Long Theory of Video Poems

 I have been puzzling over why otherwise intelligent and wise men tell me I am focusing on young women in an unsavory manner.  They use almost identical phrases to describe my motivation. 

This is in addition to puzzling over why otherwise highly intelligent and wise older women (who teach women’s spirituality) ask me with almost identical words, “Tell me what femininity is because I don’t really know.”  I have developed the following theory.  For what it is worth:

 If you fail to initiate young women into the feminine mysteries, you end up with feminists who think that “liberation” is through imitating men—that is, seeking the social and economic benefits that come from taking control over and mastering the external world. 

Women now have opportunities in career and action that have never existed before in history.  Seeking to expand one’s sphere of power and test one’s boundaries is a normal human activity.  It generates independence and self-confidence.  But this success and accomplishment have absolutely nothing to do with femininity in terms of spiritual awareness and energy.   

 In the maiden stage of life, a woman has her strongest ties to the magnetic fluid.  The myths tell us that the magnetic fluid in young women has the power to penetrate, encompass, and command the hearts of any being, mortal or divine.  However, this “empathy,” as a spiritual power, is one of the rarest things on earth.   You, male or female, will be very hard pressed to ever meet someone who senses what is going on in the depths of your soul much less sheltering, nurturing, inspiring, and guiding you to transform because of this person’s presence in your life.  

 To put it simply, the feminine spirit has been and always will be guardian of the deepest mysteries at the core of the self.  This sphere of action or field of awareness has nothing to do with the masculine abilities to analyze, to conceptualize, or explain through rational discussion.   

 The masculine sets and defends boundaries for the sake of its ego identity and productive capacity.  The feminine overcomes all boundaries—it alone has the power to unite opposites. 

If you fail to initiate young women into the feminine mysteries, you end up with middle aged men who have lost all sense of wonder, awe, and appreciation of the mysteries of love.  This is because that when they look at or think about young women they can neither get past their own guilt from how they have treated young women long ago nor can they get past their present fear of thinking about or treating young women as sex objects—and this is an absolute disaster spiritually. 

For the man, the image of a young woman is the anima—she is his guide to the inner world of his psyche.  Without acquiring and imitating her pure receptivity and ability to simply give without limitation, he has no further capacity for spiritual growth.  And that is the death of his inspiration.  

The maiden phase of feminine development is where all spiritual paths begin—that is, in sensing what is missing, not in one’s career, bank account, or social status, but in one’s soul.  It is an inward receptivity.  

Fail to develop the maiden, fail to initiate young women into the mysteries of femininity, and you end up with the world in which we live.  

The video poems, then, seek to explore a receptivity in women that is so giving it has command over everything because it is the source that gives birth to all of life.   By demonstrating women’s abilities to express feeling and emotion--personal, archetypal, and cosmic--without limitations, I present a vision of the encompassing, all-embracing power of the feminine spirit.  This is the power to shelter, contain, nourish, and transform the life and soul of any being.  I use this receptivity constantly in my work in the political arena.  The feminine spirit with its manifestation in the magnetic fluid is the area least understood and explored by the religions and wisdom traditions of the earth. 

The urban decay setting of an abandoned building can be taken as a “symbol” of the hostile environment (a monument from the past) that a woman finds herself in when she attempts to explore or express her femininity. 

The nudity demonstrates trust—no trust then no spiritual or psychological transformation.

What my professional photographer friends do not comprehend, what their culture of pixels and literal interpretations of words can not even begin to imagine, is that every picture of a woman is a symbol—look carefully, not with your male/animal mind but with your spirit—there is something familiar and something unknown; if you stop your mind from thinking in clichés and with literal words and simply observe, the image of God/Goddess is not far off.  It is those tainted with the profane, enchanted with the ordinary, and servants of the mundane who fail to see that the form is the reflection of divinity. 

[You can perform a simple test of my theory about how blind professional photographers are. Ask any professional photographer who considers himself an artist, “Do you develop the concept for your shoot first and then look for the model or do you study the woman and then develop the concept to express what is inside of her?” I have only found one photographer who even understands the question. For photographers, women are simply a means to an end: you use the woman to demonstrate your photographic skills. This is how degenerate and depraved Western photography of women is. But I am not as these. I like to interview a woman for four hours first about her life experience beginning with her earliest memory. And even then I have barely, barely begun to know who she is.]

Tantra is a mode of perception that goes beyond the superego, the conventional, the socially accepted, the moralistic, the maternalistic and paternalistic, the self-satisfied, self-serving, complacent, and hypocritical points of views.  It sees women as they are seen in many spiritual traditions—their form is the image of the enlightened mind and of a compassion whose dedication has no limitation. 

Listen carefully, if you “observe” without thoughts intervening, without any distractions entering your mind—no greedy, clingy attachment and no fear or anxiety—then the energy that appears within your consciousness transforms you into an enlightened being.  This is an exact paraphrase of the Dalai Lama’s own teachings regarding gender attractions and erotic imagery.

Look again: feel with your eyes—the energy you perceive has no boundaries.  In Expressions III, there is a picture of a girl standing facing a wall.  She is nude.  The wall is in ruins.  What I “see” the first moment I looked at that picture is the answer to a Zen koan, What lies hidden in the moment?  A stillness that embraces the universe.   The picture of a girl and a wall is a symbol: It reflects what is hidden within your self. 

To the point, tantra unites opposites.  It is a study of a state of consciousness that has attained perfect freedom. 

If you can not conceive of or imagine tantra, you definitely do not want to be on a web site that works with magic in its full power and in its greatest responsibilities.  “Run away, run away”—Monty Python, Holly Grail.