This writing was prompted by reading an article at
http://www.nationofchange.org - How to tell good art from bad
~ ~ ~
I feel to start with a root statement that may or may not communicate a tone:
Our Father, Who Art (in) Heaven.
Clearly in this statement, art is the verb to be; the movement or embodiment of that which is felt arising from a wholeness of being is a desire, inspiration, or project that is not other than our life.
The nature of what IS cannot be defined, but the Movement and Quality of its being can be honoured as it reveals itself as ... the embodiment of intuition, thought and feeling as the tangibility of life. If we are beholding of this then our lives express it.
Artifice is like the fig leaves in the Adam and Eve story. It is that capacity of mind to imagine its own reality or self along the lines of thought it wants to be true - and which it gives preference to, over and above the Current Flow of Being Itself. This sort of self-will seems to overlay a personal signature of achievement and possession on the Original and the True and subverts it innate meaning to its own self defined meanings. In the attempt to make itself real it seeks any and every kind of self validation at the level of form and appearance, and becomes forgetful and defended against the realm of the presence of life in which the tangibility and visibility is but the revealing and identifying of the communion and communication of Life Itself.
There is another thing I'd add; the self in its own illusion can only make copies of what is already real. There isn't a fake 11 dollar bill in circulation anywhere - though such could of course be a project for a conceptual artist to undertake!
The imitation of life necessarily uses something of life because there is nothing else to use. In this sense ,there is often something that can be felt as wheat among the tares in the attempts of man to make or communicate the good, the beautiful or the true. (To want to communicate the ugly or the dispiriting or the meaningless is an indicator that the mind involved has implicitly called such 'good' by the act of valuing it with his or her attention and intention).
The idea of a separate identity - endowing some kind of string-less puppet with autonomy - is itself the artifice of a thinking to which humankind has been asserting possession of and becoming possessed by. Yet this is act and not fact, and so there are all sorts of moments in its experience of itself that transcend its narrow self limitation as it stirs or is re-membered in a presence of being of which it is often hardly aware and yet IS the only Thing Going On - despite the overlay of imaginations which suggest otherwise.
To awaken to that life is moving all things one - in any moment or degree, is to be stirred by qualities of being that inspire, heal and harmonize, this naturally communicates or extends itself through the agency of its recognition. Such expression my yet be distorted and filtered by the mind of that one - and by our expressions, we become aware of such obstacle or block. This provides the life of inspiration and expression as a process of releasing 'self will' as a willingness to be as an instrument to the movement of being itself.
That life often communicates in ways that do not fit the old wine bottles is testimony to that we become blinkered and stuck in our thinking and our masks of artificial presentation.
It may be that to awaken and honour the movement of life draws us out of the apparent comforts and connection of the group that would (often unknowingly) stifle it - but that is not about being special so much as being alive and willing.
Every one of us is a special kind of artist. Our lives brush out from pallets of experience and desire that are both unique in expression and yet universal in nature. Art as something outside and separate from the Artist is the notion of a mind that has tried to separate itself from the Life that lives it!
"The seeing that it is good" is the recognition of God in the 'Creation'. That is of being moved or feeling stirred… of a shift from thinking to feeling.
Communication and communion are shared by their very nature and guided by the very intelligence that they express. The forms of our communication can be usurped as an attempt at coercion or manipulation of life - but then the channel of true communication is lost while the mind engages self-wilfulness. (Until it neglects or forgets to do so - perhaps as a result of being stirred and troubled or transported by an experience for which it could not account nor control).
Monday, 8 October 2012
Sunday, 7 October 2012
Is there a savant inside all of us?
An article in the Telegraph in which the brain is revealed to have vastly more capacity or ability than in most of us is apparent.
Start out with God - or if you prefer, with Unlimited and Indivisible Mind.
Then imagine and invest in limiting and divisive or self conflicting thought - which cannot actually divide the Indivisible, but can serve as a lens and provide an overlay of experience in which to explore the experience itself and become defined and identified within it as a self-existing entity.
Everything in one's experience reflects faithfully the program of thought and desire that is essentially running in the background - while on the surface the 'user' mentality believes it is this self existing self and that all else is its dominion - to prevail over in judgement if not in act (though it may seek such control as it can get it!).
This may be asking too much of the reader to consider, but like the comment after this one, I am suggesting that our thinking - at least at the level of definitions, beliefs, identifications and judgements is a distorting filter of limitation.
We are (generally) addicted to our thinking and to the experience it engenders as our very (and only) life - as we are to the desire to be special and to use power over the 'other' or indeed over the whole, in attempt to make our thinking (self) real.
The actual power of Mind (capitalized to indicate Universal and all pervading), is terrifying to the 'little mind' - and is effectively denied awareness by a complex of denial, dissociation and distraction that serves to protect it while it plays in limitation. But this 'ego' structure is not fact but action - not unlike an unimaginably powerful supercomputer fully active in presenting you with a virtual existence - within your own Being - that becomes unaware of anything beyond its own program - a program that feeds back on itself as a loop - such that the past re enacts itself over and over again.
The desire and defence that maintains continuity of experience of self can be interrupted or shocked such as to reveal anomalies of all kinds and on all levels. Usually there is a tidy away function that sweeps these out of sight asap or denigrates them as - 'must have imagined it' and etc - but many leaks occur in which more of the totality of what you Are - is revealed.
Some aspects of this are apparently random, as in accidents that leave someone with a changed ability that may not have much apparent consequence beyond not being able to account for it.
Other aspects are of a communication or communion of the mind / Mind. These are not always so visible in external terms but are key to a true functionality of life whether we become Self-Aware or not.
The faculty of discernment is lost amidst the insistence that it serve a personal power of advantage and yet it is a direct 'link' with Mind as the sense of the wholeness and root nature of all things. As such it is also one with inspiration and true answer because there is no inspiration or answer in programmed thinking - no matter how well it is presented.
I write this as a sketch for consideration. That our self definitions are in fact limitation and our world definitions are not different from that.
If one only seeks answer for the beliefs and conditionings of the 'organic' sense of self as separate entity - and substitutes meat-brain for mind then death is the starting point and not life - whatever powers may be added to its fleeting span!
Start out with God - or if you prefer, with Unlimited and Indivisible Mind.
Then imagine and invest in limiting and divisive or self conflicting thought - which cannot actually divide the Indivisible, but can serve as a lens and provide an overlay of experience in which to explore the experience itself and become defined and identified within it as a self-existing entity.
Everything in one's experience reflects faithfully the program of thought and desire that is essentially running in the background - while on the surface the 'user' mentality believes it is this self existing self and that all else is its dominion - to prevail over in judgement if not in act (though it may seek such control as it can get it!).
This may be asking too much of the reader to consider, but like the comment after this one, I am suggesting that our thinking - at least at the level of definitions, beliefs, identifications and judgements is a distorting filter of limitation.
We are (generally) addicted to our thinking and to the experience it engenders as our very (and only) life - as we are to the desire to be special and to use power over the 'other' or indeed over the whole, in attempt to make our thinking (self) real.
The actual power of Mind (capitalized to indicate Universal and all pervading), is terrifying to the 'little mind' - and is effectively denied awareness by a complex of denial, dissociation and distraction that serves to protect it while it plays in limitation. But this 'ego' structure is not fact but action - not unlike an unimaginably powerful supercomputer fully active in presenting you with a virtual existence - within your own Being - that becomes unaware of anything beyond its own program - a program that feeds back on itself as a loop - such that the past re enacts itself over and over again.
The desire and defence that maintains continuity of experience of self can be interrupted or shocked such as to reveal anomalies of all kinds and on all levels. Usually there is a tidy away function that sweeps these out of sight asap or denigrates them as - 'must have imagined it' and etc - but many leaks occur in which more of the totality of what you Are - is revealed.
Some aspects of this are apparently random, as in accidents that leave someone with a changed ability that may not have much apparent consequence beyond not being able to account for it.
Other aspects are of a communication or communion of the mind / Mind. These are not always so visible in external terms but are key to a true functionality of life whether we become Self-Aware or not.
The faculty of discernment is lost amidst the insistence that it serve a personal power of advantage and yet it is a direct 'link' with Mind as the sense of the wholeness and root nature of all things. As such it is also one with inspiration and true answer because there is no inspiration or answer in programmed thinking - no matter how well it is presented.
I write this as a sketch for consideration. That our self definitions are in fact limitation and our world definitions are not different from that.
If one only seeks answer for the beliefs and conditionings of the 'organic' sense of self as separate entity - and substitutes meat-brain for mind then death is the starting point and not life - whatever powers may be added to its fleeting span!
Patients starve and die of thirst on hospital wards
This highly emotive headline and story appeared in the Daily Telegraph
Step aside from the 'story' that grabs emotional reaction, the urge to judge and to blame and to add yet more layers of control in the name of merely 'DOING SOMETHING!". Feel or discern the template nature of what is being shared as our 'culture'. This lack of real involvement or relationship is not merely true in the care of the sick and the elderly but in almost every aspect of our relationships, only in this case it shows up in such blatantly unacceptable forms that cannot be glossed over, or massaged with spin and statistics.
Look beyond the characters in the story and see the ideas that make the script. Ideas are not Manna - but insofar as they were ever truly inspired they are derived from a heartfelt and passionate involvement in life, in relationship and in a spirit of discovery.
The mentality of control has appeal to the unwary, because it promises security and extension of power, but what it delivers is so far from the real safety of our true being that it beggars belief.
To try to communicate here in this comment is also to invite or reach past the mentality of control, because it is so deeply entrenched as our default identity that it is not open to question or re evaluation and is perfectly defended in its own thinking and its own personal interpretive experience. It believes it already knows and it seeks to answer the experience of breakdown with yet more control - or failing that with a sort of passive aggressive disengagement; withdrawing to fight another day.
Without the context of a culture of ideas that support it, the heart or wholeness of being in action, has to work like a double agent, not only to extend true service to the need but to 'survive' or cope within a system that does not see it, honour it, value it or support it.
A little understanding is a dangerous thing in that a desire to 'save the world' can and does open only enough to the source of inspiration to get the answers that it then tries to personally impose upon the whole. These constant 'revolutions' or rebranding with 'new thinking' often disrupt what was already naturally working and introduce new layers of complexity and control that often embody the appeasement of anxieties.
What is going on is not so different from the self justifying thinking that we all tend to employ to justify our withdrawal or lack of true presence, in that we present the 'doings' of caring, the forms of 'love' or the rights of entitlement and protection.
The consumer society is not really about products and economy but about being herded, managed, medicated and CONTROLLED in return for a substitute life. This mentality of control does not impose itself on another, so much as grow from a passivity of caring and attention amidst a surface tension of chatter, busyness and distraction.
Like a spambot, we are each compromised in our liability to be hijacked unawares and this goes much deeper than our thinking itself can uncover because the basis of our thinking is part of the 'problem'.
As long as we see the 'problem' primarily outside our own mind, intent and involvement, we actually feed it by validating the terms in which it is set.
The problem of loving - and all the fruits thereof - is one of resistance or refusal to involvement - which take the form of self-justifying fictions. The mindset of blame is chief among such fictions. Guilt appeals as a means of control but it absolutely undermines the functionality of all that is love from being honoured and embodied - and it makes its own counterfeit ideas of love as a sweetener for a bitter poison.
Common sense cries out at the story of this article - for anyone with no training at all - but with a grain of compassion - could extend the basic humanity that would make such stories imossible.
There is a capacity for compassion - the compass of identification that includes others as our self - in all of us, but it is never the result of coercive controls founded in distrust fear and 'the need to be seen to be doing something' so as to avoid blame or litigation.
The extension of trust is our most primary creative response. It is not without discernment and is not giving in order to get but is the very Movement of Being Itself - which expresses as relating in shared purpose.
This may be corrupted in our thought but it remains uncoverable to our feeling and that direct experience is the guidance for our thought.
The arrogance of our thinking is laughable if nipped at the bud, but it is tragic in time as the misery of our human experience
And to one of a plethora of comments urging punitive response I wrote:
Please understand, the above is a dramatic device to illustrate a point.
Opinions are cheap - and emotionally inflamed opinions are reactive and ill considered. I do not say this to anyone personally or single this comment as specially so - but that the answers will come from a true process of communication and not from imposing rules and penalties. We already have the law, and if a situation calls for the law then use it.
Communication is so difficult that psychiatric or psychological attempts to facilitate it often fail. The mind is very complex and mimics the forms of communication in a manipulative intent.
We herd together in collusions of shared definitions - in the name of covering our arse/ass. That is to say a kind of emotional and psychological self protective impulse (automatically) shuts down real communication unless such impulse can be seen to be causing or reinforcing distress rather than healing it.
Is moral outrage is an attempt to push away the unthinkable and the unfaceable in our own mind? I say that until we have found healing in our own mind, we seek to effect it by acting it out on the world - on our relationships.
Of course there is a call for correction, but in order to see the true nature of the situation we must first make sure we are corrected of a distorted vision - and act and speak from the heart that listens and discerns moment by moment - rather than embody a mechanism of conditioned reaction.
Step aside from the 'story' that grabs emotional reaction, the urge to judge and to blame and to add yet more layers of control in the name of merely 'DOING SOMETHING!". Feel or discern the template nature of what is being shared as our 'culture'. This lack of real involvement or relationship is not merely true in the care of the sick and the elderly but in almost every aspect of our relationships, only in this case it shows up in such blatantly unacceptable forms that cannot be glossed over, or massaged with spin and statistics.
Look beyond the characters in the story and see the ideas that make the script. Ideas are not Manna - but insofar as they were ever truly inspired they are derived from a heartfelt and passionate involvement in life, in relationship and in a spirit of discovery.
The mentality of control has appeal to the unwary, because it promises security and extension of power, but what it delivers is so far from the real safety of our true being that it beggars belief.
To try to communicate here in this comment is also to invite or reach past the mentality of control, because it is so deeply entrenched as our default identity that it is not open to question or re evaluation and is perfectly defended in its own thinking and its own personal interpretive experience. It believes it already knows and it seeks to answer the experience of breakdown with yet more control - or failing that with a sort of passive aggressive disengagement; withdrawing to fight another day.
Without the context of a culture of ideas that support it, the heart or wholeness of being in action, has to work like a double agent, not only to extend true service to the need but to 'survive' or cope within a system that does not see it, honour it, value it or support it.
A little understanding is a dangerous thing in that a desire to 'save the world' can and does open only enough to the source of inspiration to get the answers that it then tries to personally impose upon the whole. These constant 'revolutions' or rebranding with 'new thinking' often disrupt what was already naturally working and introduce new layers of complexity and control that often embody the appeasement of anxieties.
What is going on is not so different from the self justifying thinking that we all tend to employ to justify our withdrawal or lack of true presence, in that we present the 'doings' of caring, the forms of 'love' or the rights of entitlement and protection.
The consumer society is not really about products and economy but about being herded, managed, medicated and CONTROLLED in return for a substitute life. This mentality of control does not impose itself on another, so much as grow from a passivity of caring and attention amidst a surface tension of chatter, busyness and distraction.
Like a spambot, we are each compromised in our liability to be hijacked unawares and this goes much deeper than our thinking itself can uncover because the basis of our thinking is part of the 'problem'.
As long as we see the 'problem' primarily outside our own mind, intent and involvement, we actually feed it by validating the terms in which it is set.
The problem of loving - and all the fruits thereof - is one of resistance or refusal to involvement - which take the form of self-justifying fictions. The mindset of blame is chief among such fictions. Guilt appeals as a means of control but it absolutely undermines the functionality of all that is love from being honoured and embodied - and it makes its own counterfeit ideas of love as a sweetener for a bitter poison.
Common sense cries out at the story of this article - for anyone with no training at all - but with a grain of compassion - could extend the basic humanity that would make such stories imossible.
There is a capacity for compassion - the compass of identification that includes others as our self - in all of us, but it is never the result of coercive controls founded in distrust fear and 'the need to be seen to be doing something' so as to avoid blame or litigation.
The extension of trust is our most primary creative response. It is not without discernment and is not giving in order to get but is the very Movement of Being Itself - which expresses as relating in shared purpose.
This may be corrupted in our thought but it remains uncoverable to our feeling and that direct experience is the guidance for our thought.
The arrogance of our thinking is laughable if nipped at the bud, but it is tragic in time as the misery of our human experience
And to one of a plethora of comments urging punitive response I wrote:
Yes ! Stone them!
Nothing like fear of vilification, litigation and criminal punishment to bring out the best in all of us! Our God is a Holy Righteousness that will purge all the scum and filth from our minds and cast it out into darkness!
Please understand, the above is a dramatic device to illustrate a point.
Opinions are cheap - and emotionally inflamed opinions are reactive and ill considered. I do not say this to anyone personally or single this comment as specially so - but that the answers will come from a true process of communication and not from imposing rules and penalties. We already have the law, and if a situation calls for the law then use it.
Communication is so difficult that psychiatric or psychological attempts to facilitate it often fail. The mind is very complex and mimics the forms of communication in a manipulative intent.
We herd together in collusions of shared definitions - in the name of covering our arse/ass. That is to say a kind of emotional and psychological self protective impulse (automatically) shuts down real communication unless such impulse can be seen to be causing or reinforcing distress rather than healing it.
Is moral outrage is an attempt to push away the unthinkable and the unfaceable in our own mind? I say that until we have found healing in our own mind, we seek to effect it by acting it out on the world - on our relationships.
Of course there is a call for correction, but in order to see the true nature of the situation we must first make sure we are corrected of a distorted vision - and act and speak from the heart that listens and discerns moment by moment - rather than embody a mechanism of conditioned reaction.
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