itself. Therefore it is static, having nowhere to go for its own reflection. However, The tree is perfect. The leaf is perfect. The caterpillar is perfect. You are perfect.

By doing these pieces, the mind is not formulating, consciously, a certain outcome. The outcome is directly related to the actual making of the piece. In this way, the practice of BECOMING is actually the practice of BEING. The meditation is ongoing, and a loving practice. It teaches me to be gentle and loving to myself and others. It has taught me self-acceptance. To trust in the nature of the Universe and in its perfection. To see each manifestation of God’s Love in the nurturing of others and in their nurturing of me. To forgive those who don’t understand the truth of themselves and their part in the universe. It is the practice of allowing sequential “mistakes” to exist in the colors sometimes that keeps me on the path of transformation – allowing and “welcoming the weeds.”

Being able to relate this work on a deeply spiritual level is one of the most wonderful gifts possible. In the art world, the truth of the actual art is rarely the call of the day. There are veils upon veils of distortion. Even really well-meaning art-lovers are more concerned with the passing value of a thing than the spiritual reality behind it. It is a very difficult world to work within! I actually spend a lot of my time running a virtual art gallery to dispel this trend, paying homage to the artists that are exhibited on the gallery site and glorifying the true spiritual intent of the pieces. It is amazing how many artists thirst to have their inner spiritual life recognized! It is a most wonderful experience, as is being able to impart these things here. It’s a rare “gem in the lotus.”

I feel amazing gratitude to be the vehicle for Spirit through the mandala form. It is my life, and is a source of constant nourishment.

I celebrate the boundless range of elemental combinations present in the universe. From basic substances of matter emerge presences of infinite variety that take form as planets, comets, stars, trees, human-kind, and other celestial travelers. This is a manifestation of the creativity of spirit. This is present and reflected on all levels of being. It is with this observation that my drawings are made.

Contact Information:
Marjorie Kaye's Beliefnet Community profile
website: Caladan Gallery
e-mail: director@caladangallery.com

© 2008, Marjorie Kaye

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