posted October 28, 2016 01:10 PM            

I guess you could say, they all are, one way or another:
http://www.collective-evolution.com/2015/12/27/more-disturbing-but-amazing-pictures-expose-the-absurdities-of-modern-culture-warning-graphic-images/

posted October 28, 2016 08:51 PM            

To me, yeah, it's art. That's always a subjective term nowadays, isn't it?

If your definition of art is "something I would hang on my wall or want to look at every day" that is fine. But that's not my definition.

Cartoons push boundaries and so can art.

posted October 28, 2016 08:56 PM            

People have images like that in their homes.

But that to me isn't really good art.

posted November 03, 2016 12:34 PM            

My favorite poem from my college years. Been thinking of this a lot lately.

Give All To Love

Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good fame,
Plans, credit, and the muse;
Nothing refuse.

'Tis a brave master,
Let it have scope,
Follow it utterly,
Hope beyond hope;
High and more high,
It dives into noon,
With wing unspent,
Untold intent;
But 'tis a god,
Knows its own path,
And the outlets of the sky.
'Tis not for the mean,
It requireth courage stout,
Souls above doubt,
Valor unbending;
Such 'twill reward,
They shall return
More than they were,
And ever ascending.

Leave all for love;—
Yet, hear me, yet,
One word more thy heart behoved,
One pulse more of firm endeavor,
Keep thee to-day,
To-morrow, for ever,
Free as an Arab
Of thy beloved.
Cling with life to the maid;
But when the surprise,
Vague shadow of surmise,
Flits across her bosom young
Of a joy apart from thee,
Free be she, fancy-free,
Do not thou detain a hem,
Nor the palest rose she flung
From her summer diadem.

Though thou loved her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay,
Tho' her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace from all alive,
Heartily know,
When half-gods go,
The gods arrive.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

posted November 04, 2016 08:43 AM            

Later I would delve into the complexities of divinity more...

Leaving me confused.

That's where another form of art, the YouTube video montage steps in to comment on my behalf, as I subscribe more to this line of thinking these days....

Alan Watts - It Starts Now

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Transience and Art and Divinity

That is an interesting trio.

From the whole idea of "graven images" to Native American belief systems that mandated the burning of ceremonial art after the ceremony was complete...we see there is a division between "idol" worshippers on the one side (those who see value in religious art, including statues and cathedrals) and iconoclasts (originally describing those who break statues) on the other. It seems to reflect the archetypal differences between Saturn/permanence and Neptune/impermanence...and humanity's struggles to integrate the two.

To me, a happy compromise is found in transient art, like the Indian chalk drawings called rangoli, also called Kolam, which are freshly drawn on the ground each day:

The freshness of the drawings each day matches the Ayurvedic principle that fresh (sattvic) food is best, and most conducive to spiritually healthy thinking. There is an ongoing desire to keep things new and alive, never stale. Always in the Now.

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Later I will add some thoughts on mandalas and how they aptly symbolize Dean Radin's discoveries about the effects of increasing consciousness on the order of systems affected by it.

-- (later)

Paraphrasing from the book The Hand on the Mirror by Janis Heaphy Durham:

Dean Radin speculates there are five general characteristics of consciousness:

1. Consciousness exists beyond individuals and has quantum properties that affect the likelihood of events.

2. Consciousness injects order into systems in proportion to its strength.

3. The strength of consciousness changes according to level of focus.

4. Groups have collective consciousness (as proven by random number generators).

5. Physical systems respond to focused consciousness by becoming more ordered.

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Hopefully the connection between the above information and this below will be obvious and orderly. (As above, so below)

quote:

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According to art therapist and mental health counselor Susanne F. Fincher, we owe the re-introduction of mandalas into modern Western thought to Carl Jung, the Swiss psychoanalyst. In his pioneering exploration of the unconscious through his own art making, Jung observed the motif of the circle spontaneously appearing. The circle drawings reflected his inner state at that moment. Familiarity with the philosophical writings of India prompted Jung to adopt the word "mandala" to describe these circle drawings he and his patients made. In his autobiography, Jung wrote:

I sketched every morning in a notebook a small circular drawing, ... which seemed to correspond to my inner situation at the time. ... Only gradually did I discover what the mandala really is: ... the Self, the wholeness of the personality, which if all goes well is harmonious.

— Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, pp. 195–196.

Jung recognized that the urge to make mandalas emerges during moments of intense personal growth. Their appearance indicates a profound re-balancing process is underway in the psyche. The result of the process is a more complex and better integrated personality.

"The mandala serves a conservative purpose—namely, to restore a previously existing order. But it also serves the creative purpose of giving expression and form to something that does not yet exist, something new and unique. ... The process is that of the ascending spiral, which grows upward while simultaneously returning again and again to the same point."

— Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz, C. G. Jung: Man and His Symbols, p. 225
Creating mandalas helps stabilize, integrate, and re-order inner life.

According to the psychologist David Fontana, its symbolic nature can help one "to access progressively deeper levels of the unconscious, ultimately assisting the meditator to experience a mystical sense of oneness with the ultimate unity from which the cosmos in all its manifold forms arises."

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