Power and Love

In the book, this drawing illustrates the condition of powerlessness.

The human being really is capable of the most extraordinary inner conditions.  Walking in another person's shoes, putting yourself in another's position - we can literally shape shift, inwardly speaking.  This is a very useful ability when building social bridges.  In the book, this picture illustrates the moment when all people in a room put themselves in each other's shoes, collectively sensing the whole that is greater than the sum of the parts - an essential step in healing social rifts and building cohesion for the way forward.

On the American book's cover, the rose is a symbol for what Martin Luther King calls "sentimental and anaemic" love, the kind of love that consists of gestures towards connection instead of true shared understanding and mutual commitment to the other.  This picture is a different kind of rose: the rose won from the thorns, the one that is offered in spite of, and alongside, friction and turbulence.

Before and after enlightenment: chop wood and carry water.  The path is the work and the work is the path.  

By the way, I mean this literally.  I spent years earning my living doing physical work and I find physical labor fun.

My friend and mentor Dennis Klocek told me, your wound is your gift.  Joseph Beuys said, show your wound.  Saint Paul: My strength is perfected in my weakness.  

The wound in this sense is the weakness, the soul weakness, the inner failure.  Where we are inwardly weak, in our shadow and our shortcomings, is where we can grow, and where we grow, we become capable, even masterful.  The alchemists turned the shadow (lead) into the higher human potential (gold).  The psychic wound is a door to finding our true potential.

In my experience, taking one's wound in hand transforms it into a powerful teacher and a doorway to creative consciousness.

This drawing is the last page of the book.  It comes right after Adam tells a story from his work in Israel, when a rabbi instructed him on the fine print concerning the parting of the Red Sea.  When the fleeing Israelites came to the sea, they sank to their knees and wailed.  But one young man named Nashan walked into the water up to his neck (or nose, I have also heard).  This was the gesture that parted the sea.  

The creative process requires one to enter a state of not knowing and act in the moment according to what emerges.  It requires a profound inner commitment and surrender.  This drawing is about that threshold.