Illustration

What’s this about? 

Uncle Furd, can you help me think of things to paint? Of course, Melissa dear. Anything to help an extraordinary talent develop to its full potential. Cut the crap and just list a few things. Like what? Like, you know, a sunset or a vase of flowers. Or Fluffy, the nice puddycat next door. Yes. The one that draws blood when I try to pet her.

Let’s try something new. Instead of boring objects try illustrating fascinating thoughts. Great! I’ll get started right away. Painting what? The thought of a sunset. I meant, like, ideals. When thoughts are portrayed along with feelings they arouse in different circumstances.

Passionate for number one

That’s ridiculous! Tell me that after you’ve listened to “Nessun dorma” from Turandot. You’ll be doing with visuals what opera does with plot and music. Impossible! Maxfield Parrish and his fervent admirers would disagree. His paintings were idealizations drawn from the deepest part of the human psyche. Like what? Like a passionate yearning to go Home. To somewhere nice without unpleasant annoyances.

Ah! Just what I’m feeling now. Thank you, Uncle Furd. Anytime, Melissa dear. Before you go, would it help if I shared a list of ideals and ideas? You mean for me to illustrate with my amazing talent? Hopefully, yes. Passion every talent needs to express itself, from deeply felt ideals. Nourished by the fertility of ideas. 

Me think, you paint. We’re a team! Me think you nuts! But sure. As long as you don’t make me wear a stupid jersey with a number on it. Even if it’s number one? Hmmm. Gotta think about that.

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Amazing ideas and ideals for illustration 

Imperfection

Who screwed up?

Naturally, we begin with perfection. What image of “God” or “Mind” would get a pass from the Inquisition without it? None.

But “God” is an outdated term for the role that Mind actually plays in Creation. That’s not human-ape’s “home” in a hierarchy of separated bodies ruled by a “supreme being.” But interrelationships among the products of one integrated Mind: ideas and their implications, felt values and their interconnections. Where herd mentality — tribes constantly at war to be number one — is unthinkable.  

Choice can’t be free if it’s not free to make mistakes. Mommy and daddy taking sugar plum’s tests for her might produce perfect scores but not perfect sugar plum. Or perfect mommy and daddy either. OK. Timeout! This bearded old guy hanging around the pearly gates so miserable screw-ups can’t get in is a screw-up himself? 

Not him exactly, but the Child of Mind-Parents, who needs to learn how to choose freely, has definitely screwed up. And if the Child is an extension of Mind rather than separate, then Parents and Child are only different functions within the same Mind. Parents on the Growth side of Creation where mistakes can’t be made, Child on the Free Choice side where they can.

The standard: Relatability

Like letting willfulness contaminate its choices. Which probably accounts for human-apes having to clean up the mess by learning how to keep willfulness out of their choices. In an animal kingdom of hierarchy ruled by willfulness, an excellent classroom where there are plenty of opportunities.

While trying to survive in a free-for-all of competition by being relatable. What’s that got to do with it? The standard of performance for Creation that’s interrelationships is relatability. One of the main purposes of Mind’s definition and activation by Spontaneity with Order, of its Self-Awareness illuminated by Love together with Logic. To give free expression to the inclusiveness and relatability of Life. To the Worth of Creation that’s warm and sensitive. Compassionate and loving.

If the point had been perfection the standard would be exclusiveness and unrelatability. Willfulness, because its goal is supremacy. Alone at the top, free from competition. Armor-plated by perfection against questioning. Against any kind of feeling except feeling for itself. The only “perfection” that fits within Creation is Child perfect in the eyes of its Parents even when it screws up.

Integrity

Two-faced in a house divided 

What other purpose is there? Integrity. Defined by our American Heritage English Dictionary as “steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code. The state of being unimpaired; soundness. The quality of being whole or undivided; completeness.” The main component of character, defined as “moral strength; integrity.” Letting willfulness cross our boundaries corrupts our thoughts, feelings, and behavior with selfishness. Whether we do it to ourselves or let someone else do it.

Thereby dividing us in two. Making us two-faced, serving two masters neither of whom can be trusted. One personality, one-faced with integrity, now divided by animal-brain willfulness into two personalities: one respectful, the other not. But in either case an appearance meant to deceive. To hide a predator whose idea of “love” is to take its prey captive. Us. By manipulating us into surrendering our integrity. Strength of character self-defined now defined by a predator.  Weakness.

Integrity seduced and abandoned

How could a predator do that? By doing what was done when our animal kingdom appeared like a dream in the unconscious, self-unaware Mind that we all share. By converting a relationship that was, or appeared to be, between equals into a hierarchical relationship between unequals. The defining characteristic of an animal kingdom designed to replace character with its opposite: self-centered willfulness.

Where the ticket to admission is surrendering integrity. When we allow another to assume a position of superior authority. More worthy than us, entitled to compel obedience by denying any perspective other than its own. Entitled to rights that we aren’t entitled to: to speak and be heard; to express concerns worthy of consideration; to assert self-worth deserving of respect. Basic human rights.

Character lost, paradise lost

Integrity that character can’t give up without replacing itself with something less than human. Like Gollum, the pathetic creature from “The Lord of the Rings.” Disfigured by addiction to a thing more valuable than himself.

A state that’s impossible in the Reality of Mind. Self-defined and activated by Spontaneity together with Order. Of Self-Awareness illuminated by Love together with Logic. Ideals that serve as role models, like the radiance of Self-Awareness, a beacon for character with integrity. Whose origin is ideas, the function and product of Mind thinking. Both denied by an animal kingdom dedicated to the “triumph” of their opposite: will. 

More ideas and ideals for illustration

Uncle Furd’s compelling Ideals

• Relatability imagined as the vulnerability and innocence of Love, not as the invincibility and arrogance of perfection.

• Character and integrity imagined as standing up for ideals against bullying willfulness that would take them down.

• The creative Force of Now, the origin of everything that is. Everything that’s Real and Good, imagined as though brought about by a bolt of lightning from out of nowhere. Subject to no will but the ideal of Freedom from willfulness, Creativity from conformity.

• The spontaneity and playfulness of Creativity within its temenos, a sacred precinct. That functions as a workshop and playground for the varieties of Creations, each with its own perspective, contributing joyfully to their cause.

• Order. Giving Creativity and all of its parts the definitions and relatability they need to function together in harmony. The boundaries that Creativity’s temenos needs for its protection against conformity and instability. Willfulness. Not the meaning attributed to it by hierarchy: a barrier to freedom and Creativity.

• The joyful, spontaneous coming together of Love with Logic. In matrimony between femininity and masculinity, expressed through the ideals they represent, of boundaryless Abundance sharing itself through Relationships and the boundaries of Definition, the implications of Logic that give it form and direction.

• The extension of Mind from one part of Creation to another, where the character of Life-Creation is given its integrity by a unique function. Imagined as an innocent Child, Free Choice, given birth by its Parents, Love-femininity married to Logic-masculinity.

• Guidance provided to Mind-Parents, Mind-Child, and every other part of living Creation, from the Definition of the way things are. The immutable laws of cause and effect. Necessity. Imagined as minds equipped with an instrument able to receive spontaneous insights. Without asking in Reality, with some form of asking by Choice striving to be free in unreality. 

Uncle Furd’s amazing ideas

• A state of Mind, not a place. Stillness at peace with itself. Self-sufficient and self-activating. With not a trace of anything physical, like bodies, or willful, like hierarchy.

• The Force of timeless Now. The dynamo of change at the core of everything Creative. Dynamic, evolving, and Real, not static, unevolving, and unreal.

• Definition. The boundaries of the way things are and every function within it including Mind itself. Fixed by the Reality of what is and by implication the unreality of what isn’t – its opposite. Of Necessity, not of arbitrary will, the denial of definition.

• Relationship. The coming together of disparate parts from disparate perspectives. Complementing one another spontaneously, not forced into place by willfulness. To contribute shared function to the beauty, playfulness, and diversity of Creativity, a flowering, fruitful, and free-spirited composition of interrelationships.

• Illumination. Radiating the light of Mind’s function: the sharing of Self-Awareness ignited by Energy. By Spontaneity’s attraction between Love and Logic and by its Order bringing stability to instability. Responding to a driving Force behind Creation and evolution: friction caused by opposition to what is by Its Implied Ie: what Isn’t.

• Love inseparable from Logic, brought together by Spontaneity inseparable from Order. Not the coming apart of disparate parts to satisfy the “ideal” of willfulness: wildness without definition. Self-gratification without discipline, trapped inside a cage.

• Parents of Child, an extension of Love married to Logic, the function of Relationship between two disparate but complementary functions of Creation: Growth and Free Choice. Indispensable to the Worth of Creativity and Life. To the authenticity of Truth.

• Function with purpose: the origin of Self-Awareness. Abundance sharing itself through Creation. An ideal of Worth, earned and freely chosen. Alive. Growing, and expanding spontaneously.

• Evolution. Movement forward propelled by the Force of Mind-Logic thinking and Mind-Love sharing. Circumstances and their contexts, the raw material of Creation, expanding, exploring, and advancing into the unknown.

• Prototype and role model for every relationship and function of Creation. Inclusiveness composed of disparate parts, individual and original, enabled and empowered by Spontaneity with Order. Its opposition by exclusiveness, the regimentation of sameness, inactive in Reality, active in unreality.

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Always leave ’em laughing

Uncle Furd? Yes, dear. The station manager has been trying to get our attention. How? By drawing his finger across his throat. What does that mean? He wants us to go away. But first he wants to slit our throats. Goodnight, dear. Happy illustrating! And a jolly goodnight to you, our long-suffering audience. Uncle Furd? Yes, dear. Look! They’ve all slit their throats.