Where is the Well

    Labels are proliferating regarding what people call themselves, and each is an act of division separating human individuals into generalized groups. The lens of categories leaves out the essence of the human experience, the concepts that are universally understood and by which we understand each other. In the ancient Chinese I Ching it says,

     “However people may differ in disposition and education, the foundations of human nature are the same in everyone. And every human being can draw in the course of their education from the inexhaustible wellspring of the divine in human nature….but we may fail, in our education, to penetrate the real roots of humanity and remain fixed in convention, or collapse and neglect self-development.”*

  

 The limited definitions that go with the labels and categories can’t begin to describe the 360 degrees of experience or the deep well of human potential. Images do it better. Our feelings choose what we see, so our choice of what we look at reflects our current inner world. Words may be markers for the types of things we talk about but, except in literature, don’t convey the nature of experience. Art is an opening to the well, the connection to what will nourish in a way that develops the individual. It communicates through the universal metaphor of where we are and the condition illuminated is understood by all human beings because we’re built to move around in the world for the same reasons and by the same mechanisms. We see the state of balance and the trajectories of moving objects and know what to do in relation to them. The parietal lobes are dedicated to the core consciousness of where we are, processing a visual/kinesthetic understanding. From infancy, we learn the way the world behaves in a commonsense physics that becomes so automatic it’s taken for granted, yet it’s a complex multifaceted intelligence at the foundation of conceptual knowledge. Cultivating that level of understanding is a way to build on our commonality. Human differences are just the skin of who we are. Labeling all the differences emphasizes divisions that are small given the foundation we share.

    The particular details of every person’s life are varied, but they are structured by shared ways of living. The locations of our memories may look very different but the similar patterns of satisfying basic needs are common to us all. The pattern of home, the pattern of school, work, social gathering, create common circuitry through the way we function within them. Given an image of a nest, we understand its meaning by the condition of the nest, what is or is not there that is significant. Understanding the meaning of surroundings and the metaphor of where we are is developed by looking at art. This builds the circuits of visual sensitivity and triggers personal reflection that connects with universal human meaning structure. It needs no translation and creates bridges where words cannot.

*from Hexagram 48  Ching   The Well