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....WITHIN THE DREAMS
by BASIL ALKAZZI
A ball is struck, and the round form rolls across the green and
gold field. Once a ball is set in motion, it rolls on. Once a
ball is set in motion, within a moment, by a human mind, or Fate,
there is nothing to stop it, until it makes the journey that was
intended for it.
The wet trees of the giant tree shimmer in the setting sunlight as
though decked with a thousand candle flames. A ball is struck,
back and forth, back and forth. The setting sun drifts further
down, and is now masked by clouds, and then suddenly all the
candle flames seem to have been blown out, but as the wind soars,
and the clouds drift away, so they are lit once again.
It is a moment of rebirth, and within each life-span there are
many re-births. Passing from sphere to sphere, latitude to
latitude.
Once more I had to go within myself, as I do from time to time, to
see what it was the inside self, the Soul, was seeking, wanting,
needing, desiring, missing, and how the needs of the inside self
could be realized.
It is not always that one can see a flame within another flame, a
light within another light. The overall light has to be dimmer,
darker, before one can see that tiny flame flicker...
I had to once more take responsibility for thoughts. They had to
be sifted, to be cleansed of the debris that had been projected
there, or one had one's self placed there. I had been moving in
patterns, treading set pathways not to my liking, and I wanted to
move away. Through the cleansing, one looked at values, and the
values of those one associated with.
Through the sifting, one went through the ritual of erasing them
from one's pathway in life.
1988 was a painful but revealing year. One suddenly saw the ugly
corruption of those professing to be working for me and promoting
my work, a tool they used to promote themselves. The vicious
vindictiveness of those one broke away from was pathetic to
witness. Karmic law being what it is, one that cannot be changed,
they have received their just reward. For every sound there is an
echo. For every ill deed there is a ricochet, a retribution.
Patterns are tattooed on our palms. Yet nothing lives forever on
a plane, and nothing dies, there is only a passing on, from one
form to another, one sphere to another. Patterns can sometimes be
distorted, tattoos can be scarred, can be mutilated.
I was not going to build my body on the ashes of my Soul.
The Soul within the confined body seeks solace and harmony for the
body itself, so that the Soul can reach higher.
The Winter of 1988 and the following Spring in New York became
turning points on many levels. Acknowledging my own self, and
creativity, I re-accessed both, discarding the many extras, in
order to continue without such externals as exhibitions, if one
could afford to, and clearly I was fortunate in being able to
afford to; thus concentrating the energy on
purely creative aspects.
One looks into rooms that one had already looked in, rooms of
bodies and souls. One looks at rooms that entice one, though one
has already looked into them before, seeking warmth, seeking
comfort, seeking success, and fame. One goes in and comes out.
Only after coming out, after having gone in, does one realise that
they were cold and empty and sterile rooms.
I now suddenly had no past, I only had a present and a future.
The past is no more than memories. One cannot move from memories
past, into a future. The future is hopes, aspirations, and
dreams.
Within a lifetime there are many deaths, and with a death is a re
birth, the beginning of a new life, on a physical, emotional,
psychic, spiritual, material, and artistic sphere.
Having freed myself, I allowed the unconscious to flow, cajoling
the higher conscious to emerge, which then became basic and
singular in that it was being manifested from an individual
entity, but Universal because the theme which is the Soul, is so,
and jointly then, it could be called a Spiritual embrace. I was
taken, the mind was taken, the Spirit-force
was taken, once more to a realm of what is quite obviously the
beyond, on its very many latitudes. An inner space mirroring the
outer one; reflecting the outer one within the Soul of an Earth
body, but where the mind found release, drifted out, as in a
dream, and where the dreams are no more than moments of startling
truth. These were deeply experienced
and refined metaphysical growths that found expression not so
easily in words, but more so in images, transposing, the
translucent forms and images, witnessed, and experienced with
paint on canvas or paper.
Once there, I could not walk away from the images of the mind's
eye of such power and allegory and depth, without transferring
some of that memory, onto a canvas or sheet of paper. Nor could I,
nor did I walk away without a sense of knowing of a Spiritual
awakening, and an insight into one's own being, which is in
itself, but a tiny molecule in the vastness of the Universal space
and time on its very many latitudes.
To think, to believe, and dictate that ours is the only
intelligence on this planet Earth, in the vast Universe, is
arrogant conceit. There are other intelligence, there is a power
greater than our own, and it is through them, and it, that we
learn what we learn, confined as we are within a
frame of a physical body. One is meant to cajole and teach the Soul
within the body, and the body itself, as to how to live with that
higher self, one's own higher self, a higher consciousness, one we
can see, and recognise, and know, and accept, but one that can
only be touched and embraced through the power of the Spirit,
which is in the mind, and through the heart, the one within the
Soul, because the Soul itself is an everlasting entity,
that has growth. It takes on different forms,
from time to time; is obliged to take on different forms from time
to time. A different time span, other than a linear one, and
within a linear one, from time to time; and it is that link, that
growth, that one concerns the self with. Otherwise the Soul
becomes malformed.
A perfection of Spirituality is sought by the image of the Seal;
the image of the Seal being the image of perfection of
Spirituality. Where the spirit body with all the knowledge, love,
and faith, of this plane, lives in total and perfect harmony, with
the Universal,Spiritual-entity of timeless moments, with all the
knowledge, wisdom, love, and faith of that plane.
Molecules of a life-force search out and cluster together in
archway formations, opening doors for the initiates. One does not
contrive at creativity, but allows creativity to emerge. The
compulsion is, very often "seeming" to repeat, in order to perfect
the image in one's mind's eye, onto an Earth surface, or canvas,
and paper.
A painter expresses himself with images, just as a writer does
with words, but a writer is never then asked to paint an image to
express better what he has written, why then is a painter asked to
express in words what he has painted? If words are required to
express a painting, then either the artist has failed to express
himself, or the viewer has failed to be empathic, by not allowing
the images to penetrate that region of thought and feeling where
words are not needed.
Titles are used as a guide, that and no more. So, names are given
to each being, that and no more. Each being then "paints" his or
her image of their inner self, which requires no words to express
that inner vision.
An artist with all his complexities paints for himself, and not
for other people. An artist reveals himself, his thoughts, by his
work, to himself and for himself, and then others, perhaps,
discover and see that self discovery, that self revelation in
matter.
Forms, shapes, lines- the actual pattern of stones, made up of a
movement, and so of a direction, are used to lead the eye into the
soul of the painting. It is then the soul of that created image
that whispers and speaks, to the subconscious mind, of the creator
and the viewer, and it is that lost memory that one re-discovers,
in the self, and for one's self.
As an artist I choose, like many others before me, as many beings,
to tread my own path, a destined path, and one that now dazzles
the perceptions of the mind's eye; the images of which are as yet
un-categorised. But do they need to be? Labels as such,
categorise, and by so doing confine, restrict, bind, a creative
force so full of energy and light- An unfair
attitude and outlook by those outside the mainstream of
creativity.
Houses are built on graves and graveyards, and graveyards of
battlefields, and graveyards of natural forces. Cities on other
cities, where their previous forms still co-existwith the present
form. A past life co-exists with the present life, just as
childhood co-exists with adulthood. A moment past still lives in
"memory" within a moment now.
Different time elements, different moon spheres co-exist with each
other, and can be witnessed at the same moment, in memory, in
thought, in inspiration, in dreams, in actuality.
An idea, a thought drifts across a plane, and the receptive mind
snaps it. This original bubble is then absorbed, much like the
sand, in a sand timer, but at that junction it is reversed, and
the thought bubble drifts out and about on its own sphere, to be
snapped up by another seeking mind.
To grasp the moment of creativity, is to seek the bubble, and in
finding it, we then also find that moment past.
A reflection has as much substance as the original.
One relates to a past as one relates to a memory. That and no
more, but one that one must learn from. It is a moment gone. It
is not a moment one has carried with one to the present, but a
scar one might have on the flesh, from childhood- It is a memory
gone.
One cannot compare one's life, or achievements with those of
others. There never is a comparison. Nor can anyone in any one
given profession, compare and compete with another. Each Soul,
and each body has its own limitations within limitless journeys.
Even a cluster of flowers on a stem, a family, a unit, do not
bloom in unison. Each flower blooms in its turn, in its own
orbit, and within each stem of that cluster, there are flowers
that bloom, and there are others that are still-born. For each
that bloom, each has a moment. That is the way of Nature. That
is the law of the Spirit world, and of Nature, and so it is too
with Earth beings.
But this, here, is the Spirit World. Only many of us are now
living it in a physical form, for the evolution and evolvement of
the Soul. We have come back to the Earth to live in the Spirit
world in an Earthly form, to find a balance, to find a harmony, so
that the Earth person, called Man-kind, called Human-being, after
thousands of years, will at long last, finally learn and be able t
live, in harmony with himself, and so with the other Earth people.
Each Soul. Each Earth person. Then, hopefully, the miracle, will
and can take place.
Earlier, in 1985 after my first visit to the USA, I fell in love
with "America". TheAmerican peoples can live and think and aspire
collectively, as only individuals can solitarily dream of, outside
that flawed democracy. It is the dream in America that makes
"America" the Utopean dream.
No nation, and no peoples are perfect, and the beauty of America
is that it knows and accepts this imperfection, and strives,
today, as in the past, to rise up, and above it. Individually one
tries to emulate that dream. I did.
Birds can rise up and fly, but man is, through his body, Earth-
bound. Once the mind is set free, the creation and separation of
the upper triangle, then one can rise up beyond the limitations of
the body. To be free as that beautiful, light, brilliant Soul;
blue, golden, white, to drift, to float, to experience.
We fly a kite, we send up a dream. How can one have a dream come
true if there is no dream?
Late in the Spring of 1989, I went forth like a baby turtle; with
the same fear of a newly hatched turtle, reaching out, along the
wet sand, and going to swim, for the very first time, ever, alone.
Being hatched alone, and still alone, the heart pounding, going
forth. Knowing perhaps instinctively that there are others too
going along, but still going alone, towards a sea, a vast unknown
ocean. That is how I leaped, into that unknown sphere.
Each being, each Soul, has its on evolution. One cannot enforce
an evolution, either speed it up, or slow it down, of another
being, that is not natural for that being, for that Soul.
There comes a time in many, when there is that curious feeling
that there is something within one germinating, waiting to be
born. But one must wait, the mind must be still, and wait for the
new dream to take form.
A change of direction is not defeat, a change of direction is also
an evolvement, an ascension, and with each change, one must grasp
that moment.
Following the inner eye, inner path, allowing the Soul to migrate
on the new journey coming my way, and for which one was being
prepared, and for which one must prepare one's self, for being
prepared. And prepare one's self for the moment when one is
prepared.
Even seemingly dead trees, sometimes hold out a branch or two that
are still alive. Something within the roots, make them live, make
them reach out towards the sky, and give shelter.
Karmic situations come, and go, traversing our pathway. Sometimes
we give it greater substance than it actually has, and we try to
extend that re-visitation, re-union, on this plane, far longer
than it was intended, or required.
Sometimes one has to go to a certain place, not to open a door,
but to close one that had been left open or ajar. We seek
"commercial" success, with its material glory, but that kind of
success, makes one more lonely. That kind of success, should not
be achieved at a price, because that, on a
personal level, will inflict a tremendous toll on one, and on
one's creativity. One ought not to build a body on the ashes of a
Soul.
Success is doing what one has to do and wants to do, to the best
of one's ability, that and no more. It is listening to the
applause within.
It is after all not a journey from this world that we making into
the other, that would befar too grandiose, but a journey from the
other one, that we make into this one. A learning journey, a
giving journey, an educating journey, to fulfil and enlarge the
experience of the life force on the other side, on one's return.
To complete and be in harmony.
We look at a bird soaring in the sky, with deep longing, for it
epitomises the Soul, free, unbound by Earth, a Soul before birth.
That image of the soaring bird is a memory, of one's Soul, before
the birth on Earth.
It is a memory we, each, must return to.
BASIL ALKAZZI, London. Spring 1993
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