one-ness

I was asked an interesting question yesterday: "what does your life falling apart look like?" There are just infinite numbers of ways to answer that question. Life exploding and falling apart is an experience on the mental, emotional, spiritual, physical levels and so much more. And it's messy. Take everything in your refrigerator and shoot it out of a cannon into your living room. What my life exploding looked like, felt like, at the time.

Before you get all ready to help me, this happened many years ago. I weathered that storm, and many more since then. But, I like an interesting question. It was someone showing an interest in me, who I was, am, where I came from, where I'm going. Artists are like that. And, usually, an artist will share with you what they think, feel, perceive, pray about a particular thing, topic, whatever. Non artists seem to hold those opinions to themselves. I think it's because non artists don't think their own particular perspective on a thing is sacred. Ah, but that's where I think non artists are incorrect. Note, I don't think they're "wrong" - too judgmental. Wrong isn't possible in a oneness world. Which brings me back around to my initial point.

Oneness. An artist said, in part and parcel of the above mentioned conversation, "I am a non dualist." This is a term of art, I know, among spiritual seekers. And it's a nice thought with a nice meaning. Judgment, I know, but it seems not judgment to like something, even if it really is. Since that statement, and its explanation and discussion and elaboration, I changed my perspective. Being a non dualist feels to me like a judgment against dualists and a defining by the not rather than the is. But?

I do often paint a subject as much by painting what it is not as painting what it is. A face recently only took shape when I painted in the sky where the face was not. Much as I struggled to paint the actual face, it didn't happen alone. I painted the not face. Then I saw the face. There's a duality there. There's something more that exists than I can define in line, color, shade and form. The face against the sky is as much the face as it is not the sky. In that space, that energy between face/not face, sky/not sky, right there is aGod. God is not just in all of us. God is all of us. God is sky, God is not sky. You are Me, You are not Me.