Soul Making: The Painting, or the Blank Canvas Beneath It?

The Living Ancestor Podcast

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Living Ancestor Podcast.

In today's episode, I want to talk about one of the things I have been contemplating a lot as of late, which is the different ways in which people and traditions orientate upon the process of working with the soul.

What we call the soul and what we experience as the soul is. And there's obviously many different traditions and many different orientations, and especially today in the modern world, we have a slew of differing perspectives. So certainly this landscape is diverse.

However, if we take a bird's eye view of the general orientations, we could say and categorize two major paths that are very common.

And while this talk is not going to be completely exhaustive of everything that someone could do in terms of orientating upon the soul, nor is it going to be exceedingly historically rigorous, trying to tease apart the nooks and crannies of many of the ancient traditions that we have inherited into modern times that work upon the soul, but more so, I'm going to give you a metaphor that can help people identify what path they're on and what general overall orientation they seem to have.

Because this general orientation seems to emerge for most people without there being a conscious choice of doing so. It tends to be something that's already kind of happening.

And I want to preempt this by saying, even though I do myself know that I am on one path versus the other, I'm not making a value judgment about the correctness of a particular path.

What might seem like a stronger bias is really just my own deeper understanding of having inhabited a particular path.

The Painting and the Canvas

So with that said, let's talk about what the soul is through the metaphor of a person who is working with a painting and a canvas and going through the process of doing so.

I really like this metaphor because it does talk about how the soul is a kind of process. Not necessarily a noun, but something that is occurring continuously.

And obviously the English language can sometimes get us stuck in noun thinking. It's a very noun-focused language. So when I say the soul, it often does sound like I'm talking about a thing that is already pre-made.

But more so, it really is discussing a kind of process.

Awakening to the Painting

I'd love for you to imagine a person who is sleepwalking.

They are currently asleep.
They have no idea that they are asleep and painting.

That is, they have gotten up, they have gone to a canvas, they have prepared everything, and they are in the process of painting something completely unaware.

Now, suddenly, they awaken.

They notice, whoa, I am in front of this canvas and there's a painting that's emerging in front of it.

What we tend to call spiritual awakening, in whatever context you understand that, is this process, this event, of awakening to a picture that is in front of you, that's unfolding, and you're in this process of painting it.

What most people think of as awakening is often the end.

But really, awakening is just the beginning of becoming aware that a painting is emerging.

That you're in this process.

And you, with this painting, is the soul-making process.
It is the process of working with the soul.

Let's not get caught in the specifics of what's the soul and what's the painting. It's all just this dynamic for the sake of the metaphor.

What Is Already There

The interesting thing about this is that we notice that the painting is already underway.

We have awakened to something that is already there.

What that is could be anything, and it depends on your personal cosmology.

If you believe in past lives, and you understand that there are ancestral patterns moving through generations and affecting your life, and there's astrological patterns as well as cultural patterns, societal patterns, and the individual patterns of how the person has responded to what has been unfolding in their life, then any and all of this can make its way into what's already there.

We could think about it as karma.
As conditionings.
As deeper orientations of the person.

As the stories that they have, and the stories that they don't want to have.
As the stories that they want to keep, and the stories they don't want to keep.

Any and all of what is manifest in the process of experience itself is what is on this canvas already.

And yes, that also includes emotions, desires, passions, wants.

All of it.

It's there on the canvas.

The Blank Canvas Orientation

One orientation toward this process is to begin to dissolve what's on the canvas.

To release what's on the canvas.
To get rid of what's there.

Simply to see what happens.

As you go through the process of dissolving and dissolving and dissolving, all of a sudden you notice that there is a white blank canvas behind it.

And that becomes interesting.

So you begin dissolving, then painting over it, then dissolving again, then painting over it again.

Eventually, you start to notice that no matter what you place upon this canvas, as soon as you dissolve it, release it, let it go, the karmas, the stories, the desires, the wants, the emotions, the thoughts, all gone.

There is always this blank canvas behind it.

It seems as if the blank canvas is what is real.

Because it is permanent.
Seemingly everlasting.

It represents an unchanging state of emptiness.

This is what you often encounter in many Enlightenment-based traditions.

Zen traditions.
Buddhist traditions.
Some Vedic traditions.

They orient in this way.

The tradition that builds around this orientation is one of dissolving, releasing, letting go.

Removing stories.
Removing emotions.
Removing wants and karmas.

Arriving at emptiness and spaciousness.

This is often called primordial awareness or the witness state.

The thing they are trying to cohere with is this witness state.

This is why, in many Zen and Buddhist traditions, there is the understanding that the soul doesn't actually exist as an unchanging thing.

More so, it's a set of self-perpetuating processes and conditionings that move through rebirth over lifetimes.

And so the aim becomes to remove any and all trace of the paint.

To leave only blankness.

To stop engaging with the painting altogether.

That is one orientation.

The Soul Artist Orientation

The other orientation is different.

The person wakes up and notices that a painting is emerging.

And they decide to engage with it.

The canvas and the paint exist to create something beautiful.

A work of art.

They realize they must work with what is already there.

They can't start from scratch.

This orientation recognizes the blank canvas underneath.

Primordial awareness is known.

But dissolving and releasing become tools, not the point.

They are used to remove what is in the way of the painting.

The point is not the blank canvas.

The point is the painting.

This path seeks to wake up often.

To be lucid in the painting process.

To recognize that a dream is emerging into reality through life.

And to dream the most meaningful painting possible.

The aim is completion.

To reach a point where one is done with the painting.

This may be one lifetime.

Or many.

This is the path found in contemplative traditions, mortality traditions, and shamanic traditions.

In shamanic traditions, the painter notices other beings.

Ancestors.
Spirits.
Others painting nearby.

They make space for these beings to add to the canvas.

But the aim remains the same.

To dream a meaningful painting into reality.

Two Paths, Two Orientations

The blank canvas path seeks release.

The soul artist path finds spirituality in meaning-making, in manifestation, in soul-making.

Manifestation is not separate from the divine.

The blank canvas was meant to be painted upon.

As the painting unfolds, we choose what is right.

What is beautiful.

What is worth keeping.

And what is not.

Even unintended marks can become part of the whole.

An accidental splotch may become a mountain.
Or a bird.

Ancestral and karmic patterns may become central features of the path.

Even painful experiences may become part of the painting.

So can blankness.
So can spaciousness.

All of this belongs to the path.

And to the soul-making process.