Chambered Nautilus Paintings
The Chambered Nautilus Dimensions of Our Lives
By Dennis Rivers, Oregon
“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.”
—Rumi.
In the course of my lifetime of stumbling and struggling through meditation, study, prayer and ecological activism, I have become convinced of one thing: We are part of something much larger than ourselves, a living presence that supports us, constrains us, and calls to us. That Presence provides us with breath, light, food and a million companions, and also yearns to receive back from us something profound —a response, a conversation. I keep on thinking that the something given back out of gratitude must be more that the perpetual wars and oppression that have raged around the world most of my life.
Neils Bohr (Danish Nobel prize-winning physicist and philosopher) once observed that the opposite of an ordinary truth is a falsehood, but the opposite of a great truth is often another great truth. It is a great truth of human life that we each need to develop our abilities as deeply as we possibly can. It is also a great truth of human life that we need to honor and nurture the webs of life, people, lands and seas around us, in widening circles. I am convinced that the more powerful we become with new technologies, the more deeply true both the above truths become. In the dream geometry of the Chambered Nautilus paintings below, I experience a celebration of our infinite interwovenness, a celebration of our complex developmental journeys, and a celebration of the One Life that holds us all.
I am totally convinced that…
The deeper the ugliness we intend
to confront and mend in the world around us,
the deeper the beauty
we need to carry within us.
As you seek to mend
the wounds of this world,
may you bring beautiful new light
into every room your enter!
To download these pdf images, please click on the poster titles below.
By Dennis Rivers, created with the assistance of artificial intelligence, Oregon. Dennis is our volunteer webmaster. Dennis created these paintings (with help from AI) to inspire people to see the world around them with new eyes, a world in which greed and war were no longer needed. He feels that these images carry wisdom from Mother Galaxy. He writes, “I love the infinite-spiral-speaking to-us-from-another-dimension feeling that they offer.”
Dennis has offered these images as free posters with inspiring messages, rather than as traditional over-the-couch wall art pieces. He is excited about the Public Domain—Belongs to Everyone—aspect of this project. You may also visit his website, EarthPrayer.net.