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.
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