A Feminist Viewpoint on the Heroes Journey

The reality is that every man, woman or even children can be a hero.  This person is often called forth by circumstances, without the realization of the challenges that lie ahead.  It is within us all when necessary and called upon: even if that calling comes from within.

The hero is you--if you can listen to your heart and express what you know to be right in your heart.  That is your "true unique spiritual creative potential."  No one else has your unique gifts that are going to help save humanity
and the planet.

'THE QUEST"--that is your spiritual journey.  The journey of your life is to find and give expression to this unique creative potential, regardless of opposition.

"To thine own self be true"--the "Ring Bearer" is within all of Us"--and  "the Force is with you!!" It's the LEAP OF FAITH!!

La Luz de Vida - the Light of Life

A tool for transformation and change of consciousness.

The is the second part of the Hero's Journey.  Initiation, this is the time of the tests and challenges for our Heroes

Drawing, INNER TRUTH by
Rose Rosendo
 

He or she has to explore the labyrinth.  Using the silence within, and experiencing that which opens a hidden door within the self.

The movement of walking the labyrinth: this movement takes away the excess psychic energy that hinders our efforts to quiet our thought processes.  This enables us to reach a higher level of consciousness.  This peaceful place allows the mind to enter a receptive state.

Using the imagination the mind now quieted and expanded beyond every day consciousness opens a path to the sacred.  This sacred within introduces us to the vastness of the spirit.  The sacred within each of us.  This is a process of change-to release, to empty to quiet-letting go of things that block our higher power.  Letting go of all the things we try to control to allow ourselves to be fully present in the moment.  Giving us fully the potential of time.

Coming to the center with illumination and clarity.  This union with the sacred gives us the confidence to fully realize "our creative spiritual potential."  And to risk taking our unique gifts to manifest in the world.

We then serve the world with an active, self aware, compassionate and conscious manner.  Thus we bring out our own heroic potential, which  gives us the inner strength to act on it and be fully human.

Additional Comments on the Hero's Journey

Segment of Painting by Rose Rosendo

This vision can create a life of its own--First there was the word-and the word became God-The God within us--"Our Divinity"--Thus creating the Rainbow Bridge".  Each of us can be extra-ordinary, we can focus on the idea of going beyond ourselves.  Authentic evolution and change--We are a (Process.)  Not limitations only "Possibilities" - Epiphanies.  Connectedness-producing light -sparks- Illuminations for ourselves and others.  Becoming a "Unity"- we can participate in the secret that every revelation is --we are part of the mystery-we are force fields of energy.  The power of our imagination to manifest our needs and the needs of our planet.

We have got to break our stereotypic vision of our reality and create a new one.  We have to teach ourselves to see what we had failed to see.  The primordial gaze-the
gaze that thinks-the gaze of our first ancestors and its continuum as we are today.  Our reality is not what we see but what we discover.  This is a pathway to the spiritual leap to adventure.  An experience to invent new models.

Letting go of preconceptions moving between worlds - between fact and feeling-Body-Mind-Soul.  The sense of sacred.

Compassion-Things speak to you.  Trust in the process of what happens.  Our greatest suffering is attached to outcomes.-We need to be less concerned with whether we will suffer or what will happen next.  This is life of the spirit, incorporating our integrity of living life as a human being.

On the brink again of the "Evolution of Our Consciousness."  Finding our "Souls" and the sense of Awe and Mystery within ourselves and the world.

The Hero's Journey the La Luz Steel Sculpture

La Luz de Vida by Rose Rosendo

INITIATION is the secondary stage of the Hero's Journey.  This is the part of the Journey where the Hero is tested and faces the challenges to be able to complete the Journey.  For the stage of INITIATION, I have created an installation.  This installation is designed so that when viewed by the pilgrim (viewer) the pilgrim will also be performing a ritual.  This ritual is not tied to any organized religion.  It is spiritually motivated to help us become aware of the spiritual dimensions of our lives and our own special gifts and potentialities.

By utilizing ritual I am creating a journey that will put us in touch with the spiritual and mystical part of ourselves which is timeless.

I have created a welded steel life size figure, (sculpture) called LA LUZ DE VIDA, THE LIGHT OF LIFE.  This is an androgynous figure as the soul has no gender.  The figure will stand in the middle of a Labyrinth.  The pilgrim will be given a light stick.  When the pilgrim reaches the figure, having walked the Labyrinth: they will then light the light stick and return from the center of the Labyrinth with the stick alight.

This winding path leading to the center serves as a mirror to reflect the movement of Spirit in our lives.  It awakens us to the rhythm that unites us to ourselves and the light within.

This ritual meets the longing for a change of heart and challenges us to refine the way we live together; it also provides energy, vision and courage for the world of the 21st century.

My Creative Epiphany in Paris -Part 2

We rejoin Rose in the Park in Les Lilas, outside of Paris having her Creative Epiphany.  It was amazing,  the thoughts filling my head were expanding in these bigger and bigger circles.  First I couldn't believe this could come to me here.

Before I had left San Francisco, I had been going to Grace Cathedral after work and going to the Labyrinth in the Cathedral to walk it as a meditative, contemplative ritual.  I felt as I had this epiphany that the figure needed to be placed in a Labyrinth to create a meditation for people to learn.  By utilizing ritual I am creating a journey that will put us in touch with the spiritual and mystical part of ourselves which is timeless.

For the stage of INITATION in the heroes' journey I was going to create an installation.  So that when experienced by the individual that person becomes a pilgrim as he or she is performing this ritual.  This ritual is not tied to any organized religion.  It is spiritually motivated to help us become aware of the spiritual dimensions of our lives and our own gifts and potentialities.  Helping us to  connect with our souls and the mystery of existance.

American Indian Labyrinth Pictograph

I knew what I would call this piece, La Luz de Vida, the Light of Life.  This is an androgynous figure as the soul has no gender.  The figure will stand in the middle of a Labyrinth.  The individual will be given a light stick.  When the pilgrim reaches the figure having walked the Labyrinth: they will then light the light stick and return from the center of the Labyrinth.  They have thus become the Pilgrim with the stick alight.

This winding path leading to the center serves as a mirror to reflect the movement of Spirit in our lives.  It awakens us to the rhythm that  unites us to ourselves and the light within.

This ritual meets the longing for a change of heart and challenges us to refine the way we live together: it also provides energy, vision and courage for the world for the 21st century.

  

Creative Epiphany in Paris, Part 2

My Creative Epiphany in Paris

La Luz de Vida - Light of Life
Steel sculpture by Rose Rosendo

I was invited to Paris by a dear friend to help he and his partner paint his house. The house was located in the neighborhood of the second to the last metro stop outside of the metropolitan area of downtown Paris, in a suburb called Romainville, in the Les Lilas area of Paris. The previous winter they had been out of town and France had had the worst winter in over a 100 years. The pipes had frozen and burst and the whole basement and bottom floor of the house had a foot of water. By the time they had come back from their trip the water damage had extended even to the plaster falling off the walls.

So Jerry (my friend ) called me and said how would I like to spend a month in Paris and help them paint the house. Well I was blown away and of course said yes.

Every morning I would take a walk for about an hour through the neighborhood and to the park and on the way back buy Jerry fresh croissants at the bakery for his breakfast. It was so amazing to be living there as opposed to being a tourist.

I had been taking welding classes before I had come to Paris, in Emeryville, CA, just across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco. Where I had been living and working for my cousin. I wanted to make life sized figures out of cement and because cement is so heavy I needed to know how to weld to make armatures (skeletons) inside the figures. (The cement was so heavy it needed supports inside.) I had been working on what I thought was a skeleton as my first practice piece for my welding class. At that point I only had the chest completed.

  One of the mornings as I was walking through the park, it came to me exactly what I was doing with that steel chest I was working on in welding class. I am a huge fan of writer and teacher Joseph Campbell of mythology fame. I had been very taken with the whole saga of the Heroes' Journey. I had had no intention of creating a steel sculpture, I was creating a skeleton to put cement on. But there it was INITATION. The second step of the Heroes' Journey. The Heroes' Journey has three steps Departure, Initiation and Return. With the second step, Initiation; this is the part of the Journey where the Hero is tested and faces the challenges to be able to complete the journey.

  So for the moment we will leave Rose walking in the park in Les Lilas having her Epiphany. To be continued in the next blog.

ORANGE COUNTY CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ART (OCCCA.ORG)

Mistress of Chaos, Sculpture, front
by Rose Rosendo

As a mid century Feminist Artist, my sculpture is influenced by other women artists. Louis Nevelson is a favorite of mine.  My large copper and cement sculpture, MISTRESS OF CHAOS, exemplifies the direct arc of her influence.

Her influence of a belief in nature's divinity is in all of my work. My use of all kinds of materials; lights, wood,  metals, glass, steel, copper, bronze, and cement extends her use of the debris she found in dumpsters in New York.

CHAOS THEORY  FEB 7-21, 2015


Mistress of Chaos
 back by Rose Rosendo

This was a show that I was in in Santa Ana, California.  The show was at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art.  (OCCCA.org)  I was intrigued by the title of  the show CHAOS THEORY. I had just finished the piece  which is titled MISTRESS OF CHAOS and thought it would be a good fit.