Chakra System and the New Seer

The Beyond

Probably one of the most difficult current trends in symbolic art and spirituality is the vast number of modern spiritualities that refer to the Chakras.  There are 7, and they relate to areas of the body which hold emotional energy, memory, trauma and of course healing and vision.  This is actually a current modern interpretation.   There are very specific descriptions of what they look like.  Go to any spiritually minded bookstore or gift shop, and you will see them hanging as individual units or as banners around the store.  Everyone knows they are rainbow structured, and sacred geometry is within each diagram and description of their forms.  If we study them, we find out the spiritual, healing, emotional and physical significance of each chakra.  There are gods and goddesses associated with each of them and if not gods, spiritual divine energies.  We are possessed by the spiritual materialism of these derivate forms and functions.

This is, for me as a Toltec artist, ripe for recapitulation.  The very fact that it is a pattern and a structure that was laid down before I ever got here, makes me demand to recapitulate the whole downloaded program.  Thus have I spent years meditating and connecting to this system of symbols, sounds and patterns.  What I found out is that like all religions, philosophies and cultural spiritual traditions, this one has been co-opted, simplified and is working very hard to distract the original intent and lineage to which the ancient seers created them to be.

Mandalas

Jera – Year – 12×12 ink on paper original, unframed.

“ Mandala (Sanskrit Maṇḍala, ‘circle’) is a spiritual and ritual symbol in Indian religions, representing the universe.^[1] The basic form of most mandalas is a square with four gates containing a circle with a center point. Each gate is in the general shape of a T.^[2][3] Mandalas often exhibit radial balance.^[4]

“In various spiritual traditions, mandalas may be employed for focusing attention of practitioners and adepts, as a spiritual guidance tool, for establishing a sacred space, and as an aid to meditation and trance induction. 

“In common use, mandala has become a generic term for any diagram, chart or geometric pattern that represents the cosmos metaphysically or symbolically; a microcosm of the universe.” Wikipedia

Space and place… we orient our selves to spaces and places. Within the territory of our awareness, we travel through our world and create maps, guideposts on the road of our lives. These abstractions of reality help us in maintaining a sense of order, logic and purpose. From this mapping the mind grows in complexity and dynamic understanding of the world, the universe. What exists in our world is manifested within our being. What is within our being is manifested in the world. An ecstatic dance occurs ‘tween in and out of creator, creating, creation. One can point to this or that, in or out, and say it is the source of intent… but in reality both are, and they work together as awareness rolls forward.

Triple Mandala, Ink on hand made paper

Diagrams of this dynamic process, mapping awareness have intrigued me for over 40 years. It started by mapping my world, grew into mapping and diagraming what I was learning. I am a visual person and the act of diagraming information made it easier to know and understand, the links often more interesting to me than the individual facts. Finally I fell in love with geometry and its ability to draw relationships between things. The mandala was introduced to me and I started to map my own mind, information, thoughts and feelings on paper. I was literally hacking my own brain.

The Ladder, sideways

The warrior’s path of freedom, dreaming and stalking, became a discipline of unwriting and writing the story of my own awareness. To that end, mandalas reflected the journey, the pathway, the walk of a thousand steps. They began to map the energy of shifting perceptions, a shift of the assemblage point. In creating these maps, pictures and diagrams… circles emerged, a great love for their representation of integrity and impeccability. There are no perfect circles in the universe of form. They do not naturally occur. But they universe is surely attempting to intend them all the time, thus we hold within our awareness the circle as abstract form and function. When we create a circle we are creating our own integrity, we are integrating our selves and defining our awareness.

Birth – Ink on paper

As I studied at the traditional mandala and grew to draw them over and over, it became evident that something was missing. The missing piece in the whole tradition of the mandala is that of surprise, the random, the breaking of the circle… the place between integration and disintegration. Thus I began to break the circle, break the universe encapsulated in the map to search for what lies beneath, beyond and before. Searching for this energy we can all tap into, the diagrams began to become fractured, half triangles, squares and broken circles began to add up to something more universal to me than the static diagram of the classical mandala. Here we can enter not through the gateways of the cardinal directions but rather any point. And any point is in relation to any other point. We journey through the work as we do in life – the best way we can.

Being in Power

The eye darts from here to there in search of an order which is implicit in our own making. We are pattern generators. As we recapitulate the patterns, we reveal a greater mystery, which lies beneath, before, beyond. The patterns are growing old. While they are certainly beautiful and they help us to integrate and to know our selves and our world, there is always more to be explored. We can step beyond mastery into becoming artists dancing in the random pulse of a universe that is seeking continual renewal.

Birth of an Idea

For this reason, I propose the mandalas that have been emerging from my drawing board. They speak to the path of freedom beyond the patterns, into the primordial ocean of being and non-being. They breath life into a universe of surprises.

 

 

 

Power Spots and the Warrior of Awareness

The earth has within its band of awareness locations of intense energy. Like our own bodies, there are places where she is sensitive, where she produces greater heat or where she has peace and calm. She is as active and changing as our own selves. We are a reflection of these mechanics of energy for our physical form emerged in relation to her.

As part of a recent walk, we hiked up to what looked like a great place to view a vast red valley. we found a location nestled between two red rock outcroppings offered us a respite from our week. We sat just beneath an ancient line of white that marked the boundary between an ancient ocean’s surface, the rocks above being ancient islands, and the edge of the valley being the shore.

Sitting in silence the position of our assemblage points returned to silence in alignment with the earth. Across the valley points we had visited before were illuminated with vibrating energy. This could easily be seen in a restful stance. In essence dreaming into this place allowed us to “see” connections between places. Lines of power connected various places.

Nagual Man, Nagual Woman… self important readings

The Nagual Man

In correlation with the previous post on the nagual and tonal, one of my favorite quotes comes from the Heart Sutra. “Form is emptiness; emptiness is form.” Emptiness does not mean nothing, it means absence of structure and solidity. We need this to create that (form)… And vice versa. There is no actual duality in the totality of the universe. It is a constantly changing, constant pattern making system. Order emerges (form) and it becomes self-regulating through a constant link with the nagual. This is probably one of my favorite ways to speak of the relationship between the nagual and the tonal.

But there is a distinct confusion that arises in the works of Casteneda with respect to the Nagual. In this instance, Don Juan uses the term for an individual who, having connected totally with more than just the tonal and can shift their assemblage points, they reach a point where they can shift other assemblage points as well. They are in essence constantly connected to the nagual. Therefore the term, Nagual in honor of a person thus evolved.

The Necessity of the Predator…. But…

The problem with the human tribe in these times is the lack of a physical predator. We evolved because of the predators around us. This constant threat to our existence demanded cooperation in the extreme. We evolved complex social structures and communication in response to the predators so as to advance our genetic inheritance and our awareness. But something shifted dramatically when we became the alpha predator, a beast with no predator (except disease which we could not see for millennia).

Thus the human matrix began to create for itself, for it is genetically encoded in our bodies, a predator of another kind, type and structure. We became open to a deeply subtle predator that attacks within the position of our assemblage points, the default mode of perceiving the universe.

The Myth of Perfection

Marine Buddha

“Warriors have no life of their own. From the moment they understand the nature of awareness, they cease to be persons and the human condition is no longer part of their view. You have your duty as a warrior and nothing else is important. So do your best. ….. The challenge of a warrior is to arrive at a very subtle balance of positive and negative forces. This challenge does not mean that a warrior should strive to have everything under control, but that a warrior should strive to meet any conceivable situation, the expected and the unexpected, with equal efficiency. To be perfect under perfect circumstances is to be a paper warrior.” (The Eagle’s Gift)

God is all powerful, all knowing, and perfect. Ah the agony of the all, to be placed on such a low pedestal of manipulation of the masses! But then again, if our perception of perfection is not beyond our grasp, then what are gods for? To encourage us to grow, become more, better… Whatever….

The New Seers and the Struggle for the Abstract

Centerfold of Silence

The old seers solved a serious problem of the ancient seers building societies that slowly unraveled the mysteries of the universe.  At the same time, they created monolithic agriculture and social structures that began a road to global human dominion and international conflict. Old tribal allegiances slowly evolved into nationalism and ethnic prejudices. Meanwhile specialization split the seers into two generalized groups.  While these two terms can actually be applied to ancient times, reaching back into pre-written history, they clarify the split what occurred during the process of empire building into two broad camps.  These two groups are creators and sustainers.

Ancient Seers, Sorcerers and Shaman

Ancient Seers

 

Modern man often evaluates and remembers the past through the filter of his own modern experiences.  This should be no surprise to a Toltec warrior of freedom.  This is the exact definition of how the current position of the human assemblage point works.  It also predicates its functioning with the foreign installation, which wants to keep our perspective myopic.  Loosening the assemblage point, the warrior-traveler can connect to lines of awareness, which reach back through our history and observe ancient seers and their doings.  With detachment it is easy to recall the maneuvers that they did in their times.   It is an interesting source of exploration along long unused lines of human awareness, all of which can be and should be recapitulated.

First, the over all assemblage point of modern times, or the mold of man is fixated on ration.  And the conversation in our heads is concerned with the details of possessions and justifications of a rational nature.  The ancient seers and sorcerers had assemblage points fixated on silence.  A position to the left and lower than its current default.  Second, humans in general did not identify with an individual self as we do today, nor with self reflection (there were no mirrors).  The self was connected to the tribe, the group, the general movement of the group.  Thus in those ancient times, humans fell into natural bands of warriors that explored awareness and experimented with many things we would consider very foreign or strange today.

What Does Love Got to Do With It?

The Assemblage Point

Warning:  this post will most likely anger, annoy and bug the snot out of people who proclaim to walk a path with heart, a warrior’s path, if they have not shifted their assemblage points beyond the human band of awareness towards silence and seeing. 

Everything, yes, everything is perception.  This is because it is funneled through the assemblage point, which organizes the knowable world into the known.  For the seer, we see the assemblage point as a bright band of luminescent fibers, which sits on an infinite sea of fibers within what is known as the shell of our being.  These fibers vibrate and glow.  Throughout life as we become more aware of our perceptions and aspects of the universe we clamp down on this vibrating force.  This stabilizes the assemblage point and our conscious awareness of the world we think we know.

Toltec Artist’s Paintings

Mandala 15 – 18×18 Framed original ink on paper

Circles for Bear, one side of two sided work with Circle Eagle

Circle Eagle, second side of two sided work with Circle Bear – Ink on paper set in glass on walnut stand

Abstract Presence of Being, 15×22, framed original ink on paper

Amber Glow of Awareness, Acrylic Painting on canvas.

Bear Mountain, unframed original ink on paper. 15×22

Blue Silence – 15×22 ink on paper original painting, unframed.

Codex Del Sol, Original ink on paper hand made and bound book. Contact me for additional images from this book.

Dark Man – Encaustic Painting on Panel

DNA Molecule Mandala. 9×9 ink on paper original

Eagle’s Lodge – 15×22 ink on paper original unframed.

Emergence – 10×30 ink on paper original, framed.

Enso Book, ink on hand made paper and hand bound. Contact me for additional images if interested.

Evidence of Intent – 6×10 ink on paper original, unframed

Five Bears – 22×30 ink on paper original, framed.

Geographic Spirit – 10×22 ink on paper original unframed.

Golden Mean – 11×15 ink on paper original, unframed.

Holding the World, Mixed media, acrylic and encaustic on wood panel.

Jera – Year – 12×12 ink on paper original, unframed.

Jerome Spirits – 12×22 ink on paper original.

K Rising, Ink on paper original 15×22 mounted on board, framed.

Mapping the Lodge – 22×30 ink on paper original, framed.

Meditation Manual – Small hand made and hand bound book. Contact for more images if interested.

Meditation – 11×15 ink on paper original, framed.

Moon Dog – 12-21-11 – 22×22 ink on paper original, unframed.

Mountain Meditation, Ink on paper original, framed

Non-Action Assemblage Point – 18×24 ink on paper original – framed.

Perception – 8×22 ink on paper original, framed.

Raven Speaks – 8×10 ink on paper original, framed

Raven Steals Fire, Ink on hand made Paper original, Framed.

Raven Winds – 10×20 ink on paper original, unframed.

Raven’s Vision – 22×30 ink on paper original, framed.

RavenWard – 24×48 acrylic and mixed media on canvas… more pictures available.

Ride the Wave – 22×30 ink on paper original, framed.

Secrets of the Bear Lodge – 11×30 ink on paper original, unframed.

The Seed – 22×30 ink on paper original, unframed.

Snake Spirit – Encaustic on Panel.

Song of the Wind – 15×22 ink on paper original, unframed.

Spirit Vision – 18×22 ink on paper original, unframed.

Spring – Encaustic panel.

Sunrise – 22×28 ink on paper original.

The Bridge, 24×48 original ink on paper, framed.

The Land is Sacred – 11×15 ink on paper original.

The Nagual – 22×30 ink on paper, framed.

Thru the Veil – 15×22 – ink on paper original painting.

Thumb Butte, Ink on paper original, mounted on board, framed.

Vortex – 11×15 ink on paper original, unframed.

Wakataha – 11×30 ink on paper original.

Walk in Beauty – 22×30 ink on paper original

As many know, my work with the ideas of the toltec warrior are often expressed in paintings and images seen throughout this blog.  Here is a comprehensive overview of many works created in the last three years.  These works are in galleries and or in my collection and for sale.  Yes even warriors of freedom must make money somehow.  Many of these images are available in print form.

If you are interested, please contact me to inquire about pricing, size, further pictures or prints of these works.  Since several are represented in galleries… they are out there for the world to see.

Appreciate all the interest in the work, the words and the way of the warrior.  Contact me at ravencircle1@gmail.com for further information.