Beyond its linear conception, much of an artist’s creation and execution of a painting occurs by silently sitting mindfully before the canvas and contemplating the imagery placed there.
One day in the studio during a contemplative moment before the canvas, I had a revelation regarding the black hound I had painted.
This hound is placed in the center of the lower third of the canvas. Compositionally, it felt right to have this bold contrasting element juxtaposed against the rhythms of the luminous aspects of my overall design.
However, at this moment, I realized that the black hound was much more. Here was the metaphor of the transforming agent symbolized by the mythical Black Madonna. She’s dark because she’s unknown to consciousness. The unconscious has treasures that consciousness has no idea of. In mystical terms, this dark earthly virgin represents a crossroads in human consciousness and is the intersection where sexuality and spirituality meet.
She is the feminine spirit of the Self as well as the creative matrix that gives birth to the merging of soul and spirit, the physical with the spiritual. From this center point, we can perceive the world in its complementarity and indivisibility.
In essence, the Black Madonna is the bridge to the Self*.
This crossroads of unification is critical for this is the point where love becomes possible.
Without this transformation of consciousness, we’re seeing our human experience imprisoned within boundaries that are exclusive rather than inclusive and which continue to shrink to essentially a solitary confinement of one in-group against another.
In the global community today, we have become a planet that is, in essence, one entity. As this planetary community continues to expand, it must not only include human relationships, but the relationship of human beings to every form of life on the planet, and to the planet itself in relation to the Divine. Then, the opposites are no longer in opposition. Soul is in every cell, a NOW in eternity.
There is no “being right” nor “being wrong”. With the unclouded eye, we can see ourselves united as One. We can rejoice in challenge and embrace one another without losing our own center or taking anything away from another.
We are always soul meeting soul.*
The veil that we feel we ought not to have touched must be lifted.
Apokalupsis-an unveiling
*Self-the Self is on a plane of the Divine matrix. It exists in each of us and in all of life. Making a commitment to our deepest Self pulls us into life and opens the door to others.
*Soul-Soul has to do with a point where time and the timeless intersect; moments when we experience ourselves and others in our full humanity-part animal, part divine.