January 10, 2017 – Orienting towards beauty

I’m making progress on the leaves in this hydrangea painting and just the final details to go on this little one of a rhody.

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I’m so fortunate to have all the support – incredible support – in this life I’m living.  It comes in the form of several wise elders – people who have walked their path ahead of me – as well as other engaged souls I’ve discovered in cyberspace, who are tuning in and sharing their discoveries in ways that sustain me. My exploration of the past weeks – how does a sensitive, energetically porous being like me hold the oh-so-challenging events and changes in our world – has elicited response, much of it in the form of “just live your life, just do what you do.”  There is great wisdom in this – as well as difficulty – it’s hard for a compulsively thoughtful person to tell herself to not think. And it is what I’m attempting to do.  What I’m working on instead is noticing.  The past week has brought ideas and wisdom that are refining my framework for 2017 – and a new daily practice for the rest of the year.  Here’s what’s come by my radar.

I receive periodic emails from Rev. Jim Burklo.  Officially, he’s the Dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California – he’s also a spiritual adventurer who sees with a wry compassion as he ministers out on the progressive edge of Christianity.  His message last week compared the expressions “looking for” and “just looking,” using them in the context of walking through a store.  One has a specific purpose and goal, the other is browsing, being open for whatever catches the eye and heart.  I love this distinction – as these are two discrete ways of being as one “looks.”  This then sparked a curiosity in me about the difference between “looking” and “seeing.”

What I realized is that each of our modes of perception has a pair of verbs – one is intentional – something we choose to actively do or where to place our mental focus.  The other describes what we perceive, which requires that we be receptive.  Here’s how it lays out:

• Vision: to look is intentional, to see is receptive
• Audition: to listen is intentional, to hear is receptive
• Sensation: to touch is intentional, to feel (in the physical sense) is receptive
• Gustation: to eat is intentional, to taste is receptive
• Olfaction: to sniff is intentional, to smell is receptive

We can command someone, or ourselves, to do the first – to look or to listen, but the second just happens – and we have to be available to see or to hear.  With practice we can also train and refine our abilities on the receptive side.

Making visual art as we do, I zeroed in on the look/see pair.  As a teacher, what I’ve come to realize is that one of the ways I help those who paint with me is invite them to see more carefully.  I will say, “look at how this darker part tells us that this petal curves.”  It is then upon her to see it, to receive that information, to make that distinction in her brain.  In my own painting practice the particular details and nuance of what I’m painting are revealed to me incrementally too.  I can’t or don’t see it all at first. It amazes me how this happens over and over.  It just may be that our brains can only take in so much at a time.

Another piece came in a far-reaching conversation I listened to between Charles Eisenstein and Rupert Sheldrake.  It’s a couple of hours of two guys being pretty philosophical about our society and where they see we are going – as well as where they see we need to be going.  But what heard about beauty contributed to me.  Charles thinks that the transition in our civilization could come down to reorienting towards beauty.  He said “beauty is maybe the prime example of something that cannot be measured, it cannot be reduced to a set of objective criteria” and that as our society has become more oriented around maximizing quantity – especially financial returns – the qualitative aspects of our life have suffered.

I was sent an article last year – I think it was from the Wall Street Journal – that was about scientists attempting to study how we perceive beauty – where in our brains, etc.  I was touched by the thought – that I’d be interested in something about beauty – but I was irritated by the idea of the study.  Now I see why.  The conversation between these two guys has me see that by studying, dissecting, reducing to parts, we take the magic out.  If all I do is analyze a painting, it removes me from my experience of it. They also noted the same about falling in love.

They don’t make this connection, but it’s exactly the left brain vs. right brain modes of perception that Iain McGilchrist has revealed for me.  I have a curious left brain – that serves me well, but in the area of love and beauty, I’d rather have my right brain serve up inspiration.  We are in our right brains when we are “just looking” and available to be blindsided by something beautiful.

I know I’m not alone in being reluctant to jump more fully into the world of social media.  My instant response is overwhelm.  My fear is that the more active I am on social media, the more I share, the more I’ll feel the pull to respond and engage.  And I already feel like there isn’t enough time to tend to all that clamors for my response in the physical world – including working on my paintings.  But I’ve been told that Instagram is a powerful tool for sharing my artwork with a wider audience – which is what my art wants me to do.  I have been stuck because from day to day, what I’m painting changes very little.  I don’t just whip these paintings out.  So what would I post every day?

The idea came to me then, if I’m to orient towards beauty, that I could post on Instagram a photo of something that I found beautiful every day.  Since last Thursday I’ve been doing so – and it is my intention to make this my daily practice for the rest of the year.  There are just six photos so far, but among them I see a glimmer of my particular point of view – my visual voice – showing itself:  I see beauty in the natural world, where light and intimacy play a part – and sometimes even a bit of magic. This practice also supports a contention that I have had for a while – that beauty is everywhere.  I have not been going out of my way – I’m not going looking for beauty in any particular place – I’m just seeing it right before my eyes.

The six I’ve started with.

I told my friend Vicki yesterday that yes, I am still reading the newspaper.  But I’m doing so with a specific intention:  I’m looking for ways in which the world is evolving, for people who are working towards connecting us and bringing us all to the next level (I do find them).  And I am attempting to understand more completely by looking for the light in “their” shadow and the shadow in “our” light. And then the rest of the day I’m just looking to see what to me is beautiful – and attempting to create some of my own to add to the mix.  Besides painting, writing and cooking, I’m certain that all the clearing out I’ve recently been compelled to do is right in line with this.  It is living my love.

When we find ourselves asking the question: what can I do?  How can I contribute?  If what we want is a more beautiful world, it is no small thing to reorient towards beauty, to pay our attention not to what was the reaction to the latest outrageous thing someone said or did, but to beauty, to be available to see it, and to cultivate our capacity to see it more – in our way – as only we can.  When we take action then from this place, it’s transformational, because we create our world with our attention.  So, what do you want to spend your precious attention on today?

With my love,

Cara