30"x30" acrylic on canvas, 2022
 
When I close my eyes in meditation, I initially perceive the disruption of sight as my eyes adjust to nothingness. Orbs of light and floaters of dark, an amorphous universe without anything definitive to grasp is its own sensory experience on the path towards stillness. It is sometimes like this when viewers evaluate abstract, non-representational art and describe what they see - so often faces or animals - because it is our nature as humans to make sense of the world this way. Our nervous systems are wired to scan for what is familiar, to assess for threat, to determine our safety as we move or choose to rest. We look for what we know and see eyes most commonly - the most fundamental communicator of another’s identity or intention. Practicing removing this - or at least quieting the tendency to separate - we give ourselves permission to steep in a space of pure consciousness. I have been interested in nondualism for years, since my time studying abroad in Samoa, gravitating towards an interfaith approach to being, a seeker of what makes us the same rather than what makes us different. This goes against our habitual wiring yet opens a vast field of awareness. Coleman Barks’ soul-stirring translation of Rumi echoes, “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” Ram Dass repeated the mantra, “I am loving awareness,” and that is everything. The “I am” is a reminder of the divine within each of us - the Sanskrit word, samastah - all of us the same, under our bank accounts and skin - and loving awareness is the light of consciousness that permeates and fills in the space. My aspiration is to spend more time in that quiet place, with the rise and fall of breath, the emergence and passing of thought, to cultivate wellbeing for myself and to be of benefit to others, to do what my primary teacher guides and what Vivek Murthy calls for, softening into ways of being that “tip the scales in the world away from fear and towards love.”