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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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:


Snake-Puzzle-Box
Spinal-cord Statue


 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!