Pictures That Talk & Words That Paint A Picture

There are written languages, past and present, that are less phonetically oriented and more pictographic in their appearance and usage. The “logographic” system is somewhere in between. Sometimes it pictures a “thing,” and sometimes it symbolizes a word or a sound. And now we have emojis—they are definitely pictures of “things.” 🏠 is a house. 🪴is a potted plant. 🪑 is a chair. Pictures that talk. Then I could coin a phrase, “The Brilliant Sunset Sent Its Effulgent Orange Light Into The Most Joyous Corners Of My Heart’s Throbbing Illumination.” No emojis here, but you get the picture. This is probably why Poetry and Painting are so well related. Painting comes up with pictures that talk, and poetry gives us words that paint a picture. I employ my endeavors in both art forms.

I have my favoite emojis:

🦋

Butterfly

🦋🧿🦋

WOW

🚶🏼‍➡️➔🌟

Walking Into The Light

💜

Purple Heart

These favorite pictographs show up in my paintings, like this composition. It has a Purple Heart, Orchid-Like Objects, River of Grace below Purple Mountains of God’s Majesty, with a few Butterfly Emojis floating through the Sacred Atmosphere. Draw your own conculsions. It is basically the hallowed ground of a “Sanctified Landscape.”

The Holy Spirit Is a Butterfly

I can talk endlessly about Jesus the Christ. Sondra Ray and I have studied His transmissions in our times, A Course in Miracles, for a combined 90 years. (Sondra, 50 years since 1976 when it first came out; myself since 1985 when she introduced me to ACIM in a Loving Relationships Training.) Sondra was brought up Lutheran and I was brought up Methodist. But what is the Reality of it ALL? Our relationship with the Christ has to have Reality for it to Move us, Enter us, Transform us.

Take Me to the River. What must Jesus have said to John on that fateful day when His mission began? “Take Me to the River. Drop Me in the Water. Push Me in the River. Dip Me in the Water. Washin’ Me Down. Washin’ Me Down.” We can only speculate. But then, something took place. Some Power descended upon them both. Some bigger than God kinda Thing gripped them both in the Soul of Souls, and then before they knew it, the Holy Spirit was all around ’em, in ’em, betwixt ’em, and engulfing ’em.

Jesus, Holy Christ! “Love Me. Squeeze Me.” God washed ’em Down.

How would you paint such a thing? What hieroglyphic could you possibly use to convey this moment? Tintoretto used a dove. The Dove of Innocence and Bliss decended upon the Epitome of Innocence and Bliss. Washin’ Him Down.

Water and Light. Water and Light. And then that Dove! Take Me to the River. Drop Me in the Water. Bathe me in the Love of the Holy Spirit. Can you imagine it. Love is an Ocean, I can never Forget. Love Me; Squeeze Me; Love Me; Tease Me. —David Byrne

Alright. I had to come up with my own version. Here it is. Christ And The Butterfly (s) Acrylic on Canvas; 60″ WIDE x 42″ HIGH

Christ And The Butterfly (s) by Markus Ray

More of An Ascension

When you think of a butterfly, first it has to be a worm. A caterpillar has to crawl around, gobble up some greens, then weave a cacoon around itself; hang around in the sun for awhile, get warmed up; then at some point break out of jail. It’s really more like a resurrection than a “baptism.” It’s really more of an Ascension than a Descension. So the Butterfly is coming into new life from all the stuggles and ugliness of being a worm with an insatiable appetite, eating everything in sight, then getting spun into a kind of prison house of the soul, getting hotter and hotter in that hades, then Lordy Day—the Light Comes Forth and Before You Can Say “Jimminy Cricket”, The Worm Morphs Into A God and Flys Away Into a Nirvana of the Heavenly Wing Spans of Divine Flight. It does not get any better than this Budlinks!

Are you on an Ascension Trajectory?

You’ve been dropped in the water, washed in the river, heated in the crucible of heart throbbing lifetimes of glorious opportunity for the evolution of your soul, and now you are here to resurrect and leave all death behind. Are you ready for it? This is the purpose of my work… Sondra’s work… Our work together. You are welcome to walk along with us.

🚶🏼‍➡️🚶‍♀️‍➡️➔ 🌟

Walking Into The Light

Love Is An Ocean, I Can Not Forget.

We do the best we can with symbols. About 20 years ago I painted this canvas of the symbol for Allah ﷲ intertwined and woven together with the Star of David ✡. If I could just get them on the same page, I thought, there would be a melding of Life with Life, God with God. What is the same could join in the harmony of “being the same.” I called it “Heavan and Earth.” Little did it do to calm the turbulent waters still existing between Judaism and Islam, but it made me feel better. And I enjoyed the colors and spontaneous intricacies of this composition of “Joining.”

ﷲ + ✡ = ✌️ ☮️ 🕊️ (or something like that!)

It posseses some of the best colorist relationships I ever came up with off the cuff. I remember bringing back some cororful, semi-precious stones returning from New Mexico, which I picked up in the Albuquerque Airport. In one of the shops there was a large container full of these stones. One could pick out a handful and fill the small black velvet pouch, then pay for the whole lot. When I brought them home, I used these stones for awhile to determine the color schemes of a few of my paintings. This was one of them.

Ascension for most of us is an aspiration, yet to be realized, but nevertheless sought. One must be determined to rise up out of the ashes of our burnt phoenix of the past. The past is over. Memories of bygone days, fondly recalled or fretfully remembered, are problably not exactly how the actual events panned out while they were happening. At best, an interpretation was recorded for later use, to define some fragmented aspect of our accumulated Life. We are always ascending out of the past into the present. The question is can we totally enter the present, even with memory, feeling and experiencing an all pervasive Joy? Whatever memories do not support this Joy, we are best advised to just drop them.

Beings who are fully Liberated from the world of the ego are more common in India. Ramana Maharshi was a being of this stature. He left home at a very young age and travelled to the town of Tiruvanamalai, close by the holy mountain of Arunachala. He meditated for 17 years in a cave on the side of the mountain, and then came down to have a public mission and an ashram in the town. People would come from all over the world to be in the stillness and silence of his presence. Tara Singh took me there in 2001, and this picture was taken on our way down the mountain, in the twilight of early evening, after visiting the cave where Sri Baghavan lived for 17 years.

We can ascend being in the presence of a great sage. Truly we can. Can we ascend not being in his or her presence? Probably not, unaided by them. Or… not all the way. This is why having a Spiritual Master in one’s life is so important. We can take ourselves only so far in our ascent toward our full Liberation in this lifetime, but usually we need the help of a Master to make the remaining breakthroughs. Tara Singh was such a being for me. Without his loving tuteledge I would have not been clear about the determination needed to outgrow my own conditioned thought.

A Baptism of Fire

When I got together with Sondra Ray and began going every year to Babaji’s Ashram for Spring Navaratri, the 9-day celebration of the Divine Mother Festival, I started to have a relationship with fire. One of the main ceremonies at Navaratri is a daily Havan, or fire ceremony, dedicated to honoring the Divine Mother. She is the Mother of the Elements—earth, air, fire, water and space… not in the least fire, which is the great motivator of all creative energies.

🔥🫅🔥 ➞ 🕉️

Fire Given to the Divine Mother Puts Us in OM (Inner Peace)

Fire can burn away our past and bring us into a meeting with the Eternal Now. This is the purpose of a ceremony that principally honors this “burning away” of past thoughts, of karmic debts, of psychic weights, of held regrets, and of stubbornly clinging memories that replay again in our present situations. Honoring the Divine Mother’s Fire Element can help us transmute and forgive any thoughts, words, deeds or actions that are not Divinely Right with us and the universe. Her fire is a Master Cleanser of universal proportions. This is why we use the fire wisely to transform and heal ourselves.

We are travelers here on this earth with some important questions. Where are we going? Where have we been? What are we doing here? Can we honor our life on it’s own terms, and not be subject to preconceived conditions and limitations that were programmed into us by our families, parents, educational school systems, cultural norms and forms, and patterns of negative beliefs we hold about ourselves? All these have put a damper on our growth and full potential in this life. We are meant to be all that we can be, in the awareness of our Sacred Identity. God created us to shine, not to be “dulled down” by the conditions we were born into, and by which we were taught to believe, and in which we have stayed confined.

If there could be a set of modern hieroglyphics that would be interpreted correctly by the Rosetta Stone of our own Awakening, one in which we can fully grok and interpret the signs of our ascendency, let this sign language step forward to enlighten us. Let these symbols be the communicators that cleanse us in the fires of Truth, Simplicity, Love and Service. May we take these signs to represent something Greater, something of utmost form and function in the meaningful Expressions of our Life.

This ART LOOK may enlighten you today—with some modern sign or symbol that enacts some grace upon your Soul. I wish you to have a Baptism of Elemental Truth, leading to a Resurrection, nothing short of a Dove, or a Butterfly, or a Holy Spirit that could wash away the wasted motions of any unnecessary gestures in your Life. Then may all of your Actions be One-Minded and purposeful in their intention, and in their effectiveness to Liberate you fully from all situations that do not give you Perfect Happiness—God’s eternal Will for you always.

Take Me to the River. —Drop Me In The Water. —Push Me In The River. —Dip Me In The Water. —Washin’ Me Down. —Washin’ Me Down. Thank You, David Byrne of Talking Heads for these profound lines.

🦦 💦 🌊 ➔ 🌟

Otter, Water, Wave into the Light of True Blessings

Warmly, —Markus Ray—