is Morty Breier's latest work. It is a handbound edition, artfully assembled in the artist's studio. It comprises both ink line drawings by of masks and mandalas interleaved with single full page meditations. There are 89 drawings and 45 Meditations.
SPIRIT, MEDITATION, INSPIRE, PLANETARY CONSCIOUSNESS, TRANSCEND, ART, PHILOSOPHY
Masks, Mandalas and Meditations was reviewed in TIKKUN by Michael Lerner who wrote:

"A beautiful little book that points the way to the planetary evolution of consciousness. This very short but very deep reading is truly inspired."

Rabbi Zalman Schechter-Shalomi says of Masks, Mandalas and Meditations:

"Your book...is a delight....a nourishing meditation. Your reality maps and mine are very close. I am glad you are in the world."

Recently the first four meditations from Masks, Mandalas and Meditations were featured in Tikkun Magazine under the heading of "Spirituality in America". The article also included three of Mr. Breier's Mandala art pieces.

The preface to this magical volume by the author gives the backdrop for this integrative work. From Hawaii, his newly adopted home in the middle of the pacific, Morty Breier unites the diversity of our world and the spectrum of our consciousness. This is no more apparant than in the titles given his MASKS, MANDALAS AND MEDITATIONS.

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INNER JOURNEYS - OUTER WORLDS HOME PAGE

PREFACE TO MASKS, MANDALAS & MEDITATIONS

A. MEDITATIONS ON OUR DEEP ROOTS

A-1.  I AM THE GOAL OF THE COSMOS   A-2.  BIRTHED BY THE UNIVERSE   A-3.  CREATION'S CONTINUOUSLY UNFOLDING PRODUCT   A-4.  WHAT CREATURES WE ARE

A-5.  THE LATEST COSMIC CHAPTER: HUMAN HISTORY    A-6.  I INHERIT HUMANITY'S EFFORTS    A-7.  THE TRUTH OF NATURAL VS. UNNATURAL    A-8.  LOVE, A COSMIC ATTRIBUTE

 B.  MEDITATIONS ON CREATING WHO WE ARE

B-1.  SUPPORTED BY HUMAN CREATIVITY    B-2.  SUPPORTED BY COSMIC  CREATIVITY     B-3.  THE WONDER OF US ALL COEXISTING    B-4.  SEEING VS. DREAMING

B-5.  ANCIENT MASTERS   B-6.  PROGRESSIVE CREATION   B-7.  THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN HISTORY   B-8.  CREATING GOD

C.  MEDITATIONS ON THE TIME IS NOW

C-1.  THE MIDDLE CLASS    C-2.  BEING AN AMERICAN    C-3.  COMPETITION VS. COOPERATION    C-4.  OUR GOVERNMENT

C-5.  THE SCIENCE PROJECT    C-6.  SCIENCE AND SPIRIT    C-7.  CONSCIOUSNESS    C-8.  A VIEW FROM OUTER SPACE

D.  MEDITATIONS ON WHERE WE'RE GOING

D-1.  STRATEGIC BALANCE    D-2.  MULTIFACETED REALITY    D-3.  THE JOB AT HAND    D-4.  WHERE WE'RE GOING

D-5.  BUILDING THE PLANET'S NERVOUS SYSTEM    D-6.  OUR PLANETARY DESTINY    D-7.  AND

 E.  MEDITATIONS ON THE VIEW FROM WITHIN

E-1.    MORTY    E-2.    I AM A DISCUSSION IN 13 PARTS    E-3.    TIME'S ELASTICITY    E-4.    TAKING ACCOUNT OF MYSELF    E-5.    GOING OUT AND COMING BACK    E-6.    I AM A WORK IN PROGRESS     E-7.    RESTING AT MY CENTER

E-8.    EMPTYING    E-9.    BEARING WITNESS    E-10.  WARRIOR TO LOVER    E-11.  LEARNING TO LOVE    E-12.  MY MYTHOLOGICAL JOURNEY    E-13.  WORKING MY WAY UPWARD    E-14.   A SABBATH PRAYER

  ................    . ..................

 

 

 

Downloading onto humanity's hard-drive, as rabbi Zalman Schechter-Shalomi says is appropriate for the sageing, not ageing, stage of one's life. The meditations that follow are part of this downloading. They are distilled from my lifetime's experience and the worldview resulting therefrom. They are made of the spirit of humanity as it has come to me from reading and listening to all I came in contact with. They are inspirationally dictated by truths rising up from within me or called down from on high or as simply seeing into the heart of things. Each is a one paragraph, one page, essay. The messages are sometimes repetitive as a single important truth refracts through different angles and prisms of verbal expression, context, and theme. A particular revelation sometimes goes on as a mantra might, the insight worth repeating again and again.

The meditations contained in the first four sections, A, B, C and D, speak to the inclusive mind about this great cosmological unfolding that we all take part in. Grateful for all that came before, they herald a grand optimism at work, a cosmic vector of consciousness that pulls us forward toward the next omega point. They reject doom and gloom scenarios, cynical insider versions of conspiracies and manipulations and backward looking romantic tales of a modern world running down.

The meditations of the last section, E, speak to the inside world of the journey of the spirit and the reach toward integration, inclusion and transcendence. Each of these paragraph long meditations puts forward a self-examining insight, my look into my own nature. Since, at the deepest levels, we share our interior worlds, I put them forward as having shared meaning for us all.

Each meditation stands alone while being part of an integrated worldview, and can be read both ways. They are not meant as a linear argument rather as a joyous ode to reality. They point out the many powerful reasons for our being joyful. They aim to impart meaning and context to the diverse facets of our living and our being, facets that have been torn apart by the cold sciences and the hot superstitions of our times. Their language and syntax is meant to appeal to both the scientist and the dreamer, the right and left hemisphere thinkers, the male and female parts of each of us. They are meant to be integrative and inclusive. The bias of being written by a white male relatively affluent middle class American is admitted to, and so can be discounted. Honoring who and what I am, I regret no part of my journey through my own cultural milieu, as I hope you, my reader regrets no part of yours. I aim to have my journey converge with yours and hope these meditations move us in that direction.

It seems perfectly appropriate that I now live half way between the east and the west, what used to be called the Orient and the Occident. My efforts recently have been to bring together my understandings of these two halves of our precious planet. More than that. I've come to believe that the approaching century will be a time of coming together, and that I could do no better than to apply whatever wisdom I might have garnered during these last sixty two years toward understanding and teaching this integrative process. The scope of this enterprise requires a high and long view because it is at these ranges that the harmony of the landscape, the ecology (fitting in) of more of the parts of reality becomes apparent.

Like a new paradigm that embraces and explains what previously seems disjointed and antithetical, the planet ratchets its consciousness upward, in its attempt to manifest the most inclusive of visions, combining in new synergies:

Science and Religion          Profane and Sacred
East and West                  Masculine and Feminine
Natural and Unnatural       Cyclic and Vectorial
Nurture and Master           Meaning and Chance
Matter and Spirit              Consciousness and Cosmos

This volume speaks to these issues, attempting to paint a word picture of this world we share in a way that gives credit, purpose, honor and meaning to its parts. These are the meditations.

I've interleaved these word messages with drawings that address the wordlessness of our reality, in the form of masks, and mandalas. Masks represent, for me, the fact that consciousness, our's and God's, underlies the world. My Masks are representations of our divine nature, they look out from the page surrounded by the haloes and illuminations that lie just below the surface of the everyday, photographic image we each present to the world. Mandalas are ancient art forms consisting of symmetrical images used to concentrate the mind and enhance its ability to empty itself in its preparation to merge with higher realms of consciousness. Mandalas are the logos of harmony and order, the hallmark of such raised consciousness. The process of creating these drawings are themselves graphic meditations, that starts as a pair of eyes or a central dot and go on to become, through a series of enhancements, counterpoints, and complementary additions, the final plates presented. The drawings have a very tenuous relation to the adjacent text. They are meant to be separate experiences, coexisting as an expression unified only by their having been created by the same author. The book may be disassembled and the graphic plates may be trimmed, mounted, matted and framed.

Take your time with each of these pages. Some preview readers have said that I was too high when I wrote them, others that my language uses much personal shorthand with many assumptions that the reader may not follow or agree with. All I ask is that you give me the benefit of the doubt. If you do, if we address each other as the sparks of God we are, then we raise the probability of our interaction having real meaning. Come along with me for a while, you can always return to yourself when you're finished. I hope you have and retain as much joy reading it, as I have had writing it.

Morty Breier,  Kailua-Kona Hawaii, October 20, 1996
 

A-1  I AM THE GOAL OF THE COSMOS

Each of us is the latest endproduct of the unfolding storyline of this universe. Remember the sequence. You were there at the very beginning, the proverbial Big Bang, when all was raw chaotic energy, too fast, too energetic, too changing, too short lived, to have meaning. Each of us connect back to that moment. We are built of the stuff and propelled by the energy that was created at that moment. We are ruled by the laws set in motion at that moment. Our destiny was founded by the imbalance between chaos/chance and order/consciousness. The complete rule by chaos and chance, the complete absence of order and consciousness started our existence at that moment. It was this initial imbalance that created the universe's need to return order and consciousness to its pre-creation eminence (when, it could be assumed, only God's serenity existed) . And then, over the cosmic time frame in which our story line unfolds we reach the present where each of us is the result of this movement from chaos to order, our own bodies and minds, the most beautifully organized embodiments of order and consciousness yet extant in our wide but not universal grasp. Remember how the sequence went: Quantum Soup Time providing the stage for Galaxy Time; Galaxy Time providing the stage for Solar Time; Solar Time providing the stage for Planetary Time: Planetary Time providing the stage for Geological Time; Geological Time providing the stage for Biological Time; Biological Time providing the stage for Historic Time; Historic Time providing the stage for each of us. All these stages are still supporting our present drama, we stand on the stage of Historical Time which stands on the stage of Biological Time....which ultimately stands on the stage of the Quantum Soup.
 

A-8 LOVE, A COSMIC ATTRIBUTE

Early in my adult life, I believed that Love was a subjective emotion, a feeling of adoration, joy and effortlessness when with another. Later, through spiritual practice and contemplation, through age, understanding and increasing equanimity, I expanded my definition of Love and was able to have such feelings with the very process of being, I was able to love life, feel that same love for my fellow human beings, the cosmos itself, the living God. But I still believed it to be a subjective phenomenon, accessible, no doubt, to all we humans, and felt by many of us. But now I understand that what I call Love is merely the latest incarnation, in human form, of a universal cosmic attribute that has been working toward creating me since the beginning of this world, whether Genesis or/and the Big Bang. Love is the attractive force that builds complexity by uniting opposites. Love must be more powerful than the natural forces of repulsion. Combining opposites neutralizes the half truth that each opposite represents, freeing the resultant combination to act to combine yet further toward resolving opposites at higher and higher levels. These acts of Love, though perhaps rare in this galaxy filled universe, constitute our lineage. We are here because Love prevailed. Every combination of opposites, every Love affair that every one of my progeny had, every one of each of our progeny had, was successful and resulted in an offspring a little more complex, a little more conscious, a little more equanimous, a little freer, a little more aware of themselves and the universe around them, from the beginning to this point of now. Love was present along that whole journey. And now, as much as ever, Love is the necessary, joyful and critical ingredient to our successful bringing together of this diverse planet earth. Let us toast to Love's joyous proliferation, past. present and future.
 

B-2 SUPPORTED BY COSMIC CREATIVITY

We create our world nestled in and supported by each previous stage of creation. The plants and animals, the ecology of the living layer, just a thin membrane on this spinning sphere, was the laboratory of creation from which we human beings arose and whose creative achievements in chemistry and physics we still use today to sustain our life processes. It is this living membrane that continues to insure and renew our air and food, continues to inspire us with its beauty and harmony, its grace and complexity, and continues to teach us the meaning of who we are, where we came from, how to accommodate, nurture and survive. Fields and forests, coral reefs and lichen covered rocks, orchards and farms, herds and swarms, stalking cats and nesting birds, colonies and family groups, covering our planet with our kin. And this living membrane is nestled in and supported by the geological layer, where just the right ratio of stability and change gave us our most wonderful ancestor, earth itself. The stability of father rock and the fluidity of mother water. The stability of seasonal cycles with the fluidity of weather. The heat of the tropics and the cold of the poles. Flowing rivers and still lakes. Seething oceans and arid deserts. Jagged mountains and level plains. Ah what majesty this ancient ancestor evokes, what strength and grandeur. What a joy to trace our lineage back to the creativity of the forces that shaped this landscape called home. Only by learning its traits, by coming to terms with its characteristics, by fitting in with its ways did the living layer catch hold, prosper, spread and develop. We are built of, for and as a part of this planet earth and it is built of, for and as a part of this solar system, this milky way, the stars and galaxies that form our firmament. It is the planetary dance of earth, sun and moon that provide us with energy and seasonal change, with light and time. It is the stars that provide us with direction, position and mystery. The materials of our bodies were made in the cosmic fires of stars. We are, literally, stardust. Stars are us. What a joy to be sired by a cosmos of such awesome dimensions, and to be both nestled in, supported by and rising up out of such a lineage.
 

C-2 BEING AN AMERICAN

Of all middle class societies, why do I love ours best? Why do I love America? I love America for its aspirations, an experiment in embodying forward reaching ideals in the midst of pulls from our darker natures, our mediocrity, imperfections and compromises, in the midst of our weaknesses and prejudices. America aims higher than any nation ever has, higher than most of us are. I love America because we reach to be a people governed by ideas and ideals, creations of consciousness, set down in the Constitution and a vast body of law derived therefrom, and not a people whose identity is defined by its flesh, the tribal and genetic homogeneity of the other nations of the world. I love America because it heralds the age to come in its efforts at integration and inclusiveness. I love America because we aim to reward and promote performance and capabilities rather than class, ethnic or caste loyalties and prejudices, hallmarks of corrupt and stagnant societies. I love America because we hold ourselves to standards of equality and fairness, in the midst of the most diverse array of cultures, races, ancestry, religions and traditions ever to have called itself a nation. I love America because we allow ourselves to be suspended between chaos and order, between cooperation and competition, between creativity and reaction, between progress and tradition. I love America because we thrive on these tensions. I love America because we dare to be on the cutting edge, on the cutting edge of social thought, of technology, of the arts, of ecology and the marketplace. I love America because we are unpredictable, because we define ourselves in real time, because we are willing adventurers on this journey of nation building and consciousness raising, on this journey toward planetary inclusion.
 

C-6 SCIENCE AND SPIRIT

When I look at the relationship between science and spiritual understanding, beyond their seeming antagonism, I find much essential congruence at their very core. How could it be otherwise? They both constitute humanity's accumulated wisdom with science being the latest edition/addition. Let me list these congruities. Science can be defined as humanity's faith that consciousness and its attributes holds sway over, can be master of, matter and its attributes, the fundamental truth of all spiritual teachings.  Science is a potent tool derived from equanimity, it's methods aimed at assuring a non- biased witness to reality's processes, another of the great spiritual teachings. Science embodies our latest dialogue with God, He/She speaks through the language of reality and we listen and piece together His/Her syntax through our formulation of physical laws. Science is humanity's most recent cosmic paradigm, successor to a long and ever more inclusive series that began with the ancient teachings. Science is the playing out in detail of the five mystic truths: all is one; lawfulness upholds reality; phenomenon is an illusion perpetrated by noumenon; we are part of a cosmic unfolding; bear witness to the world as is. Science is our most mature ode to God, an ode of awesomeness and grandeur, of omniscience and omnipresence, of sub-atomic to galactic inclusiveness, of a fifteen billion year tale of ascendancy. Science works for us in this world, as spirit does for consciousness, relieving suffering, promoting abundance and distancing us from fear and ignorance. A balanced and inclusive view consists of: Working in the world to sustain and contribute to humanity's ongoing effort to unify itself in a seamless web of supporting services, tools, toys and options; Working in the spirit to sustain and contribute to my ongoing effort to unify myself in a world that is a seamless web of supporting services, tools, toys and options.
 

D-7 AND

The key word, as we enter into the twenty first century, is and. No longer a battle between competing dogmas and ideologies, competing world views and strategies, paradoxes are to be resolved by viewing them from a higher perspective. The Yin and Yang is embraced by the circle that contains them. The new paradigm is one of accommodation, of inclusiveness, of wholeness. Reality is multifaceted. We are multifaceted. It is both being a speck in a vast, seemingly uncaring universe and being that universe's goal. It is both being part of the ancient strata that supports us and creating new realities of our own to support future generations. It is being a quantum reducible entity and an unbelievably complex living being. It is both previously learned understanding, knowledge and wisdom and newly unveiled truths. It is the tradition of our ancestors and our own experimentation with, and synthesis of form and ritual. It is both encouraging the east's philosophy of acceptance and incorporating the west's impetus to change. It is using our gift for scientific reasoning and relying intuitively on spiritual insight. It is being fully in the given moment and dreaming of yet unknown future possibilities. It is being centered in our compassionate heart chakra and using our mind to improve conditions through technology. It is masculine stategies of mastery over nature and feminine strategies of nurturing mother earth. It is moving forward on each of our personal journeys toward individual enlightenment and contributing wholeheartedly to the planet's journey toward universal enlightenment. It is living our allotted time in this reality we are born into and being part of this reality's fifteen billion year time-line. It is being nothing but ashes and dust, mortal and temporary constructs of molecules and atoms and being conscious beings, sparks of God, birthed by the stars, destined to venture forth to seek our brethren amongst them. Wow, how wonderful is our lot, how grand our drama, how great our fortune. Wow, what a trip!!!
 

E-6 I AM A WORK IN PROGRESS

I am a work in progress. We are each a work in progress. We are all a work in progress. The universe is a work in progress. It is important to acknowledge this, important to understand its ramifications, important to affirm its foundational position. I am a work in progress. I am better, wiser, more inclusive, more loving, more aware, than I was and not as good, not as wise, inclusive, loving and aware as I shall be. My life, the lives of those around me, the life of my society, of humanity, of this universe, is a journey, an unfolding, a development, an emergence from a narrower frame of reference to a wider one. We are each asked to make this journey and we are all asked to participate in our communal journey. I always find myself in this latest snippet of  my timely unfolding while living out my life in a snippet of time, somewhere on the course of humanity's unfolding. Neither is in any way a finished product. If we are true to our potential, we are both doing what has never been done before. We are both struggling to find the best way. We carry with us both useful and useless baggage, not knowing what to discard and what to hold on to. We properly debate with ourselves the choices to be made, many choices without precedence, on the cutting edge. The answers to questions asked and solutions tried today lie always in each newly minted tomorrow. Let us be patient with and forgiving of ourselves, our fellow journeyers, our human enterprise. Today's understanding of the good may not, no will not, pass tomorrow's test if I am truly growing. My demand for what I presently see as perfection will stop me from welcoming tomorrow's larger, more inclusive understanding. Let me stay fluid so that I can reshape myself to the needs of a larger tomorrow. Let us always keep in mind that we are each and we are all a joyful, adventurous and bright spirited work in progress.
 

E-8 EMPTYING

The world is presented to me for my enlightenment. I am born into it to learn of it, of myself, and of my fellow travellers. When I learn I uncover new landscapes of larger dimension and more detailed clarity. My learning consists of listening to the world, bearing witness to reality, being aware of my inner self. In order to do this I must quiet the voices and pictures that my mind continuously produces. The Hindus say the mind is like a tree full of drunken monkeys. The voices and pictures that my mind usually produces are of what I know already, or what I am presently in debate over, or what future status I desire. This obsession the mind has with itself shuts out the schoolroom of my presence, the lessons of the here and now. I try to quiet it, to empty it, so that reality, in all its splendor, can come flooding in. My success is limited. Often reality breaks through my self absorption with a painful probe, my buttons being pushed, a fearful or angry curse, a squirming flushed discomfort, sometimes even a two by four to the head. I try to take it as an opportunity. Here comes something from off stage to surprise me with its anti-me attitude. Why isn't it on my stage, in my awareness? What part of me denied it so completely that it could only make itself known by wounding me? What work needs doing that opens the eyes and heart of this blind spot within me? What rigidity, prejudice, narrowmindedness, selfishness caused me to misstep in my dance with the universe? I am responsible for my drama, the stage on which it takes place, the props, the principal actors and their relationships, the scene taking place. The more I acknowledge this responsibility, the less I find myself turning away from it to talk to myself, the more present I am in its unfolding, the greater my awe at its great harmony and perfection and the more my gratitude that it is taking place for my benefit. To embrace the insult, to keep clear the clouded eye, to heal quickly the wounded heart, to convert anger to compassion, to change awkwardness into grace, to take each opportunity to lower the level of pain and fear, to raise the level of love and joy, these are the products of an empty mind enjoying the play of reality. It's like becoming host
 

E-11 LEARNING TO LOVE
 

I'm learning now my love must grow,    Aligned I match the moment's flow,  And in the moment's act partake,    Mindful of each breath I take,  To open heart a smile return    And all black thoughts to ashes burn.  I learn again my own sweet soul,    To love in turn by loved by all,  All those who on this journey found,    Along life's path, life's sacred ground,  Where other souls are learning too    To sweeten life and hearts renew.  I learn acceptance of each gift    That life presents, each change, each shift,  To merge with God who brings it all,    To ride the rise and take the fall,  Knowing all was meant to be    Life's perfect lesson just for me.

I learn to greet each wondrous day    With quiet mind and humble way,  To need not much and want but little,    To soften all that's hard and brittle,  To breath in rhythm deep and strong,    To free my mind for prayer and song.  With Shiva dancing at my door,    I learn to sit on faith's firm floor,  And watch the play of forces bright,    And watch the daytime turn to night,  With love I learn to laugh and cry,    With love my anger pacify.  The time for being sweet and true    Is here, right now, for me, for you,  I'm sure, I know, it's real, its so,    Come learn with me, come love and grow,  But know the work has just begun     And pray this life will see it done.