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The first step of practicing magic

12/12/2017

 
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“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.” ― Roald Dahl

I was friendly with the master magician, Ricky Jay in my early 20's. Aside from the night he took me to The Magic Castle, my favorite memories are of random afternoons when Ricky would stop by and, standing in the back alley, toss playing cards across the 2-story building where I worked to particular targets he'd call along the boulevard on the other side. Those were early-ish days of a master practicing his craft and, while I had no desire to learn card tricks, it was a wonder to watch him practice. He was fully present and supremely aware.

In a documentary about his life and his own master teachers, Ricky says:
"The real key to learning is almost like the Sensei master relationship in the martial arts. The way you want to learn is by someone that you respect showing you something."

I practice a different sort of magic and, though it is impossible to teach, I do my best. Teaching drawing and watercolor (and art history practicums!) involves watching people undergo processes of becoming aware. It's gratifying to hear people tell me that their minds are opening. The first step is always drawing because drawing helps you learn to see. It's the most challenging step, really, because to draw what you see requires you to bypass what you think you see; to bypass your thoughts.

Challenging because, on average, we think about 70,000 thoughts per day. That works out to almost 49 thoughts a minute. Quite a distraction from focusing on any object in our environment long or well enough to really see it.
​

When you start practicing seeing through drawing, you become more aware of the actual magical world that we live in. Becoming present and aware of the magical now is the first step of practicing magic.

"Learning to draw is really a matter of learning to see - to see correctly - and that means a good deal more than merely looking with the eye." ― ​Kimon Nicolaides

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Beauty begets beauty

8/15/2017

 
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"Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love... Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding."
​
—Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Because my mind was going a mile a minute when I sat down to meditate this morning, I plopped a vase of mums directly in the line of my meditative gaze. I'm not sure that this helped me step out of the thought stream but they sure were beautiful to look at. Before I stood up to move along with my day, I gathered them between my hands, buried my face in them and inhaled deeply. I love the smell of mums!

It is too, too easy to be sucked into the virtual world of (often) horror and mayhem. Make it a practice to focus on the beautiful objects in your space. After all, you put them there, didn't you? If you haven't filled your space with objects of beauty that the light can find, please, do yourself a favor and do so now.

The objects that the light finds and illuminates will illuminate your mind, whether you love them or not. Practice seeing what the light illuminates. Practice loving that.

Short post. I'm looking away now. Looking for the beautiful in my immediate vicinity.

"I don't think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains."

—Anne Frank
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One thing at a time

7/4/2017

 
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“A weakness of all human beings is trying to do too many things at once.” 
—Henry Ford

There's no such thing as multi-tasking 

The ocean waves do not try to reach shore at the same time. 

The leaves on a tree do not try to change color at once. 

Each wave, each leaf is a unique manifestation of an unfolding process of living experience. Human beings moving through space and time are also unfolding processes of living experiences. 

But the human mind? Especially with gazillions of distractions here in the early 21st century? We are so easily distracted that we miss much of the beautiful unfolding process of life. 

I make this claim with confidence because I am one of the most easily distracted people I know. 

I practice meditation briefly every day but nothing, no meditation I have come across, calms and focuses my attention like drawing or painting. It may not be for everyone but it sure works for me. 

In my experience, multitasking is a myth. Trying to multitask, or even expecting yourself to be able to multitask, can leave you dizzy, drained, overwhelmed, ungrounded. You may think that you are working on several projects simultaneously but, in fact, you can only take action on one thing or think one thought at a time (no matter how brief that time may be).

Expect yourself to do one thing at a time and plan for that. It's a sure way to sanity. ​

"Two things cannot happen at once; it is impossible. It is easy to imagine that two things are happening at once, because our journey back and forth between the two may be very speedy. But even then we are doing only one thing at a time. 

"The idea of mindfulness is to slow down the fickleness of jumping back and forth. We have to realize that we are not extraordinary mental acrobats. We are not all that well trained. And even an extraordinarily well-trained mind could not manage that many things at once--not even two. But because things are very simple and direct, we can focus on, be aware and mindful of, one thing at a time. That one-pointedness, that bare attention, seems to be the basic point." 
​

— Chogyam Trungpa, from "The Four Foundations of Mindfulness Meditation"

I have a long list of reasons why I continue to teach drawing and watercolor after 20 years. One reason is that the process allows people the opportunity to quiet their minds and practice focusing on one task at a time.

Practicing drawing and watercolor is mindfulness training on steroids.
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