Social DistanceS

This is the era of the CoronaVirus CoVid19. 

The beautiful IB Pier is empty because its closed so that there won't be any congregating which is how the virus is transmitted the quickest.  My "life" is still complicated by Sleep Apnea and my ERSF. I somehow experienced a spontaneous self healing regarding my heart.  It's now back to a normal function after failing for over 20 years???  I've fostered supportive energetic healing from friends besides my own more concentrated conscious healing energy on my life.  

It will be hard repopulating that SOCIAL DISTANCE.

Happiness

There are a lot of different stories out there, narratives which define and express who we are. Some promote happiness, others are mum; but the story does not evoke or produce the reality every person longs for since birth. And until a man decides to free himself and choose wisely what his story says, these narratives are insidious in the way they entrap and enslave men in what has been the only hell I've ever seen. What could be worse, than cut off, spun out, and oblivious to one's possibilities to ascend and evolve happy? So, that said, I want to take a stab at this idea of the highest state we are forever pursuing whether we acknowledge it or know it, but would be happy to if the idea were real and realizable. Moving mountains was never a concern when man's mind is made up and then dies.

The primary problem is being connected consciously to a purpose larger than oneself. Good ideas, wisely understood and followed, nevertheless is not alive, and our aliveness demands a transcendent exchange to being in relationship to all that possibility which exists as yet a mystery for us.

Consciously knowing this is the proper place to start, and then the real test begins as we grind out a space of vision in which the opportunity may finally arise such that we have enough time and energy to connect before the moment expires.

In fairness to wisdom's principle of balance and harmony, its necessary to say that the process includes failure which one experiences as perhaps the epitome of personal hell, and at best a return to darkness. No fun, and often the precursor to a man's relapse and slip back into a state of sleep.

The Beauty of the Mind

...is its inherent ability to partition experience, codify, and language it, resulting in possibilities one imagines despite all opposition. C-All for our potential of conscious evolution, conscious effort, conscious suffering, and conscious ascension. There is joy in recognizing that seed in one's field of awareness for what and how it is the best feature of our being but paradoxically the beauty of the mind as our personal warden whose capacity to keep us asleep is both real and an illusion. Is it our addiction to the dreams which clouds the way above? How can we step outside of the domain to prepare a higher integral including what's missing, leaving nothing out?

Created Means

In one sense Art is the gift and blessing we have as humans to live a life constantly subject to termination and forfeit. The very question regarding just how much Art has changed the world, if it ever has goes to the heart of this matter. Let's say it did, let's say something created today ended all forms of sexual assault. Now, I can't think of a more heinous crime with perhaps the greatest number in favor for its elimination from human behavior, better yet let's just end all wars with the opening exhibition of my latest painting. Now that the world has changed, now what? LOL Do you see the load of sand concealed in this question? People really ought be more skillful in their participation and stop asking questions which have nothing meaningful to offer except to fill someone's need for interactive noise I guess.

But to finish this argument in obliteration of the illusion IE the implied value of Art's relevance to our World and more importantly what is not working in our world and needs fixing through positive change. In one sense, I have just handed you the real answer you were looking for. I don't know why you had to make art part of the equation for positive progress with respect to chronic conditions which degrade our happiness in some way. But whatever , the theme is Art, an antidote for life living in this world? OR, a narcisstic self-indulgent diversion and distraction from our paying attention more seriously and effectively to this world and those breakdowns with continue to impact us? 

That really seems to be the undisclosed moral issue at work here for the questioner. As long as he thinks of this dualistically, I doubt any formulation of his inquiry will be capable of producing much more interest in me except to close my answer by suggesting everyone to consider just what a remedied world moment would be like as an invitation to move forward minus the call for heroes and what not.

For me, I don't see Art changing or our relationship to it changing, which is to say that Art functions for us as an end in itself NOT as a tool which by virtue of its originality would suggest for itself to be considered whenever progress comes to a standstill or stagnant conditions begin to accumulate. But this opens a whole different can of worms I think. As an end in itself, providing us with a record of aesthetic value we can consume in the future and to some extent relive and recapture the original bounty in terms of new energy Art often creates in the viewers, I see Art as a really cool icon of creativity and its intensity, capacity to create joy and fun, and also its depth from which true originality springs every once in a while.

It's man's primary internal playground of the highest aspirations and most gifted souls. In that space of dynamic play, man connects with a vibrational level in the cosmos which echoes true freedom I think. Along with everything I've said then there is one moral imperative I'd close this essay with which is an admonishment to all to ALLWAYS do the very best work they can and then push that at least one degree every time you think of it. Why?

By being devoted to Giving, from the creative paradigm, everything you have on all levels, IMHO it aligns our consciousness of flow and the karmic links attached there closer to the religious leader's notions regarding prosperity - the reaping of what you sow, without need or even capacity at times to explain positive results which accrue out of that space (where miracles and magic happen). For sure, one thing ought to be understandable enough and that is that if the choice is a conscious one, making one's metaphysics tightly relevant to the sociopolitical dimension of life (at least for those who truly want to make a difference on that level) could very possibly be the worst thing you could do. When Art itself, given a person's abundant attention and then some, IS whatever antidote one might conceive of being needed for our evolution. AT LEAST on the level of source and possibility, it ONLY reconciles and transforms when the artist's aim remains giving and not exploitive, for this unconditioned offering is necessary for the artifact's beauty. An artifact opens the viewers ability to imagine possibility for themselves beyond and in ways divine and unseen. Mostly we just experience the greater love inflowing through our consciousness, and in that sense a viewer's experience is unified to the artist and his being in life is validated as having some aspect of perfect value, confirmed, realized, created.

Defining Powerful Art...

Questioner:  Does the most powerful art come from adversity or equally from pain and pleasure?

Define 'powerful' first maybe?  There are so many different discrete volume settings associated with an artist's dynamic range of inputs blended more or less skillfully in an artifact.  Notions like adversity combined with pleasure and pain doesn't help this innocuous probe into artistic value. Especially given how these ideas are more indicative of the tactile sense (though adversity implies a psychological conflict).

Isn't that real seat of where Art begins to manifest as a process in man which culminates in the final artifiact created?  The level to start this inquiry in where Art's primal beginnings originate creativity obviously must be where free will and imagination interact the most dynamically and free, somehwere more or less pragmatic or not. The essential neuropathway forms the foundation for the cognitive engine from which art may be properly considered to have as its source. There are of course old models regarding creativity which juxtapose it against states of blissful serenity beginning with the friction and heat generated by opposites sexually and through sublimating that adversity instead of transforming it with love into ecstacy, creativity has historically been seen to get its POWER or potency of effect.

But please know my response is based on more conjecture than it is on having any confidence that I in fact am spot on with respect to the questioner's true search? I mean with all due respect the right answer for this particular question ought to be about the hierarchy of details, each serving its own purpose and yet the entire gestalt arbitrarily conceived of within the artist's mind defines powers of originality. Powerful art is the successful reconciliation of dualism by the artist in his own cognition and with precision translated and expressed formally and materially in the world in which the typical adversity present in dichotomies is resolved in an integirty, call it what you wish by difference of perspective it matters not except that all verify the existence of beauty as the common denominator forming the essence of that integrity.

Thus the essence of  beauty has ore to do with a certain balanced structure to relationship which thus gives rise to the old  adage that it is in the eye of the beholder.

Leveling Up by Rita King (3rd in a series of 3)

Rita King, innovator-in-residence at IBM's Analytics Virtual Center and security futurist at the Aspen Institute, has made a very positive contribution at least in theory with a web site she has started, called, Levelingup.com. I recently caught a vid of her in which she described her vision of the future and how virutual reality was capable of enhancing our experience of creativity in the virtual world in order to improve and enhance our experience of being in the real world. And in conclusion she shared this new site of hers with the audience and basically said that if you give us the challenge we will make it happen ... LOL, right? So, I went to the site and all she has is a box to state your challenge with the promise that when the site opens, or perhaps when she gets finished being worked over by her legal department, she will get to you with a solution, hmmmmm ... well, this couldn't have come at a better time for me and my current little exposition and exploration of dance as an art form, shifting the focus from that rather classical paradigm of physical movement with all its bells and whistles to the paradigm of thought, more tapered to that small but leading section we call politics and which is the arena in which our collective self is attended to for the good of the many ... Well, if you're still reading, I highly insist that you visit the site and engage it with a challenge, and absorb the experience of this site as deeply as you can. Here's a copy of what I submitted and represents something a third section or revision to the original writing titled Who Speaks For You? This one is titled, The Rita Suggestion

The Challenge I face is observing a certain defect in humanity's social collective consciousness. For instance, at some point in the history of USA, our leaders determined that the cost in establishing a federal agency which regulated and supervised the quality of food and drugs sold to the public was not so great as the cost of innocent people being harmed by either their own ignorance or the greedy dishonesty of people who made promises about effects which often times targeted the weakest of us the most defenseless and most desperate. Yeah, that's a tragedy but when the volume of incidents reached such a noticeable daily increasing rate ... our leaders decided to man up.

The first part of this challenge is simply how to word the analogous question as it pertains to a different dimension or paradigm of being, that of our intellect. Everyday, it seems like the volume of corruption, in which marketing equates to manipulating the mind to consume, increases. This condition represents for me what used to be unconscionable sellers of sub quality food and drugs before the FDA was created to insure that money spent by those without enough, at least wouldn't be lost on food that was unhealthy.

There are certain boundaries which are better left clear and intact, unblurred as Rita might say. One of them is between commerce and relationship. When you piggy back commerce onto relationship then you have corrupted the possiblities of that relationship by limiting them to profitable exchange. However, the true serendipity of relationship occurs in the moments between and during what we normally think of as tragic or nonsensical and foolish. It is only then, supported by the nature of intimate relationship itself that we have the ability to pay attention and learn something new outside of our own programming, and even that occurs rarely and only in the most ideal types of intimacy unbounded by egoism.

The plain version of this challenge looks to me like my ability to simply be in the real world unfettered and unthreatened as I move and breathe, by consumerismistic information (advertising). Junk mail, and spam, come to mind as indicative of the LEVEL OF cost associated with this problem. I don't know the exact numbers, but were talking astronomically perverse, which is NOTHING BUT WASTE.

So, is there a way to lead the world that separates consumerism from the everyday world of being?

Who Speaks for You? (1st in a series of 3)

A friend of mine is a professional ballet coach. There is no denying her genius for dance and movement. In a written statement she shared with me which although not written by her was something she felt compelling for how it brought a certain complete and balanced mental perspective on what her daily activity is so passionate about, at least in general terms. The eloquence of this statement for me was founded on the idea that what the author (a professional ballet dancer) is "doing" on stage is seen as something co-created, a deeper experience of being.

If only reason and thought were so easily judged and assessed by the rest of humanity as an audience of world class ballet attends. Where are we to begin this process of focusing our attention with respect to words and ideas.

And what does the overload of info and the glut of facimile (or mentation, reason, and thought which doesn't produce depth in the reader or listener only frustration and dissatisfaction) mean, and when and where will it stop growing in mass and volume? Is there a limit to how much noise and distraction a mind can withstand and remain healthy and balanced nevertheless? The difference in listening seems yet to genuinely be appreciated for what it is - as social pressure adheres us to conform and accept false images and copies of copies of copies, including pure garbage and nonsense.

It seems to me that even a freshman whose study includes logic and heuristic thought would understand that society lacks a certain intellectual integrity which for instance, at least in principle and authorized by law, a suitable agency exists whose mission is to maintain and safeguard certain standards of healthy food production, known as the FDA in the USA. Such institutions in society just don't manifest without tremendous public pressure, which is nothing more than a collective agreement demanding societal change as 'good' in the collective sense of the word. And by good, I also mean implicitly necessary in the sense that to continue the status quo has been demonstrated to be completely negative and destructive of the public welfare and good. Often, inertia can be directly traced to a certain ambivalence of need collectively IE too many pros and cons. Rational sober debate is a starting point and ending point for the mind in that arena, but what about issues which have little support simply due to their being for lack of a better term, revolutionary?

There are speaks of brilliance, conscious efforts of men in support of a saner deeper intelligently relevant mentality to be somehow benchmarked at least by our communities and countries leadership. Jon Stewart is a favorite, but it doesn't take too much thinking to understand his comedy is really armor against the system which he is trying to reveal for all of its corruption, idiocy, mechanicalness, hypocricy, and every other notion of mediocrity you can think of ... its all here, running our lives and minds, and there is yet NO ground swell of protest, nobody with "a dream."

Don't you find that simply becoming all too wrong? What will it take for us to organize against the insanity of conformity, the corruption of economies, the pollution of ecologies, all in all, phenomenon which reflect a certain missing integrity to the humanity's intelligent recognition of the balance and value of silence in the realization of mental integrity.

The first mistake is to think that truth is a commodity for sale, or that it can be purchased. There is no pitch, no argument, no credential nor membership or club, which can provide your mind with the truth. There is a world however, devoid of any order, thus; one merely has to look at the next step their mind's about to take to find their own grist to grind.