Visual Awareness

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed.

Gerard Manley Hopkins 1844-1889 (God's Grandeur)

When I stumbled over the piece of writing that you are about to read at the bottom of the page, I was sitting in one of the most beautiful safari lodges in Southern Namibia. Deep within the Namib Desert, the oldest desert in the world, I looked out onto its huge red dunes and flat valley floors which make up the world-famous view of the Namib.

I was numb. I was blocked. My joints felt arthritic in response to a left brain in battering mode.

My common reaction to this state of affaires is to withdraw myself from circulation for however long it takes for the clouds to pass. Sometimes hours, sometimes days. I used to figure this was the kindest thing for everyone! Very used to going into battle alone with my emotions, this had been a learned, conditioned response for as long as I can remember.

But this time around I was on a business trip. I was travelling with a Namibian colleague and we had a busy schedule of safari lodges to visit. So, I was doing the best to put on a brave face, keep up the external persona, with the best smile that I could muster.

This is ok to a degree of course. On one level it keeps you safe, keeps you operating in life. But, on another level it leads to isolation. If followed through time and time again, month after month, year after year, the way that you are experiencing yourself ceases to exist in the eyes of others. (Thank you FM for this inspired phrase)! There is a gulf between the unreality of your internal world (that you buy into as real) and how the world relates to you.

What confusion this can cause (!) and how relieved I was to have found an avenue, in the form of Friday nights at Innergy, to bring the two, very slowly, in increments, together.

In the meantime, back at the ranch, whilst the gap still exists, and when acceptance is, at times, elusive, the questions arise; How do I break the downward spiral? How do I free myself from the block when it occurs?

Often it can be as simple as a kind word, a glance of understanding in the eye of another, a smile, a hug, a yoga class, the touch of an animal's fur, a swim in the sea with the light sparkling off the water or in this particular case......a piece of writing.

Namibia, the land of big skies and raw natural landscape, is full of photographers.

As I read, I felt a resounding YES. I was impressed by the clarity of the words. It said what already lay unsaid in my heart. It allowed me to feel more 'joined'. Something shifted immediately, the blood was back in my cheeks as I connected with 'me' - without the negative, without that pesky veil of maya.

In that moment I was away, charting my relationship to Namibia in the form of images. It gave me a way back to life again from the unreality of a closed fear, (F-E-A-R - False Evidence Appearing Real as they say in the Kabbalah tradition) to the real world of open communication and love. Our natural state.

When 'stuck', communicating and relating are often the two things that I least feel like doing and yet, in my experience, both can bring you a little closer to healing.

This blog is about communicating the soul through images and, as it is my nature, occasionally adding a few words to the pictures too.

In the weeks that follow, technology allowing, Namibia will begin to unfold....I hope you will enjoy.

Om Shanti

Thank you Freeman Patterson for putting these thoughts onto paper..

Visual awareness is not a certain thing. And, when it develops, it often develops slowly, nurtured gradually by a collection of important life experiences. We can no more learn how to see well quickly and easily than a ballerina can learn how to dance well in a few days or weeks. Seeing takes effort, and productive effort takes time. Whether we hope to be photographers, sculptors, painters or to work in any of a range of other visual media, we must turn our serious attention to the craft of design and to the tools and techniques of the particular medium. The discipline of craft necessarily precedes the achievement of art.

Our parents and friends can encourage our desire to see by showing their interest and delight in the varying colours and tones of trees and grasses, dunes and rocks, cars and buildings, birds' wings and brushed silk, a black baby's cheeks and a white octogenarian's hands. Fortunate are the children who receive such a gift. However, this is only the beginning for aspiring visual artists.

Seeing - or blindness - has as much to do with the soul as it does the eyes. It is entirely possible to have perfect vision and to see nothing important. To see well requires looking deeply inside as much as intensely outside. It means opening ourselves up to health and creativity, to the possibility of wholeness. Only then can the very best occur.

If we photograph what we see, we must never forget that the camera lense always looks both ways - at the subject matter and the photographer. Unconsciously as much as consciously we write our own life stories both by what we choose to photograph and how we choose to photograph what we have selected. We do not always need to add words. The pictures are entirely sufficient to tell the world who we are.

By FREEMAN PATTERSON
http://www.freemanpatterson.com/