Skyspace Tending

While most people spent the Fourth of July watching the sky for massive explosions of color, my dad and I spent over an hour merely watching the sky. I wish I was a more talented writer; then I could relate how surreal this experience was. I'll try anyway.

How often do we stare into space, let our minds go blank, and just experience what it feels like to... well... BE? To let go of the inner voice inside your head, the one that won't shut up, and allow only present awareness to exist?

Over the past few months, I have been doing a lot of thinking. Probably more than I ever have in my life. I am trying to understand what it means to BE. The problem with "trying to understand" is that it is too conscious. By trying and by thinking, you end up short circuiting before you reach the BEING part. There is no try, there is only do. In this case, there is no try, there is only be.

I'll tell you this - it is near impossible for me. Silencing my inner thoughts is hard! They don't want to shut up!! "Did you lock the front door? Did you ever respond to that email? How long is my ride tomorrow? I'm hungry. I wonder what I'll wear to that wedding. How many people came to the website today? My foot hurts." And on, and on, and on...

I'm studying Eckert Tolle now, listening to his lectures on CD and reading "The New Earth." I think it will take a while to really grasp what he teaches, but now I really like what he's presenting in regards to just being. I'm nowhere near being able to share my thoughts on being, but I am excited to share my experience last night.

Dad & I went to the Nasher Sculpture Center to check out their latest exhibits and more so to see James Turrell's Skyspace at twilight. I've been here before, thought it was cool, and that was about it. Dad wanted to go back anyway. As for the exhibit, the Center explains it far better than I can:

In the 1970s, James Turrell began a series of works that he describes generically as "skyspaces." These are enclosed spaces - rooms or free-standing structures - open to the sky through rectangular or circular apertures in the roof. While they appear to be architectural in nature, these spaces exist solely to create the light effects and perceptual events that constitute Turrell’s art. This skyspace, Tending, (Blue), was commissioned as a site-specific project for the Nasher Sculpture Center. To achieve his optical effects, Turrell coordinates a complex system of lights that run in concert with natural cycles of sunrise and sunset, and respond to constantly changing atmospheric conditions.

In other words, there is this mid size room where you sit and stare up through a square cutout in the ceiling. If you can allow your mind to rest, allow yourself to experience just BEING in that space, the most amazing things occur. I won't even begin to explain what I experienced, but I did snap some pictures to show the changes throughout the evening. What I can say is that I have never seen such beautiful blues in my entire life. I also found myself closer than ever to just being.