Kundalini Splendor

When Our Idols Fail Us

One of the most difficult experiences to deal with occurs when someone we have looked up to and even idolized proves to have feet of clay.

The excesses of various gurus are familiar to all, as are the transgressions of certain priests and teachers, who take advantage of their positions of power to corrupt their followers.

I was indeed sorry to learn that Omar Khayyam, one of the greatest mystical poets, died 
 of alcoholism at a rather early age. 

Rumi has long been such an idol for me.  I have read and loved his poetry for years, especially the quatrains and  odes.  I first found him at a time when I was very lonely on my journey and his poems gave me sustenance and inspiration for many years thereafter.  His verses are like vases of delicious spiritual wine that overflow with joy.  I have often been inspired to write my own poems just from reading his lines.

I have never really explored the "teaching  poems" of Rumi's Mathawni, but last night I looked around a bit in these works and was astonished and disappointed in what I found there.  I only read 2 or 3 that I happened to turn to.  These were narrations that, to be honest, were extremely vulgar and even obscene.  I was shocked to think they had come from the voice of the great spiritual teacher admired all over the world as a profound mystic able to describe his connection to the divine in such eloquent and stirring lines.  They seemed more appropriate for a locker room or even the gutter than in a collection of eloquent spiritual expressions.

I do not understand how these writings came to be.  I am not a prude, but these went beyond the bounds of good taste and decency.  Coleman Barks, speaking of these, says that early translators put these verses into Latin, so they would not give offense to the ordinary reader.  Frankly,  I wondered if Rumi had suffered some kind of stroke or illness that had impaired his judgment  or intellect so that he produced such uncharacteristic pieces.

I was deeply sorrowed by my discovery and hope that at some point I will learn how these disturbing stories came to be.

Mathew Arnold, in "Dover Beach," concludes with 'Ah, love, let us be true to one another."  For me, the "lover"is the Beloved Within, and indeed, She will never leave or betray.

Dorothy Walters
January 31, 2017

Where We Are Going

"I live my life in widening circles."
                                      Rilke

No one knows where we are going.

Is it into magnificence
or into the darkness of vastness.

Will we follow light
into paradise
and be enfolded
in indescribable love,
strains of ethereal music,
or fall into oblivion,
like the petals of a fallen
flower.

What does it matter.
We came here for our journey.

Now it is over.
Perhaps then we will at last discover
its meaning.

Were we
a pebble, a cloud, or a scent 
floating in moonlight?

Dorothy Walters
January 30, 2017

Edna St. Vincent Millay: Forgotten Mystic

Even her name is musical.

When I was in high school, I was enamored of this woman and her poetry, as were many others at the time.  She was above all a "romantic" poet, that is, one who felt there was more to our perceived existence than the mundane activities or routines of ordinary existence.  She was not afraid to unleash the unspoken passions of the heart, to allow all us to know, in deep and moving ways, the feeling aspects of our existence, framed in ways that take us out of the realm of the ordinary and into transcendent spheres of imagining and experience.

Her most famous poem, "Renascence," propelled her into fame and celebrity at the age of 20.  Her physical appearance enhanced her fame, for she was indeed a beauty.  In addition she had a moving, deeply resonant voice that lent added effectiveness to her oral presentations.  Furthermore, she was, by the standards of the time, a  wanton, a woman who went freely from lover to lover, against the moral strictures of the age.  Doubtless many woman who read her poems identified with her life as a rebel, one who allowed them to experience, if only vicariously, their own secret longings and ambitions.

I, like many who cherished her work when we were adolescents, lost interest in her when we grew older, more 'sophisticated," more in touch with our heads rather than our hearts.  We scoffed at her earlier passionate outcries, and moved, along with many of the critics, into a new phase of "realistic" examination of the human experience.

This morning I happened by chance on a reprint of "Renascence" and realized, with a shock, that it is more that most of us ever noticed when we encountered it earlier.  It is, in fact, a sweeping, deeply felt, and brilliantly executed account of a classic mystical experience, including features we now identify as those characterizing universal experiences of such inner awakening.  There is a deep identification with the pain of all who suffer in the world.  The sense of knowing all there is to know.  The sudden realization of the vastness of the unknown source.  And, overriding all the rest, the sense of personal spiritual death and separation from all the concrete features of the familiar "multiform" elements that define our human experience.

And then, of course, there is the almost magical resurrection, the return of the life force and God's love, and reconnection with the beauty and abundance of the embodied world.

I feel that this poem stands with and compares favorably with many of the famous accounts of spiritual death and awakening, including those of St John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila, among others.  I do not know what personal experience lies behind Millay's vision, but clearly she has gone through the profound spiritual death and resurrection as detailed in the classic literature of the mystic transformation.  Yet this aspect of her work has (to my knowledge) escaped notice of those readers and critics who continue to deride her for her "immature vision" and her unrestrained romanticism.

Read "Renascence" and discover its forgotten treasures.  You will be well rewarded.  And you may discover echoes of your own journey of death and awakening.

Renascence

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked another way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line 
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I'd started from; 
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood.

Over these things I could not see;
These were the things that bounded me;
And I could touch them with my hand,
Almost, I thought, from where I stand.
And all at once things seemed so small
My breath came short, and scarce at all.

But, sure, the sky is big, I said;
Miles and miles above my head;
So here upon my back I'll lie
And look my fill into the sky.
And so I looked, and, after all,
The sky was not so very tall.
The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,
And—sure enough!—I see the top! 
The sky, I thought, is not so grand;
I 'most could touch it with my hand!
And reaching up my hand to try,
I screamed to feel it touch the sky.

I screamed, and—lo!—Infinity
Came down and settled over me;
Forced back my scream into my chest,
Bent back my arm upon my breast,
And, pressing of the Undefined
The definition on my mind,
Held up before my eyes a glass
Through which my shrinking sight did pass
Until it seemed I must behold
Immensity made manifold;
Whispered to me a word whose sound
Deafened the air for worlds around,
And brought unmuffled to my ears
The gossiping of friendly spheres,
The creaking of the tented sky,
The ticking of Eternity.

I saw and heard, and knew at last
The How and Why of all things, past,
And present, and forevermore.
The Universe, cleft to the core,
Lay open to my probing sense
That, sick'ning, I would fain pluck thence
But could not,—nay! But needs must suck
At the great wound, and could not pluck
My lips away till I had drawn
All venom out.—Ah, fearful pawn!
For my omniscience paid I toll
In infinite remorse of soul.

All sin was of my sinning, all
Atoning mine, and mine the gall
Of all regret. Mine was the weight 
Of every brooded wrong, the hate
That stood behind each envious thrust,
Mine every greed, mine every lust.

And all the while for every grief,
Each suffering, I craved relief
With individual desire,—
Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire
About a thousand people crawl;
Perished with each,—then mourned for all!

A man was starving in Capri;
He moved his eyes and looked at me;
I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,
And knew his hunger as my own.
I saw at sea a great fog bank
Between two ships that struck and sank;
A thousand screams the heavens smote;
And every scream tore through my throat.

No hurt I did not feel, no death
That was not mine; mine each last breath
That, crying, met an answering cry
From the compassion that was I.
All suffering mine, and mine its rod;
Mine, pity like the pity of God.

Ah, awful weight! Infinity
Pressed down upon the finite Me!
My anguished spirit, like a bird,
Beating against my lips I heard;
Yet lay the weight so close about
There was no room for it without.
And so beneath the weight lay I
And suffered death, but could not die.

Long had I lain thus, craving death,
When quietly the earth beneath
Gave way, and inch by inch, so great
At last had grown the crushing weight,
Into the earth I sank till I
Full six feet under ground did lie,
And sank no more,—there is no weight
Can follow here, however great.
From off my breast I felt it roll,
And as it went my tortured soul
Burst forth and fled in such a gust
That all about me swirled the dust.

Deep in the earth I rested now;
Cool is its hand upon the brow
And soft its breast beneath the head
Of one who is so gladly dead.
And all at once, and over all
The pitying rain began to fall;
I lay and heard each pattering hoof
Upon my lowly, thatched roof,
And seemed to love the sound far more
Than ever I had done before.
For rain it hath a friendly sound
To one who's six feet underground;
And scarce the friendly voice or face:
A grave is such a quiet place.

The rain, I said, is kind to come
And speak to me in my new home.
I would I were alive again
To kiss the fingers of the rain,
To drink into my eyes the shine
Of every slanting silver line,
To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze
From drenched and dripping apple-trees.
For soon the shower will be done,
And then the broad face of the sun
Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth
Until the world with answering mirth
Shakes joyously, and each round drop
Rolls, twinkling, from its grass-blade top.

How can I bear it; buried here,
While overhead the sky grows clear
And blue again after the storm?
O, multi-colored, multiform,
Beloved beauty over me,
That I shall never, never see
Again! Spring-silver, autumn-gold,
That I shall never more behold!
Sleeping your myriad magics through,
Close-sepulchred away from you!
O God, I cried, give me new birth,
And put me back upon the earth!
Upset each cloud's gigantic gourd
And let the heavy rain, down-poured
In one big torrent, set me free,
Washing my grave away from me!

I ceased; and through the breathless hush
That answered me, the far-off rush
Of herald wings came whispering
Like music down the vibrant string
Of my ascending prayer, and—crash!
Before the wild wind's whistling lash
The startled storm-clouds reared on high
And plunged in terror down the sky,
And the big rain in one black wave
Fell from the sky and struck my grave.

I know not how such things can be;
I only know there came to me
A fragrance such as never clings
To aught save happy living things;
A sound as of some joyous elf
Singing sweet songs to please himself,
And, through and over everything,
A sense of glad awakening.
The grass, a-tiptoe at my ear,
Whispering to me I could hear;
I felt the rain's cool finger-tips
Brushed tenderly across my lips,
Laid gently on my sealed sight,
And all at once the heavy night
Fell from my eyes and I could see,—
A drenched and dripping apple-tree,
A last long line of silver rain,
A sky grown clear and blue again.
And as I looked a quickening gust
Of wind blew up to me and thrust
Into my face a miracle
Of orchard-breath, and with the smell,—
I know not how such things can be!—
I breathed my soul back into me.

Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I
And hailed the earth with such a cry
As is not heard save from a man
Who has been dead, and lives again.
About the trees my arms I wound;

Like one gone mad I hugged the ground;
I raised my quivering arms on high;
I laughed and laughed into the sky,
Till at my throat a strangling sob
Caught fiercely, and a great heart-throb
Sent instant tears into my eyes;
O God, I cried, no dark disguise
Can e'er hereafter hide from me
Thy radiant identity!

Thou canst not move across the grass
But my quick eyes will see Thee pass,
Nor speak, however silently,
But my hushed voice will answer Thee.
I know the path that tells Thy way
Through the cool eve of every day;
God, I can push the grass apart
And lay my finger on Thy heart!

The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky,—
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat—the sky
Will cave in on him by and by. 

About Patricia Lay Dorsey

I have written about Patricia before, since she is one of my best friends and one of the most unusual people I have ever known.  I have great admiration for her.

Recently, Patricia, who has MS, experienced a major fall.  She ended up in emergency, then was hospitalized for several days, and now is headed for some 2-3 weeks in rehab.

Patricia is a devoted photographer and her work is displayed on instagram, where she has thousands of followers.  Like the dedicated artist she is, she has recorded her hospital journey on film and and posted these shots on instagram.  She has received messages of sympathy and promises of prayers from all over the world.  She is known and loved by countless numbers of her audience.

If you wish to view the visual record of her hospital experience, you can go to

@patricialaydorseyinstagram

Send her good thoughts and prayers for a full and speedy recovery!

Ithaka

As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.


~ C.P. Cavafy ~

(Collected Poems, Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)

In Homer's great epic, "The Odyssey,"  the Greeks travel for many years on their way home from the Trojan War.  For Odysseus, their great warrior/hero, home is Ithaka, an island in the Mediterranean.  He sails for ten years on his return and has many adventures along the way, including encounters with various monsters, supernatural beings, and threatening gods (Laistrygonians, Cyclops, Poseidon).

It seems to me that this poem can be read as an allegory of our own life journey, which may be very long indeed, and certainly holds many experiences both challenging and delightful.   "Ithaca' is our place of starting out.  It could be the actual spot (our home town) or the society that surrounded us in childhood (family, socially approved ways of behaving or thinking.)  More likely "Ithaca" is simply who we were when we began our journey, and the destination we imagine we wish to return to.  Without that background and foundation, we could never have begun our worldly adventures.  But now, when we reconsider that time of our lives, we have much experience beyond those early years of innocence.  We have become someone else.  Looking at "Ithaka" with the eyes of experience, we will finally see that earlier being in a different light, and understand what our beginning really meant.

(photo from internet)

When I Was Looking

How is it 
that when I was 
looking for You,
You were seeking me also.

Silently You watched and waited.
Sometimes gave me
a brief glimpse
or taste
of who You were,
like a shy deer in the forest
that vanishes when
you turn to look.

And so I roamed,
looking here and there,
gazing at the cyphers on trees
or peering into flowers for secret revelations,
listening to the waves
pounding the shore for messages,
examining books and stars,
seeking essence.

Finally I gave up my searching,
surrendered my deep desire
to stillness.
And then You gave me a kiss
that lasted forever.

Dorothy Walters
January 25, 2018

What You Should Do

This is what you should do:
Love the earth and sun and animals,
despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,
stand up for the stupid and crazy,
devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants,
argue not concerning God,
have patience and indulgence toward the people...
reexamine all you have been told in school or church or in any book,
dismiss what insults your very soul,
and your flesh shall become a great poem.

~ Walt Whitman ~

(Excert from Preface to 1855 edition, Leaves of Grass)

(picture from internet)

Flamenco Dancers Enter Heaven

We will all be flamenco dancers
making our way along
the jeweled avenues.

We will all be young
and lithe and beautiful
and slim, as we do the
steps perfectly,
finally free to be
what we have dreamed of
for so long.

The angels will be lined up
along the sides,
our own pacha mamas
with their bare breasts
and ample bodies.
They will all be
clapping their hands 
and stamping their feet 
in unison
as we go by.

We will all be having a ball,
for we will  know we have
at last arrived at our
true destination.

Want to join me?

(You can start practicing now
in your own living room.)

Dorothy Walters
January 22, 2018

From the Other Side

I wonder how it will be with us
when we meet on the other side
and look back on it all.

Which days will we remember,
which fall into the dustbin
that is the resting place of all things
not chosen.

Will it be that sudden kiss
from a stranger,
one that we welcomed
and returned.

Will it be that time in
the mountains,
she lying on the bed
of leaves and red berries,
oh, how splendid.

Will it be that day of exultation,
the dissertation finished at last,
the top of the pass reached,
what celebration within.

Will it be Greece,
the road rising toward Delphi,
the Maenads still romping
everywhere,
their spirits still alive
in the land,
awakening memories.

Or a picnic at night
in the forest,
the flames rising and
answering the stars,
scattering sparks like earth's own
luminous galaxy,
the rock circles around
the fire
splitting open with the heat.

 Or maybe sitting quietly
with the others,
listening to the Beethoven
quartets in John's living room,
each one a blessing.
Which was best?

And of course
the unforgettable moment
of the Awakening,
Shiva pouring in,
almost too much to bear.
Almost too intense to recall.
Your head opening,
the realization.
The invisible Beloved
arriving.

And then that Mozart concert,
yourself a sounding board,
rapture indescribable,
were you going to levitate
at last?
Ineffable the word,
no way to capture in language.

How is it 
that all these episodes
fused into a life,
yours,
some of which you remember,
some not,
all of it flowing
into a portrait 
of who you were.

Dorothy Walters
January 20, 2018

I am the New Human

I am the New Human.
Does this sound like a boast?
Well, doubtless it is,
but it is also a fact.

How can I make such a claim?
How can I say such things
about myself, against all cautions
to be ever modest, like a well trained
woman?

Here is my evidence:
In Ireland, at Tara,
I thought I would faint
with delight,
ecstatic energies surging up
from the ground,
flowing through my body,
permeating my cells,
this is sacred soil,
ancient body of the Mother.

In the ashram in California,
falling into that other state,
the singers of Sanskrit,
each syllable vibrating
molecules and tissues,
almost fell off my chair
with indescribable rapture.

And watching the two
chi gong teachers
hand dance before the group,
every gesture awakening
almost too much bliss within.

Sometimes even
the gentle movements
of the leaves on secluded boughs.

And now, mirroring within
the energies of others,
always pleasurable,
standing in line,
even the overweight plumber 
who came to fix the drain.

Frequencies emanating from
Rothko, ancient Chinese vase,
Buddha on my wall.
Always bliss, and more bliss.
Just happens.

Scent of Frankincense and Amber.
Mozart  echoing through
my frame at concert,
body a sounding board.
Seated at computer,
my head suddenly opening
in ineffable splendor,
energies ever higher,
how far can they go?

Touchless pleasure,
hands rotating over body,
imperceptible movement
of fingers,
even eyeballs moving back and forth.

We are all the New Human.
We are rising ever upward
to an unseen goal.
We are ascending
into a realm we cannot name,
a new configuration of ourselves.

We are becoming 
who we are
and do not yet know
who that will be.

Dorothy Walters
January 21, 2018

ShamanTube is with Alfonso Aldunate Salazar and Luna Estela.

"The old threads are unraveling,
Get your needles ready.
We are stitching a new quilt
of humanity.
Bring your old t-shirts,
worn out jeans, scarves,
antique gowns, aprons,
old pockets of plenty
who have held Earth's treasures,
stones, feathers, leaves,
love notes on paper.
Each stitch
A mindful meditation.
Each piece of material
A story.
The more color the better,
so call in the tribes.
Threads of browns, whites,
reds, oranges
Women from all nations
start stitching.
Let's recycle the hate, the abuse,
the fear, the judgment.
Turn it over, wash it clean,
ring it out to dry.
It's a revolution
of recycled wears.
Threads of greens, blues, purples
Colorful threads
of peace, kindness,
respect, compassion
are being stitched
from one continent to the next
over forests, oceans, mountains.
The work is hard
Your fingers may bleed.
But each cloth stitched together
Brings together a community.
A world, our future world
Under one colorful quilt.
The new quilt of humanity."
~Julia Myers
http://bradkunkle.com

Plato's Cave

In the movement of time
I feel things going more swiftly now,
with an urgency that is
new,
not felt before.
A clock hurrying
to midnight.

A voice saying
enjoy, this may be the last time,
or else
quickly, you haven't got long
to progress.
A destination beckoning
in the distance.

The dream is more real.
Or perhaps the other way
around:
the real is more
like a dream,
a fantasy you concocted
for your own diversion.
Would you do it
some other way?

Yet there remains
some truth,
some adherence to belief,
a clinging to the notion
that you have been here before,
have done this in a similar way
in some other time,
place,
a realm
that feels  familiar.
And will welcome you
once more.

Dorothy Walters
January 11, 2018

Plato's cave is one of the fundamental myths of Western society.  In this myth, people living in a cave mistake the shadows on the facing wall for real beings, not realizing that the true humans live and move in the world outside the cave.  This narrative reveals how many humans mistake the "dream " of worldly pursuits for the reality of authentic life.

My Near Death Experience & Kundalini Awakening - YouTube

Each Day

Each day
you think you know
something.

Each day you stumble
into new truth.

One truth ever contradicts
another.

Yet you keep on searching.

Perhaps you are not meant
to know these things.

Perhaps you are intended to
feel your way,
always ahead,
going further
toward the light.

Dorothy Walters
January 17 2017

Psalms 15

Lord, who can be trusted with power,
and who may act in your place?
Those with a passion for justice,
who speak the truth from their hearts;
who have let go of selfish interests
and grown beyond their own lives;
who see the wretched as their family
and the poor as their flesh and blood.
They alone are impartial
and worthy of the people's trust.
Their compassion lights up the whole earth,
and their kindness endures forever.


(A Book of Psalms, translations by Stephen Mitchell)

Who I Was

Frankly, it is a bit frightening.
To think that everything
each moment,
each intensity,
 was merely a phantom
passing before a mirror,
and I
the onlooker took them
for real
and became an actor
in the play.

What became of them?
Those beautiful
bodies turned to dust.
Where did those
episodes go,
secret meetings
in darkness,
joy at sunrise.

Music that tore
the soul open.
Earth sending its blissful
awakenings
into my flesh.
And something major
that came unbidden
and carved a new image
into my blood.

Am I the one
who made them happen?
My calling out,
my desire extending?

My imaginings
already fading
into another twilight,
already becoming
what we must wonder about,
try to grasp the meaning.

Dorothy Walters
January 14, 2018

The Arrival

Lately I have become
impatient
with things.

Utterances they offer
are not new.
Revelations
are notions
I encountered years ago
and filed away
in my memory book.

What they find exciting
I greet with a ho hum,
what else is new.

Yet there is something
that remains.
It carries no words,
bears no insights.

It is pure feeling
and it infuses me
with its own delight
each time it arrives,
bearing what some call
bliss, some rapture,
the moment of union,
the Beloved beyond belief.

Dorothy Walters
January 11, 2018

(image from internet)

Hi Dorothy

This Saturday at 11:00am US Eastern Time you are invited to join me in a guided meditation.

Creative Illumination: Exploring the Energies of Possibility
A Guided Meditation with Jeff Carreira
Saturday, January 13
11:00am US Eastern Time (8:00am US Pacific Time and 4:00pm GMT)

All you have to do to join is click on this webpage at the scheduled time.

I’ve been busy preparing materials for the opening of The Mystery School for a new Paradigm and one of the ideas I’ve been expanding on is called creative illumination. In my new eBook I describe it this way:

As our awareness becomes liberated from its habitual patterns we inevitably begin to experience the subtle energies inviting us into deeper spiritual illumination. Once these energies begin to arise we are no longer served best by remaining completely passive. In these moments of revelation we are being invited into a journey of spiritual discovery. Creative illumination means allowing the energies of our deepest insights and revelations to overtake us.

Join me on Saturday at 11:00am Eastern Time and explore the energetic approach to meditation that I’m currently experimenting with.

Love,
Jeff

(picture from internet)

P. S. I fear this reprint will not take you to the meditation, but it does introduce the basic ideas of the Mystery School that Jeff is developing.  Perhaps you can google the name of the Guided Meditation.  Jeff and his wife Amy Edelstein are publishing my forthcoming book entitled "Kundalini Splendor: The Future as Ecstasy."

Yes

It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon.  It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.

It could, you know.  That's why we wake
and look out -- no guarantees
in this life.

But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.

~ William Stafford ~

(The Way It Is)

(picture from the internet)

Patricia in Vogue Italia

Please read this fabulous review of my dear friend Patricia Lay-Dorsey:

http://www.vogue.it/news/vogue-arte/2017/12/26/patricia-lay-dorsey-collages-from-
the-rauschenberg-residency/

If this site does not work, try

@patricialaydorseycollages

from Vogue Italia:

by Laura Tortora

Patricia Lay-Dorsey is a Detroit-based photographer who likes to tell the inside story of places, people and experiences, especially her own. “The Hole In Between: Collages from the Rauschenberg Residency” features photo collages Patricia creates using bits and pieces of the 7,000 photos she took in March and April 2017 while an artist-in-residence on Captiva Island, Florida.

Although the iconic American artist Robert Rauschenberg died in 2008, his spirit of risk-taking experimentation permeates every facet of the residency program that is set up by the Rauschenberg Foundation on the land where Bob lived and in the studios where he worked for 40 years. It was Bob’s energy and example that inspired Patricia to move beyond her usual documentary way of working and find a more personally creative way of expressing her thoughts and feelings about the place and the ten artists with whom she was sharing the 6-week Rauschenberg Residency.

One afternoon while sitting in what they call Bob’s chair, Patricia heard the words, “Art is play. Art is not work. There are no rules. It’s like sex. Don’t think about it. Just do it!” And so she did.

from Patricia:

WHEELCHAIR ACCESSIBILITY AT THE RAUSCHENBERG RESIDENCY

For those of us with special needs, all too often we feel unseen and unheard. If we bring up adaptations that need to be made so we can participate in activities that non-disabled persons might take for granted, we can get the feeling the people we are talking to feel we are making too much of a big deal about trivialities.



My experience of working with the Rauschenberg Residency staff was a model of how it should be done.

In my first phone call with the Residency Director Ann Brady, I brought up my concerns that such a residency would be hard for me to manage because of my special needs. Ann responded by asking me to send her an email with a detailed list that spelled out every one of my special needs and the adaptations that would need to be made. She made no promises except to say that they would do everything they could to make it possible for me to attend the residency. I immediately felt seen, heard and valued. For the first time since learning that I had won this award from Photolucida Critical Mass 2015, I felt hope that I actually might be able to attend the residency.

It was over a year that Ann and I worked together with Jessica Todd, the Residency Coordinator, and Matt Hall, the Facilities Supervisor, to address all of my concerns and special needs. As time went on, they would send me photographs of the physical progress being made to make my bedroom, bathroom and art studio wheelchair accessible. When I got there we discovered that the bathroom in the Weeks House where we ate our communal meals was too narrow for me to enter and use. I managed to use the bathroom in my house and studio instead, but was pleased to see that shortly after my residency ended, they did the reconstruction necessary to make that bathroom wheelchair accessible.

During this entire process I was encouraged to give them any feedback that might be helpful. And there were several adaptations that I saw needed to be made to some of the areas we were attempting to make accessible. I was never made to feel that any of my critiques and/or suggestions were anything but helpful.

When I arrived at the residency on March 6, 2017, Jessica and Matt were at the door of my house to greet me and make any final adaptations I needed. During my six weeks as an artist-in-residence, I felt free to contact Matt Hall with any concerns or adaptations that needed to be made. He leaned over backwards to make me feel comfortable contacting him, and always responded positively to my requests. He even did special things like carrying me in and out of the pool so I could swim laps twice a week, and he even got a balloon-tired sand wheelchair for two days so I could go shelling on the beach!

This was not merely about the financial cost of creating a wheelchair accessible environment; it was about responding with openness and respect to a person with special needs. I will be forever grateful to everyone who made this life-changing residency accessible for me and now for other physically disabled artists in the future. It was the highlight of my 74 years of life!

Patricia Lay-Dorsey

Bio

Born in Washington, DC in 1942, Detroit-based photographer Patricia Lay-Dorsey brings a masters degree in social work and four decades as a visual artist to her humanistic photography. Lay-Dorsey’s photo projects tell the intimate stories of people’s lives as seen from the inside. She is best known for “Falling Into Place,” a self portrait book published in 2013 by Ffotogallery (Cardiff, Wales) that documents her day-to-day life with a disability. Blue Sky Gallery Books published a monograph in conjunction with Lay-Dorsey’s “Tea For Two” solo exhibit in December 2016.

Lay-Dorsey’s photo essays have been featured by the New York Times Lens Blog, Huffington Post, Feature Shoot, LensWork, BBC World Update, Vogue Italia and Newsweek Japan, among others. She has had solo exhibits in Oregon, Michigan, New York, Massachusetts and China, and received the Photolucida Critical Mass 2015 Rauschenberg Residency Award. Time.com named @patricialaydorsey as the Michigan representative in their August 2015 feature, “Instagram Photographers To Follow In All 50 States” and the January 2016 issue of O, the Oprah Magazine included her in the article, “5 of the Most Inspiring Women on Instagram.”

Patricia Lay-Dorsey has lived in the Detroit area since marrying Edward Dorsey in 1966. Her website is www.patricialaydorsey.com

 ART PHOTOGRAPHY , ARTE

from Dorothy:

Patricia was recently honored with a gift residency at the former residence of Robert Rauschenberg, a prominent artist of the contemporary world, now deceased.  His island estate is now an artist retreat for creators of various kinds (painters, writers, dancers, media composers).  She took countless photos during her time there and subsequently compiled them into "collages" from her visit.

Patricia has received many honors in her time.  She has exhibited her photos in major galleries, been written up in such outlets as Newsweek (Japan edition), New York Times, and others.  However, she herself has said that this review in Vogue Italia is the greatest honor of all.

As I have mentioned before, Patricia and I have known one another for about 20 years.  She set up this blog and gave it to me as a birthday gift in 2004 and has coached me on its operation often over time.  She herself is one of the most remarkable women I have ever known.  When she contracted M. S. and could no longer walk, she bought herself an outfitted van and a scooter and traveled alone often, sometimes all the way from Gross Pointe (near Detroit) to New York City.  Her photographs have received steadily growing accolades.  Once a marathon runner, she still swims many laps, works out her upper body at the gym, and is famous as "Grandma Techno" at the regular electronic music festivals in Detroit.

Needless to say, I love her dearly, for she has been an important part of my life for many years.

Look her up.  You will meet a remarkable human being, one who inspires and even awes with her talent and insights.

Ananda

Here I am,
a woman almost 90,
and still don't have
answers.

You would suppose
by now I would know the essentials,
who we are, where we came from,
what we are supposed to be doing
in our lives.

But I don't know
and don't know anyone
to ask.

When I draw my card
it is always blank.
When I write out my question,
it falls to the bottom
of the pile
and our time runs out.

Yet, today was like spring,
filtered sunlit joy
bathing us to gold
in the middle of winter.

And that music I listened to
this morning.
I hope to hear it again
in heaven.

Who am I
to insist on complete
explanations?
Why must I know
all about everything?

Blessings fall on me
like rain,
purple blossoms showering down
 from loaded branches.
I know that I will
never think my way
to truth.
Whatever it is
it lives inside me,
speaks without words,
moves without motion.

The holy ones call it rapture.
I call it union,
when the Beloved arrives
and we are one.

Dorothy Walters
January 9, 2017

image from internet

Evolution by Design, not Accident

Greg Bradon, admired visionary and explorer of the paranormal, has published a new book that challenges our accepted notions of Darwin and his theory of evolution.  Bradon contends that recent discoveries in DNA testing prove that we humans did not "evolve" from other species as the Darwin  proponents insist, but rather we appeared suddenly, without prior indications, about 200,000 years ago, through a process that is still a total mystery.  Greg does not dispute that animals did indeed evolve, but asserts that in terms of DNA, we humans of today are the same as we were hundreds of thousands of years ago.

This breakthrough theory flies in the face of current scientific orthodoxy, which insists the we are the product of millennia of "natural selection" by which we emerged as a species superior to others in most respects.  A corollary notion is that some kind of intervention was involved to allow this sudden transition to occur and thus we are creatures created by design, not chance.

Why is this new evidence not offered in schools or major scientific publications?  Because the texts all include the opposite perspective and contemporary scientists have all been indoctrinated to favor the Darwinian view and science is notoriously reluctant to accept a new paradigm.

To learn more about this iconoclastic view, read his new book (also can be read online) or listen to his riveting presentation on youtube.

Human by Design: From Evolution by Chance to Transformation by Choice
By Gregg Braden

Human By Design | Gregg Braden - YouTube
Video for youtube gregg braden▶ 6:34
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxkTRcuQ2Mg

The Ether does exist and thus everything is connected

One of the most famous experiments in science was called the Michelson Morley test.  This experiment seemingly proved that "ether"  (a mysterious element that had been accepted as a medium that connected all the physical elements of the universe) did not in fact exist.  This conclusion upended scientific theories that had been accepted for many years.

More recently, the experiment was repeated by the U. S. Airforce with updated instruments.  It disproved the conclusions of the Michelson Morley experiment and thus suggested that the "ether" does in fact exist and therefore all things are indeed connected (just as the mystics have known for millennia).  Again, because this conclusion challenged orthodox notions, it has been ignored by mainstream science.  Indeed, many careers rest on the earlier assumptions and thus no real paradigm shift in scientific thinking has occurred.

Greg is an iconoclast.  He challenges accepted theory from the evidence that is in fact pertinent today.  He is an advanced thinker and we are lucky to have him in our midst. See his presentations on youtube on these and other topics.  They will indeed expand your awareness.

A Hospital Without Medicine

Greg also presents a video from Beijing in which a tumor is apparently dissolved through the combined efforts of three practitioners who simply envision the woman as she should be at the present moment, cured of her tumor.  The point is made that one must envision how things should be now, and not as one might wish in the future.  Thus we should not say "I wish" or I hope" but affirm that the condition we desire already exists. 

Cancer Cured in 3 Minutes Awesome Presentation by Gregg Braden ...
Video for gregg braden youtube cancer▶ 14:39

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnCzd_Z3oK4

Wisdom from Khalil Gibran

Love... it surrounds every being and extends slowly to embrace all that shall be.
~
Love and doubt have never been on speaking terms.
~
Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.
~
Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone.

Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.”

~Khalil Gibran (1883-1931) (Lebanese American poet, thinker)

In earlier years, many "intellectuals" and academics scoffed at Khalil Gibran because they felt he was too sentimental or schmaltzy.  Today we can perceive the wisdom of his words.
I particularly like what he says about "many a doctrine" as ''like a window pane.  We see truth through it but it divides us from truth."  When we are given a "lens" through which to view the world we see much that is accurate, but at the same time we no longer are able to see the other and perhaps   higher truths that are not revealed thereby.  If we have a classification of all that we witness, we do not perceive that which lies outside that classification.  Some of us fall for the spiral (useful in its way) but do not see the field that surrounds it. 

"Reality is always
soft clay,
ever shifting and changing
its shape.

Fire it into form, and 
at the very moment
you are hailing it as
final truth
it will break in your hands."

(from "Marrow of Flame" by Dorothy)

(picture from internet)

The Agnostic's Prayer

They talk of miracles.
Of stables and hay
and virgins giving birth.
A world savior arriving.
A star.

I sit here
thinking of Buddha
beneath the Bodhi tree.
His mother seeking shelter
from the rain.
That flower he lifted
in front of his disciples

And then there was this wild Shiva dancing,
this Krishna and his
hypnotic flute.
Paravati, Laksmi, devas riding the sky.

Sky gods, earth mothers,
what should I believe?
Save me from the myths
and superstitions
of a frightened crowd
seeking comfort
from the unknown.
What should I make
of any of these?
I will take refuge
in my mind.

Yet I do not know
who I am,
how I got here,
how to behave.
Some kind of strangeness
seems to be at work here
that put it all together.
Something I can only guess at,
things I can't explain.

I sit in confusion and silence
and a voice that keeps repeating
"I love you"
and telling me to attend.

Dorothy Walters
January 6, 2018

(image from internet)