Art – The Occasion for Intelligence
It is no mystery that our modern society only uses ten percent of the human brain’s capacity. It still amazes me, knowing all that civilized humans have accomplished—flight, space-travel, wireless communication, organ transplants, cloning, powerful weapons, population control, robotics, and sophisticated machines. Neither is it a mystery that meditators stretch that ten percent.
The state of meditation occurs not only with when we sit in certain postures, breath and recite mantras, but can occur during any activity. With eyes open, nonverbal activities encourage an active meditative state. To get into that state, we need a bridge between linear logic and the organic state of being. That bridge is art. It is not possible to say that art can be taught because it is an expression that is spontaneous and unique to the individual. It seeks no outcome; however, it can be facilitated, inspired, and induced through many avenues.
Art is a prayer
This particular journey of giving over to true intelligence to guide our life is not easy. It demands much from us, such as the gentleness to be the director. It gives no room to anything that makes sense. It gives no room for any connectors, any relationship to the past, or any projection of the outcome. It brings forward a fearless perception and an expression. It brings forward your intelligence and meditation. In the moment of creating art, you also have the challenge of forgetting everything and everybody, to drop any muse, or any desire to express something. Your lines need to be innocent. Your colours, your music, or whatever medium you are using then starts speaking to you. They start absorbing you, taking you, and possessing you. You become so totally them that you understand in a non-understandable way that they have been rescuing you with lightness, humor, playfulness, and sacredness.
Art is a simple union
Your union becomes simple. Your union becomes subtle, and it is that awareness that can be transferred to a standstill quality for the rest of your life. The challenge is to destroy your accustomed reality.
Our perception is built through the stimulus of the senses, and our modern society overloads these senses. If you just go shopping, your senses are invaded with colours, perfumes, music, and aggressive lights, to a point that these senses becomes saturated, dull, and lethargic. In that state our perception is not able to reflect our inner landscape or to tap into a restful and quiet space that can reflect a fresh inner reality. Meditation, silence, time alone and contemplation on natural objects, can evoke and clean the saturation of the senses. This understanding is necessary in order to see the true nature of inner and outer things.