What do I know?

What do I know that you don’t know?

Suppose I know something that you don’t … why, or how would that be beneficial to you? That which we call knowledge, or accumulated knowledge, is just a residue of my own life’s experience. Footprints in the sand left behind long after a person has passed.

You are different from me. Your eyes are different, your head, body, character, your preferences, taste, your Life and all the rest of it, it’s all different from mine.

Suppose I do know something that you don’t, something that could perhaps be beneficial to you. Am I  supposed to put my “hat” on your head? Am I supposed to force my knowledge onto you, discreetly or bluntly and arrogantly? Or should I wait until you invite me to share my experience with you? How can I enter your home if your door is closed. Am I to impose my truth on you, believing that my truth is more truthful than yours?

I will tell you what I know…I am 54 years old and there is only one thing that I know for sure – I know that I know very little, so little in fact that it could be called nothing. I am absolutely unable to put my finger on anything and say – I know the truth about it; I know its true nature….Well, I don’t.

Wandering Sage (Veles’ Priest) – 40x50cm, oil on canvas (private commission).

After spending more than 30 years painting, and in regard to the paintbrush, the oil paint and the very act of painting, there are no more secrets left for me to unravel. I can paint now whatever I want, however I want, and I can paint it well. That’s it…………….And, so what? Really, So What!?

Throughout the years, I have  done hundreds of drawings and paintings, hence I am inclined to call myself the creator of my art. Well, sometimes I ask myself if I am really the only creator here? Or am I a cocreator, at its best? And surely not the most brilliant one.

See, another thing that I know for sure is that I, this Petar person, did not create my own body. I know that because I know nothing about my body – whereas I know everything about my own paintings. I know nothing of its organs and other constituent parts, nor how it all functions. Little that I know about it, I have heard from others who have been studying it.

What did Petar do to earn the epithet of cocreator ? Well, driven by certain urges and motives, through practice and perseverance, he learned how to use it and subsequently managed to sharpen his body-mind instrument, the vessel. He then created his art through it by using materials that he himself did not create.

So, what do I really know?

If the personal experience of life phenomena is indeed the king of knowing, however unreliable the wonderful human body-mind apparatus at times might be, I claim to know the wonder of Elation. Elation and Awe that one experiences the moment when personal opinions, presumptions and projections – all grounded in the accumulated knowledge – disappear, and when one finds oneself standing before the everlasting Wonder of Life, insignificant and naked, emptied out of the mental impediments.

 “I was guided by no system whatever in Le Sacre Du Printemps. I had only my ear to help me; I heard and I wrote what I heard. I am the vessel through which Le Sacre passed” –  Igor Stravinsky on composing his revolutionary ballet masterpiece, The Rite Of Spring (Le Sacre Du Printemps).

( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOZmlYgYzG4 )

 

Well, that’s all folks. After 9 years of posting, this was my last MC post.

I wish you ALL a joyful Life!

Cheers!