What stops us from seeing it?
One of the basic goals of my writings is to get to the source, the essence of what it really feels like to be alive; when you feel most alive, full of a self-propelling energy. How to turn that sort of feeling on at will (and not just at times of great danger or terror) would be a real breakthrough.
Of course it is society that has dulled our consciousness and detached us on an emotional level to such an extent that we have lost this childlike ability. Now, we must accept this society for what it is at this time, perhaps we can influence its evolvement to suit what I am talking about but that is not our concern here. What I am interested in is practical methods to work within the structure we all inhabit.
What are the causes of our dull consciousness? Lets call this a negative influence/pressure to act, think and behave in a certain way. It comes from family, school, the media, our peers and in the work place. To learn things we have no interest in just to pass astandardizedd exam so we can ultimately work in an industry we have no passion for but only a new need for as much money as possible so we can consume products we could live without etc etc. You know where I am going with this, we can all write our own version which may or may not include love-less marriages, the pointlessness of it all and the powerlessness you feel when you lose the job you hate, working till your death and still leaving debts for loved ones to take on. Sorry if those examples were a little bleak!
What I am getting at here is that all this pressure forces us to narrow our consciousness to such a degree that we can see it manifest even in our own senses. How we don't see the whole picture, how we can't taste or smell something fully, how we rarely touch another person and when we do how emotionally numb we feel. Basically thought/routine has taken the upper hand with emotions/instinct lagging some distance behind You can see this gradual slide away from feeling in modern types of music and art, whenever something needs to be explained before you can understand and enjoy it you are witnessing a step along this road. We need again to balance both of these disciplines. The left and right side of the brain, ying and yang, whatever you want to call it, to get the balance of this is all.
I'm battling to keep these pieces short so they don't look too daunting so I'll finish with some practical methods to aid your swift ascent to higher consciousness. Stop reading newspapers and magazines (the same predictable, life sapping articles over and over, all you need to know is in the headlines), don't worry overtly about things you have no direct control over (sure, give money to charity but just know that you could spend your whole life devoted to no end of good causes, filling the cracks in the system your government leaves, instead start your own more final campaign 'I'll Pay More Tax if There are No Cracks'), instead of going off to 'find yourself' with a copy of that years version of 'The Beach' in some third world countries resort town where you can live like the parasite you are, instead, isolate yourself from people for just one week, stay in and don't watch TV or read anything, just eat healthy and sleep when your tired. Trust me, once you get past the feeling of excruciating boredom you will experience more inner growth than any 'year out', meditation, complete Kerouac collection or yoga course put together.
This subject needs a book to do it justice; all I have left is a summing up, so here goes. We need to shed all of the negative baggage that society heaps onto us everyday. Then we have a chance to have our mood lifted by a sunset or the laugh of a child. We will start to see everything anew, pulsating with vitality, the weeds that thrive on the thinnest of soil, how life is breaking out everywhere, and everywhere a miracle. The negative baggage we all carry is truly the distorted mirror we see the world and ourselves in. Perhaps we put ourselves at a disadvantage by putting ourselves in a minority by seeing the world from its true perceptive but we at least know the whys and can at least strive to make our view work for us in time. I would rather live as a slave and know it than live as one not knowing it.
"Painting does not reproduce the visible, it makes visible."
Paul Klee
"I hardly need to abstract things, for each object is unreal enough already, so unreal that I can only make it real by means of painting."
"The greatest mystery of all is reality."
Max Beckmann
