[MF] Dharmakaya light

[Muzikhed at aol.com]

Maggie, Steve, Lorenz, and all:
 
Thanks for the topic, and the info shared so far. 
 
I am very much interested in seeing, and the difference between the signal  
from the eye and what we make of it, that filtering process.
In years past I have explored drawing ignored distortions and  extraneous 
light effects.
 For example, we can essentially do the narrow slit  experiments of Physics - 
and see the interference patterns directly with our  eyes and eyelids -  but 
this is rarely mentioned in science  texts, possibly because even the 
scientists habitually block out these  (normally) undesirable "errors" in perception.  
 Sometimes these  effects still come through in my landscape drawings - the 
radial shafts of light  that surround points of bright light, for example.  I 
may still draw the  apparent rays emanating from the sun, when I see them, 
whereas usually,  these get dropped by the artist - they're not "really there."  
 
I also played with something rarely seen in art - attempts at representing  
binocular vision effects in near-field drawings, as an alternate  
representation on paper of what's really seen, again, trying to remove the  filter that 
assembles the two images.  Some of these were very interesting,  most of them are 
left behind - lost to the chaos of my past.
I like to draw, and I feel that the art of seeing is half of the  creative 
process - and half of the process of looking at art - i.e.  the viewer is 
involved in creating the art as much as the painter - Lorenz's  story exemplifies 
this.  In my MoQ talk, Quality is not in the artist,  nor in the painting, nor 
in the viewer, but in the meeting of the artist and the  art, and in the 
meeting of the viewer and the art.
 
I took several long trips in '91, and drew about 50 landscapes on my  longest 
trip.  In the last few weeks, I've been documenting the drawings,  and 
transcribing notes from my trip journals.
Although I was not conscious of it at the time, part of my  trip overlapped 
with Pirsig's 1968 mortorcycle trip. I have a drawing  from a pull-off on the 
Pacific coast very much like of the spot of the climax in  ZMM, the foggy spot 
where Phaedrus re-emerged to comfort Chris.
I just realized this, and it's pretty exciting.  I'd post it, but I  haven't 
worked out the method - a spot to put uploaded graphics.   Maybe Horse can 
help me with this.
 
Lorenz, I read your story about your father & the El Greco  paintings.  I 
resonated with this story in different ways.  It is  awesome that your father 
shared his gift for seeing with you in that way.   Thanks for sharing the story 
with us. Of all the things a parent can give,  I feel these are the best - the 
little lessons, the "look at this," that may be  well above the child's 
current ability to completely comprehend, but nonetheless  leaves a strong 
impression.  My father once, while driving near the Detroit  river, said to me , "Look 
at that huge boat across the river."  But I  couldn't see any boat at all...  
The boat was so big, my father  wondered if I was going blind!  I had to learn 
what a giant Great  Lakes iron ore boat looks like before I could separate it 
from the  buildings of the city behind it.  "That's a BOAT ?!"
  My father was a serious art student, thought he gave  it up for a paying 
job and his family.  He still painted on Sunday mornings  when I was young - he 
stayed home while we went to  church.  After reading Lorenz's story, I 
recalled two  particular Museum events my dad & I shared, a traveling Van Gogh show 
that  came to Detroit when I was a kid, (mid 60's?), and the big retrospective 
Picasso  Show that was in NY in the 80's.   For the Picasso show, my dad flew  
to New York to join me at the show, and this was a special event in our  
life.  

  As a boy, my father taught me many things about ratios,  proportions, and 
perspective.  But I got more from just watching his work,  and his result, and 
it was so impressive to me, I knew he was seeing better than  anyone else, but 
keeping quiet about it, not to boast or to be too proud.   He painted, but 
also demonstrated an awesome ability to carve small wood  figures, faces, heads, 
in wood.  He had also studied pottery and knew  much about glazes.  He 
channeled his eye toward photography while I grew  up.  The darkroom was a magic 
place, especially that first  time!   Wow!  watch this !   
 He tried painting again in retirement, and has made some  wonderful 
watercolors, but he was sadly dissatisfied with his self-perceived  loss of ability, 
and had only a short run at it in his  70's.  
 
I don't have any research regarding the D-K light, but I have a brief story  
of my own.
Lila came out during a very dynamic point in my life.  Just after my  long 
travels in 91, I was settling into a new apartment near Detroit, my old  
stomping grounds.   I'd been emotionally crippled, trapped in Upstate  New York, 
trapped in fear, and trapped in a bad situation to the point where I'd  become 
unable to travel, or do anything in any way fun at all - I literally  thought I'd 
never see my hometown in Michigan again, but now, here I was.   Shortly after 
setting up shop in '92, however, my job  arrangement seemed to fall through, 
and I was just there, living, free and  happy in my apartment with no 
furniture.  I was in a dynamic state, kinda  like this Neil Young lyric:
 
"In my new life I'm traveling light
eyes wide open for the next move.
I can't go wrong till I get right.
But I'm not falling back in the same groove."
 
The new place I had moved to was also near a farm where I'd  worked as a 
Summer Camp Counselor in my 20's.   On visiting the Farm,  my old friend were 
still there, still running the Farm, the Alternative School,  and the Summer Day 
Camps....  and they had read Lila!  They were  always the hippest people I 
knew, these farmers, so I wasn't surprised.   They mentioned the Dhamakaya light, 
and as always, with good humor, told me to  keep an eye on the eyes of my 
woman friends - watch out for that pupil dilation  !  ...we all laughed.  They 
knew I'd just gotten out of a very long  and very arduous relationship, and they 
were trying to help me be  careful.   When I read ZMM, as I have a lot lately, 
I always think of  visiting these friends at the Farm as very like visiting 
the DeWeeses  -  They always seem to be there - always welcoming, warm, jovial, 
and hip  to everything going on in the world.   I used to know them well -  
now we are all different people - or are we still the same? 
 
At the same time I was in the process of meeting a woman that would soon  
become my business partner, and more recently, my wife.  She managed a  CD/Tape 
store in the big mall near my new location.  I was, at the  time writing my 
friends in Texas daily about my on going dynamic phase  adventures, and I had 
already noted to them that this woman had really gotten my  attention.  I'd been 
all around the whole country, but no woman had sparked  my interest at all, 
until now.  
The next time I saw her at her store in the mall, I thought of the Light,  
and my Farm friends' jokes about the pupils.   When I had the thought  about 
looking at her eyes, I looked, and something did happen, I saw her pupils  did 
pop open for a second.   There was a brief flash as we realized we  were both 
looking right at each other's eyes.  Then, I looked  away from the sheer 
intensity, and something else strange happened: the thought  popped in my head to 
look at her ring finger to see if she was married... and  just as I had this 
thought and was about to try to look, she turned to her  co-worker, and showed her 
assistant her finger - her left hand ring finger - and  said that her cut had 
healed, as if to draw everyone's attention to her ringless  finger.   In the 
following weeks and months we put together a plan to  pool resources, and 
start our own record store - which we opened in November  '92.  The store was 
called "Mr. Musichead" in Sterling Heights  Mighigan. The store only lasted until 
'97, but we got married in  '99.   Thus the origin of my e-mail address:   
_muzikhed at aol.com_ (mailto:muzikhed at aol.com) 
We still have the large storefront "Mr. Musichead" & neon sign in  our garage.
 
I had two prior experience with the light, visual halos.  Both came  
appropriately in contexts of 
trying to open up to a wider psychological experience.  In high  school, 
about 1970, my English teacher was very experimental - we had a student  directed, 
self-graded course, and lots of unusual stuff happened.   Some students a 
wanted to try some pop-psych parlor games that were circulating  at the time.  
One experiment involved simply pairing up, facing your  partner, cupping their 
face gently with your hands, and looking at their face  for several minutes.  I 
wasn't ready for this --- at all.  I was  overwhelmed by the experience - I 
saw a halo, yes.  I remember the  background, the school, the windows, the sky 
outside, other students, everything  seemed to melt into a blurry background, 
with just this glowing  face.  
I know she wasn't supposed to be one of the prettiest girls in school, but  
this wasn't about that.  This seemed like real beauty, the kind you aren't  
supposed to see, I mean unless...it felt almost wrong, too intimate.   
Frighteningly powerful.  I was quite shy and afraid of girls in high  school, and this 
blew me apart inside.  I was overwhelmed and opted  out of any more experiments 
in class after that.  I read in the  library until that series of 'games' was 
over.  
To this day, I have blocked out from my memory who  that girl was.  
 
Much later, in the 80's I had the experience again in a safer,  
semi-theraputic context. I was having trouble letting go of (rational) judgement  enough to 
enter a desired deep relaxation / quasi-hypnotic state.  After  several 
failed attempts, and some anxiety and doubt on my part, the  therapist/guide, (her 
hippie commune name was Splendor, which she still  went by, no kidding!) 
suggested a visual exercise.  For this exercise,  one person simply says "Tell me 
what you see", and sits still, and quiet for 5  minutes, just open and 
listening, reaction free.  The other person looks,  and talks, uninterrupted, for the 
5 minutes.  Then you trade roles and do  the same.  Then a second round, with 
a slightly different question,  "Tell me who I am."   With this exercise,  I 
not only saw a  lot of halo, I also experienced an effect I've heard of in 
poem, or  song, but only really experienced this one time in real life,  namely:   
 " I saw her young and I saw her old."    I could see the child, and the old 
woman, and everything in between, all at  once.  Really strange & interesting. 
  After that, I was  able to do the deep relaxation exercises.  
 
     I haven't developed an ability to 'see the  light' as Pirsig has, but 
I've been thinking of working on it lately.   I bet one can develop an improved 
awareness of it.
 
One more thought on seeing, though not right on the D-K light  topic.  After 
traveling for a long time (~half a year) I got use to  traveling as a 
lifestyle, and I got used to expecting to constantly be seeing  something new, 
someplace I'd never been.  I noticed that once I  settled down again in one place, as 
the familiarity grew, I would still  occasionally have moments when I would 
fall back into that same expectation  of newness - even though I was no longer 
traveling.  It was a  really strange mental state, I could make the familiar 
seem brand new,  just for a moment, and look the same way I had before...when I 
was a  traveler,  and when this happened, I got a brand new sense of 
adventure,  that this could be anywhere.  But this effect faded, and eventually I  
could only see my familiar places as familiar, located by all my static  
concepts, located in my mental grid of familiar streets,  buildings.   I found I could 
no longer wake up the same interest in  looking - because I found too much to 
be familiar.   For this reason,  I think it might be easier to see the 
Dharmakaya Light when traveling to  unknown places & meeting new people.  
 
 
Ted C (muzikhed)
 
 
Postscipt: Maggie:
 
I tend to hear the Roy Acuff / Nitty Gritty Dirt Band / Will the Circle  be 
Unbroken?
version of "I Saw the Light"  more than Johnny Cash, but right  on. 
"No more darkness, no more night."
 
Here's another lyric that's kept hitting me lately in a ZMM / Lila  context:
To me, it's Phaedrus at the University of Chicago:
 
"Well I know what's right
I got just one light
In a world that keeps on pushin' me around
but I'll stand my ground.
And I won't back down.
Hey baby!
There ain't no easy way out.
Hey -ah
I'll stand my ground.
And I won't back down."
 
- Tom Petty