--- In [email protected], "Marek Reavis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Comment below: > > ** > > --- In [email protected], Duveyoung <no_reply@> wrote: > > > > When it comes to forming a fantasy relationship: it's not hard! > > I remember practicing puja in my hotel room -- bottom half naked. > > I was rounding, and I would get up and do a puja and wouldn't > > bother getting dressed. Then, at some point, I just couldn't be > > naked in front of Guru Dev any more. My symbol got too real for > > me to ignore. > > **snip** > > Edg, have to say that you are a real treat to read. Really. > > And Thanks for that. But I just wanted to riff on the above. I was > an artist for a lot of my life, in and out of the movement and I've > always talked with friends, other visual artists, about how > extraordinary and sacred the Image really is. The discovery of > how a graven or charcoal-drawn image suddenly became Alive(!) in > awareness; Became the Thing Itself -- Wow, how amazing and > spectacular is That! It's got all the great features of mysticism > and worship rolled up into one. > > I've read speculation that the caves in Southern France like Lascaux > or Alta Mira in Spain (and others in Germany, too, I believe) were > originally where the youths of the tribe were taken for their > personal revelation and ritual binding to the social, tribal, and > religious life. The idea is that the young initiates would be > brought and guided down into the caves, in darkness, and then at > some point, lamps of fat and grease would illuminate the markings. > And even if you imagine that as a person's first experience of > Image, it's hard to comprehend just how awe-inspiring that would > have to be. > > Your story (above) is very cool. How the image became real after a > while, in a way it wasn't before. How consciousness got stimulated > by repeated applications of attention and then the inanimate becomes > animate; Attention/consciousness/awareness "creates" life.
For me the key to what you say above is in the phrase "repeated applications of attention." The Rama fellow I studied with for a while used to talk about "storing power," focusing one's attention upon an object, or a place, or an activity such that the object or place or activity becomes suffused with that attention, the attention an integral part of it. Thus finding, in a "future" life some object or place or activity that in the "past" you suffused with your "own" attention can be a very liberating experience. You find an instan- taneous resonance with the object or place or activity, and it gets you high, just the same way it did when you were *originally* infusing it with your attention. Perhaps the most striking example of this for me took place at an art museum. I was living in Santa Fe, collect- ing the Tibetan art that I could afford, and heard about a large show of Tibetan art at the museum in Albuquerque. I was underwhelmed; I thought to myself, "Self, how good could a show of Tibetan art in *Albuquerque* be?" and so I put off going to it. (Little did I know that this show was curated by the most noted scholar and curator of Tibetan art on the planet, who had been coaxed out of retirement to do one more show that was unlike anything he had ever done before -- composed entirely of pieces that had never been shown in public before.) Anyway, not knowing this, I finally found my way to the show. And I was *not* in a good mood. I was the total opposite of "moodmaking." I'd gotten stuck taking a woman to the Albuquerque airport and she was with me. She was *not* my type; all she did was talk talk talk, about nothing of consequence. And I was stuck with her when seeing the museum show. So I walked into the museum, in this low state of attention, and WHAM! -- instantaneously, unexpectedly, *contrary* to my expectations, I was high as a kite. We're talking desert-trip-with-Rama high, getting-up-from-four- thoughtless-hours-in-Samadhi high, near-enlightened high. I actually had to sit down on a bench for a few minutes to get my bearings and try to figure out what it was that had *made* me so high. It was the art. *Each* of the objects in the show had gone through this process of "repeated applications of attention." The artist -- in most cases unknown -- had spent weeks or months or years drawing or carving the piece, pouring his soul into it, infusing it with his longing for nirvana, his hopes, his fears, with the psychic "artifacts" of a whole lifetime's seeking. And all of that was still there centuries later, in almost every object. It was more present in some of them. One statuette of Padmasambhava, carved in lapis lazuli, was particularly powerful. I stood in front of it and it was like stand- ing in front of a live spiritual teacher giving Class A darshan or an advanced empowerment. After finding it, I sat on a bench nearby and watched the straight (that is, non-Eastern spirituality oriented) museum goers react to it. They'd walk up to the case, look at the piece, and get all weak in the knees. Some had to sit down. And almost none of them made the association that it was the power and the attention "stored" in this art object that had made them weak in the knees. Fascinating experience. Thanks for triggering the memory of it with your words, Marek. Suffice it to say that I agree with your "take" on the value of and nature of Images. The particular Image you choose to pour your heart and soul and your attention into probably doesn't matter; for one seeker it's Jesus, for another Krishna, and for yet another Jerry Garcia. The nature of the Image probably doesn't matter; it's the *process* of focusing one's attention that's important. And once the powerful attention of a powerful seeker has been focused on an object or a place or an activity, something of that attention remains, even when the seeker who infused it with his essence is dead and gone. Possibly it's the same thing for seekers who focus on spiritual teachers who are dead and gone.
