Eric Ravilious: RNAS Sick Bay, Dundee. Watercolour 1941
If we think of cities of light existing here on Earth, in another time or dimension, how might we find them and learn from them as we create cities of light anew?
I’ve been exploring this question as I prepare for the forthcoming City of Light Summer School. My sense is that over time we will come to converge with existing cities of light, not just here, but elsewhere in the Universe too. This kind of free connection with other communities at the same vibrational level seems to me to be a characteristic of cities of light.
One way in which this process of convergence can be helped is through resonance – the same principle that will, for instance, set a group of wine glasses ringing when one is lightly tapped.
For me the picture here is an example of the beauty and subtlety of resonance at work. I’ve loved the work of Eric Ravilious from childhood, and this picture has always been a favourite. There is such a graceful feel for space. a delight in line and shape (look at the curves of the chair back and the lip of its seat), then there’s the mystery of the empty bed and, above all, the silvery light.
In journeying into cities of light I encounter some very beautiful spaces. Sometimes there’s a sense of ‘I’ve always known this place’ or a feeling of coming home for some part of myself. One such space resonates with my sense of this picture, so that now I say, ‘no wonder I always loved it’.
There’s a story with this picture too. Ravilious was commissioned as a war artist. The year after this picture his plane was lost off Iceland. It feels to me that there’s premonition here: the empty bed and the sea planes at anchor, the otherness. But this premonition is not of tragedy, but of a journey to be made, a journey into that silver light.
It’s as if, at another level, another being, who left this life years before I was born, left a trace, an echo, a clue, to a place or state of consciousness within a city of light. And that clue helped me to find my way there.
You may find in your own life that clues have been left for you too.
The painting in the blog (Resonance and Convergence) about the cities of Light is really beautiful. It is “light” in both meanings of the word and gives a feeling of hope in its simplicity. I was born in Dundee a few years after the painting was done and feel drawn to it maybe for that reason also. I think it overlooks the river Tay.