Thoughts

Liberation – Deck Talk and Meditation

Image: Passing Over to Liberation, 2024
Torah Parchment, Cochineal Dyed Tussah Silk
Can be seen at:
”The Golden Thread 2: A FIBER ART EXHIBITION”
At The South Street Seaport
207 Front Street (Fulton and Beekman) NYC until May 16th, 2025

Liberation

Liberation comes in many shapes and sizes.
It could be letting go of clothes you’ve had for twenty
years.  
It could be friends or jobs that no longer serve 
the needs you were put on earth to accomplish.

It could be recognizing the patterns or addictions 
and actions or thoughts that are harmful
to ourselves and others, that are being highlighted for deletion.

In all of these cases, settling down your inner self
is THE BEST way to begin that Liberation
process.  
It’s Mental Hygiene! We sit for twenty minutes 
twice a day, clear our slate of accumulated 
daily stresses and rid ourselves of deep-
rooted stresses that are hiding inside, ready to be released.
Our body does not want to hold onto 
unnecessary stress.

My personal liberation in developing the Torah weavings
is to get a better understanding of the roots
I was born into. 
So, I bought a Torah in Williamsburg that was going
to be buried or sold for teaching purposes and
began some study.
My form of liberation from ignorance.
On this particular parsha (portion), Exodus 12:2, is the story of the bloodstained lintels of the doorways
of the firstborn sons, to be protected from
a decree passed down by Pharaoh, the ancient 
Egyptian ruler.
This piece comes from my series of allegorical weavings and is about
liberation from ourselves, from our neighbors, from our captors,
from our bodies.
Upon completing the knots — I counted 164, that make up this piece —
I found this # coincides with the belief
that the higher spirits are
sending a message that you are on the right path.  
Always lovely to get these signs!

If you have a desire to liberate yourself
from the stress that binds you each day.  Keeps you up at night.
Bombards you with self criticism and inner chatter.
And keeps you from your Creative Intelligence…
Let’s discuss the next steps to learning Vedic Meditation.
Reach out. 

info@fifthfloormeditation.com

Image: Burning Horizon, 2024
Sheath Core Fiber and Discarded Mylar Balloons

Burning Horizon

Everyone’s Nature is made up of earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intellect and ego.
This weaving is a vivid and colorful reflection of what humans are doing to our Universe.
Our burning horizon.

Politics and War continue to emblazon the planet.
Human Spirits and our inner lives and land are Burning.
It’s impossible not to see the correlation of earth and man.
Cause and Effect.
  
While the warming of our climate is allowing water, our most essential element, to rise up and flood places that have never flooded before.
What are we mere earthlings to do?

Our emotions get emblazoned with anger and doused
with sadness and tears.

This weaving is the reminder to do our part in being conscious of
these two very powerful elements.  Water and Fire.

How can we be better conservators of our planet?
How can we be better conservators of ourselves?  
Our egos need to be acquainted with our true Self (Being). 
I have found the best way to get there is to do your twice-a-day
Meditation practice.  
Let’s call it Mental Hygiene.
You would never think twice about leaving the house
without doing your Dental Hygiene
or going to bed without brushing your teeth.  

Mental Hygiene allows for you to clean away the debris of stress that has accumulated in your physiology; and by sitting with your eyes closed, 
you simply let go of all the random thoughts that fill your mind.  

You begin to see what your mind is thinking
and then recognize your part
in the collective consciousness of this world. 
Then, only then, can we improve the trajectory of our lives, our planet and
the celestial. 
And I rest with the knowledge that Creation, Maintenance and Destruction
is always in play.  
After Destruction comes Creation. 
That’s Nature’s Law.

Have a burning desire or simply want to wet your appetite?
Reach out. 

05.04.2025 Deck Talk available upon request info@fifthfloormeditation.com

Images Above: Pet Shop 1967 Acrylic paint
Third Grade assignment: What do you want to be when you grow up?

Childhood Dreams

Recently, I made another pass at cleaning out my storage room 
and found this painting.
I shared it with my friend Barry. He recognized it as Outsider art. 
I recognized it as a rebellious 3rd grader wanting to get back at
her teacher for scaring her. 

This fear is not like the fear that children are facing now in 
war-torn countries.
Even back then, war-torn Vietnam 
was on the news, with young children in 
parents’ arms. 
This fear was nothing compared to then and now.

1967, innocently, I painted a pet shop, housing all the animals that
occupied my life. 

My dog Cinnamon would occasionally
get out, walk to school and sit to wait for me.
One day, Mrs. Passmore demanded
to know whose dog it was in the schoolyard.  
I raised my hand gingerly, and she angrily told me to take the dog
home immediately. 
The fear that I felt got embedded in my physiology and stayed there.
Realizing now, that is what stress felt like.
It stays in your physiology
until you can settle down enough to release it.
I re-cognize that I painted this out of fear.
I saw a way to hold my animals
in a square box at a pet shop with my parents present.
So my teacher could not get to them.
About 15 years ago, I ran into my teacher back home 
and said hello. I confessed to her my 3rd grade fear.
She shared how sorry she was, but that actually she
sent me home with my dog, so the dog pound truck would not
come and take my dog away. 

I am struck by a few things here:
How wrong I read the situation.
How important it was for me to have my own shop for protection.
How can we help the children of today not hold onto fear? 
 
Every day, we can energize our thoughts in positive directions and
bring that energy to all that we do…
And likewise, no matter what, we can also draw negative thoughts into our awareness,
thus cultivating negative energy around us. 
We sit in meditation, to give our bodies the capabilities of releasing stress.

Art is a way to recognize our inner feelings,
unexplainable at times, yet resonant all the same.
And Meditation is a way of releasing stress.
Maybe a craft shop for children in the future?
Along with Meditation. 
A perfect blend.

04.27.2025 Deck Talk available upon request info@fifthfloormeditation.com

This week’s Topic is “Repeating the Known,  WHAT?!”

Have you ever said to yourself as you are entering a situation, “OK,
I’m here again setting up the same situation. Maybe this time the
outcome will be different.”–  And it never is?!   
This is called, from the Vedic perspective…
The Ever-Repeating Known.
When we are trawling along in life, simply maintaining the areas that
we need to start HIGHLIGHTING for deletion.
Clearing space for the things we really want to do,
in many cases, that is to CREATE.

The essence of the Ever-Repeating Known…

Could be a job where you are simply going through the paces
but not being able to grow in the areas of creativity that you really
want.
It could be your approach to food or drink that no longer feel
good for you.
It could be friends that bring you down rather than 
fill you with joy and appreciation.

The beauty of Vedic Meditation, a twice-a-day “mental hygiene” mantra-
based technique, is that each time you meditate, it
brings you back to your senses. Your true self. The Being inside of
you that can’t ignore what feels wrong.
The clarity to see things that you have been ignoring, that can no longer be ignored.
This meditation technique takes you into those subtle layers of
yourself that have been forgotten… joy, happiness, true engagement
with others.
To know yourself, you have to be yourself.

As a weaver, there is a quality of repetition that I find satisfying.
In this piece of detritus, strips of paper are inserted then
meticulously pulled out to create a loop. The repetition alone is a
bit like the ever-repeating known. This practice of repeating 10,800
loops in the entire piece was a way for me to understand the true
concept of watching my thought patterns during the process of weaving
and teasing out or “letting go” of old patterns of thinking that no
longer are useful to me. To safely give me the opportunity to work
through, how to grow in areas that I want to cultivate more.
Meditation, like weaving, is a discipline.

If you are finding yourself repeating old habits that are not
satisfying to you any longer, reach out for a chat. 
Simply email info@fifthfloormeditation.com

Vedic Meditation and knowledge creates more connections, brings more clarity and less ignoring.

04.20.2025 Deck Talk available upon request info@fifthfloormeditation.com

Image 1: Emily Silver, My Grief Is Heavy
Image 2: Suzanne Tick, Creating Unity Points
Image 3: Suzanne Tick, Passing Over to Liberation

From “The Golden Thread 2: A FIBER ART EXHIBITION”
BravinLee Programs

April 11 – May 16, 2025
At The South Street Seaport
207 Front Street (Fulton and Beekman)
Wed – Sun 12:00pm – 6:30pm

This week’s Topic is “Feelings, As interpreted”

I am honored to be shown at the
@SitespecificBravin 
”The Golden Thread 2: A Fiber Art Exhibition”

A glorious tactile textile rebellion against the times in which we live.
Learning and Humility 
is there for us all.
Wisdom brings Humility.

From a Vedic Perspective,
Everything is coming toward us, for us, 
as a learning perspective, so to open our awareness.  
By sitting twice a day and settling into our deepest state 
of being.  Letting go of all thoughts and notions that
things are happening to us, we transform
our physiology to that quietness of Being.
The oneness of life.
Upgrading our awareness in each sitting.

The Fiber Art show is a collective of 60 fiber
artists and their own unique way of sharing 
what they are feeling, connecting to, rebelling
against — all states of their Being.
It is a miraculous wonderment of how
to manipulate fabric, threads, images, and detritus.

Creating Unity Points and Passing Over to Liberation,
the pieces Karin Bravin selected from the studio,
focus on using materials that have been discarded and the
underlying story cast from the materials.
Each making connections with the past, present and future.

Creating Unity Points is about strength and fragility. 
Drycleaning hangers and the connotations 
that get dredged up…
and Mylar balloons…
Used for celebrations, but which can cause death for sea turtles.
The fragility in weaving with balloons is real. 
—–
Passing Over to Liberation is made of
164 knots of Cochineal Ikat dyed Silk,
Sewn onto a 200-year-old Torah from France.
In Exodus 12:2, the story is told of the bloodstained lintel of the
doorways of the firstborn sons to be protected.
Thus Passing Over these homes,
to allow the liberation of families from Egypt. 
This is where the name Passover comes from,
which begins this weekend.

We could all use some liberation!

From our feelings, from the news, 
from anything in our life that
we are maintaining.

Until the mind transcends all experience,
it does not realize the Self.

Emily Silver’s stunning work
says it all. 
My Grief is Heavy 
for so many reasons!
 
Meditation and discussing these feelings
can help us navigate through them,
to see how the shadows are all 
learning moments.

04.13.2025 Deck Talk available upon request info@fifthfloormeditation.com