1 post tagged “grief”
“Our minds are always sometimes keeping bad company, sometimes good company. When it thinks well of it- self and looks favorably on other people, our mind is keeping good company, and when it thinks ill of itself and other people, our mind is keeping bad company. When the intellect makes good decisions for itself, when it resolves to act well and thinks well of other people and understands them to be good, it is keeping good company or satsanga. And the imagination is keeping bad company when it imagines the worst things possible about itself and about other people.
… if it were to think good things it would find peace. So our company, both internal and external should be good.” Baba Muktananda (excerpted from Keep the Company of the Self, DARSHAN/ Good Company, Great Resolve, Glorious Destiny 125, August 1997 pp. 35-37)
As artists it is imperative that we “keep good” so that we might continue to create our works of art and experience joy in practicing our artistry. Then what we offer to the world will heal and promote well-being. But as Baba Muktananda points out, the company we keep resides both inside and out. And that company influences both what we create and karma and the energies it invokes.
As an artist who is also a psychotherapist, I know as well, that the
company of thoughts that reside and that we nurture within ourselves
determines to whom we are drawn and move toward in our external walk.
The internal and external company we keep determines the nature of our success both emotionally and financially.
The recent publication of my first book, Keeper of
Secrets…Translations of an Incident, explores a violent event through
the eyes of the protagonists that live and move at the center of my
eight stories. The first story displays the story. This first story and
each successive story reveals a secret, long held and rumbling, within
the lives of the characters that witness or hear about the event. The
secrets, long held and rumbling wreak a silent havoc upon the lives of
the protagonists and their fellow characters, often family members.
The clandestine moments of histories of my protagonists live as close
to them as their breaths. They emotional residue dripping from the sad
and painful occurrences stand between my protagonists, and those whom
they most love, and who love them. These secrets separate the
protagonists from their most essential self. They, and the thoughts
they give rise to are not good company.
And yet these mysteries form a piece the identity of the individuals who shelter them. They shape their personalities and thoughts, how they see the world, the beliefs they hold about themselves and others. Would the quality of their lives have been better without the meanderings of their haunting thoughts often oblivious of their own existence?
By what standard to we assess the value of our living and presence in the world, the creations we render from this experience?
On observance and in truth we are pressed to find anyone without secrets, any person lacking something–an act or a deed committed or omitted of which they do not hold the slightest bit of regret. It would seem that the passage from infancy to toddler hood with which the entrance into preschool and kindergarten follows is thereafter fraught with things we all wished to not have done. Our first response is to forget them.
Freud concluded that one of the main features that distinguishes depression from sheer grief at the loss of a life or material object was not only the past presence of that person or object, now gone or extinguished, but the fact of having known or seen, or held the destroyed piece or having known or held relationship, however slight or brief with person now deceased.
In Freud’s opinion, which often varied from subject to subject but
remained focused in his intent to heal, depression was the loss of
something the person [depressed] had never possessed, or of that which
had not existed. In simple terms depression was the loss of the
intangible, unmanifest, an illusion, or more aptly put, an erroneous
belief.
Are secrets real? Or are they erroneous beliefs long held and hesitantly relinquished, if ever, abandoned?
What are the dreams that haunt our nightly deaths, of which we desert and forget on rising in the morning?
What would we have to give up to make those dreams come true, infuse them with vitality?
What death would we have to die to make room in our lives for their fruition?
The protagonists of Keeper of Secrets…Translations of an Incident realize that to dispel the power their secrets hold over them, they must not only acknowledge or reveal the secret, if only to themselves. More importantly they must let go of a falsely held belief concerning who they are.
As artists we face our secrets each time we approach the blank page, face the canvas, attempt the first note of our warm-up scales. The sound we hear with that first note, the image we begin at the easel, the first word of our poem or story, is a call to adventure–a dying of sorts to the old of what we have created, and a surrendering to what is emerging on the horizon. Each time we ignore or forget that call and opt for the road filled with travelers, our soul cries out. Will we respond and unleashed it from the secrets of our past, the lies we were told about ourselves and world and what we can do in it? Will remain hostage to the illusions and what has never existed except in the minds of our detractors and, and live separated from our destiny?
What comprises your satsanga?
When in just the presence of yourself, alone, do you feel comfortable, and safe?
Or do you long for more?
If so what can you give yourself today, this moment that will bring your closer to freedom as you practice your art?
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