Encroachment

Sharing Consciousness

Earth Day is a day to recognize how interconnected with our planet we are, how long the chain of events that brought our food and other physical needs, as well as all the influence of people in our lives and what goes on in our heads. Beyond the support for our physical body are the minds that shaped ours, the person we saw yesterday and the line of thinking that grew from that and any interaction. The idea of being separate is a trick of words. We are the ongoing expression of everything that has been shared with us. Think of the eye of Jupiter, or a place in a stream where the current circles, both holding thei shape as the current flows in taking a shape supported by what’s below. If we think of ourselves as complex patterns of energy, the rocks are placed by genes and caregivers, some burrowing into the mud, others nudged around until a strong current moves them downstream. What flows from upstream can’t be predicted but some of it will lodge in the swirl and some won’t. This image reflects how I think of various groups I’m part of as well as myself as a particular organization of energy that will break down when my body does. Called solitons, the specialized character for each energy swirl last until the supporting structure ends. For the tapestry of human energy fields, groups form and disperse directed by confluence of individual purposes. With every soliton we inhabit we make linkages that persist in the overall field of vibrations from all that has emerged. There is resonance with similar patterns, behaviors and thoughts, finetuning our perception of experience. The interplay of multiple qualities in the flowing overall consciousness is ongoing with everyone affecting everyone else in varying degree as part of a unified field These images free our ideas of consciousness as trapped in our heads, an assumption with no basis and far more evidence to suggest otherwise. Even in the most detached head-centered lifestyle, influence flows in from all sides. We’ve been ensnared by words for too long and they aren’t adequate to describe consciousness. Images are more effective at stimulating new ways of looking at a subject. Images can show the contradictory as complementary, the difference that completes and allows the whole to work. The soliton is just one image for the interweave of consciousness. It provides a set of relationships that stir the viewer’s mind to their own speculations. Artists are best suited to showing alternatives to old mindsets that keep people from feeling part of the universe. Efforts to shift the mechanical view of the universe to an organic growth model are already happening. Artists Alex Grey and Amanda Sage use organic patterns intuiting the webs and pattern of energy that grow in complexity. Even with the sky overhead and the earth beneath our feet holding us secure in its gravity, modern people often lose their sense of connection to nature even as many in medicine are seeing the concrete benefits of nature for relieving stress and prescribing daily doses. Reconnecting to nature personally may be a necessary first step to caring for the planet. The resonance with what grows reminds us we are growing too, are part of the growth of the planet with responsibility toward it.

Encroachment. (in progress)

Art for the Mind and Body

In his recent column in the New York Times, “The Power of Art in a Political Age”, David Brooks’ spoke of art as a balancing power to the ever “shallowization” (his wonderful word) driven by technology, and “politicization of everything”. His column celebrated art’s power to stimulate the depths, feel our feelings and see into the mind of another, enlarging our range of experience. The science supports what he writes. Two new books to support what he writes. How Art can change your life by art historian Susie Hodge emphasizes the emotional connection we make to art. The just released Your Brain on Art is based on neuroscience specifically devoted to how all of the arts are processed and what that reveals about their importance that is the focus of the new science of of neuroaesthetics. The authors Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross cover all the arts and the sensory structures associated with experiencing them, how the arts improve health and recognition of deeper layers of feeling. The importance of feelings should not be underestimated. New research in neuroscience shows that emotions are the organizing force for all areas of cognition. Brain scans reveal that emotions have interconnections with multiple areas in the brain, demonstrating the breadth of their influence. As an indicator of how much something matters, emotions are a register of what we care about and how much. That extra concern is what shows in the emotional signals picked up by lie detectors. All emotions are laced with personal significance. Being able to recognize emotions is key to best use of the mind. Otherwise, they can run the show. Art is an outstanding tool for building the capacity to see what you’re feeling. What we’re drawn to in art shows something about the current state of our feelings that we might not have noticed. The thoughts that arise could add important information about unrecognized underlying feelings. Those shadow feelings, hiding in the depths, need to be put somewhere. Life on the technological surface puts too much emphasis on the surface differences, the labels, and categories that translate easily into posts. Social media becomes a habit, even an obligation. Personal feelings not consciously acknowledged are projected onto an easily identified target. More awareness of the feelings below the surface would allow empathy to surface. Connecting to art, music and performance of all kinds resonates in a place without surfaces. Art can soften the rigid boundaries of too much reliance on the separating effects of words. What seems very different on the surface can touch the heart and show how artificial the surface distinctions are. Art connects to the deepest part of us.

Tendencies

Considering Consciousness

“The universe appears as a single undivided whole whose patterns and forms emerge out of a ground, are sustained for a time, and then die back into the field. Consciousness, too, can be considered to arise out of a deeper ground that is common to both matter and mind.” Physicist David Peat As much as scientists have learned about the brain, they don’t know where to look when it comes to consciousness. The underlying perspective on reality matters. This is the starting model for building how we think, an armature to structure our ideas. If our starting model is based on machines, looking at everything as an organization of small parts, consciousness is expected to be found somewhere in the parts. But what if it isn’t? They are just the particles. It’s time to consider the wave nature of reality. David Bohm suggested that a more accurate way of approaching the universe would be as a continuous field. Connected within a field of consciousness, individuals might be like sense organs adding our knowledge and perspective within a larger consciousness that likewise influences each individual. An image that takes the wave nature into account might help us see beyond the limits of the machine model and open new ground for speculation. Just like science fiction can anticipate and inspire scientific investigation, there are many artists who are trying to include this interconnectedness in images of webs and networks that suggest what has influence but can’t be seen. How we might be embedded in intelligence that includes but goes beyond our own is an idea that cannot be properly communicated in words. Words can be the finger pointing to the moon, not the moon itself. Art is not the moon either but is a portal that allows insight to develop that stimulates a deeper sense of the possible. Different modes of organization, relationship, and influence could be visualized more easily than described. We might be neural nodes of a universal mind, local inputs participating in an overall awareness, threads within a larger tapestry of mind. The Net of Indra is a beautiful image from Buddhism tracing back to Hindu that envisions cosmic unity and our interconnectedness as a net of reflective jewels, each of which reflect the whole and are reflected in all the others. There are many wonderful artists’ conceptions of this on the Internet. The net metaphor pervades the modern world, so it feels natural to the reality of being in a web of information. Looking at the natural order and enlarging the metaphors to include fields of influence and repeating patterns could illuminate new possibilities.

Quickening