Can We Change the Underlying Game, Fundamentally?... by Understanding How We Continually Truncating Our Options?

The game I am speaking of is the structure through which we perceive and thus conceive of ourselves and the world around us. If you were to distill down how you perceive the world into a paragraph, a sentence and then to a word, what would it be? I have found the word for me both surprising and sobering. I invite you to consider the question in a quiet moment, concluding with the word that best representing your present construct of your Universe.  

The word that best reflects my current, that is not daily, or weekly, but persistent world view is "polarity." I do not mean duality, contrast, or even dichotomy, but opposition in a way that stops possibility. As a visual artist, my orientation is creating, which I distinguish here from creativity. In creating, I speak of making something that was not there before you conceived of and created it. It could be a business, a meal, or the idea in a conversation. Creating is also different from problem solving. Although many problems arise in the creative process, overcoming them supports a greater vision and is not the goal in and of its self.

The structure of polarity does not invite creation because the two ends of the spectrum fight each other. In my studio life at last polarity is not an active dynamic, however in the rest of my life the conflict between negative and positive valence often truncates my options. The word valence is usually used in psychology in relation to emotions. In different cultures, eras, and even in relation to gender, the same emotion can considered negative or positive. That some emotions are better than others is a value judgment, an example of how our teaches us to think in polarities that is not necessarily there.

Karla McLaren in her book, The Art of Empathy, a Complete Guide to Life’s Most Essential Skill, talks about the how intense research on empathy is happening worldwide in more than a half dozen academic disciplines. Neuroscience is revolutionizing our thinking about feelings. There is more and more agreement that any emotion that comes up is valid, and emotions in and of themselves do not have a negative or positive valence. No emotion is invalid. How it feels and what you do with it, of course, is another question.

Emotions are indeed a natural response that causes damage only if repressed or acted out. Creating emotional polarity of good and bad lessens the opportunity for accurate perception, growth, healing and understanding. Emotions are a lucid example of how we are enculturated into polarity-based thinking which truncates our possibility of creative response. We have done the same thing when we pitch the masculine and feminine against each other. They are not opposites. They are compliments, for they inform each other. We have recently witnessed in our country the state of congressional dysfunction when the two political parties are polarized.

What is it exactly that attaches us to positions of right/wrong, good/bad? It is not principles of ethics,I believe, but identity. That is what we can or want to identify with over-rides our values. The more we react without reflection, the deeper the ruts of our polarities. We have all heard of Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist and survivor of Auschwitz. He had a first-hand experience of what one might call clear-cut polarity of right/wrong or good/bad  and yet he did not identify himself as victim. This is what he learned from that experience. 

Between a stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. The last of human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.

Let us consider identity in the realm of those in a culture who are creating with an identity which allows them to go beyond the rigid constructs of the norm. There have always been a few who were able to hold their identity loosely and expand what was thought infeasible. They have a curiosity and willingness to play and work which factors which cultural norm feel contradict each other.

There have always been a few who were able to hold their identity loosely and expand what was thought infeasible. Let us consider those in a culture who create with an identity which allows them to go beyond the rigid constructs of the norm. They have a curiosity and willingness to work with factors, which like Frankl, do not fall into the construct of polarity. 

Within inter-disciplinary research many old beliefs of creativity are being discarded. After 30 years of research and the publication of his now famous ‘flow’ theory, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has worked with ‘creatives’ including; Nobel Prize winners, Poets Laureates,  and well-known authors, composers and artist of all disciplines.  In his book Creativity, he interviewed one hundred creative people across a range of professional fields.  Contrary to popular myth, one of their common characteristics is a generalized equilibrium is the enjoyment of life with a constant willingness to expand the edges of what has gone before -- they are adept in the art of internal adaptation as life conditions change because they see more options than most of us. I know personally know how the roller coaster of doubt and elation in the studio can undermine or support the creative process.

Linda Graham in her book, Bouncing Back, Rewiring Your Brain for Maximum Resilience and Well-Being uses the latest research in neuroplasticity of the brain to prove that what we once thought was hard wired is not.  Here are just a few of the kind of awareness shifts that help you rewire your brain for resilience, well-being, and I would add, more possibilities for creating. In the book she offers exercises that help you to see different perspectives, create new options and discern choices, interrupt self-talk, and facilitate deeper brain integration as a way of reconditioning old identities.

Many of you have experienced life crisis and debilitating diseases, first hand or through loved ones, and have experienced the opportunity to step into a larger identity. Modern day cataclysmic disasters, as well as diseases of epidemic proportions are the vehicle of identity transformation. But, we do not have to wait until we or a loved one is stricken to expand our identity with greater understanding of the larger spectrum of life through which we are passing. It is a creative act to notice where you polarize, and consider how the dynamics of would totally change how you perceive the situation.

Want to Tango with Mars?

Did you hear tangle? That would be understandable. We often don’t realize we are in a relationship to Mars until we are entangled. I would like to suggest some ways of responding to Mars, god of War known for destruction, chaos and upheaval, in the context of Argentine tango. 

Tango is a dance of improvisation, which requires relaxed awareness. It also requires practice, not in the sense of doing something over and over, but a cultivation of a particular state of being. The music is complex with layered rhythms and themes combining eros and pathos. You need to be responsive to your partner and others on the dance floor. For me tango has correlation to other disciplines that might surprise you. I once went to a Zen/Tango weekend at Green Gulch Zen Center, where the abbot was learning tango and appreciated the connection the Zen arts. I also associate it with the martial art of Aikido and, as well, the creative process.

I first learned about cultivating response in Aikido, where you turn your opponent’s force of energy back on them. You practice responding in ways that pre-empt your natural instincts to flee, flight or fold. It requires a translation of a force of energy into equilibrium and equanimity. Mars energy has strong directionality and he is the quintessential leader. Tango requires a strong lead. 

There is an intimate, yet not necessarily personal exchange in Tango, and within that schema the designated leader cannot function without a responsive follower. Between good dancers the lead and follow can switch back and forth. A powerful leader demands to be met toe to toe.  I will use the masculine pronoun for the leader and Mars in this context of tango.

Let’s suppose that you know that you are on Mars’ hit list and your life is due to be shaken up good. You are scheduled for disaster; loss of job, home or loved-one. Instead of waiting around, I invite you to text Mars with the invitation to meet you this evening at a local Milonga, a tango dance event. 

You put on a little black dress and head out. Arriving at the dance, the lights are low, the band is tuning up. You take off your coat and sit down to put on your dance shoes. From across the room you can feel someone who demands your eye. When you look up you immediate recognize Mars in the guise of a tangero. It could be the rake of his fedora, or the crease of his pants, the shine of his shoes, whatever reason, you have no doubt. In Tango protocol you agree to dance from across the room. You nod your acceptance to his invitation and he starts across the dance floor.

There are a few things that you need to understand before he arrives. The follower decides how close to embrace. You are on your own with that one. In a loose embrace you have your own vertical axis to keep balanced, but in a close embrace, although you both have responsibility for your own balance, you create an axis between you. You both lean into each other to form a triangle with your feet at the base. What each of you do greatly affects the other.

An essential understanding in the dojo, zendo, studio and dance floor is that it is not about you. You are merely a conduit. How well you do does not add to or diminish from who you are. In other words the more ego that you have invested the harder it is. Stay out of the analytical mind and in your body.

As Mars offers you his hand you stand up. Mars will take you just out of the current of dance which is a counter clock flow. Before the music starts he will test your mettle by rocking you slightly from side to side, and you will change your weight from foot to foot as directed. This will determine your dance. It will give him information of how responsive you are to his lead. He will see how you keep and regain your center axis or the axis between you, and how quickly you respond to change of direction. Do you need a two by four upside the head or the slightest movement? As leader his mission is to make you look as good as possible, by bringing out your highest capabilities, but of course he must have an assessment of your capabilities. Good here can mean elegant, sexy, cool or whatever is your expression. Mars will of course challenge you, as he does in all aspects of life. 

Tango is a walking dance, he will be facing forward and you will mostly go backwards as you move around the floor. The other dancers will greatly affect his choice of turns or pauses and what degree of embellishments are possible. Your job is to stay out of your head, trust your instinct and use mistakes to learn.

As you move around the dance floor it is important that you fully understand with whom you are dancing.  In spite of Mars’ bad PR of destroying things, he is not about endings. Mars energy is about beginnings, about becoming--- forward movement. Think about your last meeting and you may see the new beginnings that were created.

This three minute song can be a moment or a life time. And I hope that you are willing to dance out the next two or three song that are part of the set. If you inadvertently say thank you, you will be taken to your chair and in that case you will miss the opportunity to experience being. But whatever you decide to do, if you really engage with everything that you have, you will sit down a different person than when you first stood up.

It is not really a question of do you want to tango with Mars, but how will you tango with Mars, because in life Mars will engage you. Only you can decide the how. I hope this might assist you in your next encounter with Mars, for surely you will be encountering Mars.         

                                                                                                         

                                                                                                            Majio                                                                               

Lady Ragnell of the Art World

Stories carry the wisdom and follies of our everyday life. They convey the patterns of destruction and acts of heroism, which frame our dreams and nightmares. If the universal archetypes that populate these stories do not change over time then change must come in an evolution of our perspectives for they surely are psychologically updated. A spell in traditional fairy tales is a metaphor for constriction to a limited pattern where the life energy cannot flow. Those under the spell often do not recognize it as in the spell of materialism cast over much of contemporary Western art and the Western artist. In a story from the King Arthur legends, Lady Ragnell, can be viewed as a central archetype for the artist of our day.

Our lady has been placed under a magical spell by Sir Grommer to live her life as a gruesome hag.  It is also Sir Grommer who meets the young King Arthur, defenseless, in the forest and threatens to take his life if he fails to agree to return to the forest, unarmed, in one year's time with the answer to a perplexing riddle: "What do women really want above all else?"  Failing miserably in his quest for the answer to the riddle, he reluctantly returns to the forest to meet his fate when he encounters the Hag, who offers to save the King, by answering the riddle, but only in exchange for her marriage to one of King Arthur's knights. The King, facing certain death, reluctantly agrees to her proposal, and the Hag provides him with the answer. The answer, of course, is correct and important, but all the elements of the myth are equally crucial. ”Woman” here refers to the Yin principle of receptivity, intuition and connection to spirit, which is critical in the creative process. The masculine principle, the Yang, is the initiatory principle and both of them can be positive for wholeness and health or negative for destruction.

Why and by whom a spell is cast is extremely significant in these legends which provides a map to the human psyche. It is said in the story that she was put under the spell because a powerful knight took a dislike to her ‘quick will.’ It seems she knew exactly what she wanted and because of that Sir Grommer changed her from a lovely young woman in her prime into an aging, warty, stooped, foul smelling old woman who drooled through her rotting teeth. We have to assume that ‘quick will’ in terms of creative process is different for the Yin and the Yang. Quick willed for the Yang in the artist may be knowing the art market, having a finger on the pulse of public response, and so on. Quick willedness of the feminine, which can aggravate the patriarch, is a different way of knowing, and does not always yield a viable product that the masculine can utilize.

Lady Ragnell in the form of the Hag is the Yin principle tied and bound from her vital impulses, her source; all those things that protect, nurture and allow the natural energy of her ‘quick will’ to flow. She knows the answer to the riddle that can save the King and the Kingdom because she is living it. She bargains her answer to marry Sir Gawain, the knight in the Kingdom with the highest integrity, because this is her only hope of breaking the spell. She is delivered to the marriage altar and then to his bedchamber because she supplies the solution to the riddle that no other woman in the Kingdom can furnish. The one thing that women (artist) want above all else is . . .sovereignty. 

As we well know from the dramatic illustration in Communist Russia and China, the artist cannot be a mouth piece of the state, or anything or anyone else. The artist must have his or her autonomy, just as the masculine principle within the artist must trust and respect the feminine principle. Lady Ragnell, as the Hag, is the dark shadow of the artist who is constrained by the need to please, as well as rebel against outside influences, either way she loses her own authentic impulses. She needs to enlist her own masculine self to protect, trust and value what she knows to be right.

Lady Ragnell’s spell has two parts. The first is the easiest broken in all of us — but it is what causes us to live a dual life. When Sir Gawain kisses her on their wedding night she becomes her beautiful, powerful self, but, like us, she cannot easily maintain this shape without slipping back into her disempowered self. She asks him whether he wants her fair by night in the bedchamber or fair by day in court. This is a hard question for the masculine, particularly in societies where an external feminine symbol reflects back their own masculine power through beauty. Sir Gawain, understands the dilemma, and finally concludes that she must decide, and that he will respect whichever decision she makes. With this declaration the second part of the spell is finally broken.

What do you want as a woman or as the feminine in the artist? If you could only have one thing, do you want success in your inner life or in your outer life? Artists are acknowledged for riding the roller coaster between public and private life. Even as Sir Gawain's answer breaks the second spell for Lady Ragnell, we well know that the twisted, decaying Hag form who restricts the vital energy flow will be constantly lurk in the shadows. If public and private life exists separately from each other, there will always be fragmentation. The artist in us all wants to flourish and needs to be seen, above all, by our own selves for who we are.

It is easy to identify with our appearance or, for an artist, with how our work is received in the world. Women, in particular, are trained to perceive self as a projected image, rather than being the embodiment of creative forces. Healing of the first part of the curse is liberating, but it leads to the second kind of fragmentation. Buddhism speaks of the flash of insight that comes when you see how both the Maiden and the Hag are illusions. This awareness is initiated and supported by the masculine principle that enables the unification. We cannot integrate the fragmentation through the will or by techniques, only through love and conscious awareness of unconditional acceptance, like Sir Gawain in his value for the higher cause of the Kingdom. He resists relating to the Hag through a vision of perfection, a vision that would be crippling to them both, instead he creates a more encompassing vessel. This kind of vision and dedication is what artists need to claim personal sovereignty.

     Majio