Context: The Sequel

The "Tao of Now" for my October What Shines newsletter is Context, and how, as Anais Nin observed, we see things not as they are, but as we are. Today I experienced another, literal, "frame of reference":

I'd wandered into a local art gallery, in part because a new client had mentioned his photography was being exhibited there. After finding his work, I continued to enjoy the other artists' creations ~ until I came to a canvas that appeared to have crumbling strips of white plaster pasted on a background, with a little blob of red in one corner. The price was $1350, and I shook my head in amazement. While I aim never to criticize art, as it's the epitome of personal preference, this looked like something a child might have done when bored.

I strolled to the entrance and saw a fellow I've seen here before; one of the exhibiting artists. We struck up a conversation, and I mentioned that, as usual, I loved seeing the new works on display, although there was one that I didn't understand. Something kept me from saying anything more judgmental. I was glad I'd obeyed my intuition when Bob revealed himself as the creator of the piece.

A recent transplant from Taos, New Mexico (a noted art colony) he explained that the white strips represent the dominant Caucasian culture — which is crumbling — and the red dot, Native Americans, whom we've dominated. All at once, like a trick cube, his work appeared brilliant, and I asked why he didn't include a brief Artist's Statement with the piece to help people understand his intent — even something as simple as "Anglo / Native American". But he wants it without training wheels, so to speak. Enigmatic, though quite powerful, once I had a context.

Where are you making assumptions because you're missing the proper context? It's a potent exercise for us to practice every day: staying open to new information that could completely shift our interpretation of what we think we see.

Beyond Visible Light

In order to stretch into the unknown, we must be able to imagine the unimaginable ~ like colors we've never seen. In my June newsletter, What Shines (now available as a trio of pdf eBooks, with a special bonus offer for June!), I wrote that it's "notoriously difficult to explore what we can't conceive, such as colors beyond the visible spectrum."

Yet Santa Fe glass artist Paul White, whose first spoken word was "light", responds that he's already gone there in meditation. So, what do colors we've never seen "look" like? Here's Paul's insight:

"In my mind's eye the colors have been somewhat velvety and more of the feeling of color. I'd say the colors are something like the dichroic glass I work with but deeper somehow. There was always a warmth to them."

According to my computer's dictionary, "dichroic" means "showing different colors when viewed from different directions, or (more generally) having different absorption coefficients for light polarized in different directions."

Intriguingly, I myself had been trying to imagine colors of a, well, different color ~ it had never occurred to me that the color could become multidimensional, changing hue according to perception and direction. This is precisely the kind of quantum leap we need to make as we "excavate the boulders of belief that cloud our consciousness," as I wrote in the newsletter.

Paul, thank you for your prismatic contribution to our collective evolution, refracting clarity!