Awakening is an experience that leads to the release of what some call "patterning" or old programming. Some call it "DNA Activation" and even "Uploads." All of this is an attempt to give voice to this feeling, this force, that causes us to stir and melt away the old ways that have not served us. Our bodies, our very neurological structure, is built around a type of patterning or pgrogramming from the earliest moments when we are alive from embryo forward. The neurological system is vast and we learn before we know how to mimick behavior that we see as early as a few weeks after birth. A baby will smile back at its mother because she has smiled at it because the nervous system has cells that actually help the baby to do this long ebfore it might know what the smile is supposed to mean, long before the brain is mapped. But we see these things, we copy them, and then learn from the world what they are supposed to mean. We are building a library of reality that will inform us about what we think we see. And yet, we know that our library of reality is itself built less on real things as supposed things, on feelings and ideas highly internalized. If we see someone tall and thin who scares us as a child, we may go about our lives being afraid of tall thin people even though there is nothing inherently wrong or bad about tall thin people. This meme built up within our minds remains like a blueprint until it is changed. the path to this change is rather radical, since it requires a momentary brush with the unknown, the very realm that those who awaken find themselves living in.
It isn't just the province of a mystical or spiritual experience, but is also something that is present in art. The very act of making art can involve breaking down these old conceptual boundaries we have set for ourselves, which is this inner library of what we think the outer world is. It doesn't matter whether this inner version of reality is correct or not since this inner view will predominate and distort what it is we think we see in the physical through our senses. Carl Jung was all over this notion in his work with projection and how someone who has this distorted sesne of reality within will porject it upon his or her neightbor with absolute certainty that the problem lies in the neighbor and not in him or herself.
So thinking about this, as I usually do, I am often reminded or given opportunities to change how I see it or think about it by a chance meeting her or there. This morning, being rushed to get to work, I had not gotten breakfast, and so I decided to duck into a local coffee shop for a cup of coffee to sip on my way to the studio. While there I noticed someone whom I often would talk to about nothing in particular, but my friend is always thinking and writing. I asked him what he was writing about and what he told me, in a nutshell, is about how we create these patterns, how we, from the ground up, create a kind of illusory existence out of any number of things even as we seek to break out of those bounds by various methods from Eastern practices of meditation and art.
This is why I continue to feel that art is itself an important way to go about clearing our lives since it allows a wide beth for the subconscious to enter even while we ourselves, our ego selves, aren't even aware that this is happening. I think that the freer we are, the less anaytlical we are in doing this, the more effective we are in bringing forward information that can help us to identify the patterning within. it is also a way, too, for breaking the old patterns through a singular act of intention, imagination, and self recreation. The wonderful thing is that we do not even need to know how this is done, except that we let go and allow this broader current to simply exist. For the artist, the current it seems is inspiration. It is the forward edge of awakening. It is here that the spark of knowing or gnosis enters and illuminates the brain from left to right. The structure in both is enlivened, brought into a kind of energtic balance while also existing in a kind of suspended tension that is about the orbit of opposites. It is in such a place that an old cognative bias or belief can be changed forever. It also has the power to change how others see and think and feel.
In art, most often, this has meant a new stylistic development such as Mannerism, or Pointalism, or Impressionism. All of these were in their own time radical new ways to express and form reality in a creative way. They also recieved a great deal of criticism from people within the art field as some chose to resist the change in themselves. But these changes are tidal in nature and sweep all form with them. A tsunami itself is often just a six foot wave of water, but it has so much steady force behind it that it has the power to wash away an entire village within minutes. It does not look like much sometimes, but this is how it achieves its effect. Simply, quietly, the old order is there one moment, and is gone the next. This is the power that the creative has. It is one reason why I have chosen to not be a part of organized religion but have taken art as my guiding discipline. It is the one thing that has no rules. We are encouraged to break the rules, to change how people see or feel. It is also how one, in awakening, also makes a break from the old to see what is there in a new way. Sure, in some cases, art may simply bear a new form to replace the old which may itself be in its own way a distortion of what is there, but all of life is imperfect, yet also perfect. We are like blind children who are led by a great golden string that ties our heart to heaven. We are pulled by this string so that we come face to face with those things that will at some point clear away our eyes enough that we will begin to see. Bit by bit, we pull on this string and feel the weight of heaven coming nearer. We re each bound to heaven by this golden string, and if we are to realize heaven on earth, we will have pulled this string so hard and well that we have given up everythhing except heaven that stands in its way of being here. For heaven is not a place, and there is no string. But when we remove the boundaries we have erected, it is ever closer as we breath into its crispness and vibrant presence within us.
This does not happen in masses, but individually. Life may conspire to inspire us or bring us a friend in a coffee shop who tells us the right thing at the right time, but each of us is feeling the current passing through this cord that is our lifeline to the infinite, to wonder, beauty, grace, and awe. What we will encounter when this happens will be for each to know and feel. It will be ours, our heaven. It is less a place as a state of being, an undivided sense of presence, a quietness amid great movement. It is the whole, the totality, and this is a great mystery.
Asking what method will do it seems itself beside the point. There are many methods, many paths, and all of them serve in some way to help assist you in plumbing something in yourself. If it achieve that and is a good match for now, then it works. For some the Rosary could do it, or sitting still in the kitchen looking out the window, or listening to music, making art, dancing, or any number of things. Most often what works is what allows us to let go of that which has haunted us, those distorted memes within us that have held back the deluge, the tsunami of energy that is part of breaking old bounds.
It isn't just the province of a mystical or spiritual experience, but is also something that is present in art. The very act of making art can involve breaking down these old conceptual boundaries we have set for ourselves, which is this inner library of what we think the outer world is. It doesn't matter whether this inner version of reality is correct or not since this inner view will predominate and distort what it is we think we see in the physical through our senses. Carl Jung was all over this notion in his work with projection and how someone who has this distorted sesne of reality within will porject it upon his or her neightbor with absolute certainty that the problem lies in the neighbor and not in him or herself.
So thinking about this, as I usually do, I am often reminded or given opportunities to change how I see it or think about it by a chance meeting her or there. This morning, being rushed to get to work, I had not gotten breakfast, and so I decided to duck into a local coffee shop for a cup of coffee to sip on my way to the studio. While there I noticed someone whom I often would talk to about nothing in particular, but my friend is always thinking and writing. I asked him what he was writing about and what he told me, in a nutshell, is about how we create these patterns, how we, from the ground up, create a kind of illusory existence out of any number of things even as we seek to break out of those bounds by various methods from Eastern practices of meditation and art.
This is why I continue to feel that art is itself an important way to go about clearing our lives since it allows a wide beth for the subconscious to enter even while we ourselves, our ego selves, aren't even aware that this is happening. I think that the freer we are, the less anaytlical we are in doing this, the more effective we are in bringing forward information that can help us to identify the patterning within. it is also a way, too, for breaking the old patterns through a singular act of intention, imagination, and self recreation. The wonderful thing is that we do not even need to know how this is done, except that we let go and allow this broader current to simply exist. For the artist, the current it seems is inspiration. It is the forward edge of awakening. It is here that the spark of knowing or gnosis enters and illuminates the brain from left to right. The structure in both is enlivened, brought into a kind of energtic balance while also existing in a kind of suspended tension that is about the orbit of opposites. It is in such a place that an old cognative bias or belief can be changed forever. It also has the power to change how others see and think and feel.
In art, most often, this has meant a new stylistic development such as Mannerism, or Pointalism, or Impressionism. All of these were in their own time radical new ways to express and form reality in a creative way. They also recieved a great deal of criticism from people within the art field as some chose to resist the change in themselves. But these changes are tidal in nature and sweep all form with them. A tsunami itself is often just a six foot wave of water, but it has so much steady force behind it that it has the power to wash away an entire village within minutes. It does not look like much sometimes, but this is how it achieves its effect. Simply, quietly, the old order is there one moment, and is gone the next. This is the power that the creative has. It is one reason why I have chosen to not be a part of organized religion but have taken art as my guiding discipline. It is the one thing that has no rules. We are encouraged to break the rules, to change how people see or feel. It is also how one, in awakening, also makes a break from the old to see what is there in a new way. Sure, in some cases, art may simply bear a new form to replace the old which may itself be in its own way a distortion of what is there, but all of life is imperfect, yet also perfect. We are like blind children who are led by a great golden string that ties our heart to heaven. We are pulled by this string so that we come face to face with those things that will at some point clear away our eyes enough that we will begin to see. Bit by bit, we pull on this string and feel the weight of heaven coming nearer. We re each bound to heaven by this golden string, and if we are to realize heaven on earth, we will have pulled this string so hard and well that we have given up everythhing except heaven that stands in its way of being here. For heaven is not a place, and there is no string. But when we remove the boundaries we have erected, it is ever closer as we breath into its crispness and vibrant presence within us.
This does not happen in masses, but individually. Life may conspire to inspire us or bring us a friend in a coffee shop who tells us the right thing at the right time, but each of us is feeling the current passing through this cord that is our lifeline to the infinite, to wonder, beauty, grace, and awe. What we will encounter when this happens will be for each to know and feel. It will be ours, our heaven. It is less a place as a state of being, an undivided sense of presence, a quietness amid great movement. It is the whole, the totality, and this is a great mystery.
Asking what method will do it seems itself beside the point. There are many methods, many paths, and all of them serve in some way to help assist you in plumbing something in yourself. If it achieve that and is a good match for now, then it works. For some the Rosary could do it, or sitting still in the kitchen looking out the window, or listening to music, making art, dancing, or any number of things. Most often what works is what allows us to let go of that which has haunted us, those distorted memes within us that have held back the deluge, the tsunami of energy that is part of breaking old bounds.
No comments:
Post a Comment