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Rublev, TSK and the 21st Century

Posted November 12th, 2008 by Linda Hollier

My fascination with and love of icons recently took an interesting turn. I suddenly realized that my changing relationship with my favourite icon – “The Holy Trinity” by the Russian iconographer, Andrei Rublev – reveals much of my personal development.

There was a time, when viewing the icon with eyes influenced by my Christian upbringing, I could only see the traditional aspects of the Father, the Son and The Holy Spirit. Having contemplated it for many hours I was even privileged to view the original which hangs in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.

A time of disillusionment with traditional religion saw me packing away my much loved icon.

However, thanks to the writings of Thomas Merton, Brother Wayne Teasdale and Ken Wilber, I was over a period of time exposed to a wealth of spiritual traditions. Personal inquiry, travel and practice led to me opening myself to the All – the One and the Many.

In my icon of the Holy Trinity, tentatively brought out again, I could now see the similarities and differences with the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha of Buddhism, and the concept of “satsang” in the Advaita Vedanta tradition, in which is there is highest truth, a teacher of the truth and a group of practitioners studying this truth.

This eventually led to the realization that the transcendent, the manifest and the great web of life can be expressed in terms and symbols influenced by culture and tradition. The 3 faces of God had been revealed and seen.

In a sense, I guess I had reached the seventh stage of the seven stages of deep dialogue.

And then last week, after following a number of links mentioned by Balder a new insight dawned.

Reading “Excerpt from an Orientation to TSK (in Sacred Dimensions of Time and Space)” I was particularly struck by the following paragraph under “Dialogue of Being” which I quote here in full:

“The key to activating the vision is inquiry. We can use imagination, visualization, speculation, common sense – whatever helps to sharpen our questions and awaken our intelligence. Good questions are an invitation to knowledge to sit at our table as our honoured guest. Having accepted our invitation, knowledge brings with it time and space. If we treat all three with appreciation and respect, they soon begin to speak among themselves, giving us the rare privilege of listening in.”

How aptly this paragraph described my much loved icon in which three angels appeared to Abraham and Sarah.

“Space grows more spacious” was none other than the many mansions depicted behind the one figure. “Time begins to show us new faces” threw new light on the figure traditionally meant to represent Jesus and the tree behind him representing the cyclical rhythms of nature.“Knowledge has patiently held itself available” and is as solid as the mountain depicted behind the third figure.

Rublev, TSK and the 21st Century had met each other.

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the Trinity, implicit

Posted November 12th, 2008 by Kerry Dugan

Linda,

I find a lovely resonance between what you've brought here today and something I'd written to Durwin last week. The Trinity, implicit.

"There was a way that Ira Progoff laid out, in his Intensive Journal Process, of working with or across the respective quadrants through journalwork. You might recall his chapter on "Steppingstone Periods" (in At a Journal Workshop). He proposes using various distinct Dialogues. Dialogue with Persons, with Works, with the Body, with Society, with Events, and a Dream Log, a Twilight Imagery Log, an Inner Wisdom Dialogue, and an Intersections exercise.

I don't know how much acceptance and commitment journal material you've generated on or around career, or if that's still something you're doing, but I imagined that you might use Progoff's method of attention to quadrants as an approach to authentic career as you've defined it. For that matter, I wonder now if Voice Dialogue might also be applied in ways which address quads or zones as spaces to speak from, places to write from. What if 'first, second and third... persons' kept diaries and we availed ourselves their counsel, retaining them as consultants in personal growth?"

I too have a copy of an icon of that scene, this one also showing Abraham and Sarah (written by a Benedictine nun in northern Africa), given to me by residents of St. Joseph House, a house of hospitality.

May we always invite the Other. May we remain open to the Invitations.

Thanks,

Kerry

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Hospitality

Posted November 12th, 2008 by Linda Hollier in response to the Trinity, implicit

Kerry

Although I now only journal when I am away from home, there was a time when I did so on almost a daily basis for many years. At one stage I attempted to take a first and second person perspective and then looked at what they had to say to each other.

Your idea of letting the quadrants be places to write and speak from is most valuable. I can see that this is contained in the shadow work practice recommended in ILP. In fact, Kelly Sosan Bearer in the tutorial “Practice: The 3-2-1 Shadow Process” suggests the option of recording such conversations in a journal. I suspect, however, that you are suggesting this usage in more than just shadow work and would be interested in you elaborating on this.

There is one word in your comment that I feel needs to be highlighted: HOSPITALITY.

As recent discussions have indicated, the need to dialogue in a hospitable fashion can only add value to what we are attempting on this blogsite.

Abraham and Sarah entertain three strangers and the hospitality they show them is spontaneous.

In a sense, we are experiencing something similar by participating on this site. Your comment to my work made you arrive unexpectedly on the doorstep of my blog page. I have never met you before this. It is up to me to welcome you and open myself to hearing what you have to say. This is a new experience, in that we have to learn in this new “we-space” to listen with our eyes, not our ears.

It is also new, and this never fails to amaze me, in that the normal constraints of time and space are here of no significance. You live in New Mexico, I live in South Africa. We live in different time zones, but that fact too does not prohibit our conversation.

Maybe, Rublev has something to say to us as integral bloggers in this regard as well.

Andrei Rublev was trained by a master of three-dimensional artistry. When studying Rublev’s works, however, one finds that although he painted historical events in three dimensions, he chose to paint certain happenings in two dimensions, in order to indicate that they are beyond time and space. They cannot be seen in the normal way. Is our blogging here, not such an event? Has not the whole technology of the internet opened the possibility of communicating on just such a plane?

If so, we are privileged, but also have a responsibility to dialogue in a hospitable fashion as we welcome each other into this “we-space” – a space from which I believe, a new collective consciousness can arise, bringing with it the potential for a new type of creativity.

I agree with you Kerry. May we always invite the Other. May we remain open to the invitations.

Thanks

Linda

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presence and memory

Posted November 13th, 2008 by Kerry Dugan in response to Hospitality

Linda,

You write here, simply, clearly, with an attention to place and time which may not be far from how Rublev wrote an icon. Such a complex and intricate set of intentions fed the process. The long tradition provided the model. His social intimates gave support for the activity. Riding his own habits of craft therein entered those specific inspired enactments of the art. It took a civilization, at least, to make the icon possible. It took Rublev's hospitality to Spirit in the moment to give us pieces which continue to give fuller, deeper meaning generation after generation. I hear you speaking from that same moment.

The topic of journaling sparked an old memory, the Progoff reference, but it lead to a kind of conversing which comes closer to communing in the nascent moment. You may have noticed Bren Hudson's mention, posted today here on I+L, of the Generative Dialogue Model. The Integral Review article Bren referenced goes into our need to arrive at so refined a space, so present an enactment, that the participants in dialogue do approach communion. The practice of the Adoration of Icons, like mandala meditations, have nothing to do with looking at an old image but have only to do with the immediate, the direct, the spontaneity of experience. If I remember correctly, it was Sarah (as feminine/communal?) who was spontaineously hospitable and that Abraham (as the masculine/agentic?) lagged behind her in his recognition of the need to prepare for guests.

And your being in South Africa reminds me that, in St. Joseph House, where I was given the icon, I spent some time with Fr. Michael Lapsley (of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission). Fr. Lapsley, as you may know, had both hands and an eye taken by a parcel bomb. What an inspiration it was to see him years later celebrating Mass, raising the chalice and the Eucharist with stainless steel hooks, his new hands. He's toured widely giving workshops on Memory and Healing, on bringing awareness to even the most painful of memories, bearing witness in groups, sometimes including perpetrators and victims together... That use of memory is yet another kind of hospitality; a letting-in what is already contained: an acknowledgement.

all for now,

Kerry

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Re: Rublev, TSK and the 21st Century

Posted November 12th, 2008 by Balder

What a lovely and unexpected resonance, Linda. Thank you for presenting it so beautifully! The perichoretic play, not only of the figures in the painting, but of the themes you've evoked in your title: Rublev, TSK, and the 21st Century ... dancing around each other, inviting us to join in and see anew.

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Just One Word

Posted November 12th, 2008 by Jerry Sherwood

WOW!

-------------------------------------------------

It is in the clarity of Conscious Awareness that Truth is revealed.

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Rublev, TSK and the 21st Century

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the Trinity, implicit

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