The Third Thing

Unknowable But Certain | Oil and mixed media on wood | 12” x 12” © Laurie Doctor
This painting has been in gestation for a long time, but I was inspired to complete it after our class, A Grain of Hope.

Third thing?

This post is about the magic of number three, and how it applies to makers.

My online class, A Grain of Hope, just finished. We talked briefly about the numbers 1, 2 and 3 — the unity of one, the duality of two and the possibility of breakthrough with three. I will focus on three, the third thing, and give some examples, but first I want to lay the groundwork with number two:

Two brings both relationship and the trap of dualistic thinking. Two deceptions that we makers, and probably most humans, fall into are perfectionism and comparison. That is, how trying to be perfect, or comparing ourselves with others, leads to endless unresolved spirals in the mind. In this setup, we are never good enough, or even when we are, it’s only for brief moments. These mind-weeds leave no ground for the third thing. We get stuck in the thicket of good-bad, right-wrong, and pretty-ugly tangles in our mind. It is tiring. These mind-weeds stop us in the studio and at our writing desk.

Two yucca seed pods | © Laurie Doctor Sketchbook

What are some examples of puncturing duality with the third thing? Everyone has experiences of breakthrough, generally coming after a struggle and at unexpected moments: stories of being in the shower, driving in the car, something catching your attention out of the corner of your eye… The third thing cannot be pinned down, but I will give some possibilities below through metaphor, verse, dreams and koan.

Metaphor

Poetry can point us toward a third thing through metaphor, like in this stanza by Jorie Graham:

Today, I'm getting my instructions.
I'm getting them from something
holy. 
A tall thing in a nest. 
In a clearing. — Jorie Graham, [To] the Last [Be] Human

This poem uses metaphor to incorporate the idea that instructions are coming from something other than the self, or what we usually think of as self. It activates our imagination with the metaphor of the tall thing in a nest. This image will mean something different to each person. What matters is that the instructions are coming from elsewhere, from some other source or some other part of ourselves. For this to happen, we are listening. There is a need to cultivate the ability to relax with opposition, to not push away the dilemma. The dilemma or unresolved conflict is a barrier that becomes a door. The door is the image or feeling evoked by the poem, an opening to the third thing.

Sometimes the third thing is just recognizing the ink splots that bled through your paper as a hand, or a home. © Laurie Doctor Sketchbook

The stasis of two, your indecision about your work, you thinking you are at the end of the road, that it’s time to quit — can be punctured with the movement and creativity inherent in the number three. Carl Jung called the phenomenon of resolving the tension between two opposing points of view the “reconciling third”. The paradox is punctured, creating a resolution of opposites or a third thing. What is important to me is how this idea can be grounded in the practice of making.

Verse

I often begin with a verse that resonates beneath the surface of analytical thinking, like the the first two lines of our poem:

Today, I'm getting my instructions.
I'm getting them from something
holy. 

When I say this to myself or aloud, I feel the relief of remembering I am not in charge, that I can be receptive to the voice coming from otherness, from something holy. This puts me in the frame of mind of being open to what comes, or what I have before me (regardless of what I may think about my writing, painting or sketch). In a practical sense, you can work on three paintings or pieces at once (rather than one) — so it is easier to avoid being obsessed with making one perfect thing.

Dreams

Dreams, and the time between waking and sleeping are propitious times for breakthrough. If I lie still and vanquish any to-do lists before I am awake, ideas float in that are more elusive in daylight. Sometimes I get just a simple verbal message in my dreams. For example, just this week my dream made this pronouncement: 

Follow instructions so things bloom.

Even though I don’t know what the dream message means, it resonates with something I know, but cannot articulate. It reminds me of our poem. Just pausing and remembering that instructions await me, and that things want to bloom, shifts my whole bearing into being a receiver. It affirms the sense of sustaining otherness.

Follow instructions so things bloom | oil on wood | 5” x 5” | © Laurie Doctor

I believe that you and me, all of us, are tied together by our curiosity about this otherness, and by our yearning, our reaching for this presence. You develop a habit, at least for some time in each day, to dismantle anything in the way of you and this inner listening.  There is the faith, however faltering, that when we make ourselves ready, something will receive us.

Koan

I have been reading and re-reading Through Forests of Every Color: Awakening With Koans by Joan Sutherland. She talks about how the awakening to the meaning of the koan often happens in relationship, in questions and dialogue about the koan, in engaging paradox. Last evening I was reading aloud to my husband this koan:

The arms of the coral hold up the light of the moon.

What does this mean? After some time, it was pure delight to suddenly receive an image of moonlight on the water with the coral beneath reaching up to hold it. I don’t think this would have happened without taking time to live with the koan, or without the exchange, questions and pause with Steven.

Finding your way through

I closed our session with the poet, Gregory Orr. For those of you who don't know him, he is a poet and a professor and considers himself to be a secular humanist. And yet, he wrote a whole book poetry called Concerning the Book That is the Body of the Beloved. But first I just want to tell you a little bit about his story.

He grew up in the country in a family in the northeast United States. In the small town where he lived there were two rituals: going to church and hunting. If you were a boy, the ritual, once you turned 12, was to go out with your father and shoot a deer. So, when Gregory turned 12, he took his rifle and he went out into the countryside, with his father, and his little brother as he had done many times before. But this time was his initiation into manhood, his time to shoot his first deer. When he spotted the deer he reached up aimed and pulled the trigger, only to discover he had shot his little brother instead. At 12 years old, he shot and killed his little brother. In his world he had little way to make sense of this tragedy. Adults didn’t talk to children about death, and when they did, would only say his brother was in heaven. This was not helpful to the grieving child who had just murdered his little brother. But in his own struggle through, even as a child, Gregory somehow knew enough to find himself in a story, to give himself a bigger picture. The story he found for himself was from was from the Bible; the story of Cain and Abel. He made the decision that he was the brother who wanted to live.

So here's the poem: 

We exist in the mortal world only. 
But the beloved persists 
Beyond also. He or she 
Starts here, starts as a body 
of flesh and blood (and oh, 
It's so lovely) 
But that's not enough. 
How could that be enough? 
And so our longing calls out 
Past those limits, calls out 
Into the void. 
And the beloved answers from all directions. 
Answers from every page in the book. — Gregory Orr

The poem circles back to the idea that what brings us here is our longing or yearning, our reaching. The “how could that be enough” is the longing to make sense of loss. In the poem he is reaching for what he can't see, past the limits, past the body and into the void.  The longing for a response is reaching for the third thing.

It doesn’t have to be a tragedy, it could be any dilemma or problem, or even struggling for a solution to the thing you are working on. The stuck place that makers know so well. 

What is it like to have the experience of answers coming from all directions? To step into the place of the third thing, and find answers from every page of your book, or every glance around you? You have all had some experience of losing yourself, often after a long period of struggle, and finding the answer in plain sight. There’s a field you enter. When you're in that place, you can't make a wrong turn. Everything works. You are looking out and the world looks back. Our work is tied closely, is a vehicle, to finding the third thing.

Do you have a story of breakthrough? Or being stuck? I’d love to hear from you.

Featured Artist

Our featured artist this month is Catherine Cooper. She was also the recipient of the Martin Ray Young-At-Heart Scholarship for our class in Taos this past March. See more of her work, and other featured artists, here.

The Martin Ray Young-at-Heart Scholarship made it possible for me to attend "Winter Seed's Promise" in Taos, NM.  The class was a gift—it was time to recenter myself and expand my artistic practice.  I learned exercises and skills that I could bring back with me along with a book to work into and continue that exploration.

Magpies at Mabel Dodge Luhan House | © Catherine Cooper (inspired by the work of Jonathan Warm Day)