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| SIMPLICITY (10/12) 5"x8" Mixed Media on page book paper |
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| FORGIVE (11/12) 5"x8" Mixed Media on page book paper |
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| NO SEPARATION (12/12) 5"x8" Mixed Media on page book paper |
The response to suffering is a conditioned one. We unconsciously respond to suffering/hurting the way in which our caregivers did. Not because it was right or because we want to but because a conditioned mind is simply a conditioned mind. The good news is that thought patterns can be changed.I've been valuing the ability to stay with a person rather than judging and walking away. The greatest catalyst for shifting the shape of my compulsive, conditioned thought patterns is through land based ceremonies such as the Sweat Lodge and the Vision Quest Fast. In these land based ceremonies, we are leaving the natural world and we enter the spirit world ushered by song and our ancestors. In land based ceremony, one is encouraged to pay attention to the slightest changes that bring about temperature and moisture change. Also, one has the opportunity to hear, when fastened into their lodge, the first animals to stir in the morning before the facilitator comes to unfasten the door for another day of prayer and listening. The quietness and stillness that comes from solitude in land based ceremony awakens intuition, instinct and the senses. The mind, body, heart and spirit unite to commune with nature. Purification through land based ceremony enables one to return to the natural world with innocence and freshness. The freedom that purification through land based ceremony brings is the state of being that brings about the greatest sense of peace from which comes the ability to see and love deeply. And to me, nothing is as important as the wisdom that love brings.
