On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 3:26 AM, Martin
Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com>
wrote:
Alive
in Myopia.
" To see the world in a grain of sand,
and heaven in a wild flower.
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
and eternity in an hour."
William Blake.
"If the doors of perception were cleansed,
everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."
William Blake.
"The eye, altering, alters all."
William Blake.
Utopia-
"Any real or imaginary society, place, or state, considered to be perfect or ideal."
Myopia-
Whereas, 'myopia', means short-sighted, or the failure, or inability to see where one is.
Myopia, would also serve as an appropriate name for the actual society, place, or state in which we live.
Myopia, the State we live in.
Alive in Myopia.
For want of the kind of far sightedness Blake is referring to, we habitually equate 'utopia' with the ideal, rather than the real, that which already is.
This is so, because we live in the 'concept' of where we are, rather than in clear perception of where we are.
Our direct perception is rarely, if ever, wholly free of preconceptions. Unless you happen to be a relatively innocent infant.
Wherever you may find yourself to be, in the man-made world, is likely to be as far away from being utopia as you can imagine.
This is due, both to the nature of perception, overlaid with 'thoughts about it', combined with the fact that, a man-made environment is a concrete expression ( pun lethally intended ), of your predecessors' concepts.
Your predecessors' concepts, as well as those of your contemporaries, are part of an ongoing system, which, most likely, will not serve your highest aspirations, or sense of beauty and freedom.
Sounds like a mess doesn't it?
It takes a bold, honest innocence to simply LOOK, and see if that's what it is in fact, or not.
To a very great extent, so many of our ills, neuroses, anxieties, self doubts, and depression, are the natural response to not wholeheartedly admitting that our environment is not to our liking, along with not sufficiently exploring in imagination, what would be as we would wish. Plus simultaneously feeling incapable of doing anything about it.
Repressing and resigning to it, doubting our honest perception, we often become depressed and get sick.
Like any natural creature in a cage would. Because we seem to have no VOICE to comment on the contradiction.
Myopia in Utopia.
This IS about beauty, wholeness, and hope however, and intent to help. Having found myself in such a situation many times, in many places.
Which is why i opened with a few encouraging insights from William Blake. You can be sure he'd been there too. His 'Songs of Innocence and Experience' document poetically the varieties and archetypes of such universal circumstances.
We all have such experience in common, to whatever degree, as sensitive soulful creatures, longing to feel a sense of being bonded with our environment.
It's not that we 'have' to suffer, or even that suffering is particularly good for anything in itself. Rather, that it universally tends to precede, and be a significant factor of a transformation we haven't as yet, fully imagined into manifestation.
As Blake the seer would have, and did say, IMAGINATION is all important.
POSITIVE IMAGINATION that is.
Not imagination as escape, or as fearfully focusing on what 'might' be. Not a good idea. Imagination is too effective a power to misuse.
What i mean, is, imagination used regularly in whatever way serves to remind and attune you, to whatever you most LOVE in the world.
It could be anything. Or next to nothing. Small is good. Big is not necessarily better. What you feel, is what counts.
What you feel, is big enough to colour the world, and it does anyway.
Do what you like, but do, like what you do. Even, and especially if it's next to nothing.
Next to nothing is the best place to start from. It leaves plenty of room for the surprise you never thought of yet.
It wouldn't be a surprise if you had. So never give up.
NEVER, give up. There is no ending to loving to express what you love, unless you 'decide' to give up.
But even that is part of it. It comes round again just where you thought there was nothing.
It's wise to have a respect for the apparent nothing that 'a something' comes out of.
Where else would it come from?
Next to nothing got me through some really tough times early on. A picture postcard, a doodle, a leaf!
Especially when i 'turned over a new one.'
We'd be lost without leaves. Millions of people are. Especially in the winter. The same way, we'd starve without bees to do the pollination, and look how small, they are. Big things come from lots of little things.
When you love something about your environment, all your cells, (that's you), wake up.
It's been biologically demonstrated many times, to the point of proof, (in case you need proof.)
Love is, waking up to what interests you, and being clear and conscious of what you feel about it.
Never mind what 'society' says should be the main focus of what you should be doing.
You know, struggling, suffering, only doing what you don't like.
Nature's Mirror.
Another quote from Blake.-
"The tree which moves some to tears of joy, is, in the eyes of others, only a green thing that stands in the way.
Some see nature all ridicule and deformity.... and some scarce see nature at all.
But to the eyes of the person of imagination, nature is imagination itself."
I can say from experience, that is true. It makes a world of difference to how we relate to the world.
Especially here, in Myopia.
I'm aware perpetually, that, what i see, is a direct reflection of what i feel for what i see. I feel what i see, and i see what i feel.
There's an innocence to the experience, in that, thinking about it only, steams up the mirror, and you don't get a clear reflection.
There's a place for thinking, and that is, when it's called for. Not all the time.
And even then, it comes out of nowhere, now-here.
Field Of Vision.
Whether nearsighted in Myopia, or far-seeing, insight without words hits the mark. Seeing, is having a feel for what is seen.
Not just glancing and reading the label.
In Myopia, the people live in a world of labels and think thoughts. But ask them to draw a particular type of tree, and they might have difficulty recalling from memory exactly what it was they saw.
But there's much more to appearance, always, than mere appearance.
The 'qualities' of the nature of what appears to be, are those of soul or spirit.
Literally and actually, reflecting what you bring, and don't bring, to the experience. A silent mind, and an open heart.
The heart being the prime intuitive perceptor.
Walking on a street, does your attention note the slightest stray fallen leaf, or scrap of paper just as it is, in the field of vision?
Or are you pulled out of your inner quiet by the rush of cars and activity? Mirroring mind's preoccupation with what it was you must remember to buy. Thereby not registering anything in its' just-so-ness.
Even a drab familiar street, openly regarded as it just is, without judgement of like or dislike, has its own unmistakeable character. Everything rests in its' own unique beingness, along with the boundless whole of which it's not apart.
We're talking 'IS', not some fantasy or concept, and it's reflecting your 'deep within' back to you, a moving mirror of your moment in the timeless continuum.
See it as spontaneous poetry. Especially in the over all changes in the mood of weather. Weather is poetic if ideas about good and bad are not projected onto it. It's just, what we call weather, and we seem to focus more on what we regard as the spectrum of good and bad of it. Weather is weather whether we like it or not.
Poetry is a quality of feeling. Not some idealistic fabrication of form.
It's the living depth and diversity of the ever changing aesthetic actuality of everything in flux and flow.
Evoking something through and beyond the words and therefore poetic.
Being, seen to be being just itself in its' own way flowing naturally like water.
Call it familiar, call it mundane, call it boring, call it soul, ordinary or beautiful. Beauty is where you find it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Martin.
art : water painting, martin law, 1988" To see the world in a grain of sand,
and heaven in a wild flower.
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
and eternity in an hour."
William Blake.
"If the doors of perception were cleansed,
everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."
William Blake.
"The eye, altering, alters all."
William Blake.
Utopia-
"Any real or imaginary society, place, or state, considered to be perfect or ideal."
Myopia-
Whereas, 'myopia', means short-sighted, or the failure, or inability to see where one is.
Myopia, would also serve as an appropriate name for the actual society, place, or state in which we live.
Myopia, the State we live in.
For want of the kind of far sightedness Blake is referring to, we habitually equate 'utopia' with the ideal, rather than the real, that which already is.
This is so, because we live in the 'concept' of where we are, rather than in clear perception of where we are.
Our direct perception is rarely, if ever, wholly free of preconceptions. Unless you happen to be a relatively innocent infant.
Wherever you may find yourself to be, in the man-made world, is likely to be as far away from being utopia as you can imagine.
This is due, both to the nature of perception, overlaid with 'thoughts about it', combined with the fact that, a man-made environment is a concrete expression ( pun lethally intended ), of your predecessors' concepts.
Your predecessors' concepts, as well as those of your contemporaries, are part of an ongoing system, which, most likely, will not serve your highest aspirations, or sense of beauty and freedom.
Sounds like a mess doesn't it?
It takes a bold, honest innocence to simply LOOK, and see if that's what it is in fact, or not.
To a very great extent, so many of our ills, neuroses, anxieties, self doubts, and depression, are the natural response to not wholeheartedly admitting that our environment is not to our liking, along with not sufficiently exploring in imagination, what would be as we would wish. Plus simultaneously feeling incapable of doing anything about it.
Repressing and resigning to it, doubting our honest perception, we often become depressed and get sick.
Like any natural creature in a cage would. Because we seem to have no VOICE to comment on the contradiction.
Myopia in Utopia.
This IS about beauty, wholeness, and hope however, and intent to help. Having found myself in such a situation many times, in many places.
Which is why i opened with a few encouraging insights from William Blake. You can be sure he'd been there too. His 'Songs of Innocence and Experience' document poetically the varieties and archetypes of such universal circumstances.
We all have such experience in common, to whatever degree, as sensitive soulful creatures, longing to feel a sense of being bonded with our environment.
It's not that we 'have' to suffer, or even that suffering is particularly good for anything in itself. Rather, that it universally tends to precede, and be a significant factor of a transformation we haven't as yet, fully imagined into manifestation.
As Blake the seer would have, and did say, IMAGINATION is all important.
POSITIVE IMAGINATION that is.
Not imagination as escape, or as fearfully focusing on what 'might' be. Not a good idea. Imagination is too effective a power to misuse.
What i mean, is, imagination used regularly in whatever way serves to remind and attune you, to whatever you most LOVE in the world.
It could be anything. Or next to nothing. Small is good. Big is not necessarily better. What you feel, is what counts.
What you feel, is big enough to colour the world, and it does anyway.
Do what you like, but do, like what you do. Even, and especially if it's next to nothing.
Next to nothing is the best place to start from. It leaves plenty of room for the surprise you never thought of yet.
It wouldn't be a surprise if you had. So never give up.
NEVER, give up. There is no ending to loving to express what you love, unless you 'decide' to give up.
But even that is part of it. It comes round again just where you thought there was nothing.
It's wise to have a respect for the apparent nothing that 'a something' comes out of.
Where else would it come from?
Next to nothing got me through some really tough times early on. A picture postcard, a doodle, a leaf!
Especially when i 'turned over a new one.'
We'd be lost without leaves. Millions of people are. Especially in the winter. The same way, we'd starve without bees to do the pollination, and look how small, they are. Big things come from lots of little things.
When you love something about your environment, all your cells, (that's you), wake up.
It's been biologically demonstrated many times, to the point of proof, (in case you need proof.)
Love is, waking up to what interests you, and being clear and conscious of what you feel about it.
Never mind what 'society' says should be the main focus of what you should be doing.
You know, struggling, suffering, only doing what you don't like.
Nature's Mirror.
Another quote from Blake.-
"The tree which moves some to tears of joy, is, in the eyes of others, only a green thing that stands in the way.
Some see nature all ridicule and deformity.... and some scarce see nature at all.
But to the eyes of the person of imagination, nature is imagination itself."
I can say from experience, that is true. It makes a world of difference to how we relate to the world.
Especially here, in Myopia.
I'm aware perpetually, that, what i see, is a direct reflection of what i feel for what i see. I feel what i see, and i see what i feel.
There's an innocence to the experience, in that, thinking about it only, steams up the mirror, and you don't get a clear reflection.
There's a place for thinking, and that is, when it's called for. Not all the time.
And even then, it comes out of nowhere, now-here.
Field Of Vision.
Whether nearsighted in Myopia, or far-seeing, insight without words hits the mark. Seeing, is having a feel for what is seen.
Not just glancing and reading the label.
In Myopia, the people live in a world of labels and think thoughts. But ask them to draw a particular type of tree, and they might have difficulty recalling from memory exactly what it was they saw.
But there's much more to appearance, always, than mere appearance.
The 'qualities' of the nature of what appears to be, are those of soul or spirit.
Literally and actually, reflecting what you bring, and don't bring, to the experience. A silent mind, and an open heart.
The heart being the prime intuitive perceptor.
Walking on a street, does your attention note the slightest stray fallen leaf, or scrap of paper just as it is, in the field of vision?
Or are you pulled out of your inner quiet by the rush of cars and activity? Mirroring mind's preoccupation with what it was you must remember to buy. Thereby not registering anything in its' just-so-ness.
Even a drab familiar street, openly regarded as it just is, without judgement of like or dislike, has its own unmistakeable character. Everything rests in its' own unique beingness, along with the boundless whole of which it's not apart.
We're talking 'IS', not some fantasy or concept, and it's reflecting your 'deep within' back to you, a moving mirror of your moment in the timeless continuum.
See it as spontaneous poetry. Especially in the over all changes in the mood of weather. Weather is poetic if ideas about good and bad are not projected onto it. It's just, what we call weather, and we seem to focus more on what we regard as the spectrum of good and bad of it. Weather is weather whether we like it or not.
Poetry is a quality of feeling. Not some idealistic fabrication of form.
It's the living depth and diversity of the ever changing aesthetic actuality of everything in flux and flow.
Evoking something through and beyond the words and therefore poetic.
Being, seen to be being just itself in its' own way flowing naturally like water.
Call it familiar, call it mundane, call it boring, call it soul, ordinary or beautiful. Beauty is where you find it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Martin.
artwork : digital pan play - photographic image repair & definition, DEC 12 - wfp for moo
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