LIVING HERO

Solitude and Solidarity: To Be Whole and Healthy, We Need ‘Em Both

To live your life as a creative artist, everything you do and experience is invested into vision, meaning and insight; and in this, there cannot be a separation between self, work and life.

Successful creation is a distillation of many hours of time alone just sponging things in and then processing them with the light of solitude on. Solitude, a word that comes from the Latin “solus,” is akin to the Greek word “holos,” signifying whole, entire. An artist comes to wholeness in and through solitude.

You’d be hard pressed to find an artist who isn’t poignantly aware of her existential aloneness, and yet, like anyone else, she lives in relationship. However, often, instead of social relationships, she relies upon deep, abiding relationships with the ineffable intimations of her gift. There’s a sense of partnership with the unseen–the muse, the unconscious, the universe–to get her work done.

And so the artist working in solitude is not really “alone.” She is having intense affairs with aspects of the self and with the numinous. Henry James once told the journalist Morton Fullerton that the “essential loneliness” of his life constituted his “deepest” aspect.

The quality of relationship with one’s own inner dynamics, which are nurtured in solitude, provide the conditions for creation. The feeling arises, when you are creating, that you are doing what you are meant to do and it is sustained by the experience of being touched by something larger– a communion experience that one simply cannot explain, but instead must honor and serve.

But there is a big difference between solitude and isolation. To balance long stretches of unbroken solitude, an artist, especially a developing one, needs like-minded others, people who understand the passion and process of a creative person and who support him in his efforts, who welcome him when he finally does come out from behind the closed door. It helps to have a peer group or, at the very least, one trusted fellow artist with whom to share both the work and one’s life.

Solidarity means unity among people, a shared sense of purpose and understanding of what matters–values, feelings, sensitivities about things, qualities of life. Solidarity is every bit as crucial to the health, balance and survival of the artist as is solitude.

Some artists must or perhaps choose to find their solidarity without real-time contact with peer artists, but instead, through the works of more distant artists. In the words of painter and art teacher Robert Henri, “If the artist is alive in you, you may meet Greco nearer than many people, also Plato, Shakespeare, the Greeks. In certain books–some way in the first few paragraphs you know that you have met a brother.”

T.S. Eliot states something similar about our solidarity: “A common inheritance and a common cause unite artists consciously or unconsciously: it must be admitted that the union is mostly unconscious. Between the true artists of any time there is, I believe, an unconscious community.”

I wonder, are these qualities, which are so obviously critical to the life of the artist, not important to the health, balance, development and well-being of everyone? What do you think?

I have been traveling alone since the end of March, and also living among artists with long days of solitude in my studio and cherished connections at shared meals and walks through the Illinois prairie. I have now relocated temporarily to Austin, TX and I have been exposed to a great deal of art and culture along the way!

Since that last week of March I have seen: The Homer and Hopper exhibitions at The Art Institute of Chicago; Laurie Anderson speak at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The collections and current shows at The Milwaukee Art Museum; The current shows at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin; The Kohler factory tour; Columbia College Book & Paper Arts facilities and the M.F.A. show there; A lecture by G. Edward Griffin at the University of Texas; The On the Road show at the Harry Ranson Humanities Research Center in Austin; I was also invited to spend an overnight as an all-expenses-paid guest at one of the exclusive private Kohler clubs.

Ask me about any of these–I have many notes and an abundance of memories! And I am look forward to hearing from you!

jari psychology, creative arts, integrate, culture, holistic, creativity, values, art, solitude, solidarity, vision 1 Comment » | (1 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

The Subliminal and the Sublime

In our language, we have two similarly named thresholds of awareness. One is the subliminal, “that which lies below,” that which we generally refer to as the subconscious. The other is the sublime, which we speak of mostly at times when we have briefly transcended that upper limit, when we are momentarily sent “over the top” with feeling, with awe, surprise or beauty, surpassing our usual realm of sensation and awareness. People have been known to faint from being unable to sustain the sublime.

We would not know these boundaries if we didn’t, in unusual states and circumstances, access what is beyond them. Symbols, metaphors and buried memories do break into consciousness from the unconscious. And we do have wondrous and sublime experiences in nature, through love, in beholding our own newborn child, in moments of discovery, and through the experience of insight.

These thresholds of awareness frame not where you have been and what you have done, but the range of perception and feeling you were fit to bear, whereever you went and whatever you did.

Our ability to access both the subliminal and the sublime is integral to our capacity to accept and bear their truth and their gifts. These thresholds in the self are not fixed. They can go from brick walls to accessible doorways to a mere change in the landscape within yourself. As you develop yourself as a human being and become someone more psychologically mature, of greater spiritual fortitude, your range of awareness and capacity to feel into both the subliminal and the sublime will grow. You will be able to experience more feeling without fear, awkwardness, overwhelm or discomfort. You will also be much more in touch with the tremendous creative and integrative forces that are within you.

How do you open the range of your awareness and enlarge your capacity to feel and know more of your own life’s forces and riches? The best ways I know involve yoga, creativity and meditation.

jari psychology, consciousness, creative arts, integrate, insight, meditation, maturity, human potential, human development, philosophy, creativity, creative, love, body, mind-body, fear, feeling 1 Comment » | (4 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Since its an Election Year . . . Let’s Look at “The Truth Bomb”

Let’s be bold and talk with each other about our culture holistically. I’ve started this blog and the Living Hero podcast to enter into an integrative conversation that brings the formerly cloistered and private work of Jariscope into public discourse in a new way.

This is a place where we don’t have to think outside of the box because there is no box—whatever box there was, was in somebody’s mind and here the boxes were smashed to smithereens a long time ago and we’re with Reality. That’s where we have to look at it, consider it, and handle it all at once, the way life really is, where you can’t really cubbyhole and compartmentalize and fragment and label, but you’re up against the task of either keeping your eyes, mind, senses and heart open to the way things are or not. And if you are, you have to navigate by virtue of virtue itself.

So, since it’s an election year, let’s go into the politics of the inner life, where this Reality I’m talking about meets the road. I’d like to introduce you to a book by Alexander Lowen entitled Narcissism: Denial of the True Self. If you are not familiar with Lowen’s many books, I’d like to suggest that you join me in reading them all. I call Lowen “The Truth Bomb”.

I am always on the lookout for wisdom, sanity, and truth. Lowen is the real deal. He is a direct protégé of the late Wilhelm Reich and Lowen has taken the best of what Reich set in motion and brought a great deal more balance and wisdom to it. You may know Lowen through the term Bioenergetics, which is his name for the form of body-centered psychotherapy he pioneered.

I would like to have an ongoing discussion here about this book with you. I am seeking the best representative of Lowen’s work to join us on Living Hero a little later in the year. Dr. Lowen is still alive, but I’m told he is not well. I’m hoping to have this podcast while he is still alive, so he can listen in.

Chapter titles from Narcissism: Denial of the True Self; A Spectrum of Narcissism; The Role of the Image; The Denial of Feeling; Power and Control; Seduction and Manipulation; Horror: The Face of Unreality; The Fear of Insanity; Too Much, Too Soon; The Insanity of Our Time

Buy the book here, start reading, and let’s start talking about it!

jari Uncategorized, psychology, holistic health, integrate, human potential, synthesis, wisdom, politics, books, narcissism, holistic Comments (0) » | (1 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

CULTIVATE SYNTHESIS!

E.O. Wilson, one of our most brilliant living heroes, preciently wrote in his 1999 bestseller, Consilience, “Thanks to science and technology, access to factual knowledge of all kinds is rising exponentially while dropping in unit cost. It is destined to become global and democratic. Soon it will be available everywhere on television and computer screens. What then? The answer is clear: synthesis. We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.”

Many other luminaries have echoed this call for synthesis. One of Howard Gardner’s Five Minds for the Future is “Synthesizing Mind,” and Daniel Pink devotes a chapter of his recently released A Whole New Mind to “Symphony,” the ability to draw together details from many different disciplines while holding in mind the big picture and what it takes to achieve harmony, balance, and beauty.

This whole-brain capacity has been the gifted and treasured realm of artists, writers, philosophers, and spiritual leaders all along, but these are realms of activity that our culture has not rewarded financially. Is this going to change now? How will we see this change?

This blog is devoted to providing a forum for the exploration and discussion of these and related topics. I invite your thoughts and wish to know specifically whom you would most like to hear from in an interview or panel discussion and what your most burning questions on these topics are.

jari Uncategorized, integrate, interviews, future, human development, feminine values, culture, synthesis, a whole new mind, wisdom, financial reward Comments (0) » | (1 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Introducing Jariscope and Living Hero

The movement of yoga, the creativity of art, the reflection of meditation

jari Uncategorized, psychology, holistic health, consciousness, creative arts, language, integrate, interviews, insight, meditation Comments (0) » | (0 ratings)  | Email it