To be at one.

I thought I would return to a poppy again just a single flower head. I chose white and have found it the most difficult painting I have tried in a few months. Working with white is never simple.

I think the problem lies in the need for further contemplation of white poppies before beginning. So this one has no copyright on it a sure sign I am not fully content with it.

To truly understand something we have to get to know it. This is true not only of friends and people it is equally true of nature and everything within it.

I frequently walk along a narrow path through trees on the bank of a river. My wife and companions often ask if I have managed to see any fish, they are aware that I spend a lot of time just looking at the river as it flows. I watch the reeds and the watercress like plants as they move this way and that with the flow of the water. 

It was the Buddha who said, "You can never step in the same river twice." Of course, when you first share this idea with others they say that of course, you can. For them, the river is just there and has a name so of course, you can stand in it twice.

The river was running there probably years before I was a twinkle in my parent's eye. But the way this river flows the currents that take it around the rocks, the banks of the river, the hiding places of the fish, they are all subtly different at every moment of the day and weeks.

To really know this river we have to know it directly, to touch it, to taste its water, to stand in it possibly even swim in it, to contemplate it and drink it into the inner being.

It is the very same with nature, or as the Taoists call it the Chi of Life.

The spirit of creation, this Chi like the river is constantly flowing through our lives. Although it was present since the beginning of time. Many experience this inner spirit but to know it one has to explore it. To see and feel it, to be at one with it. 

We are so often like the fish that was told by the otter that if it did not find water it would die. The fish swam this way and that asking every living thing it saw where it might find water until the wise owl told it that he was in it, that he moved and lived within it and if he did not he would already be dead. 

The spirit of life or the Chi is what we live and move and have our being in. To truly know this and be at one with it we have to contemplate and not take for granted.

Once you have touched and felt and swam with the Spirit of life there will be no doubt and no need to have this confirmed by any book or words. 

it is the same with my poppy I need to get to know it better before attempting to portray it.

Have a spirit filled day and one of peace.