In The Merging Of The Actual And The Imaginary I Can See The Divine

The title of this entry can be seen as a poetic statement, but the notion comes from functional explorations yielding palatable results. I find the workings of my interior landscape, the interaction of psychological agencies, to be far more complex and curious than this sort of thing is generally spoken of. On reflection I find it's formulation is in no way apparent.

When I began to draw automatically and had the flood of intense experiences that were part of that, I began to question my beliefs, beliefs I didn't realize I had until they were challenged by these experiences. I had accepted ideas and conceptions of how the mind works  without realizing I had, and I began to see that these ideas were most probably not very useful to me, if only because I accepted them without question. As a response I began pay attention to what was already there in my perception, observing outside of any ideas of interpretation of what it is or how it should work, just to give awarness to what was already there.

One of these things I did is what I call closed eye viewing. SImply I would just close my eyes and look, attempting to see it as clearly as possible the scene under my lids. This is not as easy as it might appear. It requires a certain kind of relaxation that was difficult for me to achieve.  My reaction often to was to try and use my muscular ability to do focus on what I was seeing, but there is nothing there to focus on. The image is internal and requires a mental form of attention rather than the reflex of the eye. I made it a regular daily practice to look deeply at the patterns and colors that I saw, what I have recently learned are called phosphenes.

I began to wonder if these closed eye images have a physiological or psychological function beyond just the phenomenon of their occurrence. Most of us just ignore this aspect of our being, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have a greater interaction within us. It could be just noise, but it could be functional noise too. 

Another kind of internal imagery I began to be curious about is mental imagery as related to imagination and dreams, most commonly thought of as primary to internal workings. During this same time my dreams and mental imagery began to become increasingly vivid, often shocking me in their vividness. 

I can loosely define two types of mental imagery, one is envisioning, as when one asks you to image an apple, then imagine it on a pedestal, then imagine the pedestal coming out of a bed of roses, and you can see it, more or less, in your mind's eye. The other is spontaneous imagery, related to dreams or to the muses. The former has to do with control of the mind, the latter with surrender to witnessing what the mind throws up.

As an artist both ways are important. But for me, the culmination of witness to spontaneous imagery has been very provocative.  At some relaxed moments I am given a show of amazing objects and scenes. They are complete, extreme in detail and curious in formation. In the past, as the progression of images flowed, the amazement of seeing what I saw would shock me out of continuing to view them. Much like in closed eye viewing, I wanted to focus in on the image I was seeing, but the peak of my attention made the images evaporate. I have since become much more relaxed and adept at keeping my composure when viewing in this way, and over the past few years I have seen many very strange things. Very often they are art objects and graphic images, sometimes seen in the flipping pages of book. I call these Night Visions. I have recorded many and have let many, many more go on into oblivion.

Early on in this investigation, I pondered if the images of closed eye viewing, the phosphenes, are related to the formation of spontaneous mental images. This idea came from the notion that contemplation on seemingly random or scattered types of patterns brings a greater or more comfortable level of association, an idea that has been commented on its use through out history. Phosphenes  themselves have a scattered and loose pattern, similar to many things in the world, and they are always with us, in fact, within us. Perhaps the activity of phosphenes act as a stimulus to open association and the formation of ideas and images. Perhaps it even functions during dreaming.

Of course this is all contemplation on its own. I have no way of proving what might be the relationship between these two activities. And I wonder if there is even a way it could be approached. But on a few occasions, when awakening and looking at what was under my lids, as was my practice to do, on a few occasions I did notice a dream image fading into a similar color and shape in what I saw in closed eye viewing. So I am inclined to believe there is a relationship of some sort.

However, all the above is just the background to what the title of the entry refers to. These are thoughts and practices from a few years back which I no longer engage in as fully as before. But I still ponder them. As I did recently, in the morning lying in bed. I had the idea to focus on both kinds internal imagery, both the phosphenes and mental images, as clearly as I could. Certainly they occur simultaneously in our being, but I found attention on one diminishes the attention on the other. I wanted however to see how clearly I could see both. 

With a little mental balancing I found a pretty strong focus on both areas. On achieving this I discovered it resulted in a great deal of excitation, even exhilaration. I had an expanded sense of internal space and with eyes still closed began to see patches of white flashing from various directions. I do not recall it being overly intense, but felt a definite strong and notable ecstatic response. I have seen similar internal white spaces or lights before, sometimes with an extremely high level of ecstatic excitation, so I interpret their occurrence within that realm. And this also reminds me of the proverbial inner light in discussions of rapture.

A few days later I attended a dance event at where I often do my practice. Within the event I reflected on the balance of attention I had recently reinvestigated and decided to see if I could recreate it within this group setting. I set my attention on both my surroundings as well as on the flow of images in my mind, or maybe more specifically my mental space, finding a balance of focus on both simultaneously. I discovered this brought an opening to an intense excitation. Everything looked as it usually does, but was also utterly different and new.  It seemed as I was looking into a vast, amazing new world. This shift was extraordinary to witness, which I stayed in for several minutes. The stunning wondrousness of it is what I call the divine, as it is so stunningly wondrous. It is the quality of my experience of it that makes me call it divine. This experience was provocative beyond a certain threshold that makes it important for me to note.

Most of my investigations are soft as repeated results are very elusive. When I see a correlation, as between these two events from different days, I note it as significant.  But when I try to recreate experiences it is not uncommon that I do not find again what I hope or expect. As such I have not tried to reach this again and feel better to hold the notion loosely. All these efforts take a certain internal posture that can be compromised through effort. Things come around again, as the history of this telling makes clear. I learn over a span of time. 

However, an ending note of speculation; I can say no matter where we look or what we look at there is always a certain amount of noise in our perception coming from our eyes, our nerves and brain. I wonder, beyond what I wondered before, if the incorporation into our awareness of this inherent and always present noise, that which we generate continually, is functional to an experience of witness to the divine.

The Inverted Picto Man

I have a symbol I have used from time to time in my art. It is the inverted picto man. I got it from the early days of when I began to draw automatically. That was such a radically different experience for me that everything I thought I knew about myself and my world felt upside down to me. Where as before I would use feeling to insure a gesture with integrity now the gesture was coming on its own, the feeling issuing from it's action. I was no longer drawing for effect but was the effect of what I was drawing. 

What was incredibly challenging in the first couple of weeks of doing this automatic drawing was the fracturing I experienced in my being. The control center of my mind was no longer in control when I was drawing. Some other intelligent part of my being was moving and directing me, and the controller was absolutely frantic at losing its illusion of control. It was literally screaming at me. But the drawer was not affected by this. It's movement was not hampered. And it was powerful movement, which was in no way based on knowledge or habit.

My body was speaking and making art. I was not sure I even liked the art it was making but the experience was so profound I could not do but continue. There were so many questions that arose then, questions I wouldn't have been able to formulate a few weeks before. And one thing I questioned was the validity in an objective disposition to the world in the face of such profound subjective workings. Generalizations, categories and assumptions became highly suspect from seeing which part they arose - the controller, the thinker, the analyzer and the habit maker - a part I could then see was not even half of my make up.

The picto man is a generic symbol of man. It is purely an indicator of man, or a man, without any greater complexity. It represents the idea of man in a completely objective way. And what was being challenged for me was the authority of this objective view, an authority that seemed never to be seen as influencing, but merely accepted as being so. I put this symbol upside down as this seemed to represent the new sense of the complexity of my subjectivity and the authority that represented to me, as my world view had been turned on it's head.

In 2003 when time I did mock up of this image above I burst into tears. It had a great deal of import to me. The image seemed to represent quite a bit what I was feeling and thinking. The inverted picto man as symbol is mirrored by the physical markings which result from a powerful introspective response, one which shows a pattern of the complexity of the subjective. I did series of about twenty of these drawings and displayed fifteen in a series.

From that point on I pretty much eschewed the use of representational or graphic imagery in my work. I wanted to discover what this pure automatism would develop into. I have seen the image evolve, perhaps as the movement has evolved within me, and have explored it to formal ends. I knew eventually I would reintroduce representational material, but I am glad for the pure investigation without it. Also I wanted to make this an addition which rests on ideas and questions about the relationship of ecstatic to more normative experiences. 

How I am introducing these representational images is through the use of stencils and with rubbings. Paint applications are still primarily automatic so the representational elements still come directly from my ecstatic approach and are integrated into that application, hopefully in a way which shows both the spontaneous and methodical, and the relationship between them.

Below is the first painting I have done with stencils. I decided to bring back the inverted picto man symbol as this ties the work back to my own history in this art making. Multiples always work well in my art.

Why Call It Kundalini?

I do know that my experiences correlate to documentation of Kundalini awakenings, but that to me is neither here nor there. I had these experiences for a few years before I read accounts similar to what I was experiencing. And although inquiry into teachings and documentation about the Kundalini often proved interesting and enlightening the label of Kundalini best served only as a title to a collection of such material, not most of it beneficial or accurate to my found direction. What I had discovered that was of the highest profundity to me was a very new and vastly more intimate view of my own subjectivity. In no way does the idea of Kundalini affect this perception. It is my own relationship to my inner workings and to my unfolding ecstatic experiences in which the import lay. This is where I learn the most.

Unfortunately Kundalini as a subject is a bit volatile as the occurrence of it is highly coveted. There is a whole culture of reverence, mystery and verification surrounding it. I had already known of the Kundalini through Kundalini Yoga as taught in the US by Yogi Bhagan, but none of the explanations about Kundalini in those teachings described what I was experiencing. Mostly they were generalities in very mythological terms about the types of attainment available through the Kundalini. What I was experiencing was very specific and direct, so the reference never came to mind.

In researching Kundalini on the internet I often find a certain effort towards authority  in the Kundalini experience through indicating benchmarks of growth and denouncing other's claims of authenticity or level of attainment. This covetousness would be a major distraction to me and my growth. I do not care to compare experiences for another's authentication as I have nothing to prove. As stated the label of Kundalini is superfluous to my experience and growth, I have no reason to claim or defend it.

The nature of my experiences are completely unique from all other experiences of my life. The onset of them was an entry into a completely novel perception, one which continues to astound me. There is no way for me to really describe them. And the problem of then saying that they are of the Kundalini is that the concept of the Kundalini is known by many. There are many books written about this and its history in human practice. However these books cannot penetrate into this perception or give an experience as I have, (at least I assume they cannot.) In this respect the five thousand year tradition of the Kundalini is only five thousand years of hearsay about something which cannot well be described. 

For me it has been a great endeavor to communicate my experiences through my words and my art in an accurate a way as possible, a very complex challenge. And I hesitate to identify what is ineffable by something that many people feel they can understand or even know through the great length of literature that has and still is being generated about the subject. Whatever Kundalini is most probably do not understand it. However many people really want it. The want for something one does not understand cannot be the want of that thing but of something it represents to them. I in no way want to associate or address what I experience to this want in others. If I could I would like to give the discovery of an experience of the great complexity and vastness of one's own subjective authority. Speaking of the Kundalini seems to me a diversion from that end.

Elements of the Ecstatic Experience

I wrote this in November 2006 to post to an online group. What I describe reoccurs much more regularly in my life and has become very much more pronounced. I used to have dreams where it seemed the culmination of my experiences had finally been fulfilled (wish fulfillment I suppose) where my vision got very fuzzy and I felt dizzy. This was a rather accurate preview, but it is more like the heightened amount of information I am perceiving is what is causing this response. That is, due to what seems a loss of filtering, a more singular (and more familiar) focus is compromised.

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I have made a list of the four most prominent aspects of my own ecstatic experience. This is an attempt to describe what this feels like to others who may have questions. It is surely not very accurate as the experience as a whole is rather unique in character and not exactly like the those which I am making an analogy to, but close enough. All these elements can be experienced at the same time as well as independently.

1. Convulsing of the body-

These are what we call kryia. These can be gross movements or small and more global. As this is involuntary it is a bit like shivering. And in fact being in a cold environment can enhance them.

2. A searing feeling in mind and body.

This is probably what we call bliss. Some analogous experiences are the hot flash one gets on hearing some very disturbing news, hearing a very high pitch and loud sound that makes the head reel and even the rush of heat before vomiting. It has a very disorientating feel to it.  Although none of the analogies are pleasant this experience is often very pleasurable but not always exclusively so. Awe and panic are often hand in hand here.

3. An heightened experience of color, detail and movement.

This seems to be the classic description of a peak experience. The only analogy may be a chemically induced psychedelic experience, but for me the ecstatic experience is more subtle and more intense, there is no hallucination to get in the way. With this level of detail everything commands my attention. Also I am very aware of the movement of the scene as I pass through it. I cannot but see my view bouncing as I walk, trees turning as I pass and so forth.

4. An increased sense of association.

The best analogy for this is the fever dream. I think this may be what some famous thinkers call entering the mythic experience, an experience where everything appears as living. Objects in view seem somehow related, or they strong conjure mental images, or both with the connection in the association being very vivid. The associations can be very, very rapid, faster than I can actually reflect on. They are also shifting and shift away from associations that I would normally make, again leading to disorientation. This also distorts normal perception of size and separateness.

This last item deserves a bit more. I think that the mind finds meaning by analogy, the structuralist view. And I think the mind creates a matrix of analogy. As attention vacillates between the different elements in this matrix it is a motor that gives the sense of meaning. But when this facility starts working on an heightened level, indiscriminately using mental and objective elements, the sense that everything is alive and responsive starts to prevail. I do think that this way of being is very beneficial for me, especially in being an artist, as long as I am reminded that this is in the subjective inquiry. I also know that this way of being is so inconsistent with the generally accepted world view that an acceptance of it as something valid and beneficial is a bold assertion.

I also want to note that all my analogies are to things that denote a compromised individual and in so none of them are necessarily desirable. This does not make it easy to put my ecstatic experience in a positive light. However I do have faith in what comes to me as a culmination as well as not disavowing that a compromise is being made to my normative being. And I prefer the greatest accuracy in describing what my experience is, even if the description feels aversive, over a beautiful categorical statement that does not really explain anything other than itself (such as being at the vanguard of the evolution of man into a higher existence.)

"Paying Homage To Both Sides Of The Cuticle"

I would like to explain the background of one of my works, "Paying Homage To Both Sides Of The Cuticle", image posted here. The black and the white panels were actually studies for larger works.  My goal was to get a sense of depth from essentially a monochromatic painting; white built forward from a golden ground, black built forward from blue ground, with shinny lines on top of a matt surface. I haven't done the larger works, I envisioned doing two 48" square canvases of each color scheme. When playing with the studies I liked the look of the two contrasting panels placed side by side, but the overall dimension was not so pleasing to me. On contemplation I suddenly envisioned a third panel, the lower red one, which came out almost exactly as I imagined it.

The compositional process I describe here, though seemingly formal, it is actually based on thematic material. This is what I really would like to explain. The title of the work, "Paying Homage To Both Sides Of The Cuticle", reflects this thematic material. The large pieces that have yet to be done of which the black and white pieces were studies, as I describe above, I have been planning on titling "I I  I II", which looks like code but actually means "self one, self two". I was also considering the title "Poles Of Passage". The theme here is one of internal and external identity and the flux between the two.

Now this idea has a personal history. I have done a much smaller work preceding this one with a very similar color scheme. I do not believe I was trying to replicate this work, or even had it in mind, but the theme of it was still working in my thinking. Here is this earlier work. This is entitled "B&B", two drawings placed side by side. What these drawings represent are two distinct presences I felt during the time I first started to do this art I do now, one that felt mostly internal and another that felt mostly external. 

The internal presence I would feel running around my body. It was like a very quiet but poignant voice, very whispery and impersonal. I would see it on occasion, if I could get a bead on it, as a kind of golden white vapor inside my body, flowing into different parts of it. 

The other presence I felt externally. This was a much more personal presence which felt quite feminine. I had so much intense stimulation during this time of my life it was quite emotionally challenging for me to sustain it. I would sometimes become very disturbed and distraught. This presence would come to me at these times and calm me down. Or maybe the presence would just be with me. Then I would feel a very strong but gentle and loving demeanor. The color I would see with this presence was a dark blue with black, and this is the presence I named "Blue", who comes rarely now but unmistakably succinct when she does. 

It was funny for me to realize that how I saw these two presences in my mind were of opposite colors, black with blue and and white with golden orange. This color polarity correlated to the polarity of the internal and external ways in which I felt them. On a personal level I equated the golden white presence with me and the blue black with a friend of mine, who at the time seemed to have an influence on the discoveries that were happening with me. This again brings another polarity, self and other. However all that was happening, what I was experiencing, was based within my being and my perception, from inside me. There was very little sense of objectivity. At times I had more of a sense of Blue inside. And on a few dramatically intense occasions the white would be swirling outside which I felt inside as well. This very extraordinary occurrence is something I would not be able to explain more deeply. But it made me think of experiencing the inside on the outside and the outside on the inside, a flux of boundary beyond usual experience. 

This explains  the "Both Sides Of The Cuticle" part in the title (cuticle meaning epidermis). The "Paying Homage" part has to do with the red panel below the two. This is related to the use of certain materials in human culture to mark a thing or place as significant. A golden guided frame around a western religious icon is a perfect example, the use of red ochre to mark sacred sites in prehistoric times (and perhaps in the present) is another. Monks golden robes would be too. What is interesting about this is that whatever it is that is used to create a mark itself denotes a boundary, often physically, between that which it is indicating as noteworthy and that which it is not. So there is a kind of paradox in devotionally indicating what is on both sides of that boundary. The honorific object or material has to be part of and yet still separate from that which it indicates.

The red panel is moved slightly away from the other two and in an inferior position It is also painted so the panel recedes compared to the other two. It is a frame which doesn't surround the subject, is removed from the subject, and is also part of the subject. The red color to me is like the red earth I mention above, or like fire used honorifically. However I painted this panel to look like there is a layer of skin on it, with a muted view of activity behind the skin layer and glossy gestural lines on top, echoing the glossy lines on top of the black and white panels. So the perimeter between the white and black is mirrored in the representation of a skin layer in the lower panel. 

Viewed from the front all of the three panels have a certain depth to them, if only pictorially, which metaphorically represents extension into each dimension away from the boundary line. This is another polarity from the viewer's point of perspective, one from their point of perception, to, into distance and depth. Geometrically then there are two axes of polarity represented, left to right and front to back. This brings in the complexity of polarity within a matrix of three dimensional physical space, which makes the boundary more difficult to discern, even though its existence is still perceived.

Substance and Spontaneity

When I began to make art the way I discovered and since have engaged in regularly, I had many thoughts about the process as it was something completely new to me. It was not in fact based on the intention of making art as I had done up to that point. The art seemed as a by product of the process, an artifact, but also a necessary part in focusing on what transpired through me. Since then I have learned to elicit what comes away from any art surface, which has made the effort even more suspect as an artistic or creative process. But even when I first began the experience had me question and redefine the artistic process as far as I had thought of it up until then, what art had to do with what I was doing.

What I thought about most profoundly in the beginning was of the substances which I was manipulating. It was obvious to me that I was not doing what I was for an intended effect. The image was one I was discovering, not deciding upon, as spontaneously as the occurrence of marking the page was for me. If there was no intention per se of an image to be created then I saw what I was doing was interacting with substance so substance itself was the meaning of my work. Even though during that time I mostly used (and still do, but not exclusively) traditional art materials and supports, usually ink and paper, the artistic process in which I found myself had me think specifically of the interaction of substance itself, and of my facilitation of this in a very direct and unencumbered way.

As my participation felt so minimal in what I was doing I could understand what I was doing as not so different from the interaction of substance in the world around me. I could distinctly see the connection of what I did to what everything was did everywhere. I was rather incidental in the process. I thought about early forms of human expression, using red ochre to mark special or sacred places and settings, of people covering their bodies and faces with mud, of little figurines of clay, and of the story of Adam being fashioned himself of stuff from the clay bed. I began to ponder a meta-theory of the function of art in history. What I came up with was this (taken from an email dated 9/1103):  "All efforts at art making are a reenactment of the transformations of material done by the world."

The effect of this thought when worded in my mind in this way had a seriously profound effect on me. I began to cry profusely. When I to wrote it out in an email to share the idea with a friend (see above) I began to cry again. And whenever I tried to express this verbally to anyone over the span of a few months I could not hold back the tears, so much so I was reluctant to speak of it, the effect it had on me was so great. I do not get the same reaction in my life now on contemplating this idea, but the poignancy of the concept has been impressed on me from it being so emotionally framed despite and beyond it seemingly being so completely intellectual. It is a contemplation on art I will not forget and which I have been investing in further over time.

On a personal level what this means for me doing what I do, especially when I do not actually produce any physical results from the effort, is the intrapersonal interaction of the stuff of by being, what must be interacting to cause the response that has me move so spontaneously and alter my perception of my surroundings so dramatically. In this way I can define my art as the manipulation of the stuff inside me, whether seen or not, but the interaction of which must be happening for me to experience what I do. This as a re-enactment of the world around me is a pretty heady thought, one which has many implications the least of which I have contemplated. But which upon further investigation surely would include insights on the fellow beings who share this world with me.

Introduction to the Blog

A few years back something happened that changed the direction of my life, the discovery of a completely automatic way of drawing. For years I have been trying to get my head around this thing and explore the best way to engage in it as honestly and authentically as possible. This has yielded more questions than answers and so I have been spinning a matrix of inquiry. 

Thinking is essential for the artistic process. If an artist explains his thoughts around a work he is often not explaining the work but the intellectual process which he had while creating it. These ideas may not appear to have much relevance to the final work but they are always essential to the creation.

When I first began to draw in the way I do I was shocked to find that I had many assumptions about myself and my world that were no longer believable. My perception opened to things in myself which I had no way of knowing before. The shift was that radical, it fractured me, everything was called into question. Over the years though I have made several new connections as I have begun to perceive, reflect, and discover more deeply. 

These ideas and thoughts are what I would like to share in this online journal. But what I want to remember the most is the moment in which I realized that my deeply held thoughts were so obviously inaccurate. This for me means remembering that any new construct remains in question. And if I now see things so differently to remember the absurdity of how I saw them before, believing them with no way of perceiving an alternative. This is not something I could have helped, nor can anyone else. The revolution may again befall me or anyone else, pushing the absurdity of our beliefs into our eyes. Therefore, in honor of this human predicament, I do not speak of truth, but ideas I would like to share.