Beck Balken Portraits

to go beyond the ego we have to turn inward with our own microscopes of introspection;we have to go into our own opaque`matter to discover the unpredictability and spontaneity of our true nature. We have to enter chaos,terrifying though it might seem,if we are to find our own creativity, Courage and awareness of the dangers are essential to our entering into the dance of our own dark reality. To let go of the familiarity of our own restrictions risks madness. For Kali is said to be mad and with her wild lord Siva kali riegns over and impels onward the dizzying creation that is this world....

Red Headed Man

PICTURE ABOVE OF RED HEADED MAN is... John was my Hospice patient. He was 93 when he died recently. When I was a kid I had an imaginary presence who made deals with me. I called him the Red Headed Man because he had red hair. In painting John's portrait things took over again and when I was done I realized that it was the Red Headed Man. When I would visit John he took what he could if I gave too much and sincerely thanked me for coming if I came more professionally. I always gave him Reiki which he asked for by commenting, "Oh there are those hot hands of yours again" as I held his hand. When I asked him what was new one day he replied, "Well I'm trying to take a piss" and grimaced in pain. His awareness was necessarily focused. One day I went to see him and he could not close his mouth. His throat, I knew, was terribly dry and I asked him firmly to drink water which he obliged me. But we both could see it was much too painful for him. He died 3 long days later.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

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Saturday, February 16, 2008

Ben's Portrait is finished

I finally finished benjo's portrait- about a month longer than I thought it would take ...not that the labor was so intense; but rather, digesting the subject in order to find the finishing images was. He was there in the studio every day and we worked on other things postponing his "finishing". You know : the painting is dead when it is finished - the give and take finished. Benjo represented all the things he should for me-- Abandonment: as an act of birth and death(first we are abandoned into this life by the universe and then we have to be abandoned by the very life we didn't ask to be part of at the time when we most need it)--Heroism: many before us recognize the heroic act of life itself; in its solitariness, as we seek the thing which we are that does not die--Youth: Ben was me at his age and I watched with as cold an eye as I could his dance with his impermanence.--Death: I asked my hospice patient before he passed away what it was like to be 92, hoping to get an in site into the nature of impending death.He answered by stating loudly that he was 93! We have no reference to the state of dying and can not know it until we meet it. But in Ben I came as close as I could to it and all the simple gifts of life that are so evident then; love and compassion, trust, giving, honesty and respect, and finally the strength of living in reality and acceptance of all that life gives us. So Ben is done and floats smiling in Davey Jones Locker with a couple a cute mermaids and a big Yellow Tail Fish. As the pain of attachment wanes the real truth of the power of his existence becomes clearer, clearest, crystal clean. He is in all of us and we are his continuation. Love Ya Ben! Beck

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Selected Bibliography

Addiction to Love-Susan Peabody
Autobiography of a Face- Lucy Grealy
Buddhism Without Beliefs- Stephen Batchelor
Can You Become a Creature of New Habits?- Jane Rae-Dupree NYTimes May 4 2008
Cold Mountain- Han Shan
East of Ego: The intersection of Narcissistic Personality and Buddhist Practice- Pilar Jennings (article investigates the potential psychological dangers of Eastern spiritual practice when undertaken by a narcissistic practitioner) Journal of Religion and Health,vol46,No.1,March 2007
Ego Death
Freeing Yourself From the Narcissist in Your Life- Linda Martine-Lewi
Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart- Mark Epstein
In Focus: Marion Woodman
Kundalini
Leaving My Fathers House,a Journey to Conscious Femininity- Marion Woodman
Marion Woodman- 'Dancing in the Flames-the Dark Goddess in the transformation of Conciousness
Mother Goddess as Kali
Nonzero- the Logic of Human Destiny Robert Wright
Rumi The Book of Love- poems of ecstacy and longing
Secret of the Vajra World- Reginald A Ray
The Agnostic Buddhist:Secular Vision of Dharma Practice- Stephen Batchelor
The Art of Worldly Wisdom - Baltasar Gracian
The Day the Voices Stopped- Ken Steele
The Mind and the Brain- Jeffrey Schwartz and Sharon Begley
The Neural Buddhists-op ed columnist David Brooks,NYTimes,May 13 2008
The Pregnant Virgin,a Process of Psychological Transformation- Marion Woodman
The Ravaged Bridegroom,Masculinity in Women- Marion Woodman
Train Your Mind Change Your Brain-Sharon Bagley
True Love- Thich Nhat Hanh
Video: Deep Water
Video: God and Buddha
Video: The Power Of Myth- Joe Campbell
Video: The Robert A.F.Thurman Collection
Video: Touching the Void
White on Black- Rubin Gallego
Zen Mind, Beginners Mind- Shunryu Suzuki

Mom

In contemporary relationships Psyche and Aphrodite are often confused,. Women who are genuinely attempting to differentiate their Virgin out from their Mother try to speak their own truth. If their partner is still stuck in Mother-still thinking that femininity is only mothering(mother providing a safe cherishing container in which life grows)-he experiences her truth as a judgment.Or the interchange can happen with the man having a more finely honed feminine voice than his wife, in which case she may experience HIS truth as judgment passed on HER. As the Virgin and Mother mature into Crone and the Crone speaks w the sharp tone that shocks and alarms others again the woman may be looked on as the negative Mother voice. As soon as that old pattern surfaces the infantile judge and blame games are resumed. If we can remember that once the old archetypal patterns start to resonate, the individual is no longer present-it may make getting out for a walk an easy journey to the door......

Quotes from Marion Woodman's book "The Ravaged Bridegroom"

---Somewhere along the line slaying became simply an act of murder instead of a means to transformation.

Murder is rooted in the ego needs for power and domination. Sacrifice is rooted in the ego's surrender to the guidance of the self in order to transform destructive, although perhaps comfortable, energy patterns into the creative flow of life...

---In other words the grounding of the life force in the lowest chakra has to be secure, open to the energies of the earth, before the radience of the spirit can take up residence.

Here is where an addiction can be the royal road to the unconscious, and while the road is sometimes lost in a barnyard, it may find itself in a stable with a divine child lying in a manger, the cattle hardly distinguishable from the wise men. The danger of falling backinto addiction keeps addicts walking with eyes wide open, knowing now tat the addiction has brought the suffering that is forcing them to connect to their body at the deepest level, with the awareness of light in the body, and with the love of Sophia that radiates all life. At this level of consciousness they are able to draw on the strength of the self to face moment by moment the darkest corner of their addiction...

One Liners

where love reigns there is no will to power; and where the will to power is paramount, love is lacking- Jung
the child is the secret of its sire- Muslim proverb
maintain beginners mind
the problem is that you think you have time
in all chaos there is a cosmos. In all disorder a secret order...
there are no kudos for the truth
whatever joy there is in the world comes from the wish that others may be happy: and whatever suffering there is in the world comes from the wish that we ourselves may be happy...
every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In the first place it is ridiculed. In the second place it is opposed. In the third it is regarded as self-evident...
marriage starts after the divorce
wisdom=compassion , reality= absence of suffering
Reality- we are taking refuge in what we can reliably take refuge in
fear of intimacy is no ones' fault
industriousness cannot replace love and intimacy
we must have faith in the fact that things die
Jang chub sem chog Rinpoche ma ke pa nam key joor chig ke pa nyam pa meth pa dhang gong ney gong du phel joor chig
Change Everything Alter Nothing
Om Gate Gate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha- gone gone beyond completely exposed awake sobeit
Buddha In You!
Time Goes Fast
Nature Bats Last
Me ves y sufres

Heros Journey

Encountering the Goddess within is not a task for the faint hearted. Only a hero can take the journey to find her. To reach her he must pass through his own wasteland,give up his false sense of power and discover what is of real value to him. Only then can he give full expression to his own creative power....

Patriarchy and the sons and daughters of patriarchy do know the Goddess. Locked in fear of her judgments they see her as a negative mother who could destroy them-therefore they want either to dominate her or please her, In her positive form the Goddess is the cup the vessel the womb in which they need to be protected if they are ever to know the parts of themselves that are not recognized by the collective

tension...energy-same thing

tension and energy are the same thing. In fact this is analagous to the dichotomy that the Buddhists use with the terms samsara and nirvanan. Samsara...nirvana-the same thing;tension...energy-the same thing. When I meet with tension the fist thing I tell myself is that I really want to grow.What that means to me is that I dont get entangled in the tension but rather that I absorb it and turn it into energy. When you identify w tension you get stuck. You become part of the obvious crystallization or polarization that tension represents. But when you can take a breath and draw this tension to a deeper level or to a point of different vibration within yourself then all of the tension uncrystallizes. It starts to flow and becomes an energy that lifts you above the event-Chetananda

it also...

it also begins to awaken you to a higher resolution because the tension itself informs you as to how it wants to be resolved and how it can be resolved in a beautiful way. At that point youre not imposing anything external onto the situation=youre simply taking it to a deeper level and responding to what it has to tell you...

this is the basis for understanding what growth is=growth represents the release of tensions-freeing the energy to disclose its secrets and the secrets of your own nature to you. INSTEAD OF GETTING STUCK AND polarized in tension,tell yourself. No-I want to grow-I really want to grow!! This prevents you from identifying w a stupid situation

The decision to grow continuously changes your focus. In every situation youre there to grow period..youre not there to fight to analyze or to intellectualize youre not even there to talk necessarily but to grow...when you confront your tension first you make this inner effort- then something dawns on you and you find that you can do the right thing...... Chetananda

attachment anxious or attachment avoidant- dance of the narcissist and co-dependent

most narcissistic personalities never seek psychological treatment.They are comfortable with themselves feeling no need to change..when others around them are suffering from their horrendous conduct the narcissist scratches his head with insouciance and wonders why there is so much fuss. Narcissists blame their intimates,labeling them demanding,spoiled,dependent,and mentally unstable.

Why should the narcissist endure the painful hours of humiliation,self doubt,the reliving of traumas connected w the therapeutic process. Why would he want to level himself and come clean. Why should he acknowledge and take responsibility for the pain he has caused others... The goddess is the deliverer of truth(love "bears"(births and holds) all things) and not yer mom...mom may have had a good hand in the way you see yourself and therefore relationships, but its time to grow up and die-to your infantile ego self- and be reborn an adult-experience the goddess...reality beyond opposites and the blame of victimhood

There is a plastic brain exercise involving changing the way you see the goddess-from a patriarchal point of view or from the natural point of view....it could be the way you see all women and yer mother. it involves awareness of behavioral addiction ...what makes you know whats going on and then do exactly the opposite thing regardless of the dire consequences?...The Dalai Llama is interested enough in this commonality to yearly hold a seminar involving scientists whose work can shed further light on the philosophy of Buddhism...one of them was some one working on attachment theory-anxious(addicted to the love) or avoidant( addicted to avoidance).... you have a heart if youre anxious,not too much of one if avoidant. So the work,according to His Holiness, is about opening the heart to compassion and therefore 'world peace'.... it is all Mom's fault after all so get over it. If someone says follow your heart make sure you follow it and not some defensive story line(avoidant) or keep it to yourself and enjoy being alone in the universe (anxious).