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IN EVERY MOON THERE IS A FACE was created from my heart.
It celebrates the profound reverence for life with which I was born.I came into this world aware that I was merely visiting. Everything, everyone, I met here was, to me, a Living Thing. A person. Each a point of consciousness within a whole, speaking a common silent language, expressing the single reality within us all.
Well, it wasn't long before I figured out most humans had forgotten this spiritual point of view, at least in the Western world, so I quickly shut up about such things and became a very good and very quiet little girl. Shutting up about what was meaningful to me made me withdraw more from others than it was my nature to do, and I became quite confused about expressing only those things other people did approve of and understand. Still, I had a sense of humor and was a good little mimic so I managed. People said I was "just too sensitive," which I am. (Which you probably are, too, if you're reading this.) Anyway, imagine my surprise and my great delight many years later...
...when, one day early in our marriage, I found myself asking my husband, Charlie, to write me a poem. "One that doesn't tell a story of its own," I said. Twenty minutes later he handed me this miraculous necklace of glorious words (he's gifted that way) and two years later I handed him a finished and fully illustrated book.
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But, lucky me, in those two years I had taken an uplifting journey. A journey to the Eternal Home within us all. Each line of the poem inspired a new awareness, taking me deeper and bringing me closer, to that world we can imagine only when we are untouched by what anyone else has thought or the external world perception has taught us. In my secret self, I met the creatures and elements we see in our every day world, but I saw them as they really are--within the Within. Just like I did when I was a little girl--when I was that newly-minted human, alive with a bright, fresh mind and open heart.
I looked into the FACE of the moon that keeps tender vigil in our twinkling sky.
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I swam in the SEA, that for all its strength and power, is forever reaching to keep us safe and far from harm.
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I touched the STAR that lives in the soul of every flower, just like the STAR that lives in my soul and yours.
And, I heard the TREE of Timelessness whisper to me that life is a joyful Dance that is playing the Tune, we ourselves, are making.
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This was my journey and this is what I put down on paper, but let me be perfectly clear about what it is I am saying here. I am saying, in absolute terms, that the pictures in this book reveal a REAL WORLD, a world seen from its inner meaning. Oh yes, I know that makes me crazy to lot of people, but isn't it interesting to contemplate, what kind of life we would create, if more people saw our world this way?
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Human Beings want and need Magic, that awareness of transcendent being. That joyful sense of being in right relationship with oneself and with life. Magic is a part of our true nature and we are lonely and sad without it, consequently most of us live lives of disappointment. We look to the world to give us what we lack and it betrays us time and time again. But the world has no Magic to give, it merely reflects what we ourselves are giving. It is our individual imagination we should look to for aliveness. And it is this inner world we should make,
most real of all.
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The illustrations from the book are available as signed fine art prints from:
janekahanfolio
Words & Pictures © by Arlene Graston
All Rights Reserved
