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.
of impact and send the pain back, assuming the wood tolerates it better than my soft tissue. It’s a long-honoured small-scale experiment with disentangling subtle vibrations. It works for me – pain and swelling ease miraculously. Try it, for fun.
As in receiving and sending waves, I converse with my body, with trees, shrubs, flowers and creatures. I caution spiders not to come near my sleeping space. I have heart-to-heart chats with my house, laptop, car, and all manner of things. I say thank you to what I value and depend upon and even use little mantras conveying something like – all is well – I hear you gasp. I do this to disrupt mindless automatic response patterns. With people, I admit, it’s way more complicated.
During recent centuries, western cultures developed multiple viewpoints. But what is happening to this wonderful diversity, given the hyper connectivity of the internet, where the masses turn for guidance, where people empowered by visibility offer opinions that swing back & forth in dramatic ways? Is this the dawn of a new tribalism that blanks out the unique contexts and realities of individual minds? One has to have one’s wits about these days.
The flashing mirrors of the media blind me at times. Wary of the hive, I also like to belong. When fed up, in need of digestion, I retreat to a cave in my mind (once real) where I attend to what bubbles up from the unconscious in that zone between dreaming and waking, until I emerge from my cave into the light of a new reality, new beauty, new meaning and new questions.
16/17th September 2016 was a strange night of wild dreams – one of a big old mansion of which I occupy a part (I actually live in a semi,) while the other part is lived in by an aging famous actor, Jeremy Irons. In the dream he collects antique furniture, art objects and frames. Some large pieces, including a massive empty frame, he fixes onto a wall in the courtyard. We mainly meet in the wide inner hall of the mansion. He seems a little absentminded but quite amicable and kind. He likes that I talk to him.
Course of Mirrors 