Saturday, March 13, 2010
Light
In the course of my search for imagery that might assist a more comprehensive understanding of our spiritual nature it occurred to me that the image of light is associated with the all-encompassing universal intelligence in most if not all religions. Arguments between different faiths overlook this shared central image and I wondered why didn’t we see beyond the human-like god with its warring dualities to the inclusive light beyond it. A conversation with Kris Hjelli the night before he died pointed to the answer. He was very concerned by all the problems created by our anthropocentrism. The human mindset of being separate and better than the planet and everything on it was for him the root of the problem in our ecological dilemma. That humans think that only humans are important leads to disrespect and disregard for everything else and encourages an underlying selfishness. This started me thinking about whether the anthropocentric mindset might be behind our inability to go beyond human-like images of the divine. By putting an emphasis on the human image, it becomes other and separate. The Image molds the viewpoint and the viewpoint leads us to see a multitude of individual separate beings with a separate god outside of ourselves. Arguments break out around which separate supreme entity and codified book is the right one and none of that feels very spiritually focused.
The image that encompasses all of the separate views and is part of many references to the Infinite Intelligence is the image of Light. It’s a part of mystical experience in all faiths. It’s always been present, but our focus on what’s human kept us on the level of distinctions. Perhaps Islam’s distrust of images had to do with their focus on what is manifest, on what can be seen. But since imagery is so important to understanding, a better image may be necessary to get us to a place that includes us all. Since light includes and envelops all that is around it, it makes sense to go back to Light. After all it was there in Genesis, in the Clear Light of Buddhism, in the radiance of the saints. In the dark, we can't see. The metaphor of increasing our light makes the pursuit of learning a spiritual path, since it moves toward greater light. Knowledge illuminates.
Beyond the religious image of light, light has long been a central metaphor for intelligence. We bring a new issue to light, we cast light on a problem, something is seen in a different light. The light in the heart enables us to see our deepest meanings. A person might be referred to as bright, a prophet called a light to the world. When I say a person is full of light, it’s not so much a particular quality I’m feeling, but an outward directed interest, a lively curiosity that connects to what’s seen. We feel it as a level of attention and are more fully in the light in someone’s attentive gaze. The light of receptive attention feels like love. Words of love can betray. Responsive, accepting attention IS love. It doesn’t just represent it. We always have the choice to offer that to others, to be Light. We are drawn to the Light because it offers greater awareness.
What we see becomes known in a deeper way than what we hear or read. Envisioning something in relation to our existing inner model is the only way we can integrate our accumulating perceptions into our worldview. We all have these associations with light. It’s been so close we couldn’t see it. We couldn’t see beyond the human intermediary.
What is all encompassing suits me better. Learning, meeting people with different backgrounds and views, seeing and experiencing different places, all increase my light.
It’s something we could head toward together.
The image that encompasses all of the separate views and is part of many references to the Infinite Intelligence is the image of Light. It’s a part of mystical experience in all faiths. It’s always been present, but our focus on what’s human kept us on the level of distinctions. Perhaps Islam’s distrust of images had to do with their focus on what is manifest, on what can be seen. But since imagery is so important to understanding, a better image may be necessary to get us to a place that includes us all. Since light includes and envelops all that is around it, it makes sense to go back to Light. After all it was there in Genesis, in the Clear Light of Buddhism, in the radiance of the saints. In the dark, we can't see. The metaphor of increasing our light makes the pursuit of learning a spiritual path, since it moves toward greater light. Knowledge illuminates.
Beyond the religious image of light, light has long been a central metaphor for intelligence. We bring a new issue to light, we cast light on a problem, something is seen in a different light. The light in the heart enables us to see our deepest meanings. A person might be referred to as bright, a prophet called a light to the world. When I say a person is full of light, it’s not so much a particular quality I’m feeling, but an outward directed interest, a lively curiosity that connects to what’s seen. We feel it as a level of attention and are more fully in the light in someone’s attentive gaze. The light of receptive attention feels like love. Words of love can betray. Responsive, accepting attention IS love. It doesn’t just represent it. We always have the choice to offer that to others, to be Light. We are drawn to the Light because it offers greater awareness.
What we see becomes known in a deeper way than what we hear or read. Envisioning something in relation to our existing inner model is the only way we can integrate our accumulating perceptions into our worldview. We all have these associations with light. It’s been so close we couldn’t see it. We couldn’t see beyond the human intermediary.
What is all encompassing suits me better. Learning, meeting people with different backgrounds and views, seeing and experiencing different places, all increase my light.
It’s something we could head toward together.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
To My Drawing Class- In Memory of Kristoffer Hjelle
In the time our class has been together we’ve become a community and a group mind comprised of many different ways of seeing. Losing Kris is a tremendous blow to us. His way of seeing and expressing itself broke boundaries in every direction.
In the community organism our class has become we need to stop and digest how the way Kris thought has influenced the way we think. As I write this I’m listening to a sound piece he made for me with binaural beats and nature sounds. He addressed my interest in meditation and the brain and combined it with his own sensitivity to nature. His ecological consciousness, including a compassion for all beings, turned up throughout his work. He pushed experimentation with media and the structure of drawings and ways to think about art that we can in some way metabolize, build into our own creative being. He broke down boundaries between different disciplines, combining imagery with sound and interactivity. We can build our own possibilities by the inclusion of his.
We can develop the neural circuits that were affected by his presence in the class, whether it was identifying with his ideas, his sensitivity, his use of media, or his willingness to structure drawings in entirely different ways. There was a boundlessness to his creativity that we can reflect on when we feel restricted.
Thinking about how he influenced us, remembering how our lives were touched, on some level makes him more present through the focus of our attention. Last Thursday night, looking at the hand stitched book he was making, I told him that some of what he’d written represented deep spiritual insight. He was very wise about the pitfalls of the human mind. This showed clearly in some of the papers he wrote for Amy Eisner’s class. He wrote, “We must not always look to etymology, history, or any other established approaches to find understanding, because the truth is that in one word, there is a bible of meaning and although an artist makes his own path, so will the reader. I say ditch the path and create your own.” This was his challenge to us.
When we reclaim the complete life of a person, we can feel all of the ways their way of being affected us and extended our understanding of how people look at the world. We may have shared an opinion and felt affirmed that someone as smart as Kris was thinking along those lines. He and I had conversations that I thought about long afterward and often changed the way I was looking at a subject. His ideas will have reverberations throughout the rest of my thinking. The length of a life has nothing to do with its value.
Recognizing how Kris has affected us enables us to deepen and grow and be grateful to him as the source of greater light.
In the community organism our class has become we need to stop and digest how the way Kris thought has influenced the way we think. As I write this I’m listening to a sound piece he made for me with binaural beats and nature sounds. He addressed my interest in meditation and the brain and combined it with his own sensitivity to nature. His ecological consciousness, including a compassion for all beings, turned up throughout his work. He pushed experimentation with media and the structure of drawings and ways to think about art that we can in some way metabolize, build into our own creative being. He broke down boundaries between different disciplines, combining imagery with sound and interactivity. We can build our own possibilities by the inclusion of his.
We can develop the neural circuits that were affected by his presence in the class, whether it was identifying with his ideas, his sensitivity, his use of media, or his willingness to structure drawings in entirely different ways. There was a boundlessness to his creativity that we can reflect on when we feel restricted.
Thinking about how he influenced us, remembering how our lives were touched, on some level makes him more present through the focus of our attention. Last Thursday night, looking at the hand stitched book he was making, I told him that some of what he’d written represented deep spiritual insight. He was very wise about the pitfalls of the human mind. This showed clearly in some of the papers he wrote for Amy Eisner’s class. He wrote, “We must not always look to etymology, history, or any other established approaches to find understanding, because the truth is that in one word, there is a bible of meaning and although an artist makes his own path, so will the reader. I say ditch the path and create your own.” This was his challenge to us.
When we reclaim the complete life of a person, we can feel all of the ways their way of being affected us and extended our understanding of how people look at the world. We may have shared an opinion and felt affirmed that someone as smart as Kris was thinking along those lines. He and I had conversations that I thought about long afterward and often changed the way I was looking at a subject. His ideas will have reverberations throughout the rest of my thinking. The length of a life has nothing to do with its value.
Recognizing how Kris has affected us enables us to deepen and grow and be grateful to him as the source of greater light.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Art Showing Feeling
√ It was after completing a series of very simple drawings in 1976 that I began to think art could be a useful tool to help people recognize their feelings. They were exhibited that spring at the Image Gallery in Stockbridge, MA. I was pleased and somewhat surprised at the reception they received, since my work is usually very detailed and I thought that was part of its appeal. Stacks of lines in varying degrees of balance, the drawings seemed like shorthand for expressing feelings difficult to describe in words. Anyone could immediately recognize how they were “stacked up” at that moment, how balanced they felt at any given time. When I went to work in a short term counseling facility, I quickly saw their potential usefulness. Often the reason it’s so hard to tell a counselor how you feel is because there aren’t really words that fit. Each word puts the feeling into a definition that may not really match. I adapted my series to hang in one of the counseling rooms, nine drawings ranging from total collapse to perfectly balanced. They seemed to make a difference, enabling counselor and client to get to the point more quickly and lay out the situation contributing to that state. Though I left after two years, the pictures stayed in use for the next seven. (The ones I’m posting are from the original series). It occurred to me after posting my last essay that anyone who wanted to reflect on their inner state could draw a stack of sticks and see how they feel, what mood they’re in, how they stack up that day. I thought I’d offer these up by way of encouragement to try your own.
Talking with students about my own drawing process I emphasize that I don’t know what’s going to happen when I start. I lay out big shapes and color fields in a way that feels right until the whole page is divided into a particular state of balance. When I look at it I’m often surprised at what it shows me. I’ll think, “Hmmm, I’m in worse shape than I thought.” Usually that thought makes me snicker at the immediate insight into my whole circumstance.
For the deep psychological strata, nothing is better than looking at great art. To look at a portrait by Rembrandt you can see your own deepest questions looking back. Current art challenges aspects of our immediate culture, and it can be deeply reassuring to see others pointing beyond the surface descriptions. In every case, it’s not just the recognition that we’re more than the boxes we’re put in, but the enlarged perspective we gain that is the best kind of learning. Since learning produces endorphins, the acquisition of more perspective makes us feel better. Great art shows us how much bigger we are than the world makes us think. When an artist hits my current state of mind dead on, I laugh out loud.
Drawing is a way of thinking visually. Whether your doodling during TV or depicting the detail on a dead leaf, you are showing yourself something your brain is trying to see. The doodle may have a musical feel in the repetition of similar shapes and have the same soothing effect. Drawing what you see develops powers of observation as well as showing what in your surroundings you care enough about to want to see better. Observation is the foundation of art and science. Building that skill serves you well in every way imaginable. It shouldn’t be reserved for artists. It develops a hemisphere of the brain long neglected by the dominance of words. Everybody should get a pad and see what they feel.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
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