Early Morning

 

Busy Shadows

I spent a week in mid-August at a Wayward Research Facility in Easton, MD. The lead researcher, W,  was just about to turn three years old. Two of her many seminars were memorable.  She would take us on a tour of the facility and every time we passed a mirror, especially full length ones, she would remark.  "There, see your Shadow"  We were never quite sure whether it was a statement or a question.  It provoked a short meditation on the nature of Shadow, that's it's always with us and a review of the ancient practice of Scrying, the intentional encounter with your own image. 

The other seminar was held outside.  We would all follow W's lead and start to move.  First there were yoga poses, then it got a bit faster and more dirvish-like.  Several of us lost our balance and fell over. We said that we got "dizzy". W would comment that we fell over because we were "Busy." We then 
returned to our private areas for a meditation on the effects of contemporary life on spiritual centering

She invited to watch this YouTube on Archetypal Imbalance. https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=ddkqMfBbGN8

Heads

My carving and assemblage work over the last years has returned several times to HEADS.      Heads that break off, heads that get carved alone, heads I get stuck in.  

In Celtic tradition, it is believed that the power of a person, his Soul, lived in the Head. As an honor to a slain enemy, there was a practice of severing the head, preserving it in cedar oil and displaying it, not as vindication, but as honoring Soul

GAME of HEADS

PSYCHE

Head Case

Remembering Our Wolves, as Politics Heats Up

THE WOLF YOU FEED

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said, "My son, the battle is between two "wolves" inside us all. 

One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. 

The other is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: "Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed.”

Two Quotes and an Interview

for those of us examining and reexamining directions and needs

Artists can choose what their profession will be about—

inventing deceptions that encourage more consumption—

or helping repair the world. David Berman (Do Good Design)

Learn to dwell in timelessness, give yourself away, tend youth  andyfisher.     

And this Interview with Murray Stein                       

Re-Visiting Morse Peckham

These kaleidoscopic times churn and turn up new/old insights.
I've been re-reading the rich works of cultural historian
Morse Peckham (1914-1993). 
Here are my notes and underlinings from one of his books:

Art and Pornography  (1969)       

Art is the exposure to the tensions and problems of a false world so that man may endure exposing himself to the tensions and problems of the real world”

Anarchy is the mother of Order   Source of Tension:  Libido always trying to control the Ego which was trying to absorb the Libido.  Freud

Art offers not order but perceptual disorder or discontinuity,  contact with chaos

Art is rehearsal for the orientation that makes innovation possible

flickering between need for stability predictability control and innovation  risk  (free energy)

Story-Making 85 is a near instinctual activity forward, backwards, always adjusting     

All discourse is equally fictional. Putting changing, meaningless bits into a meaningful context Managing  multiple, shifting  social roles/personal (archetypal) needs Making meaningful organization of Materials via the Imagination     Contact with the Unpredictable

Porn is a Storyline, like political propaganda and religious art:   simplified view/fairy dust sacred

Human beings prefer stability to innovation… 99.9% of genetic variations are dysfunctional. Stick with ones that work  132 Human beings have two primary but divergent and irreconcilable interests. to stabilize the cognitive model;  the other is to compensate for the necessary inadequacy of the model correcting and improving through innovation

Exemplary thinking 156  is a relief from explanatory and theoretical thinking, so mediating non-verbal thinking is a further relief  157        

No aspect of the empirical world is meaningful until it elicits a behavioral response

Unreal = inability to organize it into an available belief system vs Rational/real  = cooperates with known belief system   165  Interest=activity that serves to smooth the adaptational process

Cognitive Overload 177 precedes powerful innovative thrusts/breakthroughs                                        

Need for Multiplicity of roles/models  179                     

Man is free and freedom threatens stability/predictability  two aspects of same thing: 181        

Paradise 189  = no disparity between cognitive and sensory data, (Ego and Libido)

Harmony between remembered, projected and perceived realities,  The Head, Hand, Heart

No social management necessary, futility of anarchy, trance, cult, religious deference of personal authority 192 “vacation from cognitive tension”  Issues of hierarchy, dominance, authority competition for scarce resources

NEED to disengage  from controlled society (stability/predictability) 298     

Beliefs in how much stability/Innovation is tolerable, or destructive Art-Making can effect that 300

Roadmap to introspection

This 7-page booklet may help jumpstart
some needed processing
FAST START