On the Last Landscape as a work of death literacy
WHAT is death literacy!
In general Death literacy can be thought of as a social collective. A collection on how a culture of death is on display and where the disconnects of death’s blind spots are under-appreciated as missed opportunities to one’s mortality and how we die.Then how new thinking or best yet how old traditions can be re-engaged . Finding the Hidden Elements.
Death Literacy a definition:
The current pandemic
The act of end-of-life (EOL) caregiving provides a deeply personal connection to death and dying and is a catalyst to developing death literacy, a new movement that embraces whole living and whole dying
Today there is a clear call to understand and work with death and dying in new and more open ways. Our culture is awakening to a more conscious view of our own mortality. Death literacy is intended to reframe our current conception of dying and reclaim the wisdom and practices of the past.
Death Literacy brings forth a path of reflection that offers a soulful life, a deep re-imagining and intelligence, a sensibility to the symbolic the metaphoric life rich in beauty, and inspires genuine community. A point of view of our mortality providing a breadth of vision, inspiration and sense of meaning.
WHY consider Death Literacy !
One can consider an aspect of death literacy as the art of spiritual science. “Through spiritual science, human beings are meant to receive real content from the spiritual world once again. We are meant to be released from the life of abstraction, from the life that refuses to go beyond the perceptions and thoughts that lie between birth and death, from a life that at most takes in some indefinite verbal indications of the spiritual world to be aware of the super sensible world even as we live and work in the physical world. This life between birth and death passes through the gates of death and continues soulfully the journey”. Rudolph Steiner
Death literacy informed by embodying artistic living and is more then having stronger sensible feelings – artistic living can be our most valuable educator in freeing the soul from fear.In this freedom the body unites with the imaginative force of the soul in the creative power of the spirit.
As long as our senses are fragmented disembodied they remain compartmentalized, fear is left to roam at will, to dislocate our vitality. Shadowing our truth, bearing beauty. Using the wings of imagination to find her way to love through beauty.
An imaginative rooted Death literacy shows us what is already there in the ordinary, but without art we live under the illusion that there is only time, and not eternity. Death literacy brings forth the holy ground of soulful living. To the soul artful creativity, imagination informs and death literacy giving life into the winding paths into deeper soul awakening ; the mysterious reveals itself as heart, death a turn at the fork on the path. A Thomas Moore remix
Benefits of Death Literacy :
Death Literacy can be a bridge it can serve us well in this process if we make connections between our experiences of drama, literature, painting, and music and our most personal conflicts and challenges. In that the arts meet us at the point of imagination, which isa blending of reason and mystery in images. In the arts we contemplate our world and have the chance no longer to be strangers to the deep self that is as opaque to reason as it is transparent to the imagination.
In a time of emotional struggle, it might be better to listen to a special piece of music than to consult an expert, and better to draw a picture of the situation than to try to figure it out. Reason is distant and has its own limited requirements for an ordered life, while the arts are intimate and can hold almost any conceivable human predicament.
Death Literacy as imagination and freedom and the making of The Last Landscape
Seeing the soul in the every day transforms how we see our own journey how how we embrace our own mortality. It is a gift of insight.
As an artistic expression The Last Landscape embraces Death literacy as a means of deepening ones souls as creative imaginative beings. In narratives, stories, images, literacy – imagination is real because every perception of our consciousness is colored by the narrative or image – as lenses through which we perceive. In the Last Landscape an allegory on death and the grave It opens the gates of our humanity through the lens of Earth, Water, Fire and Air. Last Landscape is a story inspired by real events shared by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche In Love with the World, A monks journey through the Bardos of living and Dying, his account of his near death experience. But more than a journey it is a visual meditation, a montage and musical interlude as a lens to awaken consciousness.
We are all poets, artists, writers, dancers, musicians as we live our daily lives. We can be educated about our existence our mortality – death by the arts. This is why thirdmessenger sees death literacy as primary in a soul’s focus. The deep soul that gives us vitality and interesting substance goes so far into hiding that it becomes invisible.
Death Literacy as a Bridge
Death literacy is a gift of insight to make a new intelligence prevail, awaken a deeper consciousness. Death literacy is attempting to deepen awakening to see life as a living human document rather than a literature fixed on books and to focus attention upon the issues of spiritual life and death. A means to see our humanity linked to creativity. To see death’s shadow as a gate into a threshold entering out of a hidden place so the fruits of creativity and wholeness can grow and glow and awake.
“what does it mean to wake? Perhaps to be living with the lively imagination, responding honestly and courageously to opportunity and avoiding the temptation to follow mere habit or collective values. It means to be an individual, in every instance manifesting the originality of who we are. This is the ultimate form of creativity – following the lead of the deep soul as we make a life” Thomas Moore
A WAKE UP CALL
The way to wake up to vitality is first to find holes in the illusory literalism of everyday life. Ansel Adams used a camera to see through the film that covers over the world’s lively personality. Others use oils on canvas or crafted words on paper. The skin of literalism can be penetrated, but some kind of technique is required—an art, a craft, a rite. The camera lens can do it, when the eye of the photographer is penetrating. A mirror might do, if we could get past the literal reflections to the wonder inspired by reflected images.
The key to seeing the world’s soul, and in the process wakening one’s own, is to get over the confusion by which we think that fact is real and imagination an illusion. It is the other way around. Fact is an illusion, because every fact is part of a story and is riddled with imagination. Imagination is real because every perception of the world around us is absolutely colored by the narrative or image-filled lens through which we perceive. We are all poets and artists as we live our daily lives, whether or not we recognize this role and whether or not we believe it.
It is possible to create our stories, to live artfully in life’s constant stream of poetry. We can be educated in the language of imagination by the arts, and that is why the arts are primary in any soul-focused education. In the arts we see the images, the stories and pieces of story that give meaning and value to the most ordinary details of a life. A still life reveals the soul in a kitchen. A landscape teaches us that nature has a personality. A sonata recapitulates the rhythms and moving forms of experience. A short story the character , the fragrance, the grace the beingness of its art. And in the Last Landscape the primal forces of the bardo of the a threshold a grave and the elements stir our deepest imagination.
Once we penetrate the illusory veil of literalism and glimpse the layers in events, we may never go back to the fabrications of fact. We will have become• poets of the everyday. Death Literacy then is the gate that calls us to dig , to awake, to be creative and allow our gifts of soulful imagination to embrace being with our mortality.
A remix of Thomas Moore’s Original Self
Testamonials:
… it is breathtaking. Like an unfolding prayer.
… Beautiful and meaningful work,
…profoundly beautiful. The melting of poetry and images and music together into a dreamlike awakening. This is such a glorious gift – your alchemy of balancing the dark and light, it does not shield us from the horror of death but invites us through its depth. My heart opened completely when I saw the dedication to Eva and realized that she was everywhere in this masterpiece.
Favorite moments –
the words, ‘destined and soulful departure’
‘element of imaginal knowledge’ – after death this bridged me back to the preciousness of now
pipe organ at earth, oh that was rich…all the music perfectly matched expression expansion
the last image, stunning – I saw the goddess Eva bowing to fellow travelers
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The voyage – to awaken by experiencing the movement of the heart through fear and death. Yes.
…Thank you. I realize now how strange it is to respond to you in words for something that is written in the language of soul. Perhaps you can read between the lines, my gratitude and awe.
… A beautiful, provocative, enlightening communication with our soul.
…A powerful journey into the first gate of Bardo. Loved this. Expressive. Revealing. True Essence.
…The Last Landscape is your Piece de Resistance.
Visio Divina of the Etheric Expression…Resounding Revelations…Said Osio’s Graceful Art serves as Anointing for Our Soulful Journey. A most Meaningful Enunciation of our Passage into Perpetual Presence…Thanks for the Great Gift.
… Sacredly Beautiful
Wow. And Wow again! … Said has done a wonderful job and I loved his narration.