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Looking up

Posted in creativity, from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, narrative, neuroscience, perception, personal growth, photography, psychology on December 26, 2020| 3 Comments »

When we look up the world looks very different.

This is not the view of a tree which you’d usually see in a photo, and I think it stands out all the more because of that.

In “Metaphors we live by”, Lakoff and Johnson make a convincing case for the embodied nature of the metaphors which underpin the meaning of so much of our speech. We take these metaphors so much for granted that we don’t even notice them. They give many, many such examples in their book, but the one which comes to mind as I write this is the one I used for the title today – “Looking up”.

Looking up is something we do physically, as you see in this view of a tree. “Looking up” also refers to our position in the physical world. We’d have to be very tall to look down on most trees! We look up to see what is above us…..or to raise our eyes from the ground if we happen to be walking around with our gaze fixed somewhere just between our noses and our feet.

The important insight about the embodied nature of our metaphors is that we can find clues in the language we use which can point in two different directions – they can indicate something about our emotions and our behaviours, but they can also indicate something about our bodies.

Once I learned that insight I became even more alert to the exact language a patient would use when describing their symptoms and experiences. Sometimes the words and metaphors they chose were the clues to finding their pathologies, and the way in which they were unconsciously trying to adapt to those pathologies. But that’s for another day.

Today I just wanted to highlight how physically “looking up” can actually link us in to the emotions, values and behaviours of “optimism”, of “looking forward” and of looking ahead with some flavour of brightness or expectation. Because it seems to me that we are pretty desperately needing a bit more positivity just now.

So, here’s my thought……maybe if we go out and deliberately, consciously, look up more, it will influence our mental state at a deep, unconscious, and emotional level and work as a kind of “reset” to enable us to engage with our lives more positively in the year ahead. And maybe if we do that, then as the active co-creators or reality, we will actually begin to build a better world.

As you raise your glasses at the end of the year, here’s to a time when things begin to “look up”!

Another world is possible.

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Finding beautiful paths

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on December 24, 2020| Leave a Comment »

When France went into lockdown the first time in this pandemic I decided to share one of my photos, and write some reflections on it, every single day. My idea was to send some positive waves out into the world. I wanted to spread some beauty, some awe, some wonder, some love. And I wanted to provide some inspiration, some stimuli to reflection as we all try to work out what on earth is going on, and how might we collectively, and individually, respond to it.

I had no idea that I would still be writing and publishing these posts by the time December would be drawing to a close. I wrote the first of this series on March 17th……that’s just over 280 days ago, and I haven’t missed a single day.

As we move towards the end of any year we approach a threshold. January, after all, is named after “Janus”, who has one face looking backwards and one looking forwards. It’s a time when we traditionally begin to think about “New Year resolutions”. It’s a time when newspapers, magazines and TV shows do a “Review of the Year”, producing dozens of “Best of 2020” lists. So, in the midst of all that, I came across two photos which I took earlier in the year…..both of them are paths.

The first path is the one at the top of this post. Isn’t it beautiful? This is one of my most favourite kinds of path….through a forest, or, at very least, tree-lined. This particular one is a tree-lined path connecting the remains of a Roman amphitheatre to an extensive Baths complex and the outline of a temple. I wrote about this place the other day, highlighting what was obviously important to people in those times – culture, health and spirituality. Compared to those magnificent structures this path seems kind of humble but I love it all the same. It inspires me to reflect on the whole concept of a path – because I think the paths we walk are probably more important than the goals we make. You might think, well, doesn’t every path lead to a destination? Aren’t those destinations “goals”? OK, I don’t want to divert off my main thought here. My point is that as we come to the end of 2020 and start into 2021, which paths do we want to take? Do the paths exist already? Or do we have to lay some new ones?

The second path is inside the old Roman bath complex –

Look at these stones! Look how worn they are! Can you imagine how many people walked along this narrow passageway between two of the bath houses? Almost 2000 years ago? It’s been a long, long time since the Romans lived in this part of the world, and I know that with the excavation and opening of the site to the Public that many others will have trod this same path recently, but isn’t it astonishing how long a path can exist?

This second path made me wonder about our human tendency to do what other people are doing. We are created as highly social creatures and it’s not a bad thing to learn from others, to share experiences with others, even to mimic or echo others. But too much of that tendency can obliterate individuality and turn us into “zombies” unconsciously responding to signals and stimuli set by others. This pandemic with its repeated lockdowns and its long drawn out “social distancing” has, at least, shone a light on that. It’s showing us what we’ve been blinding following, what we’ve tolerated, and maybe even, I’d suggest, made us start to wonder how we got into this mess in the first place – in other words if we can find and understand the paths we’ve taken to end up here, maybe we can choose different paths, create more, and better ones, to take us forward.

Well, these are the things I’m going to be reflecting on over the next few weeks. I’m reaffirming my commitment to continue created these little posts every day until this pandemic is over. But I’m also ready to make some new paths too………..

……..and here’s my wish for you – that you create your own unique paths as you walk into 2021, that you create them yourself, and that you create them with those whom you love.

Another world is possible.

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Public Spaces

Posted in art, creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, personal growth, photography on December 22, 2020| Leave a Comment »

There’s a Roman site about an hours drive from where I live. I visited it earlier this year during one of the times we weren’t in lockdown. These three photos show you the three main parts of the site. First on the left is an amphitheatre. The guide says this kind of amphitheatre was used for performances, like plays and music, not like the different sort of amphitheatre they made elsewhere for gladiator fights. In the middle is the remains of a temple. Look at the extraordinary shape of it! Again, the guide says, it’s thought there was a Celtic temple on this exact spot before the Romans constructed theirs. On the right is one of the baths in an enormous complex of baths. You can sort of make out the floor level of the bath, and below that the area where they lit the fires to heat up the water. It’s an astonishing building with several different baths, each of which were apparently heated to different levels.

One of the things that astonishes me about this site, apart from just how big it is, is exactly which buildings were constructed and what they were constructed for – primarily you’ve got the cultural space of the amphitheatre, the religious space of the temple and the social/health space of the baths.

Now contrast that to a modern “High Street”! Or one of those rings of shopping malls orbiting a town or a city!

I look at this and I wonder…..is it time to shift our priorities? To put culture, spirituality and health at the centre of our societies and communities? How might that change our experience of life?

What do you think? I’m not wondering here about re-creating a copy of what the Romans did…..I’m wondering about what a contemporary or into the future equivalent would be if we picked up on some of those core values…..creativity, spirituality and healthy sociality. (is that a word? “sociality”? well, I hope you know what I mean!)

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Inspired by a spiral

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography, psychology, science on December 21, 2020| Leave a Comment »

This is one of my most favourite photos of a seed head. When I was a child I guess the “dandelion clock” was the seed head we all knew best, but as I’ve got older I’ve realised there are an immense diversity of “wind dispersal” structures and systems used by a variety of plants. I do find them truly beautiful. But they do more than entrance me, they inspire me too, and perhaps this one more than most.

I love the whole phenomenon of wind dispersal. This is the way a plant handles that most crucial aspect of life for any species – expanding its reach physically (to other fields, other landscapes, even other continents), and expanding its reach temporally (by reproduction – by reaching into the future and create the generations to come).

No species of life would survive unless it did this – yet look at the way these plants handle it – not by setting goals, measuring and calculating and trying to control all the variables – but by trusting to the planet – by holding their seed high and waiting for the wind to come, pick them up and carry them to their future destinations.

This is SO different from our drive to be in control of everything. I’m not saying our controlling drives aren’t useful, I’m sure they are, but I am saying we should learn from the rest of the natural world sometimes and pick up this principle of letting go, of trusting that when you live in harmony with the rest of Nature, then you will survive and thrive.

Of course this is not a way for we humans to procreate and raise children – leaving them outside for the wind to carry them away! But that’s not what I’m saying…..we are not adapted to survive through the specific method of wind dispersal! No, what I think we can learn from this is the deeper, more widely applicable lesson – that we should live in harmony with, in tune with, in association with, in collaboration with, the rest of the natural world, rather than seeing the rest of the planet as something outside of ourselves just waiting to be plundered, consumed and controlled.

But there’s something else in this particular seed head – that glorious spiral shape. It seems to me that the spiral, looping model of time makes a lot of sense….the way the cycles of Nature appear – from seasons, to moon phases, to birth, growth, maturity, decline, death and birth again……

A spiral is also a very dynamic shape – it looks like it is moving. It captures that truth that change is constant, that nothing every stays the same.

I hope you find something inspiring in this photo today – it really is one of my favourites.

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Reaching out

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, narrative, perception, photography, science on December 19, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Here’s what Nature does. She reaches out.

Here’s what Life does. Life expands.

There are many stories of the Universe, many Creation stories. We discover the Universe in those stories. We tap into Creation. We uncover the themes, the characteristics, the features, the behaviours and the phenomena of reality in those stories.

One of those stories is the story of Evolution. It’s the story of Life on Earth. In this story there is one particularly striking feature – there is always more life. Life creates life. Life replicates, reproduces, expands, connects, complexifies, diversifies, multiplies.

Look at these two photos – on the left, a plant with two sunbursts of seeds held up as high into the air as it can. Reaching for the sky, reaching for the Sun, reaching for the wind, reaching out for other creatures, birds and other animals, to come along, to help her spread her seeds, to send her offspring far and wide, seeking new places to settle, take root, and to thrive. On the right a tree in the middle of a forest, a tree with branches reaching out in every direction. Every year adding rings to its trunk, every year sending out new branches to hold leaves closer to the sunlight, closer to the other trees, inviting birds, insects and other creatures to come and find home, to make their nests, to find shelter, in order to nurture their own.

We used to think of forests as collections of individual trees, but we know now that forests are not quite like that. Instead every single tree has multiple connections through a hidden root system interwoven with a myriad of fungi creating a “wood wide web” of connections. Each tree learns to find its share of sunlight and holds back from interfering with its neighbours. Each mother tree protects her young, nurtures them, in ways we never knew before.

Every year there is more Life on Earth than there was the year before. Yes, we have species loss, and we lose habitats. But from the beginnings of the Earth until now, Life has spread to every nook and cranny, adapted to every possible environment, diversified, evolved and spread.

It’s something which evokes wonder and amazement in me. After all, we know that when it comes to elements, the elements we have ordered in the Periodic Table, that pretty much all the atoms of all the molecules which exist on this planet, have been here since the beginning. The Earth doesn’t make more gold, more silver, more lithium. All the elements we know were created in the great furnaces of distant stars, and all came together here to form this little planet. But Life isn’t like that. Life expands, doubles, multiplies.

From the time Life emerged this direction of travel hasn’t stopped.

Life, it seems, makes life out life.

I think that’s pretty amazing.

It strikes me that if I want to be in tune with the planet, if I want to live in harmony with Life, then I need to pay attention to this characteristic of reaching out, connecting, expanding…..I need to focus my energies on nourishing and nurturing, on protecting and providing, this living planet. What does that tell me about the choices I should be making, the directions I should be following, as 2021 rises above the horizon?

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Mind the gap

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, neuroscience, perception, photography, science on December 18, 2020| Leave a Comment »

This is a very common pattern of spider web, and in the early morning the dew hangs in sparkling droplets creating these beautiful strings of glittering crystal balls.

But this particular web attracts me especially because of the parts I can’t see. There is a whole central section between the outer rings and the middle of the web which have not held onto any water droplets (or hardly any) so there are many strange of the web that, at least at first, you can’t see.

That reminds me of constellations – how we create the designs and symbols in the night sky by “seeing” the invisible connections between particular stars. It was the artist John Berger who first pointed that out for me when I read his “Ways of Seeing”.

Artists are also the people most likely to be aware of “negative space”. Only yesterday I came across an article which pointed out that if you look at an “8” of diamonds in a pack of cards, you can see the figure eight in the negative space between the red diamonds.

It’s clear once it’s been pointed out to you, isn’t it?

Iain McGilchrist describes how the right hemisphere is brilliant at enabling this kind of observation. Whilst the left hemisphere zooms in on the parts, the right has a preference for connections, for “the between-ness”, and for patterns.

Finally, this web makes me reflect once more on perception, and how what we “see” in our minds, is not a simple optical image cast onto the brain by a lens, the way a camera works. It’s a far more complex phenomenon, an act of creation, where we use sensations, memories and imagination to deliver the exact image which we “see”.

Turns out there is always more to be seen that we realise at first, it’s always worth exploring the “gaps”.

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Two owls

Posted in art, creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, photography on December 17, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Can you see the two owls?

The “Little Owl” sitting in the plum tree at the corner of my garden is watching me, watching him…..as usual! On the right is a photo I took in a forest in Southern France last year. Can you see the carving of the owl at the top of the tree? Instead of just cutting the branches (I don’t know if there was something wrong with them, or they broke in a storm), someone has carved an owl at the top of one of the stumps.

These two photos make me think of our relationship to the world…..just how interactive that relationship is. I have many experiences now of noticing another creature noticing me. Maybe it just makes sense that we would both have the natural ability to be aware of each other, but when it happens directly like this, it shifts the experience into another gear. It’s a bit like when I do a whistling “conversation” with the Redstart who lives in the garden every summer. Those “call and response” sessions are delightful and they really do give me a deep sense of connection to the non-human, living world.

The carving speaks to another aspect of our relationship with the world brought about by our powers of imagination and creativity. The truth is we change the world every second just by living….just by breathing, just by walking, gathering, eating and drinking, just by our behaviour which is determined by our values, beliefs, our thoughts and our bodies. But this conscious interaction, again takes our relationship to another level. This fashioning of an owl changes the experience of this tree, and so, too, of the whole forest. It’s a point of wonder, of delight. It made me pause, raise my camera and take a photo. It made me wonder about the artist….who he or she is, when they did this, and why……what did it mean, and what does it mean, to them? The sculpture raises the awareness of the observer to the fact that the forest is full of life, not just of plant life, but of birds and other creatures, but given the symbolism of owls, for me, at least, it also raises my awareness of the wisdom of the forest, and the wisdom of Nature.

Seeing this example of human imagination and creative expression in Nature reminded me, also, of an article I read in “Le Monde” a few days ago, about another cave complex full of wall art in the Dordogne. This one near Cussac. It isn’t open to the public and has still not been completely excavated but has many, many drawings of animals, just like in nearby Lascaux, but in addition they have found the skeletons of six Paleolithic human beings. There’s something else different about Cussac – (click that link if you want to read a good English language article about this cave complex) there are, so far, four clear drawings of the female form. Yep, that’s right, the female, not the male, form…..gets you wondering, huh?

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Looking the other way

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, photography, psychology on December 11, 2020| Leave a Comment »

I was never aware of the “Belt of Venus” before I moved to South West France. The first time I saw it, I thought, how come there’s that’s pink colour just above the Western horizon as the Sun rises in the East? When I looked it up, I discovered it was the “Belt of Venus”. Since then, I’ve noticed it many times.

I suspect I am more likely to look towards the East in the morning as Dawn breaks, and to the West in the evening as the gorgeous sunsets transform the sky into works of gold, tobacco brown and all shades of red.

But now I know to look the other way. I look towards the West when I am up at dawn, and what beautiful rewards await me for making that decision.

We are creatures of habit. We tend to observe in habitual ways. We tend to think in habitual ways. So, we repeat the same experiences again and again. Sometimes that can be a good thing, when our habits bring us joy, comfort and contentment. But, it seems to me that often those habits extort a high price, keeping us stuck, blinding us to opportunities, engulfing us in rumination and regret.

So, I find it’s good to look the other way sometimes. Not as in denial, neglect or in choosing ignore someone or something which needs our attention, but in consciously setting up the opportunities to change the tune, to open a few more doors, to release our abilities to imagine and to dream….in other words to increase our joy, our wonder and our delight, and to embrace our natural capacities to create, to invent, and to change.

You might think that this is a call to do the opposite of whatever it is you are doing, but I don’t think it’s limited to that. Looking to the West in the morning is not a simple opposite to looking to the East (after all, I do look to the East to see the sun rising as well). It’s more about expanding the attention, stepping out of narrow, well-trodden paths, and seeing what else is here…..right here, right now.

This exercise of looking the other way is, for me, one of releasing myself from the familiar, sticky, narrow focus of the left brain, to develop the broader, novel-seeking, particular-seeking, connection-making focus of the right brain.

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Spreading how we live

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, science on December 10, 2020| 2 Comments »

I know, you’ll have seen photos like this one many times. It’s almost a cliche. But, hold on, let’s just pause for a moment and take a closer look.

Plants which use wind dispersal of their seeds often produce a spherical display like this one. Even at first glance, they are beautiful, but once I stop to look closer, I can see each individual seed held on the end of its own delicate stalk and surrounded by a myriad of soft, fluffy, fibres, just waiting to catch to the wind. In that moment I am amazed. I am caught, the way the seeds hope to catch the wind. The delicacy, intricacy and complexity of this structure is actually quite mind boggling, but, still, it’s just part of normal life for a little plant like this.

I think we are apt to pass this by too easily. I think that when we stop, look more closely, and reflect on what we are looking at, we can’t help but be impressed by the creative power of plants, the creative power of Nature.

But I think something else now when I see a seed-head like this. Because this has been the year of the pandemic, of the rapid, global spread of a tiny virus, hopping from one human to the next, infecting millions, killing hundreds of thousands. If that hasn’t given us pause for thought to realise that we might live in a civilisation of nation states, but we share the one, small, utterly inter-connected planet, then I don’t know what will.

So, I see this little plant now, waiting for the wind to come and spread her seeds far and wide, and I am reminded of how Nature is One, and how we humans are neither separate from each other, nor from the rest of the living planet.

Aren’t we going to have to move on from the dominant mythologies of capitalist materialism? Don’t we realise now that we cannot dominate Nature, that we are not separate from Nature, and that if we want to survive and thrive we need to learn to live together by creating mutually beneficial bonds and relationships – do you remember that definition? It’s the definition of “integration”.

I think that’s the new story we need to learn, those are the new myths, beliefs and principles we have to adopt…..the ones which teach us about, and which promote, “integration”.

My actions are like these seeds.

My words are like these seeds.

My thoughts are like these seeds.

They are going to spread far and wide, and so are yours. That’s just how it is. So maybe I should consciously choose the actions, words and thoughts which will spread “integration”, will spread kindness, will seed happiness, love and joy….wouldn’t that be something?

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Imagining

Posted in art, creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography on December 9, 2020| Leave a Comment »

When I looked up at these trees and the sky above them, I saw the clouds as leaves on the outstretched branches of the trees….almost an impressionistic presentation of leaves of course….white, fluffy, almost like individual brush strokes painted onto the blue canvas.

Just a moment of imagination.

I didn’t at any point misconstrue the clouds. I knew they were clouds floating high above, and the trees were trees growing far below the blue sky, but in that moment of imagination the experience becomes a little magical, a little less mundane.

What’s the alternative? To notice severely pruned trees in the foreground and clouds in the sky above with absolutely no connection to what was growing down here on the surface of the Earth?

Well, that’s one of the reasons I like imagination…..not only does it enable us to see the invisible connections between everything…..in the same way that we humans have seen invisible lines joining stars at night into constellations which we can then use to navigate, or to know when to plant and when to harvest. But it enhances our daily experiences, giving them qualities which feel enchanting, delightful, joyful, or expansive. Qualities which would be hard to experience from a “simple” consideration of “facts”.

The world is not full of disconnected “objects” dispassionately viewed by disconnected “subjects”.

It is a whole, a fully integrated web of connections, contexts, environments, and flows of matter, energy and information, which is alive, vibrant, beautiful and awe-inspiring.

I don’t think we would realise that, were it not for the powers of our imagination.

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