Final Blog Entry

Final Blog Entry

A lot of people think meditation is this relaxation thing, almost like a trance, but in actuality it is this incredible awareness. To be present from moment to moment is to brush (gently) away all the thoughts and emotions that normally are racing through the brain, so that for however long one is meditating they are just constantly aware of only the present moment in time. This is a mental and a physical process. At least, in my head I always seem to separate my body and my mind as two different things. Certainly, they correlate to each other directly, however, in their core they function on different levels. The mind must be clear of thoughts and focused on moment-to-moment perception, while the body has to be in a physically aware state as well to be able to allow the mind to perceive things from moment to moment.

I feel like anyone that uses the right side of their brain on a regular basis, such as an artist or designer, already has a special aptitude for the ability to stay aware and present. For example, an illustrator probably gets pretty close to that state on a daily basis, even if they didn’t realize that they were. When somebody draws, there is this tendency to get into this similar state of just being physically aware of what you’re doing, where the pencil is going, how the paper feels against your hand and how various materials feel underneath the pencil. They already have the ability to get halfway there. However, they wouldn’t know how to go the rest of the half way there mentally, without practicing being aware from moment to moment. I am sure a lot of artists and designers may separate themselves in two when they are working on art. Their bodies would be fully attuned to what they are doing, but they might disassociate themselves mentally and use the time their body is busy working to think about things. Therefore, if they could just focus mentally on being mindful present moment, to present moment, they would be able to be successful.

I’m not sure I full understand the question about a contemplative aesthetic. A contemplative aesthetic could mean a certain look or feel, certain constant emotions or contemplative beauty. I think that no matter what the answer to that is, that it would vary from person to person and there wouldn’t be just one contemplative aesthetic. Each person is so different in how they think and how they achieve certain mental processes that it would be inherent that not every single person on the earth would have the same idea about a contemplative measure. There are certainly contemplative techniques that are the same, but I think the aesthetics, being such a beautiful, artful thing to begin with, would always have to be individualized. Each person would have their own preferences to music, colors, sounds or textures that would allow them to be contemplative.

I do believe there is a relationship between contemplative practice and creativity. Certainly, they help each other, and certainly practicing one would better the other, but there is a difference between the two. Contemplative practice involves a sort of training of the mind to be aware from moment to moment, where as creativity isn’t always so trained, it is more like a spark that suddenly has come and gone. This is why I think practicing both would make both practices stronger. If someone spends a lot of time with contemplative practices, they would have more connected neuron pathways for creativity to travel down. Also, it might be easier for them to brainstorm for creative solutions, because they would already be trained to gently push conflicting thoughts aside while they were trying to work. Also, if people practice being creative, they too have a lot of different pathways that are connected and they inherently must brainstorm to be creative, and so they might already have some of the skills necessary to be aware from moment to moment. The relationship between the two is fairly similar in the give-take ratio. As one grows, so does the other. Also, if one did not practice either for a while, both would suffer. The biggest difference is that contemplative practice requires a constant practice, where as creativity tends to be more spontaneous.

Contemplative practice certainly influences interactions between persons and among communities. It is such a widely world spread idea that it may influence people in one country to discuss their experiences with people from another country. People who practice contemplatively have the propensity to always want to know more about practicing and how to become better at it. Also there are so many different cultural ways to attain the same goal, that practitioners would be curious as to how it is handled from place to place. It is also such a gratifying experience that people would want to share their experiences and ideas with other people. It is one of those things that people would instantly create bonds with someone else who practiced, because of how affecting the experience itself is. Also, contemplative practices affect people and may allow them to handle situations better or to function more easily on a day-to-day basis with other people. This in itself would affect interactions between people and communities. People who do contemplative practices may handle situations of interaction better than people who do not. Their mind is in a different place and they are obviously more aware than people who do not practice at all.

I think my experience with tarot reading before I started doing my daily practice for this course certainly helped me to learn more about being aware from moment to moment. There is supposed to be the same meditative sense when one reads tarot cards. Most pagan activities like tarot reading or spellcasting involves being in a centered, focused and mental state. It is interesting because I have read a lot of books in the past about that sort of thing, and it is practically the same things we discussed in the contemplative arts class except perhaps worded a little different. At the core, however, there was the same idea of being present from moment to moment. I think paganism just uses a lot more specific visual cues in order to get people to that state of mind, where as the things we discussed in our contemplative arts class focuses more on physical sensations and direction to get people into a meditative state of mind.

Also, as I mentioned at the beginning of this blog entry, because of the various art oriented practices that I do daily, there was already this understanding of how to get my body to a state where it was aware from moment to moment, and from brainstorming for creative solutions there was the ability to clear my head of thoughts. In class, I feel like we learned how to integrate these two skills.

Overall, I really enjoyed this class and what it had to teach me. I feel like it opened me up to all these different subjects I never thought about before and now that I am aware of them I want to know more. Also, I really enjoyed the sittings and the yoga practices that we learned in class and look forward to continuing those (in particular the body scan). I think for artists and designers, that it is especially important to be able to learn how to be mindful, and to practice it because it helps tremendously for the arts and for people who need to be creative. It also is just a very healthy thing to practice in general.