a creative place…

“…I was hearing the forest grow!

Nikon D750 f/7.1 1/800s 70mm 110 ISO

Then a peaceful sensation came over me, a sense that I didn’t have to do anything, that nature was taking care of itself. …The forest grew itself in the same way that my body breathed. What are Earth’s natural systems, living systems, always up to? Growing and reproducing. The living world is a creative place, because living things are always creating. Humans are not separate from this creation… We are creating our lives, while all around us the world is a creative place. …when I sit and draw, I am expressing that same creative energy. I open and let the drawings emerge.

John F Simon, Drawing your own Path

early morning readings

…he also is as though covered by a mist, a cloud, a darkness that hides everything he does and hides everything that takes place within him.

Trans: Ira Progoff. The Cloud of Unknowing
Nikon D750 f/7.1 1/8002 85mm 160 ISO

And ‘when I speak of darkness’ the author of The Cloud of Unknowing says, it is ‘not the kind of darkness that is in your house at night when the candle is out.’ It is a darkness of a quite different kind. ‘I am referring he says, ‘to a lack of knowing. It is a lack of knowing that includes everything you do not know or else that you have forgotten, whatever is altogether dark for you because you do not see it with your spiritual eye. And for this reason It is not called a cloud of the air, but rather a cloud of unknowing that is between you and your God.'” (IV:18)

lens artists challenge: elements

…the four–earth, water, fire, and wind–are without characteristic, without entity, without self, without … principle.

D S Lopez, Jr, The Heart Sutra Explained
Nikon D750 f/7.1 1/800s 70mm 125 ISO

“The fire element is heat, warmth, and also the motivation that dives us; it also is our metabolism. …

“The earth element is all things that are solid, all the things we can touch…

“The water element is all the fluids in our body…

“The air element is the space in our body, also the air that enters and leaves our body, our breath…the movement the our body makes.”

Brother Phap Hai, nothing to it ten ways to be at home with yourself

Hop on over to Amy’s to join this week’s lens-artists challenge: elements

early morning readings

Nikon D750 f/4.5 1/1600s 85mm 320 ISO

“…Visual transmission through images speaks directly to intuition and feelings, circumventing the verbal mind. Drawings offer spaces for imagination to wander, evoking meanings too complex or subtle to know intellectually. This state of mind, in which one can receive information through images, points to one of the closest parallels between the contemplative and creative paths. Aesthetic appreciation and receptivity to spiritual teachings are both practiced with an open-ended state of mind, a state of comfortable not-knowing. We draw and meditate in heightened awareness of what is happening in the moment, opening the space for new ideas, and allowing change to happen.”

John F Simon, Drawing your own Path. pg.150