Shamanic Sacra-Mental Spaces

Life is a disease with a very bad prognosis. It lingers on for years and invariably ends with death.

Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It's that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don't know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.

It is either through the influence of narcotic potions, of which all primitive people and races speak in hymns, or through the powerful approach of spring, penetrating all of nature with joy, that those Dionysian stirrings rise… Not only does the bond between person and person come to be forged once again by the magic of the Dionysian rite, but alienated, hostile, or subjugated nature again celebrates her reconciliation with her prodigal son, mankind.

…we have learned from them the beginnings of life, and have gained the power not only to live happily, but also to die with a better hope.

Our greatest fear is that when we die we will become nothing. Many of us believe that our entire existence is only a life span beginning the moment we are born or conceived and ending the moment we die. We believe that we are born from nothing and that when we die we become nothing. And so, we are filled with fear of annihilation. The Buddha has a very different understanding of our existence. It is the understanding that birth and death are notions. They are not real. The fact that we think they are true makes a powerful illusion that causes all our suffering. The Buddha taught there is no birth, there is no death; there is no coming, there is no going; there is no same, there is no different; there is no permanent self, there is no annihilation. We only think there is. When we understand that we cannot be destroyed, we are liberated from fear. It is a great relief. We can enjoy life and appreciate it in a new way.

A few years ago I re-interpreted the Symbolist painter Jean Delville’s Portrait of Mrs. Stuart Merrill also called Mysteriosa. Delville is a very inspiring figure to me. Though it’s completely unprovable, I have had numerous “past life” flashes about working on his paintings. After studying his work and writing a book, “The Mission of Art '' inspired by Delville’s “New Mission of Art”,  I discovered that he died on January 19, 1953 and according to my mother’s diaries I was conceived March 4th, 1953. This is within the 49 day period between the time we die and are reborn, called the Bardo, according to the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Of course, this information just reinforced my elaborate fantasy. He was one of the earliest painters associated with Theosophy and Rosicrucianism and wrote books connecting art and spirituality before more well known modernist Theosophists like Kandinsky. He even stated that if an artist cannot complete their mission during one lifetime then they may choose to reincarnate and continue the mission.

O God! if I worship Thee in fear of Hell, burn me in Hell; and if I worship Thee in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise; but if I worship Thee for Thine own sake, withhold not thine everlasting beauty.

I have been alone but seldom lonely. I have satisfied my thirst at the well of my self and that wine was good, the best I ever had, and tonight sitting staring into the dark I now finally understand the dark and the light and everything in between. peace of mind and heart arrives when we accept what is: having been born into this strange life we must accept the wasted gamble of our days and take some satisfaction in the pleasure of leaving it all behind.