Christmas Holiday Greetings 2010
December 26, 2010 (From now on
this is how I'll be posting my Holiday Greetings Cartoon-Doodle on this
website):
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This is 2010
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Theme for this year: "Thought-Bubbles of the Trans-Dimension-ettes
(Other mandalas for
2010 are posted at this link.) The idea that the mandalas I draw
might also be understood as being thought bubbles of beings that live
in the trans-dimensional realm occurred to me. (Was this just a notion
or was it "revealed" to me? ;-) Another way to imagine these is that
they are "messages" from my guardian angels---the aforementioned
"trans-dimension-ettes," the spiritual guides who serve on my
life-facilitation
committee. It seems to me that there are perhaps 30 of them, different
ones arranging for such inputs as artistic inspiration, dreams,
intellectual insights, cues from my body, synchronicities (also known
as "meaningful coincidences"), cosmic intuitions, quasi-telepathic
hints, and the like.
Another way to say this is that they operate in a realm I call the
double-deep
unconscious, where archetypes "live," and is known also as the "nagual"
by some shamans described by Carlos Castaneda in his books about "The
Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqi Way of Knowledge."
These "beings" are themselves expressions of "higher" forces, analogous
to the ways the hand is upon the arm and innervated by the brain and
fed by the body, and who we are would in this analogy be the fingers.
So in a sense we "are" them and they "are" us, but in another sense
they transcend our individual conscious egos. Operating out of
multi-dimensional or beyond space-time, they really can not express
themselves in a linear
fashion. It would be too much of a dumbing-down. Their messages are
multi-dimensional, and that's why it needs to be in dreams and
such-like. Hints can be found through a confabulatory hermeneutic (a
fancy term for guessing) of these pictures.
I've asked them to stop messing with my mind and
just tell me straight out what's going on, and they---through their
translating angel, whom I call "Uncle Bud" (who sort of sits on my
right shoulder and also acts as a reformed superego, coach, and
pal---yet one who reminds me that the theme this year is courage and
discipline, not slackening self- indulgence---sorry, tangent.
I should say as a disclaimer that I am just making this stuff up, part
of my practice of confabulatory contemplation, creative
mythmaking,
and such-like. So in this exercise, don't take me seriously. It's just
play. There may be resonances or elements that curiously ring true, but
I don't need to take responsible for your hermeneutic process. Anyway,
it's another way to look at
mandalas.
So, for example, on the right is one of their thought bubbles. The
closest I can get to its meaning for now is something like, "Yes, it is
this complicated."
Some times they think "thoughts" that I can intuitively capture in two
dimensional space, and they are a bit more complex, revealing more
jaggedy thought-feeling-images, such as the one shown on the left.
Well, they're there, too, I guess.
Anyway
Uncle Bud replied that they can't express themselves in a linear
fashion, it would be too much of a dumbing-down. Their messages are
multi-dimensional, and that's why it needs to be in dreams and
such-like. Hints can be found through a confabulatory hermeneutic (a
fancy term for guessing) of these pictures. To the left is one of
thos trans-dimensionette thought-bubbles. I think one of the meanings
is, "Yes, Adam, it really is that complicated. This is just a poor
translation, a stylized two-dimensional projection of what goes on in
our minds in a moment of multi-dimensional beyond-space-time."
Around now in the evolution of humanity is the moment, "they
said," to reveal the low-down on the higher-ups. (However, they told me
that so y'all don’t think I'm a total wacko, I shouldn't say that
this is channeled widsom or anything flaky like that. I should say that
I just made this stuff up with my own little imagination. "They"
reminded me that, after all, I am an imagination-ologist with a
side-degree in confabulology!)
So anyway, here’s the skinny. You know all those drawings and mandalas
that you’ve been cartooning for years? Well, many of them are really
the rough pictures of the thoughts of the transdimensional epiphanettes!
Here on the right is a drawing by the famous artist Saul Steinberg
illustrating the process. (It’s not as if I'm the only one who has ever
been inspired in this general way, even though my own style of
inspiration takes a slightly different form.) Notice that what the man
on the left (e.g., me) could perceive was a very tame caricature of
what my transdimension-ette was thinking. Sort of expresses the problem
well, I thought.
As you can see in the other C'mas holiday cartoons drawn over the last
30 years and from other cartoons drawn since my early teens, for years
I've been opening my mind to inspiration. It's a kind of spiritual
practice. I find it amusing that it has taken this long—to the age of
73.4!—to reach the point that I now realize that these mandala drawings
really mean---i.e., that they represent the thought-bubbles of my
multi-dimensional grace-bestowing guides. Sort of. (Or maybe I'm
just manifesting a bit of Some-tzeimer’s disease, which is milder than
All-tzeimers in that it’s only sometimes. Yuk yuk.)
They reminded me that I'm part elf. They said---or it occurred to me
that they did---"If you think back with the aid of past life hypnotic
regression or just a stretch of your imagination, you’ll remember that
part of your soul used to be one of the elves in Santa’s workshop.
That’s why you get all misty around Christmas songs and events. Anyway,
elves have that mixture of child-like-ness and a capacity for intuitive
insight into the higher “planes” of super-reality. (No, not the
highest planes—those would still blow your tiny mind. But a bit higher,
sort-of.) So in this lifetime you’ve been more sensitive to our playful
muses in your singing, dancing, cartooning, and other behaviors."
At least I think that's what they said. Maybe I didn't get it right.
I'm not sure. Well, I'm thankful that in other roles I’ve proven that I
can seem normal—in my professional life, for example—but now I'm
retired and I can cut lose and more radically include my imagination,
so as to help others make toys out of their own minds, just like way
back when I (think) I might have been an elf and I made toys for the
children. It's a pleasant pseudo-memory.
About these mandala-forms: Please note that I've made up some
collections of them, about 32 pages per set, which you can copy onto
paper and color and tape up on your windows. They are in a sense,
extra-elaborate amulets that offer what you imagine, aid in fending off
the evil spirits of oversimplistic reductionism---the word for fending
off evil is "apotropaic," just for fun--- or for, well, just for other
kinds of fun. Just for fun is a very important element in a vital life
well-lived. May they say about me someday, "He did lots of stuff just
for fun."
As mentioned before, on a related
website
are some other mandalas
I made this year. Now to the right is not a mandala, but a more complex
explanation thought bubble of one aspect of the bubbles, in the
language of the trans-dimensionettes.I've made this year. And
here are some others:
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Snake-Puzzle-Box
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Spinal-cord Statue
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And finally, just a hint of a glimpse at the trans-
dimensionettes. It is of course impossible to reveal their essence,
since they transcend form. But IF they had form--- and this is what's
weird and hard to imagine---they could be any size, from sub-atomic to
galactic cluster---but for purposes of making contact with us, they
choose to manifest as small-ish, rather cute-ish, but some still have
trouble becoming very recognizable. So here's a little picture below:
Well, that's enough to fill your mind and imagination for the
season. May your world be filled with light, from a Hanukah Bush,
perhaps---some call it a Christmas Tree ---and with good feelings
always.
Remember, finally, that is only if we
sing, dance, cartoon, laugh, love, share, that the transdimensionettes
also get to enjoy, through us, more-than-vicariously, the experiences
of vitality in those activities. So know as you participate in all that
stuff that you're feeding each other with soul-food, and your deeper
soul, and through your soul-feeding, also feeding your best friends,
allies, guardian angels, guides, whatever.. And through their being
fed, spiritually, you also spiritually nurture and enliven the greater
movement of Higher Spirit in the Cosmos.
What a lovely celebration!