Kiyamah

Travelling back to Dubai last week, I put on my headphones to listen to some music I had recently downloaded. The pieces were relaxing, when suddenly one track had an incredible impact on me.  About a minute into the piece, my insides moved and it felt as if something was rising within me. At one stage tears filled my eyes, not accompanied by a feeling of sadness, but rather of awe.

I have been home for a week now and listened to the piece on numerous occasions. And still..... it has the same effect.

Annie Syed in her latest Still Sundays post tells of visiting a museum and being ”mesmerized by this amazing sculpture.” 

I recall too an incident on Twitter when a video of Louis Kahn’s Phillips Exeter Academy Library was being shared amongst us. One response to a tweet I sent out was, “Made me cry. This is what architecture is about.” 

The overwhelming responses to the video indicated that something was happening not only on an individual level, but on a collective level as well. Technology had made it possible for all of us from different parts of the world and in different time zones to not only view a place many of us might never visit, but also to experience simultaneously a feeling of awe.

What is it about some works of art that have the power to move us so?

Attempts to share such an experience often fail, as words can only attempt to hint at the actual experience itself. They are really only a finger pointing at the moon.

But they are a finger, nevertheless, and those who have had the same or a similar experience will know what is being pointed at.

Ken Wilber, in “The Eye of Spirit” writes,

“Let me return to what art is finally all about. When I directly view, say, a great Van Gogh, I am reminded what all superior art has in common: the capacity to simply take your breath away. To literally, actually, make you inwardly gasp, at least for that second or two when the art first hits you, or more accurately, first enters your being: you swoon a little bit, you are slightly stunned, you are open to perceptions that you had not seen before. Sometimes, of course, it is much quieter than that: the work seeps into your pores gently, and yet you are changed somehow, maybe just a little, maybe a lot; but you are changed.”

This extract is part of a piece entitled “Contemplating Art”. It is one my favorite pieces of writing by Ken Wilber and is, in my opinion, a work of art in itself. You can read the whole piece here. It is to be found on the last few pages of the pdf.

My piece of music, Kiyamah, has changed me.

Which works of art have touched you? Let's share them here2here.

Mindfulness and Balance

On a visit to the Gate Village this morning, I took a wrong turn in the Dubai International Financial Centre and soon found myself outside, underneath what is called The Gate, looking up towards the Emirates Towers. With temperatures of over 40 degrees Celsius in Dubai at the moment, outside is not exactly the ideal place to be, but as things turned out, what awaited me there made my day.

Looking around me I was confronted by an exhibition of tightrope sculptures suspended between the buildings.

The effect was mindblowing. I have still not figured out how the actual placement of the sculptures on these ropes was achieved, but to see these figures poised in midair with the skyscrapers of Dubai in the background simply stopped time. All the hustle and bustle taking place in the buildings nearby formed a background contrast to the stillness, precision, presence, and pointed focus captured in the tightrope walkers. 

Each figure portrays being totally in the moment as tightrope walkers have to be. If balance is to be maintained, the tightrope walker cannot afford to be planning an outing while precariously sensing the placement of the next footing. S/he has to be mindful of every aspect of the body and the rope. Should another walker be on the rope this mindfulness needs to extend even further. Each step has to be given the attention it requires as a harmony of movement and interaction takes place. 

And so it is with mindfulness. Awareness of the present moment, on purpose and non-judgmentally, anchors one with the correct amount of balance in the life situation one finds oneself in. It provides the pause before the next step and thereby the ability to respond instead of simply react.

The sculptures were in various poses (please further pictures in this gallery) and perhaps some of you can identify more readily with the tightrope walker who is also juggling.

A multitude of daily tasks often need to be juggled if sanity is to maintained, but there again mindfulness provides the balance and the often much needed pause to decide on the priorities of the moment.

Not only the tightrope walker and the juggler, but also the trapeze artist has much to teach us about balance and mindfulness in both our inner and outer lives.

In his book, “Wounded Prophet. A portrait of Henri J.M. Nouwen”, Michael Ford states that Henri saw the trapeze of the “The Flying Radleighs” as “a symbol of the concentrated meditative life which offered, in the same instant, both a sense of temporal freedom and a glimpse of eternity”.  

When we reflect on this statement, we see that the trapeze act also illustrates true freedom in time, a life filled with presence.  However, Nouwen saw that in some inexplicable way, in that moment of being fully present to the present, we are given a glimpse into a world beyond the immediate. These are the moments when something breaks through and we realize there is more to life than meets the eye. 

Mindfulness requires practice, both in times set aside specifically to foster the practice and as one goes about one’s day.

Sometimes, five minutes might be all you can manage as you attempt, for example, to follow your breath.  Thoughts might overwhelm you and sidetrack you to such an extent that you feel you have fallen off the task at hand. That is okay. That is how it is, while it is and while it lasts.

Next time you begin again and gradually the practice flows out to all aspects of your life.

One of my favorite juggling youtube videos features Thomas Arthur (@thomasart).

His performance is one of perfect balance and fluidity of movement. It is an embodiment, in my opinion, of being totally in the moment.

Filtering

Walking home today I was very much conscious of the fact that I was going to need to take out my sunglasses. The glare at the moment in Dubai is such that without aid to filter out certain rays, the eyes automatically squint as a protection mechanism.

The body has a number of filtering systems in place.

The mouth will immediately spit something out that is unbearably hot, the nose has little hairs to filter out unwanted particles, the skin experiences pain as a warning signal when exposed to that which is harmful and our ears filter out sounds in certain ranges. Without any conscious effort on our part, the body is constantly attempting to filter out that which is harmful or toxic.

Mind chatter is a mental filter which can often block out an experience. The brain, too, often filters out trauma, only allowing it to resurface at a time when the individual is able to deal with it.

At the same time, on a subconscious level, our egos filter our experience, cultures have membership filters, and all these filters give rise to perspectives and worldviews which assist the shadow in remaining hidden. We see things as we want them to be or as we are socially conditioned to see them.  Life is viewed through these filters and accepted in this form as the only reality.

Technology is full of filters. For example, when you go onto a website to purchase a book, there are filters in place which note where you are from, what books you have purchased before and what subjects you have shown an interest in.  These filters enable the site to recommend similar books and thus have the power to influence your buying.

Until we become aware of them - an analogy these days would be taking off our 3D glasses as we exit the movie theatre - these filters remain in the subconscious, affecting how we feel about things and giving rise to various emotions.

Imagined boundaries separate us from others and from ourselves.

“Boundary” has up until now perhaps been the most appropriate word to discuss the imagined separations that need to be overcome as growth takes place, barriers are broken down and more and more of the Kosmos is included in one’s embrace.

I have a suspicion though that, with the current emphasis being placed on relationships and processes as the collective “we” comes to the fore, the focus will change from “boundaries” to “filters”.  

While technology has its own filters, at this point in our evolution, it is having an incredible effect on breaking down what we thought were boundaries. 

Time and distance are no longer barriers to communication. Space is becoming more spacious as it were. Information is easily accessible. Open sharing is on the increase. Information has been set free as it were, except in certain countries where social media is being threatened by the blocks or filters on certain websites.

Technology is in a sense is making us reconcile what before we might have considered  total opposites. Cultures are meeting and different perspectives on the same topic are becoming readily available.

This has ushered in a time where more than ever before the individual is conscious of the need to filter out certain information if balance is to be maintained.  So much is coming at one that one cannot possible click on every link, listen to every video or read every article.  There is so much one can “tune into” that discernment is necessary if one is to listen properly and not be all over the place.  Without this discernment, information overload is difficult to avoid.

“If you actually look at the amount of data coming in through all your senses, there’s something like 100 million bits of information coming in every second through your visual system and another 10 million bits coming through your auditory system and another one million bits coming through your tactile system.” (Will Wright, The Sims creator)

There is a cry going out for a filtering tool, a means to cope with the stresses of sensory overload, information overload and even emotional overload – the downside of being able to be connected more than ever before.  

At the same time we need to open ourselves to be more without filters. The wonderful paradox is that both these processes need to be happening at the same time!

The time has come for filters to be consciously chosen.

Whereas technology has removed many of the filters put there without our doing, we now have to put our own filters in place to protect ourselves and expose ourselves. That is the marvellous two way function of a filter. It allows some things entry while preventing others from passing through.

There is a great interest being shown of late in mindfulness as a tool to enable one to be present without filters so that necessary filters can be put in place.

In a sense we have “come full circle”, or let us rather say, we have spiralled above where we started.  In a sense we are in another Eden where once again the wisdom of the serpent is required to offer us knowledge of ourselves and of the reality of good and evil.  We need too, to attempt this with the gentleness of the dove.  

Language can be so limiting. In its present form it is very suited to linear, three dimensionality.  Nouns dominate our current sentence structure with the duality of subject and object.

As many perspectives are simultaneously held and moved beyond, as barriers of time and space begin to fall away and subject and object begin to be sensed as being one, verbs are often more appropriate ways of expressing the reality being experienced. 

In which case instead of “filters”, “filtering” will become perhaps the apt term.

(Adapted from a blog I first posted on the Integral Life Website)

Meeting in the gap

Yesterday, in South Africa, making my way to my boarding gate for my flight back to Dubai, I passed a little shop selling Ndebele art.

Today, 24hrs later, I had lunch in an Iranian restaurant.

 

These photos were taken within one day of each other and between them was a gap - the gap of place, the gap of time, the gap of culture.

Yet now you see them both, brought together by my sharing them with you in this here2here space where we meet. 

This space is in itself a gap between us and yet it is a gap not void of content. On the contrary, it is the space of untapped potential, the space of creativity, the meeting place of various personalities, cultures and worldviews, made possible by technology.

It is a reminder of the many gaps we encounter on a daily basis.

The beauty of communication can only be appreciated by acknowledging pauses between words, whether they be spoken or written. Music is filled with pauses between notes, gaps between movements.

There is the transition point between ending one task and beginning another, the time of waiting for a new phase in one’s life to begin, or even the time spent waiting for the lights to change while on the road. 

These gaps are not wasted spaces or wasted time. They are filled with potential when we become mindfully aware of them. 

There is always a moment between an experience and our response to it. The simple act of pausing and finding this gap is proving to have many benefits on many levels of being.

As we begin to find these gaps, inner rhythms can be acknowledged, and when necessary, alignments made with the universal rhythms present all around us. These universal rhythms have always been there, but it is as if we are only now, not only as individuals but also as a collective, beginning to hear them.  

One place these universal rhythms are to be found is in the gaps between cultures. These gaps were once thought of in a negative way, as if they were points of separation and divide. On closer inspection they are a meeting place to discover similarity, interconnectedness, unity and creativity.

Meet you in the gap!  

Mirror World

Over the last few months I have been fascinated with the floors of Dubai. Often in marble, they lend themselves to capturing beautiful reflections. I find myself drawn to photographing them, enchanted by the patterns and pictures that result when domes, arches, skylights, structures, escalators or even feet, meet inlaid designs.

Imagination takes me back to the time when as a child, I would often dream of being able to build dwellings under the ground, places where people could drink tea and socialize. The “underworld” to me was a fascinating place.

So too, was the world “up there”. Enid Blyton’s “The Folk of the Faraway Tree” was my favourite childhood story. I loved the fact that when one got to the very, very top of the tree and climbed through the last branches, one could visit magical lands which came past at various intervals.

Recently I discovered, that in certain bygone cultures, there was a belief that under the world there existed a mirror image of the world we inhabit.  This world was a shadow world and was upside down. It could only be entered at certain special places.

You are currently online, a special place, beyond the limitations of distance and time. Other scenes can be entered into with a simple click. 

Please accept an invitation to tour the “Mirror World” I have discovered in Dubai. Step on the escalator and ascend or descend (it’s all a matter of perspective, anyway!) into the images of my new gallery.

There is always more to see than what first meets the eye. Mindful looking opens up new worlds.