And They are Seeing You: Meeting the Gaze of an Alive World

Exhibition at the Warburton Arts Centre, 2025

As a child, mystical experiences in nature left me awe-struck, and intensely curious. Why was this most special of all things not honoured in my culture? As I grew I learned that these experiences lie at the core of human meaning, but because my culture is haunted with unexpressed griefs and trauma, and hijacked by the lures of capitalism, there’s not much place for this precious knowing. I learned too the incredible story of the repressed and demonised esoteric (hidden) path in my Western lineage. Meanwhile, I strive to live with integrity on stolen yet beloved Aboriginal land: a path both searing and soul-making.

And They are Seeing You: Meeting the Gaze of an Alive World explores themes of perception, awareness, and the place of meeting between humans and more-than-human life. It tells a story of seeking to attune to and participate with the natural world through aesthetic responses, intellectual enquiry, and through body practices that increase heart perception. Through reflecting the beauty I see, I offer thanks to this special place, the valley of Birrarung, and celebrate participation with animate beings through forest walking and food growing.

Including photography, poetry, and mixed visual arts, we also showcase the work of many of the participants in Maya’s writing and creativity (co-becoming) workshops that feature contemplative techniques of deep listening and flow writing. These works offer diverse voices united by a vision of deepened ecological, emotional and spiritual connection. Together we celebrate the esoteric as revealed by this beautiful world. The real secret is that the knowledge is not hidden, rather it is obscured by our cultural frameworks and our states of mind. It is visible as mountains. This is not a metaphor, for the knowledge is, also, our mountains. This is almost impossible to understand, but it can be felt. This is also not a metaphor. Deep feeling facilitates heart perception, which opens us to awe, to wonder, and to love. This is the shift necessary for esoteric knowing. As you experience this exhibition, we invite you to soften your gaze, breathe into your heart, and listen through all of your skin.

I acknowledge the generous support of Yarra Ranges Council with their funding to enable this exhibition to continue living via this website.

Hover over the images (or tap on mobile) to reveal Maya’s writings.

circles of belonging
The vision of bringing people together in an extended co-becoming process (The Plunge) to honour the animate world arrived alongside an image of concentric rings, rings rippling through water after a deep dive into a mysterious world below.
Nested Bowls of Belonging
These nine bowls sit inside each other, representing the nine layers we dive into in the Co-becoming Plunge. Radiating from the centre of our being, these are: breath/heartbeat, digestive tract, skin, home, garden, community, elements, Gaia, cosmos.
The Eyes of the River
Many years ago, alone at Kur-ring-gai Chase National Park, sunning my body after a dip in a clear shallow pool, I suddenly had a strong sense of being seen by an animate world. The gaze was compelling, yet not localised. It felt as if I was being seen all over, and inside, and it was deep and tender, a moment of grace and gratefulness. In a happy daze I took this picture of my shadow falling across the riverbed. Later, I got the photo printed. Only then did I see the eyes. It’s not a double exposure. It’s the pattern of stones in the river that create those beautiful eyes. I didn’t consciously see the eyes when I took the photo. That strong sense of being seen, that happens sometimes, and it’s not about eyes. But in this rare case, the image tells the story of my inner experience.
Welcome to my Bower
Welcome to my bower. I have gathered together what is lovely to my eye, I have arrayed my pieces, and in this I sense a pattern. I will dance amid my collection. This is my courting, and I am courting you.
The Seeing Tree
Developing a practice of tending the world
through deep listening is transformative.
If I walk into the world, open,
sensing through all my skin,
the world comes closer in,
and the feeling is of all the trees seeing me.
Sometimes, even through eyes.
Double Vision

‘What to others a trifle appears
Fills me full of smiles or tears
For double the vision my eyes do see
And a double vision is always with me
With my inward eye ’tis an old man grey
With my outward a thistle across my way.’

The visionary poet William Blake’s experience of what he called double vision was to experience the intelligence, character and will of different beings in the animate world. Blake’s visions had antecedents in the ancient tradition of ‘faerie’ in European culture, a realm the Irish call ‘the other world’, a place that is eternal, timeless and endlessly creative. This is exactly the felt sense of the realm we meet in the writing process of co-becoming. In this photo, the sun somehow got in on the process, hitting the lens and creating a second eye over the eye, doubling the vision, and reminding me of the collaborative intelligence of the animate realm.
Ghosted Vision
Our capacity to listen carefully and sensitively in order to perceive the aliveness, complexity, beauty and balance in natural systems is always mediated by culture. Under modernity and the cult of materialism in science, we have been schooled out of depth perception, which for some of us has shamed our experiences of intimacy with nature. We may ghost our own capacity for ‘double vision.’ Thankfully we live in a time when culture is changing, awareness of the intelligence of plants and animals is growing, and more respect is being accorded to indigenous knowledge, which has always understood this. It’s a ripe time for a return to practices of deep listening, deep seeing: the cultivation of heart perception. When we do, we may discover that nature will see us in return, has been waiting patiently for us, and will welcome us home.
Becoming Something Other
All of us are patterned deep into each other; making, and made from, each other, body and soul. Mostly we are ignorant of this. Perhaps we discover it, and discover how precious it is to know this, yet despite the preciousness, we forget. Art is there to help us remember. This owlish tree reminds me of both my intimate patterning with the world, and the grace in the act of art making: thus this image becomes a mnemonic for returning to pattern awareness, and for returning to the devotional act of participation with the world we call art.
Yoni Tree
The banyan, a sacred tree in Hindu and Buddhist traditions, sends aerial roots down from branches, becoming a vast, many-trunked being. Trees are wise ancestors: generous, steadfast and lovely. In apprenticing ourselves to them, perhaps over time we may find ourselves reflected there.
Lingam Tree
The banyan, a sacred tree in Hindu and Buddhist traditions, sends aerial roots down from branches, becoming a vast, many-trunked being. Trees are wise ancestors: generous, steadfast and lovely. In apprenticing ourselves to them, perhaps over time we may find ourselves reflected there.
Weatherkin
We are as we are because they are. We have been made in their likeness. To know this is to know our nature, which is nature.
The sun, everyone
The rays of light across the water come straight to you The sun does this for everyone The only time we can gaze at the sun is when it is just about to vanish Inside the feeling of this is a knowing
What River Becomes
I began at the bay, for that’s where I was. The circle bay lay open to the sky, and the light fell into the water. The sea was a silver-green mirror for the dome that wrapped the world. The sea held the fallen sky. I could fall in there too.
Source Country - Tiny River Rising
There are many stories, stories great and wild, given us by the oldest of things. The river, the sun, the turning world, tell them every day. This world has given them to us to mind while we are here. This is the unfathomable generosity of all things. They are of the deepest, truest comfort there is.
The Idolatree of the Pilgrim
I was drawn to revisit Mt Baw Baw, near the source of Birrarung. I came across this large and magnificent snow gum, and discovered, cut into the bark, these symbols. (full story at the blog)
Landscapes of Loss
Why do I love them, these bare lonely hills, with such melancholy longing? Stolen lands, parcelled up by barbed wire and ecologically denuded, yet despite all this, alluring.
The Mountains will Tell You
You look, from where you live, to the mountains. One day, to your astonishment, you realise the mountains are looking back at you. You see the mountains  And they are seeing you. Who must you then become, to be worthy of such a gaze? If you listen, the mountains will tell you. How do you become a listening person? How could we become a listening people? In striving to discover this, the real work begins.
The Wave of the Mountains
You see the mountains. And with deep calm being they are seeing you. Their slow wave too subtle for mammal to perceive. Mountain makes cloud via her green attire and cloud, curling, sea’s swell seen inland, breaks on the arid shore of my unseeing. Sucking me into the oceanic. My whole body is a wave, waving back.
Shining Strands
Country, how shall I tend you? I send out the shining strands and bring you in. I bring you to me. Listen. Don’t hoard your longing. I gave you this longing so you would see me. Don’t be afraid to love, and don’t be afraid to reveal what you love. In this way you will learn that you are not alone. Map the paths. Plant the trees. Tell the stories. Web yourself within me, and sing to me of my beauty. Commit, reach out, make art with me. Let me grow you. And let me grow you up. Listen, watch for my wonders, let me be the tales you tell. Give me my rightful place at the centre. Doing so you will slowly become sane. Keep going. Remember to talk to me. I am your mother.
Starburst
Water, every drop of water, is formed when stars, coming to the end of their life, explode. In the unimaginable heart and the immense pressure all the heavy elements come into being. When stars go supernova, stardust plumes over the universe, elements spread wide, and water molecules dance through the vacuum.
Ethereal Cathedral
One rare midwinter day, it snowed so much that Donna Buang’s road was closed at the spring. Hundreds got out of their cars and walked along the winding mountain road within the windless, silent storm. Giant eucalypts, all green gone under the drifts, made an endless, ethereal cathedral. People were smiling, awed and delighted, and all sound was softened by snow. The atmosphere was unlike anything I’d ever experienced, but it felt familiar to my European soul. I felt shifted to a time and place when we traveled like this: on foot, through snow, convivial in the enchanting seasonal beauty.
Magenta Snowstorm
One rare midwinter day, it snowed so much that Donna Buang’s road was closed at the spring. Hundreds got out of their cars and walked along the winding mountain road within the windless, silent storm. Huge flakes came thickly down onto the delighted families, coats became heavy and white in mere minutes. Snowballs were flying, and brightly attired children, spots of colour in a world turned black and white, were dragging toboggans many miles, seeking the runs.
Mandala Duck
Duck, I seek to be your disciple. River rings, ripples. I make these. Follow them back to their source and you’ll find me. My life is lived in view of you. We’ve been close for a long time now. Feel how I fill your mind. Follow the ripples down, deep into your body. Sense now my nest in your heart. The beauty of my babies fills you, a rain-swelled river of joy. The intensity and energy of my flight open your wings to imagine this, feel now how love grows wider. The vulnerability of my walk feel how I bring you to the tender. The elegance of my neck, the rare shimmer of my iridescent feather, my glide upon the evening water. Do you feel me, changing your body? Over millennia I have made you thus I have made you to love me. In memory of Michael Leunig
Mothershield Fern
Ferns line the mountain paths. Among them is the mothershield fern. At the end of her unfurling, there at the tip, new life begins at the outspread edge. The weight of the tiny fernling helps to lower the frond to the forest floor. There it will find its own soil, it cannot help but trust the ground it finds. It will root and fling its tiny fronds up toward the sun, leaf-fingers unfurling. To step on a young fern feels like stepping on a baby. A baby just born, still with the curled-in head, the fist-like fronds. To step skilfully enough to avoid all harm to the young ferns is impossible. They naturally and inevitably spread across the path worn by humans through the forest. They fill the gap carved out of the wild. And thus inevitably there is damage. The baby ferns get crushed, mushed into the mud.   I walk carefully along the mountain paths, searching for the straying babies. I dig up the ones rooting in dangerous locations, to transplant into my garden and tend them there. To be mother to them, to shield them, this is my instinct. I see that tiny child-form and come over all maternal. 
Entwined
Here. Cleave to me. Keep circling around the centre. Return, again and again. Spiralling, coming in under my holding. I meet you and match you perfectly when you release into the shape of me. Grow old like this, so close. Become soft and green. Allow yourself to be grown over. In this way you will become beautiful.
Indra's rose
Every serration on every rose leaf by the kitchen window catches the heavy Warburton dew. Looking close in, I see that all is reflected in each drop. Including many tiny little “me”s. We’re all part of the exquisite pattern, as Indra’s net reveals. That Buddhist teaching tale tells of emptiness, interdependent co-arising and interpenetration through the story of a magical net hung with jewels. The reflections in the jewelled net reveal that each thing that exists is dependent for both its existence and its identity upon every other thing that exists. In leaning in to the loveliness of the dew-jewelled rose leaf, something like this might be known.
Autumn Gathering
To live in the valley is to rejoice in the conviviality of food growing alongside friends and neighbours, farmers and backyard permaculturalists. And also with the many lovely beings living alongside me in the form of fruit trees. The slow and dedicated work of designing, planting and tending a food forest means learning to share with the birds and grubs, and to be in wonder at the generosity of the rooted ones.
Visions of Dwelling
Traveling in Nepal, the connection between the humble vernacular village architecture and fields and the monumental mountains and rivers was to experience the expression of the belonging of the people. Such a courteous and elegant relationship was one I longed to know, to live. Coming to live in Warburton was my chance to imagine some way towards this. My tiny home, the shemple (a shed dreaming of temples) was the result.
River Altar
Riverstone, what is your teaching? Bring body down Down and in and under Make like me Steadfast surrender Change beautifully Imperceptible to others We soften together Becoming other
Unfurling
Cucumber, what is your will? Vegetal tendrils My many spiral hands Unfurling into awaiting air, through my skin I drink the invisible. Space takes the shape of me. Latch, catch, I clamber into sunlight My body is sun’s imagining. All leaves unblinking face him. I am countless orifice. Be with me as I drink Through your skin feel my pleasure As I will be with you as you eat me Your delight is my becoming And the depth of your reverence Is the measure of our meeting.
Heart-leaf
Red bud tree. she dappled heart-shadows upon the path. Looking up one luminous leaf. Oh lovely world you are my valentine. February 14 2023
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