Thoughts

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

The Melody of Freedom is ringing in my ears lately,
as we listen to the news.
And as people are systematically being taken away.
Let these people go!
Making connections with the past, present and future, this
weaving, entitled The Song of the Sea, is from an allegorical weaving
series from Weekly Torah portions and is woven from Mylar Balloons
found on the beaches of Fire Island.
It is then sewn onto the parchment, to
frame the only poem/song found in the Torah. 
About recognizing we are all meant
to be free.
The story of Exodus and the parting 
of the sea.

Meeting this week with a young group of students at the JCC
in Brooklyn, The Rabbi of The New Shul, Misha Shulman, and I asked
how the students felt about an artist using the Torah
as a foundation for the work.
A young student, younger than the students shown, stated: 
”I think it’s good, so you can use the Torah to teach other 
stories.”
How beautiful is that.
So here we go!

This week’s Topic is “The Song of the Sea”

Who is like you? 
That is a song sung every Friday night,
reflecting our connections with other.
In the Vedic Worldview there is no 
other. You are it.
We are all unique beings walking around this 
beautiful, colorful ball, rotating 
around the sun. 
Knowledge coming to us
and awareness from within ourselves, on how we 
contribute and/or take away energy
is a constant recognition and evolution.

Being lies at the root of everything.
Like the Ocean, it gives and it takes. 
This is in motion, like we are in our active lives.  
We have choices on how we want to Be 
on this planet. 
Our creative impulses pull us, and sometimes 
push us, into behaving in ways that can disarm. 

Like doing artwork on a Torah!

Let’s continue to find ways to come together, as we did in
the National Day of Action.

04.06.2025 Deck Talk available upon request info@fifthfloormeditation.com

1288 warp threads on the loom of Metallic pigment
sheath core fiber for a new weaving
to begin next week

A FRESH START

This week’s story posted on instagram
was of a young man who took
the 4-day 90-minute course to learn
to meditate. 
He commented that 90 minutes was the 
perfect amount to take in the knowledge
and to get the idea of how to be a self-
sufficient meditator. And that he could
really feel the deep quietness when 
he finished meditating.
He was referred to me by a friend in Australia,
so I asked as he was leaving, if I could
get a quick pic to send her a thank you
note. 
Usually reluctant about those things, and not
wanting to encroach on privacy, I asked
him later in the day, if I could add the pic
on my story board.  
Sharing that there was nothing better than
teaching new students how to meditate
and watching the light emerge in their eyes.
A Hallmark of a meditator.

Sharing this sentiment, there is also nothing better
than putting on a sparkly warp and having a
fresh start to begin a new weaving project. 
Thank you SG for helping with the winding and warping.
The pristine quality of the uniform
tie on and the simplicity of the plain weave… is 
always so rewarding. Then, sliding your hand
over all the threads, to feel if there is
evenness or tension across the warp.
I love that part.

This week also brought a dear friend and meditator,
who came into the house. I hadn’t seen her for a year.
She knew, that I knew, that she had stopped meditating.
From the moment she came up the stairs. 
I said, “It’s all ok!”
You see… we have a Fresh Start every morning
that we wake up and every afternoon, when 
we simply do our 20-minute practice. 
We can sense the evenness and the tensions 
immediately. They show up in the form of thoughts and 
body sensations. 
In this inward least-excited state, we let the thoughts go 
and sense the body tensions dissipate.
(Stress is embedded in our physiology.)
We then open our eyes after practice, to a
Fresh Active Start.
Recognizing some expansion to our awareness.
My friend sent a note a day later,
saying she hadn’t known why she stopped 
but had started again!

Like weaving, preparing for the process
to meditate is a simple, natural technique. 
It takes inward time
and outward time.
Then the magic begins!

Each meditation is a fresh start.
Each weaving is a fresh start.
If you’ve stopped meditating, making, creating…
START FRESH
and feel the shift. 
It’s Always Good!

03.30.2025 Deck Talk available upon request info@fifthfloormeditation.com