Stripped Down

"To study yourself does not mean to add more knowledge to your cluttered brain's ideas about yourself, but to remove all of the customary defining characteristics you usually associate self with: name, race, gender, occupation, social status, past, as well as all of the psychological judgments you make about yourself. When the self is stripped down to its essential core, all that can be said about it is: 'I am; I exist.'
What then is the I that exists?"

~Adyashanti

Painting ~ The Snake Charmer (1907) This painting was commissioned by Robert Delaunay's mother, Berthe, Comtesse de Delaunay. Rousseau supposedly decided on the subject for this painting after hearing her stories about her experiences in India. The mysterious figure of the charmer, surrounded by snakes and hidden in shadow except for a glowing pair of eyes, could almost be mistaken for a member of the wildlife. The odd stillness of the work - characteristic of the mood of Rousseau's paintings as a whole - seems particularly appropriate here, as if the song of the flute held the world in a trance.