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

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Roger Federer and Art

    When I heard that Roger Federer liked modern art, I was immediately curious about what, and though I never found that out, the search itself was interesting. Most of the listings you get if you put his name together with art are paintings of him and articles about his playing as art. The best is the 2006 David Foster Wallace piece in the New York Times describing him.

Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty. The relation is roughly that of courage to war.

The human beauty we’re talking about here is beauty of a particular type; it might be called kinetic beauty. Its power and appeal are universal. It has nothing to do with sex or cultural norms. What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings’ reconciliation with the fact of having a body.⁽¹⁾

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20federer.html

    

     A decade later he is still winning grand slams. Mihaly Czentmihali wrote that the creation of one’s own self can be as exciting as writing a symphony. What moves me about Roger Federer and Serena Williams is that they have done just that, created a work of art that sculpts both body, skill and character out of the whole of themselves. Roger and Serena are examples of embodied art in the realm of immediate intelligence.

     When someone is centered and expressive of the core of their being, that’s art. It takes skill to reach a relationship with a mode of expression that enables it to be a natural extension of the body, responses finely tuned to go where intuition leads. The body/mind knows what it knows and can act before thought. This metaknowledge is part of the initial feeling. Not just comprised of emotion, our feelings are as complex as we are, responses from the whole picture of our background in combination with our current state. Because Roger Federer has developed so many ways to hit a tennis ball together with all he’s seen about how the opponents play he’s developed a body/mind response that’s highly sophisticated yet unencumbered by analysis. Like any artist he extends the range of what tennis can be.

In a short piece in Art News, Andrew Russeth quoted a Sports Illustrated interview with Roger Federer saying he liked modern art because it helped him keep an open mind, that as he gets older it gives him inspiration. Watching tennis at its best inspires me to stretch my own capabilities. Excellence is always inspiring.

http://seeingmeaning.blogspot.com/2008/06/watching-tennis-for-self-improvement.html

http://seeingmeaning.blogspot.com/2016/07/tennis-drawings.html

Modern art opens the mind by pushing the edges of perception. This enlarges the scope of choices. Looking at art increases sensitivity to intuitive response and awareness of how we’re led by underlying overall adjustments, the inclinations that move us before we’ve figured them out. Art attunes our feelings to meaningful form and so builds the scope of understanding. The brain is structured to mirror the spatial world and understand the meaning of things by how everything looks within it. The more in harmony we are with ourselves and what’s happening around us the better we can flow with it. Focused attention comes after immediate attention reacts.

Tennis is a demanding and artful sport. Players styles are unique and bigger doesn’t mean better. Women’s tennis is treated with the same respect as men’s and provides just as many opportunities to be amazed.  The players we like best are as personal as the art we like, each with an individual style of meeting the challenges posed by another. This year’s US Open will include record setting players, still at the top of their form. It’s an opportunity to be both impressed and inspired.

Non-local Consciousness

Deep Perception

Perception is continuous, the mediator of our relationship to the world and in that role, the place where meaning starts. Our sense of where we are is built from the ongoing dance of body in environment that leaves impressions we crudely label as “uneasy” or “tense” or “calm” or “uplifting. These automatic adjustments are shared by all beings that move around in the world and though as humans we may have gained some power to articulate them, each of us knows how specific and perhaps never to be seen again the fleeting qualities in any given moment. Yet in the moment the meaning is clear to us. Deep perception is where the rich inner life takes place, the anguish of a secret tragedy hidden behind the smiling selfie, confusion and uncertainty under the surface while projecting mastery to those around you. The contradictions of being human are the stuff of drama, literature and art. It’s an area that goes ignored by the compartmentalized demands of life until art comes to resuscitate it. The play or music unlocks the feelings that come from that level of knowing. But visual art has several advantages. First it is not time based. Revelation can be immediate, an insight born of the change in perception created by the image.

Because vision is always directing attention behind the scenes it can lead our thoughts forward. What we see initiates associated images triggering thoughts and ideas that underscore what the image means to us. It helps us see the personal pattern that led us to a particular painting. The stronger the feeling we have about what we see, the deeper the connection to individual emotional themes revealed by the artist’s expression of this sense of life. By boiling down essential patterns art offers the structure by which many analogous ideas can be constructed. Put an elementary school child in front of a painting and ask them what they think is going on and you’ll see this generative imagination work. That’s why talking about art has been shown to be so effective in building a child’s intelligence concretely demonstrated in higher test scores. (http://www.vtshome.org/) Since there are no wrong answers there is free use of language and expression.

Perception is so important to our navigation of being, developing our sensitivity to deep level patterns can only be a benefit to human intelligence.

Though meditation is best for training attention in the present moment, looking at a painting can provide a personally chosen enrichment to reflection, to add a level to the meditation that gives room for associations to flow and change. Whether you choose from visionary art that transcends the purely human or a modern portrait that resonates with existential confusion, the choice is led by deep perception of your current state and clarifies what you need to see.

 We navigate the world guided by perception in the moment and haven’t had to give the visual level much thought because it does its job so well without conscious attention. But the world has become too complicated for linear processes to handle. We need the speed and overview of perception to see the patterns in the whole that guide attention to what is out-of-balance. Developing the range and sensitivity of immediate reactions to the overview means becoming more attuned to visual structure. Allowing room for deep perception gives us time to pause and reflect on the meaning of what caught attention and allow space for a more thoughtful response.

First posted in July 2015

Resonance