Paul Caponigro: Thanks to a Master of Light

(Excerpt from a Letter to Paul Caponigro December 7, 2017)

Dear Paul, I hope this finds you well and ever enriched by life’s essence. Sending Birthday greetings that when opened play the song of Light dancing on the diamantine skin of December's new fallen snow, and celebrate the wondrous mysteries you continue to embody.

I will always appreciate the deep understanding I felt in our meetings, the mark you left on me…and all that must have transpired for us to meet in this life. I am a woman who flies above the Earth and also sees through its surfaces. I live among mountains of solitude and remote peaks of silence permeated by pure air and undistorted truths, but not to escape the world of which I am a part or to remain alone. It is so I can travel down along polluted rivers into the most congested valleys and share impressions and stories of a more empowered Nature and universally networked self. It is a lasting joy to know that regardless of the decades that passed between our Sagittarius births, we have followed a similar passion and path through Sound and Light as a way of exploring and expressing Nature’s subtle mysteries and the more infinite dimensions of our human nature. You were there encouraging me at the outset, when the Light came for me and I was still unsure of how to serve it, so I have also included a few thoughts below on what I have learned thus far in my life with the camera. You remain a distant, but ever-present influence and inspiration as my own images become more evolved openings of Consciousness, unbound perception and Light.

"-When with a resolute mind and enduring devotion you take up the pursuit of Light (not just the pursuit of photography, which is something entirely different) the flow of primordial energies and forms of reality are elevated, expanded, re-harmonized and rebuilt within you. Creation through photographic images then becomes a transformative process rather than a documentary one…a practice in which the photographer surrenders all finite and imagined conceptions to the universal Energy, Will and Consciousness speaking through the Light, and accepts the dimensions of their perception of Nature and “the self” will be transformed because of it.

-Gradually, as one becomes less a projection of their finite mind and more Light, all that is perceived and projected in impressions carries a transformative power through which both the receiver / photographer and the viewer/humanity may shed their illusions of reality and draw nearer their own infinite human totality.

-In Light is Consciousness and life, yet even in darkness wait the involuting sparks of Light’s and matter’s beginnings. Part of my work in photographic imagery is to master and convey a more unlimited understanding of both the involuting energies of the dark and the evoluting energies manifest in visible light. It is also about learning to envision with the senses withdrawn, and seeing in a way that engages the network within the self where all manifestation converges and energies connect beyond their separateness and duality in one living Nature. Beyond depictions of surface forms, I endeavor to create images of outer Nature which carry the resonance of that seed of shared beginning; a universal frequency that comes through the door of Light to grow the seed of life within us and inspire us, beyond fear and conditioning, to unveil something of the unknown dimensions and unlimited potential of the self.

-In my life with the camera I have learned that reality expands to the degree that we have expanded our conception and inner experience of the self. The best camera equipment can only capture what the photographer perceives and nothing more. I spend less time hunting for new and better equipment, and more on refining my own inner instrument of seeing. What I perceive beyond our conditioned preconceptions of form in Nature may seem unreal to some, but the unique significance of the camera is that it can reveal and bring us closer to truths about the subtle dimensions of Nature and our own human nature without separating it from the physical plane. Unlike other art forms, photography in its most refined form is not recreating the mind’s imagined or dreamt impressions of un-manifest thought, or trying to reproduce an experience of what has been created by Nature, it is sensing the dynamics of an increasingly more subtle dimension operating between manifest matter and what is thought. Photography has great unexplored capacities as an integrative medium, and when interpreted as more than an outer sensory or emotionally driven endeavor, is a tangible bridge between the causal mind and the physical plane. It is an art of the subtle body, the inner energetic interfacing plane of our human totality where an inner sensory system evolves our awareness and connection to a more infinite network of being. As we develop our inner ability to perceive and project the subtle as well as the dense levels of our multidimensional existence, photography will excel in uniquely serving those ready to transcend the limits of past preconceptions about who we are and our relationship to Nature and its powers, forces and potentialities.

-I will continue to follow the Light, and seek the wonder and beauty of its presence in all of Nature. I will continue to receive and project impressions that encourage others to find the Light in themselves and in their own endeavors. I will continue to explore and master my projection of impressions of a reality in which one feels free of their preconditioned perceptions, transfused by Light, beyond the individual finite self, and part of a more subtle and universally convergent network of unlimited energy and intelligence. Where the wings of humanity have been clipped and nailed down, I will be a channel of images that transcend the past and radiate a realm of being that is more than the toxic waste of a limited reality. I will continue until we are no longer confined to a one-dimensional physical identity, and our minds are capable of flight. I will continue…and it is with enduring gratitude for you and your own creative efforts to translate the Light!”

Happy Birthday Paul and Regards in Light Always, Deborah

Image "Entering the Temple of Crystal Light" 2016 Deborah Goudreault / Honoring Sculpture by Gary Haven Smith

Deborah GoudreaultJanuary 18, 2018