Syncope

Re-Connecting

Art does not show people what to do, yet engaging with a good work of art can connect you to your senses, body, and mind. It can make the world felt. And this felt feeling may spur thinking, engagement, and even action.’ – World Economic Forum, Why art has the power to change the world, 2016 This capacity to create connection makes art valuable for healing, both in the individual and between populations. The connection made to the full self is an integrating force. Healing the world depends on first healing the self, but the engagement with art is connection to the outer world as well. It’s where the deep inner life and deep outer world meet. It joins two cerebral circuits that usually operate separately. Most of the time we are either attentive to the outside world and its demands, or to the inside world with its needs. Art is the occasion when the two are alive together. Multiple websites about art and healing point to art as a way to unify body, mind and emotions. Though most sites concentrate on making art, looking at art can get to feelings a person may not have skills to express. Our natural urge toward balance will look for the art that has meaning for us at the moment, a recognition that can be stabilizing. Seeing art that moves us is connecting to the artist as well, not just seeing personal feelings expressed but feeling them shared. Recently, a friend told me of an experience she had where an abstract painting made her weep. Talking with the artist about it later, she discovered that it had been done shortly after the artist’s mother died. Responding so intensely is cathartic. People seem to seek out the strongest feelings. It may be why the drawings I did after my father’s death and over my mother’s slower disappearance are among the most visited on this blog. Recognizing the presence of those feelings claims a deeper self. Perception is always scanning for what we need. Finding and responding to art is part of the mind’s homeostasis, using what will balance energies by giving attention where it’s needed. Looking at art is both stepping back and seeing within. Knowing oneself is an important step to understanding others. Not recognizing feelings leaves them growing below awareness until they explode at the wrong targets. Art can provide a clarifying mirror that connects to the feeling level of our species. The author of the quote at the top, artist Olafur Eliasson said in another part of his paper. “Art helps us identify with one another and expands our notion of WE from the local to the global.” We are at a necessary threshold for the reorganization of our worldview. With personal transformation, we can make a start to changing the world.

Bookmark 2021

Sharing Cultures

“Wisdom is directly proportional to the size of the group whose well-being it takes into account.” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, The Evolving Self One of the great things about teaching at a school that draws students from all over the world is that I’ve had the opportunity to have close relationships with people with very different backgrounds. Since art is understood through similarities in our emotional core, I feel connected to what they do and the different wells of imagery stimulate a wider perspective. Gregory Bateson defined information as “the difference that makes a difference”. When something new actually changes the way we view the world, it enlarges the scope of our understanding. The world is full of untapped sources of knowledge from which to build a bigger picture of reality. Every human being is a library of unique experiences that form a particular window on the world. No one view can see it all. Each individual outlook has something to teach us. When someone else’s background is radically different from our own, we can learn more than we might from someone similar to ourselves. Yesterday a wonderful young Chinese student came to visit and brought me a Christmas present. She said it was the first time she’d wrapped a Christmas gift. I gave her some of my homemade Christmas cookies, one of my bookmarks and her choice of ornaments to hang on my tree. Her contribution enriched my pleasure in the tree and I’ll think of her when I hang the bell in the future. We have novelty to offer each other and novelty stimulates dopamine, so it’s clearly good for our well-being. Every culture teaches me about being human. What kinds of things are celebrated and how, where the true principles are beneath the modern surface manifestation. This is where the disillusionment blossoms and people can miss the wisdom found at the source. The polarization being pushed by destructive elements in society denies the value of what thinks differently. To create an atmosphere that includes all points of view rather than setting them in opposition, invites knowledge. Put aside the competition to have the right idea and we can have a whole landscape of ideas to choose from to match a particular problem or situation. Insight into a range of ways to consider an issue offers more opportunities to think creatively. With a larger intellectual range established, everyone is set free to speculate more widely and more interesting constructions and hybrids can occur. The greater the range of ideas from which to draw the better the final synthesis will be.

Ko

Deep Seeing

The more we see something the better we see it, each time taking new details and variations in the overall state. Visually educated to more specific knowledge of something builds sensitivity to impressions at more subtle levels. Looking builds visual understanding. The larger meaning of seeing always includes the depths, insight goes beneath the surface. When we feel someone “really sees” us they “get” us to use the current term. It can’t happen without a certain level of attention. Feeling that level of attention is feeling visible and known to the world, having a witness to our being. Rupert Sheldrake thought the act of attention created a connection that could be felt which he describes in his book “The Sense of Being Stared At”. We give the most attention to is what we most care about, and care and attention makes anything flourish. Plants are said to grow better with proximity, touching or talking to them. It’s not just the water and sunshine but the attention itself. To really see is an act of love. The I Ching is certainly not the only ancient text that says something to the effect, “If you want to know what a person loves, look where they direct their attention.” This is where the overlap between love and fear is most evident. Fear is the thing that grabs attention away from what we love for as long as the sense of threat persists, a fact exploited by commercial media to manipulate our emotions and attention. Recently, I heard a man on the radio lamenting how beset with notifications people are now, how hard it can be to give full attention to anything. Art is quiet and undemanding. What we seek out shows us something that expresses us in some way Art is a pleasurable way to extend personal understanding of feeling since that’s where you find it boiled down to its essence. Portraits can reveal essential qualities in complex and often conflicted expressions. Looking into the eyes of a Rembrandt self-portrait shows an understanding of the human dilemma that speaks directly to the heart. There is tremendous depth and variation in centuries of portraiture available for developing sensitivity to facial expression. Mindful attention is fully present. To be fully present with someone feels good to everyone involved. Thanksgiving is a perfect opportunity to practice mindful attention to people in person and appreciate our connections to others.

Hypothesis