The
real trick to life is not to be in the know, but to be
in the mystery.
~Fred Alan
Wolf
|
In
1979, up and coming
New York
artist Jerry Wennstrom destroyed all the
art he had created, gave away most everything he owned, and began to
consciously empty himself of his identity. Thus, he began a new
life—an unstructured way of living, an immersion into spontaneity
and a letting go of resistance to whatever life presented. In
releasing the form of the known, Wennstrom began his move towards
formlessness—a deep, intense journey into the hollowed out, bare
bones presence of here and now living.
Sometimes
it was easy. Friends brought food; strangers serendipitously offered
up messages from God; things took on a dreamy, shape-shifty sort of
feel in which deep lessons were learned in a spontaneous flash of
beauty.
Sometimes
it was hard. People came and dumped their feelings on the floor,
regarding the strange, quiet man as a kind of guru, hoping for,
expecting, or—worse yet—demanding answers, insights and blessings.
There were days without food; weeks of weariness, headaches and
worries; dark hours of sharp-edged despair and broodingly heavy, damp
blankets of thought.
Through
all of it, however, Wennstrom followed his own longing to be open to
the energy of life itself. In trusting and learning to appreciate the
significance of each moment in his journey, he followed the signs
offered to him by everyday living, relying on his intuition, listening
to the deeper nature of his inner feelings and honing the grace-carved
wisdom of his heart. Thus is the title of this well-written book
really quite perfect. For Wennstrom’s journey is one of evocative
transformation—and not only for himself, but for his reader, all of
us, as well.
“We
are at a rare time in the history of our world,” he reminds us.
“Consciousness is attempting to come through the spirit of our
lives. It brings with it all that we need to live out its gift. At the
same time, our old ways of being on the planet are beginning to fail.
Our social forms and structures are radically changing and breaking
down. Our mother, the Earth, is ailing! We are truly in uncharted
territory.”
It
is precisely in this sense that journeys such as Wennstrom’s are so
important for our world. For it is in the process of releasing our
old, outdated ways of knowing that we come to discover they are really
much more a projection of what we think we know than what is truly
known. Thus we are freed to move ever onward into the new—into the
mystery. In such a grand adventure, stories such as these offer
guidance. And, they offer promise.
“A
time may come when you are asked to let go of everything you think you
are and all that you think you possess. If you can give yourself to
this process, what will emerge will be a truer self in a truer world.
All will be well. All that you had hoped for, all that is most
important to you, all that seemed to be impossible or gone forever
will be sanctified and returned to you.”
In
short, this profoundly moving book offers not only a personal journey
of finding one’s true self, but a universal sharing of the awe and
wonder of life becoming.
|
What
the Bleep Do We Know: Discovering
the Endless Possibilities for Altering your Everyday
Reality
By
William Arntz, Betsy Chase and Mark Vicente (Health
Communications, Inc., 2005; hardcover, $26.95).
For
more, see www.hcibooks.com
or www.whatthebleep.com
|
|
This
instantly engaging and continually thought-provoking book is written
by the same three authors who created the popular movie of the same
name. The idea, by their own admission, was simple: “We trooped
around the country interviewing brilliant people so we could get on
film what they had to say.” What happened, however, was that many of
these brilliant folks had different ideas—“different from some of
our notions, different from each other, different from what we were
taught in school, different from what was preached in church and
different from what we see on the nightly news.” Yeah, that kind of
sneaky different that gets us thinking outside the box. The adventure
thus came to be to a personal exploration of truth, consciousness,
perception, paradigms and, of course, reality itself. Or, as the
authors put it, “to decide for ourselves where the truth lies and what to try out in our lives.”
Don’t
think of this book as the movie in words. Rather, think of it as where
the movie left off. Or, what fell through the cracks of the movie.
Though many of the same ideas and notions are explored, there’s much
more idea storming, roundabout musing and personal investigation
encouraged here.
As
the authors note, it is the great questions that open us up to what we
previously didn’t know and grant access to the other side of the
unknown. However, we first need to summon up the courage to ask these
questions and allow ourselves the journey of discovery and
self-awareness. Thus, each chapter in the book ends with a page of
questions that poke beneath the layers of consciousness to the murky
(and thus not often explored) layers of the subconscious. They are fun
questions in that there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ and yet they
are also challenging questions, urging you to ask yourself why you do
the things you do or think the things you think.
The
whole of the book, in fact, is an exploration of questions: What is
reality? What paradigms govern your/my/our realities? How can you know
your consciousness? Do we really create our own realities? Or (one of
my faves): Was time invented to keep instant karma at bay?
With
the help of quantum physicists, mystics, philosophers, book and film
characters, the authors and more, a wide variety of topics is
covered—from emotional addictions and quantum logic to mysticism and
the connectivity hypothesis. The pages are colorful and rich with
illustrations, photos and intriguing sidebars. It’s a kind of
crash-course workbook of life’s big questions for adults. Indeed,
the whole thing is a wild ride, full of rabbit holes and shapeshifting
paradigms, science and philosophy plunging into the unknowable core of
spirituality, while all the time everyone seems to keep pointing out
that we are all on this ride together—co-creative participants in an
ongoing, deeply meaningful, ingenious and inspired adventure. What
could be more fun?
Dawn Brunke is the editor of Alaska Wellness and author of Animal Voices and Awakening
to Animal Voices. See www.animalvoices.net
for more.
