A friend called Maks, sent me the site for an artist who creates love interactions, love injections and love related art. It is inspiring.
Streetlove: “Creating an interaction between people and love represented by objects, words or paintings on the streets, in order to make people thing and rethink their relationships, their own situation and love itself.”
In cooperation with photographer Hanse Cora.
| “The best art and writing is almost like an assignment; it is so vibrant that you feel compelled to make something in response. Suddenly it is clear what you have to do. For a brief moment it seems wonderfully easy to live and love and create breathtaking things. In this section we have archived some of the work that has commanded us in this way. In a sense, these are assignments — in the same way that the ocean gives the assignment of breathing deeply, and kissing instructs us to stop thinking.” |
I have been contemplating commitment a bit more. I realized that interestingly my fear of commitment came from fear of letting go. I could see myself being stuck because I was holding on to too much. On one hand I want to take all my options with me, and I am not willing to let go of any of them “if I let go of this I will loose it forever”, “but maybe this will come in handy, so I should hold it as tight as I can”. So it is a bit hard to move forward when I am holding onto things.
On another hand I am too scared to make a choice because “what if I am wrong” “what if this road is a dead end” “what if it leads to a lonely, scary place “. To continue I have to let go of wanting to make the right choice. So how do you let go?
I think part of my problem is that I think letting go means loosing something forever, it means separation and pain. Here is a good explanation of letting go from http://www.buddhanet.net/4noble14.htm
“When you find yourself attached, remember that ‘letting go’ is not ‘getting rid of’ or ‘throwing away’. If I’m holding onto this clock and you say, ‘Let go of it!’, that doesn’t mean ‘throw it out’. I might think that I have to throw it away because I’m attached to it, but that would just be the desire to get rid of it. We tend to think that getting rid of the object is a way of getting rid of attachment. But if I can contemplate attachment, this grasping of the clock, I realise that there is no point in getting rid of it – it’s a good clock; it keeps good time and is not heavy to carry around. The clock is not the problem. The problem is grasping the clock. So what do I do? Let it go, lay it aside – put it down gently without any kind of aversion. Then I can pick it up again, see what time it is and lay it aside when necessary.”
“Now with personal problems and obsessions, to let go of them is just that much. It is not a matter of analysing and endlessly making more of a problem about them, but of practising that state of leaving things alone, letting go of them. At first, you let go but then you pick them up again because the habit of grasping is so strong. But at least you have the idea. Even when I had that insight into letting go, I let go for a moment but then I started grasping by thinking: ‘I can’t do it, I have so many bad habits!’ But don’t trust that kind of nagging, disparaging thing in yourself. It is totally untrustworthy. It is just a matter of practising letting go. The more you begin to see how to do it, then the more you are able to sustain the state of non-attachment.”
In my case I think I simply need to take one road and see where it leads me, without worrying so much if it is the right road or not.
Which made me think of Robert Frost
| TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood, | |
| And sorry I could not travel both | |
| And be one traveler, long I stood | |
| And looked down one as far as I could | |
| To where it bent in the undergrowth; | 5 |
| Then took the other, as just as fair, | |
| And having perhaps the better claim, | |
| Because it was grassy and wanted wear; | |
| Though as for that the passing there | |
| Had worn them really about the same, | 10 |
| And both that morning equally lay | |
| In leaves no step had trodden black. | |
| Oh, I kept the first for another day! | |
| Yet knowing how way leads on to way, | |
| I doubted if I should ever come back. | 15 |
| I shall be telling this with a sigh | |
| Somewhere ages and ages hence: | |
| Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— | |
| I took the one less traveled by, | |
| And that has made all the difference. |
Yes that is true, I never know how to spell committment…
I love new opportunities, traveling to new places, making new friends, starting new projects with many many layers. Generally I love to do everything, so commitment to a specific few or even one thing does not come naturally to me, and actually makes me very nervous.
Recently this fear has been really eating away at me. Over Christmas I started reading about commitment phobia. I like this exert, perfect for my love challenge:
“I firmly believe that showing commitment to something, or someone, is one of life’s most empowering (and liberating) experiences. It’s how we achieve; how we grow; how we learn; and how we love.
From the Self Help Collective on All About Fear of Commitment
And I love this quote:
“When women hold off from marrying men, we call it independence.
When men hold off from marrying women, we call it fear of commitment.”
– Warren Farrell
Wishing you Happy 2010 with a collection of cell phone snapshots of hearts. May this year bring love to the world!
Since I am still Love challenged, the Green Dream Love challenge will continue. I am making the commitment to dedicate the whole year to Love and to living in the present. You can do that too.
Stay tuned for more inspiration, reflections and sometimes frustrations from this journey.
My journey to live from Love continues and I have to admit that it has been really challenging lately. I am going back to repetitive thought patterns, which are all dead ends and very emotionally draining. Part of me knows that I should just ignore my mind, but part of me still believes it. Next you know I am over analyzing everything. I start feeling paralyzed, I cannot create, I am scared that every decision I make might be the wrong one. Needless to say I stop enjoying life and am unable to live in the moment. When this happens the whole love thing goes down the drain.
A big problem for me is my identification with my thinking mind. But this is such a common thing in our and as a consequence being unable to even feel my heart and live in the present. I get taken away by one thought after another. I create big wonderful dream worlds only to see them crash. Meanwhile life is going by. And love is now in the present moment. I was just reading Practicing the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and here are two quotes that I found helpful.
“With the timeless dimension comes different kind of knowing, one that does not “kill” the spirit that lives within every creature and every thing. A knowing that does not destroy the sacredness and mystery of life but contains a deep love and reverence for all that is. A knowing of which the mind knows nothing”
But of course we do need to think. Thinking after all is a tool. I generally struggle knowing how and when to use it. Here is a quote that I like and it helps me put my creative process in perspective.
“When you do use your mind, and particularly when a creative solution is needed, you oscillate every few minutes or so between thought and stillness, between mind and no-mind. No-mind is consciousness without thought. Only in that way it is possible to think creatively, because only in that way does thought have any real power. Thought alone, when it is no longer connected with the much vaster realm of consciousness quickly becomes barren, insane, destructive.”
from Practicing the Power of Now
by Eckhart Tolle
At the end of my 90 Day Love Challenge, after interviewing many people about Love and contemplating it myself, one thing was sure. Whatever nicely figured out description I had of Love I had to let it go. And what better way to do that then through a broken heart.
I dressed up as a Broken Heart Fairy for Halloween. Before I explain the fairy part I will explain the Broken Heart part. (the one that gets lots of, oh what…poor you…?) Green Dream started with a broken heart, or to be more precise numerous broken hearts: over nature, over an urban park I loved, over a man, over always leaving my home and finding a new one, and over Green Dream being constantly rejected. The time has come for me to cherish the numerous times my heart was broken, accept the pain and allow it to transform. And since all the broken hearts have been blessings to help me grow, I though I would be a broken heart fairy.
I had a box where people can put their own broken heart stories. I do feel that acknowledging your pain is the only way to let it transform.
I found this comic at http://xkcd.com/55/. I was always bad in math, does that make me good in love? Let me do some calculations.
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/useless.jpg
Любов трябва
от Иван Вазов
Почтено чувство е да негодуваш,
да бъдеш съдия над всички строг
и с реч от яд пламтяща да бичуваш
недъзи, слабости, разврат, порок.
Добро е нещо да жигосваш века,
греховний свят да теглиш ти на съд,
да фърляш злъчни клетви въз човека,
повтаряни, откакто е светът.
Но има нещо по – добро, о, брате,
от твоя гняв и благороден бес,
а то е: да обичаш – и туй подвиг свят е,
и много труден, много славен днес.
Да любиш – то е да знайш да прощаваш,
да имаш в себе си велика мощ;
да любиш – то е храбро да съзнаваш,
че си кат всички, можеби по – лош;
то значи ти да вярваш в тържеството
на божий луч у бедний человек,
не с дума –с дело да ратуваш с злото,
за язви вместо бич да имаш лек.
Да съди всякой знай – злият тоже…
Омразата – тя пълни днес света!
Тук требува любов! – тя само може
светия кръст да вземе на Христа!
Сърцето без броня, открито оставих.
А исках с метал да го скрия.
На хората честни реших да раздавам
сърдечната светла магия.
Защото не мога да хлопна вратата.
Че аз без врати съм родена.
Приемам ги. Давам им истина свята.
Кой колкото може да взема.
И знам, че раздам ли се цяла, до края,
ще хвърлят те своята броня.
Ще върнат доброто. Съвсем не мечтая.
И празни миражи не гоня.
Ще върнат стократно дареното с обич.
Ще пазят сърцето открито.
Защо ми е броня? Обичам ви, хора!
Не ни трябва нищо прикрито.
A little love inspiration by Leonard Cohen, who is one of the few people who can put the paradox, mystery and beauty of life in words, and actually do it justice.
Another picture with a great heart design.
cc Eva Blue
http://www.flickr.com/photos/evablue/3937798848/in/set-72157622417360600/
posted at www.greendreammedia.com/blog
In the last part of my film I have been interviewing people asking them What is Love? in a general sense.
As the person behind the camera I have the luxury to listen, but not always expose my self to such hard questions on a short notice.
And since I think visually I decided to give my impression of what Love is in images:
Love is: the white cottony pollen that flyes like snow and covers the grass in the spring.
Catching the sunset from the highway
Looking at the moving clouds in the sky through the telegraph wires.
The Heart that an anonymous artist had painted on a red traffic light
Seeing random hearts everywhere
…and I do mean everywhere!
Love is my niece joyfully climbing on a lion
After she had spent the last two hours testing her parents’ patience
Love is my parents.
Love is the only thing that helps me handle living without financial stability.
Love is the reason why I write incomprehensible amount of tedious grant proposals, pull all-nighters, and do all the things I do not love.
But most of all, Love to me is this:
posted at www.greendreammedia.com/blog
My endeavor called the 90 Days In Love Challenge has come to an end. The 90 Days are over and I have naturally been feeling a bit sad. I have been thinking of ways to celebrate those 3 amazing/challenging months, to celebrate the end, but every end is a new beginning. In the spirit of our never ending universe, the circle of life, the roundness of my head, the passing of the seasons, the weekly garbage pick-ups, the coming and going of each day and the need to brushing my teeth twice a day, I am going to start a new Love challenge. I have decided to commit to live from Love for the rest of my life. Love not as a concept but as a practice, my understanding of which is always evolving. I will recommit to my love challenge every month, and come back to it every day and every minute.
I still have a lot of things to share on this blog, but for now this video shows some of the amazing things I have experienced.
posted @ www.greendreammedia.com/blog
“The artist is not a special kind of person; rather each person is a special kind of artist.” Ananda Coomaraswamy
It has been said that “The greatest vision without action is simply hallucination.”
“To dream of a person you would like to be is to waste the person you are”
“In a time of change learners inherit the future, while the learned find themselves perfectly equipped to a world that no longer exist”
“Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling.” Margaret B. Runbeck
“Men, said the Devil, are good to their brothers: they don’t want to mend their own ways, but each other’s.”
“All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.” Havelock Ellis
“To hold, you must first open your hand. Let go.” Tao Te Ching
“We work to become, not to acquire.” Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
“Even stones have a love, a love that seeks the ground.” Maester Eckhart
“Value of persistence comes not from clinging to the past, but from vision of the future, so compelling you would do anything to make it real” Steve Pavlina
“Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.” Alexander Smith
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” Rumi
“No great deed, private or public, has ever been undertaken in a bliss of certainty.” – Leon Wieseltier
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” Carl Rogers
“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” Scott Adams
“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.” Rumi
“ Love wasn’t put in your heart to stay. Love isn’t love until you give it away.” ~ Michael W. Smith
“In your pursuit of your passions, always be young. In your relationship with others, always be grown-up. “ Tom Brokaw
“Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.” St. Augustine
“We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.” Sam Keen
“What the world really needs is more love and less paper work.” Pearl Bailey
“Love is not blind, it just only sees what matters.” William Curry
“You never lose by loving. You always lose by holding back.” Barbara De Angelis
“What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” Helen Keller
“Perhaps love is the process of my leading you gently back to yourself.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“Never let a problem to be solved become more important than the person to be loved.” Barbara Johnson
“Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get, only with what you are expecting to give, which is everything.” Katharine Hepburn
“Love is not Love until Love is vulnerable” and “I came to love, I came into my own” Theodore Roethke
“If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” Mother Teresa
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“A smile is the lighting system of the face, the cooling system of the head and the heating system of the heart.” Author Unknown
“Nothing is predestined: The obstacles of your past can become the gateways that lead to new beginnings.” Ralph Blum
“Many of our fears are tissue paper thin, and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them.” Brendan Francis
“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.” Seneca
“.. you may have a fresh start any moment you choose,for this thing we call “failure”is not the falling down,but the staying down.” M Pickford
“Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.” Will Rogers
“When you get into a tight place & everything goes against you,never give up then,for that is just the time that the tide will turn.” H B Stowe
“Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations.” Faith Baldwin
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” Alice Walker
“I trust the intelligence within me – whatever is happening out there is only a mirror of my own thinking.” Louise L.Hay
“Take the word victim off of your person, out of your vocabulary. It reeks with the old energy and does not suit your magnificence.” Kryon
“The first duty of love is to listen.” Paul Tillich
“Never Let the Fear of Striking Out, Keep You From Playing the Game.”
“Unusual travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.” Kurt Vonnegut
“Using passion as
your only fuel will no longer assure you of success than being in love
will ensure a successful relationship” Steve Pavlina
“Preconceived notions are the locks on the door to wisdom.” Merry Browne
An interview with Maia Iotzova on the Monday Morning After Show
hosted by Liz Pieries.
I think when you relate from love to another person or nature the action that takes place is listening rather then telling.
What I often do, is have my preconceived notions of how something is and when I relate to it, I impose those notions on our interaction. I think relating through love is an act of listening. Instead of coming from a place of “I know”, coming from a place of “I would like to hear”, “I would like to learn” ” I will work with what is there, and respond to that”.
I think relating to the natural environment or another person through love is an act of listening to the inherent nature in everything and acting as a steward to help that nature express. I guess part of that stewardship is admitting that you don’t know all the answers and sometimes the inherent nature of something might not make sense to you. It is a humble position where both sides a constantly learning through their interaction, a process, a sort of dance.
Through the journey of making Green Dream I have often found that people in the documentary industry give me critique and advise on a film I am not making. There are certain preconceived notions of what are documentaries and how they are made. So very few people give me a critique where they listen trying to understand what I am doing and then responding to that. Instead I often get told how a film is made and what is the formula and structure I am supposed to follow. It is experience that leaves me and the other person frustrated.
It is the same with relationships of any kind, between kids and parents, romantic partners, friends, teachers and students, colleagues. Our role in each relationship isn’t to tell but to listen to what already is there and work with that, play with it, respond in a way that helps the inherent nature within everything and everyone flourish and fully manifest.
I though I would share this article on effective listening.
Effective Listening
http://www.drnadig.com/listening.htm
“We were given two ears but only one mouth, because listening is twice as hard as talking.”
There is a real distinction between merely hearing the words and really listening for the message. When we listen effectively we understand what the person is thinking and/or feeling from the other person’s own perspective. It is as if we were standing in the other person’s shoes, seeing through his/her eyes and listening through the person’s ears. Our own viewpoint may be different and we may not necessarily agree with the person, but as we listen, we understand from the other’s perspective. To listen effectively, we must be actively involved in the communication process, and not just listening passively.
We all act and respond on the basis of our understanding, and too often there is a misunderstanding that neither of us is aware of. With active listening, if a misunderstanding has occurred, it will be known immediately, and the communication can be clarified before any further misunderstanding occurs.
My film journey has been about going into the unknown territory in the process of a paradigm shift. It has been incredibly scary and times with a lot more questions then answers. (I will not explain much more at this point, since hopefully it will all become clear in the film). The answers that I have come up with are simple but go to the essence of who we are and therefore effect everything we do. Change towards the environment has to come from one’s heart. And when I talk to people about that, 99% of the time they say: yes, but how…would we stop clear cutting? yes but how …are we going to change the average “Joe” who doesn’t care? yes but how…? but how….?
I just stumbled on this book which gives the perfect answer:
The Answer to How is Yes: Acting on What Matters
By: Peter Block
Modern culture’s worship of “how-to” pragmatism has turned us into instruments of efficiency and commerce—but we’re doing more and more about things that mean less and less. We constantly ask how? but rarely why? we use how as a defense — instead of acting on what we know to be of importance, we wait until we’ve attended one more workshop, read one more book, gotten one more degree. Asking how keeps us safe–instead of being led by our hearts into uncharted territory, we keep our heads down and stick to the map. But we are gaining the world and losing our souls.
In “The Answer to How is Yes,” Block places the “how-to” craze in perspective and presents a guide to the difficult and life-granting journey of bringing what we know is of personal value into an indifferent or even hostile corporate and cultural landscape. He raises our awareness of the tradeoffs we’ve made in the name of practicality and expediency, and offers hope for a way of life in which we’re motivated not by what “works,” but by the things that truly matter in life — idealism, relationship, intimacy, and engagement.
In his classic book “Stewardship,” Block showed how to free our organizations from stifling, control-obsessed bureaucracy and redesign them so that they are governed by the ideals of service, responsibility, accountability, and meaning. In “The Answer To How Is Yes,” Block helps us to realize similar ideals in our individual lives. Block offers a new way of thinking about our actions that helps free us from being controlled by the bombardment of messages about how we should live and act. He inspires us to say yes to our ideals and aspirations.
I was happy to find this message in my Inbox a week ago:
“I was linked to your blog recently, and wanted to share some of my fear drawings with you. Being a doodler myself, I’ve been doing this one for a while now. It really does help.
In response of the 10 Love Potions of Dr. Love
Potion #2. Draw your fear. Sometimes the more you try to enter into love, the more you face fear. Every time when fear comes to you, take a pen and paper and make a drawing of it. Decorate it, animate it, give it speech bubbles, be creative, be silly. The drawing does not have to be beautiful, it just has to show your fear. (This is a 2 in 1 treatment because it also heals your fear of drawing) Repeat this treatment as needed. Collect the drawings. I would love to have one of your drawings (please send to maiavideo (at) yahoo (dot) com, along with your name)
“The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you
not knowing how blind I was.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.
They are in each other all along.”
Rumi
This is the best explanation on non-attachment and Love in relationships that I have heard. Thanks Noah! and thanks for filming it Velcrow Ripper.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave: An adaptation in clay from Michael Ramsey on Vimeo.
This video made me think about a saying that my friend told me
(it might have been a First Nations saying, or a spiritual teacher advise, I forget)
“Go to the beyond.
Go beyond the beyond.
Go beyond the beyond the beyond.
Hail to the one that goes.”
We live in a world so vast and magnificent that our human mind can hardly comprehend it. It is a bit like digital technology, as soon as you understand something and conceptualize it, it becomes old and if you follow life’s constant renewal process you would move to the next level of understanding. The problem I see is that as an extremely mental society we have gotten stuck to the concepts once we understand them and instead of using them as a stepping stone for the next level of understanding, we use them as the absolute truth.
We used to live in a society of religious dogma and now we live in a society of conceptual intellectual dogma.
In my career (documentary filmmaking) I face the Three Act Structure Dogma. This is how good films are made…they all have the same structure and God help you if you question that. Not only that but documentary films are not seen as “art”. ” Art” is a dirty word in this industry. I have actually been told by a funding agency when I pitched them Green Dream: ” This is Art, we fund social issue documentaries.”
When I started planning the Green Dream Mapping Project I was also given the advise that I should not do art, but stick to something pragmatic that will help.
Art to me, gives us the capacity to step outside the cave and imagine the world where the beyond is always changing and we are always expanding our understanding. It breaks through the pragmatic dogma into unknown and not yet rationalized territory. It is one of the most powerful agents of change that can reunite our fragmented world.
It was a pleasant surprise to read my friend Kit’s blog and see how he was inspired by the Love Challenge.
http://lambsamongwolves.blogspot.com/
“What I am talking about here, on a fundamental level, is a certain cultural lack of sensuality in our daily experiences, and I don’t just mean of the hubba-hubba sort. The rainstorm that poured down on me as I biked home reminded me of this, as I took the time to stand out under its heave and tow for a few minutes before going inside. The power of the plane flying directly overhead reminds me of this if I think about what its sounds represent, and the intensity of the imagery of its trajectory, a straight line above my roof quickly-disappearing-into-other-lands-and-times. The smell of dark, damp soil at night, the way your hand feels against face.
This being said, I feel like in order to begin to reinforce some of the desires I have to unlearn the speed at which I wizz past so much and the obliviousness I often have to the things I have time to notice, I am going to engage my whole being in a 90-day sensual challenge. To remind myself of what it means to really *feel* out my environment, and to ask my body to be less lazy about the gifts of the senses I have been given.”
Sharon Harris wrote on
“The I Love You Blog”
Declarations of I love you from popular and not so popular culture
“I am driving through a mountain pass, ignoring the beauty around me, and only focused on my relationship with my car. What make, model, how it’s running, etc. That’s how I’ve been looking at human relationships. When I focus on them, they become everything, and I miss the magic of all that is. I closed myself to the beauty of the universe.”