ONE FACE: A Collection of Interfaith Prayers and Poems

One Face by MAK

ONE FACE: A Collection of Interfaith Prayers and Poems is now available for free download.

From the introduction:

Through the years, I have come to travel an integral path of spirituality. I came to this path through a series of life transitions and transformations. My early religious upbringing left me emotionally wounded and eventually I began to study and explore many of the other world's spiritual traditions. Each new spiritual tradition I encountered seemed to offer me a different view of the Divine that gradually coalesced into a more expansive view of the sacred. Additionally, it seemed as though each tradition was entering my life to give me a specific experiential lesson about the Divine and my relationship with it.

Eventually I began to incorporate these various traditions into an eclectic and integral spiritual practice, which is continually evolving. Through many blessings and graces, I have found myself walking a single road made up of many converging paths. Ultimately, this integral path brought me back to my religion of origin, Judaism, and I was able to see it in a wholly different light. Now Judaism is part of my integral path and the essence of its teachings forms the core of my practice.

The writings in this booklet are a collection of both original and adapted prayers and poems that have come through me through inner guidance as I have sojourned on this journey of Integral Spirituality.

Creative Inspiration

Through the years I have been creatively inspired by many things: a beautiful sunset, a tender human moment, a work of art, a song on the radio, a passing comment by a stranger or a passage in a book or newspaper. During my sophomore year of film school I received the creative inspiration for my film Gun, while I was listening to the Beatles' Happiness is a Warm Gun on the stereo and reading a newspaper article about handgun violence. Suddenly, I saw a series of images in my mind's eye, which then unfolded into a series of stories. The rest of the story solidified when I rented a Magnum 44 prop gun and held it in my hand. I felt a powerful force inherent in the gun, which further inspired me to attempt to capture this presence on film. Throughout the entire process of making the film I felt guided by a creative spirit, receiving inspiration at each step along the way.

The word inspiration can be used to describe many things, including the drawing in of breath; a sudden brilliant, creative or timely idea; a creative influence or force that stimulates thoughts and/or ideas; or a divine influence or force that leads to wisdom, understanding, and/or revelation. Besides being inspired to create, I have also had the experience of receiving inspiration in the form of seemingly divine influence and guidance from the creative expression of others.

Rembrandt’s The Night Watch

One of these creative divine inspiration experiences happened to me at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. I remember walking into the room where Rembrandt’s The Night Watch was hung. I froze in my tracks and softly gasped (inspired). The painting’s presence was so powerful that it felt as though I had entered the presence of some great force. The painting seemed alive, as though Rembrandt had captured the life energy of himself, the people he was painting and the presence of the divine, and fused it all into the paint and canvas. I sat in front of the paintings for hours, while it spoke to me through image, character, story, color and light about human struggle and divine yearnings within myself and within all of humanity. The messages I was receiving from the painting seemed to be answering some of the inner questions that had been on my mind just before I entered the museum. That night I lay in bed feeling a deep sense of gratitude for the gifts of the inspiration and guidance I had received at the foot of that giant wondrous canvas.

Art is contemplation.

It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature

and which there divines the spirit

of which Nature Herself is animated.

- Auguste Rodin

Months later, I had a similar inspirational guidance experience at the foot of Michelangelo’s David in Florence, Italy. Again, I felt a powerful presence in the work of art. Michelangelo and his David were alive in the stone. As I circled the towering figure, every angle revealed another emotional reality, from great courage to hidden fears. I spent the entire day with David; walking around him; sitting and gazing at him from different angles; and meandering through the gallery of Michelangelo’s other sculptures.

Michelangelo’s David and unfinished sculptures

At one point, I felt an inner prompting to go into the gallery by Michelangelo’s unfinished sculptures. I followed my inner guidance and found myself in the middle of an art class. The instructor was explaining to the students that Michelangelo believed that each piece of stone had an image within it waiting to be released and that the Divine revealed these images to him and his job was merely to release them from their stone encasements.

I saw the angel in the marble 

and carved until I set him free.

- Michelangelo Buonarroti

The instructor went on to say that Michelangelo also felt that a work was complete when he had learned the lesson he needed to learn, so sometimes he would leave a piece physically unfinished because he was finished with it internally. This, he added was a blessing for humanity, because without these unfinished works we wouldn’t understand how he created his masterpieces. Somehow, this information was exactly what I needed to hear in that moment. The lecture combined with the visceral experience of the sculptures gave me guidance for my life as an artist and my journey of the spirit.

Excerpt from the book The Search for a Divinely Guided Life by Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D.

Communicating Meaning Through Art

As an artist of many different mediums (film, drawing, text, photography) I can honestly say that on one level it feels like a miracle when a viewer understands my work in the way that I intended it. And there is often another miracle, when the viewer sees something in my work that I did not consciously intend, but when they speak their truth it rings true for me as well.

I have studied the language of my mediums and how each of their material elements communicate differently across cultures and societies; I have studied the psychology of how individuals perceive and view art; I have studied symbols, metaphors, and archetypes across cultures; and I have studied how different states and stages of development in the viewer and the work communicate with each other. I believe all of these are factors in how the artist communicates to the viewer.

Yet, there is also something else involved here; something I learned in the form of both direct experience and teachings from some of the masters of art I have studied with over the years...this something else is that the more a creative work comes from a deeply personal meaningful place in the artist, the more universal its meaning becomes. This is the great paradox of art and meaning; the more personal the work the more universal and the less personal the work the less universal. Actor and playwright Sam Sheppard said it beautifully when he spoke to my class at the AFI many years ago. He said that if an artist starts with a deeply human truth, one from their own experience or one from the life of another, then the work becomes universal because what is true for one human heart resonates with all other human hearts.

In addition, as a practitioner of art as an integral spiritual practice, I see myself as a creative channel for the Divine; and that when I align myself with the Creative Source as the Divine Suchness, Thou and I AM, the Source speaks through me into the work and out to the viewer. From this perspective, in addition to my own personal meaning being expressed in and through the work, I believe there is a higher meaning being channeled through me and the work that I most often am not even conscious of. Sometimes I discover this meaning when a viewer shares what they received from the work; other times, years later, I discover this hidden meaning when viewing my work from a different place in my own life journey. In the end, each individual views the work from where they are at on their live journey and when a work of art is a channeled work; I believe it has the capacity to become a kind of magic mirror in which the viewer receives the message that is perfect for them at that particular moment on their life path.

From an Integral perspective, I would say that meaning in art is tetra-resonant, in that a work of art can have subjective, material, cultural, and/or social resonance. This resonance channels meaning between the work of art and the viewer, and one can gauge the general message of the art work through any and all of these resonance channels/dimensions. The more this meaning is rooted in a deep truth in any and all of these dimensions, the more universal the message becomes.

In the end, as an artist I never know for sure beforehand if my intended meaning will translate to others; I can only strive to speak the truth as I perceive and feel it and attempt to communicate it through as many resonance channels and dimensions as possible. I have found that I feel that I have communicated with the audience if I have touched them somehow, and I have come to feel that the reception of my intended meaning is not as important as the reception of the meaning that arises through the wondrous and miraculous process of channeling the creative force…

*Image: Enlightenment by Diana Calvario (dicalva)

Night Watch

In the fall of 1985 I visited the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. I remember walking into the room where Rembrandt’s “Nightwatch” was hung. I froze in my tracks and softly gasped (in-spired). The painting’s presence was so powerful that it felt as though I had entered the presence of some great force. The painting seemed alive, as though Rembrandt had captured the life energy of himself, the people he was painting and the presence of the divine, and fused it all into the paint and canvas. I sat in front of the painting for hours, while it spoke to me through image, character, story, color and light about human struggle and divine yearnings within myself and within all of humanity. The messages I was receiving from the painting seemed to be answering some of the inner questions that had been on my mind just before I entered the museum. That night I lay in bed feeling a deep sense of gratitude for the gifts of the inspiration and guidance I had received at the foot of that giant wondrous canvas.

The Seeker

This image reminds me that...

The true seeking of knowledge and wisdom

requires whole person, or embodied learning,

as well as a deep commitment to

a life of lived inquiry,

in which every experience

is taken as a lesson to learn.