Be it music, dance, poems, novels, painting, photography, film, architecture, sculpture, weaving … I reckon that listeners, readers, image and film connoisseurs, shape huggers, textile lovers … many of us … occasionally perceive the deep emotional significance of what is conveyed, though sometimes even artists themselves may only faintly sense the deeper underlying symbolic essence of their work, where superficial layers of seeing sink away to the bottom of the Akashic ocean, from where original creativity emerges.
That’s just how it is, except maybe for some universally powerful masterpieces of the arts, old and new. So I wonder, were these masters aware of the emotional depth from which they expressed their art? Were they conscious of their mastery? Or, to put it in another way – is consciousness a factor in conveying deep levels in their most powerful way.
Or, like most of us, including many artists, do we grow only slowly into our depth, connecting us with our own symbolic essence, and through such recognition affect our collective reality?
My occasional deep seeing surprises, and shocks me alive, in pleasant or unpleasant ways.
Deep seeing can seem like the invasion of a psychopomp, in a Jungian sense – a mediator between conscious and unconscious content. It could come from an item on the virtual web, from an image, from a wise being, spirit, or animal – whatever rattles my comfortable ignorance. I may feel embarrassed when discerning a deeper truth, as if I had long failed a task my psyche suggested, or, physically, it may feel like hitting a sore tense point in a muscle.
At times I notice that when my body is tense I can fall into some weird associations, interspersed with trickery. The associations and the meanings I discern may be useful, or not, or outright confusing, as if the wavelength of a familiar radio station is crackling.
In my experience, when I’m contemplating an idea, a project, I tend to attract, like a magnet, tiny messages from anywhere. But what orders these messages into cohesion.
Instead of projecting invaders, why don’t I assume my relaxed self being in tune with my diverse inner crowd, and my soul’s angel … with that extra PSI sense that awakens all the other senses, and a sane inner voice, my normal crazy, which on and off I am asleep to, or intentionally avoid.
Meanwhile, every instance my body recovers from accumulated tension is a birthday, and a day of fresh unlearning, a new unknown.
Once upon a time Khidr, the Teacher of Moses, called upon mankind with a warning. At a certain date, he said, all the water in the world which had not been specially hoarded would disappear. It would then be renewed, with different water, which would drive men mad.
When he saw, from his security, the waterfalls again beginning to flow, this man descended among the other sons of men. He found that they were thinking and talking in an entirely different way from before; yet they had no memory of what had happened, nor of having been warned. When he tried to talk to them, he realized that they thought that he was mad, and they showed hostility or compassion, not understanding.
In my last post I touched upon the half-imagined essence shining through a work in progress – via incubation, the search for one’s language (in whatever form,) through the heart. This kind of search is bound to involve deep personal experiences, be it related to an outer or inner place, as the myth of one’s existential journey, which, when authentically communicated and shared tends to assume universal significance.
Talking in the dark, their hands occasionally touching, Louise and Addie come to value their fragile pact. Even Addie’s abandoned visiting grandson is wooed by the loving regard between his grandmother and her new friend, and their tolerance and tender concern for him, which is, the way I read it, the initiation of a small boy into the wisdom of respect. While the petty gossip of townsfolk adds to the fun of their social transgression and strengthen the closeness they’re forging, the jealous objections of Louis’s daughter and Addie’s son are truly hurtful, and in the end decisive.
Truly witnessing the tragedies on our planet is not the same as passive looking, witnessing expands and transforms consciousness. As an individual I feel helpless, unable to solve the overwhelming problems, but by witnessing and accepting the sad truth of what is happening, and by grieving the losses, I, each of us, in a small way, can contribute towards a necessary and crucial paradigm shift.
Some scenes near the end of the film bring home powerful metaphors – like what it takes to fly. Fledglings, to lighten their weight, must empty their stomachs of everything fed to them by their parents (in this instant plastic.) Mothers, forgive yourselves. We can hardly avoid dumping stuff on your offspring, be it psychic or material. Many fledglings don’t manage, but if lucky, and if the right wind comes along, their wings will carry them across the sea towards their adult adventure.
My dream vanished. It’s going to be one of those weird days, I reckon, soon confirmed by a fleeting glance while passing a mirror. My morning ritual includes stretching muscles while coffee filters into the cup. I breakfast before the screen, skim through emails and various online papers, shake head at captions ranging from atrocious, futile to hilarious, the latter due to brexasparation. The scene beyond the window calms – wispy clouds, birds flitting from hedge to tree to hedge, familiar cats slouching across frosted grass, the ginger, the black & white bushy monster, the nimble black tom with white paws and white-tipped tail, much like an exclamation mark.
I deeply appreciate the dreams that provide an afterglow to the relationships in my life, be it the ones marked by kindness and love or the ones distorted by projections and a narrow reading of intentions. The insights that dreams bring help me to renew my sense self, no matter how delusional, it’s what I need to function in this world.
Course of Mirrors 