Alpha

Painting has always, it seems, been integral with my practice. I would meditate and paint. There was a time in my painting work when I tried to paint from a place” that was original, completely original, with nothing there yet created.

I would paint spontaneous brush strokes with luminous colors. But always before my brush would strike the canvas, there would seem to be some idea preexisting that would immediately form before I could paint the stroke. Time after time I tried, but always some even faint idea would form before I could paint a stroke.

I would frequently take a nap before beginning to paint at that point in time. One day as I lay in my studio, just waking up from a nap, during that time when one is awakening, just regaining consciousness of the physical world, but not having yet stirred, there came a knock on my consciousness. I mean it; there was actually a kind of knocking sound in my mind. And in my mind, it was kind of like a video had started to play. In other words, it was like watching a movie that was happening to me. Like seeing a dream, but I was not dreaming, it seemed that I was awake.

But as I say, there was this knock on my consciousness and this little fell’ sort of poked into this movie that had begun and took me on a journey. We traveled up and up, until we came to this grand building. It reminded me of the Vatican in its scale and general feeling.

The little spirit took me down an isle and showed me that inside some of the display cases were “original creations”. We walked down the isle as he pointed out to me several creations that were made and that were on display there. Apparently this was a kind of museum, where things that were original creations, the first of their kind, were on display. This, for example, would have been the creation of language. Another example would be the creation that enabled physical life.

After a brief tour, my little spirit friend motioned me over to an open door in the corner. It looked something like an elevator. We got in and it went up. Then the doors opened and before me was a large circular room with a large dome or skylight sort of thing in the center.

Beneath it was a circle of figures and there was this energy of glow emanating up from the group of them. One of the figures turned to me and nodded. And, before I knew what was happening, I was amongst the group. Unfortunately, I didn’t know what was going on. Apparently, I tried to join in with the activities, but was doing so unsuccessfully. The figure that had nodded to me began to encourage me to loosen up, let it flow, etc. etc. But, I was instead like a monkey wrench in the workings of whatever ritual they were doing.

Suddenly, everyone gave up and they disbanded quickly. All of them left except for the one who had invited me to join the group. He was looking at me angrily as he began approaching me. But, before anything further happened, a giggling was heard from behind me. It was my little spirit friend.

The menacing figure stopped and asked what was going on here. The little friend” came out from his hiding place. He had apparently been playing a little joke.

He explained this and then mentioned that I was interested in learning to create. It turns out that the little spirit was an apprentice creator, and that the group that he had brought me to were Creators. These were persons that made the creations such as the ones that we had seen downstairs. And, the point of his “fun” was that I was interested in learning how to create (make things that had never been made before).

Upon learning this, the master creator brightened up and asked me if this was so. And I, of course, said that it was. Just at that point the movie playing in my mind ended. And I stretched, wondering at this strange occurrence.