Blog #3A Imaginal Field: Refrigerator an Archetypal Portal

Anavami Center

Anavami CenterMark-marking this week continued to cultivate somatic intelligence as we access the Imaginal Field. By becoming-like other things, we expanded the felt-body response by cultivating vision into the unknown through imagination. It is an ancient portal that the age of reason has upstaged, and yet is alive in science and all the arts, music, performance, literature and every aspect of life that is carried to artistry, like architecture, landscaping, cooking, parenting or even politics.

This shape-shifting is becoming easier as we recognize how many ways we slip into each other and address other with empathy and compassion. It is an ancient way of learning, expanding perception and gaining new insights. Through Marking, we soften the demarcation of inside and outside, experiencing more and more how our defined physical body is really integral to a greater biosphere.

In the arts, an archetype creates an immediate sense of familiarity, without need to ponder why a character or event is understood. Archetype can be defined as an emotion, character type, or event that is notably recurrent across the human experience. Consider the archetypes of things around you. The chair that holds you for comfort and ease to do things like eat, work, converse or travel. It is a structure adapted to human body, a kind of a container to easily enter and leave. It has a history beyond function and culture denoting social status and even termination of life. Our inquiry is interested in the metaphor and poetics of archetypes in relation to the Imaginal Field.

Anavami CenterYour home, a safe private place, like a nest or a shell, is what Gaston Bachelard marks as the place to dream. In the introduction to his book, The Poetics of Space. Richard Kearney says, “Poetics, for Bachelard, is not a matter of anonymous floating signifiers; it signals a relational dynamic between beings, involving vital dimensions of intimacy, secrecy, desire and repose.” And later, “Imagination is at its best when it is incarnate, elemental, opening out into time and space, even when the space is elsewhere—before being, beneath being, beyond being, more than being.”

This week we explore universal archetypes as organizing principles, which unite physical matter with consciousness. We used opening a refrigerator door, that everyday utilitarian object, as the start for everyone to step into a unique Imaginal Field. My refrigerator contained containers, preserving sustenance and enjoyment. This container has a physical inner structure but also a metaphoric structure related for me to the psyche. I thought of how different the freezer compartment is from the shelves on the door or the vegetable bins. The archetype of refrigerator gave us a poetic fulcrum to investigate being in our marking.

 

Majio

 

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In-Bodying the Field Blog #2D: Reciprocity, Shape Shifting

Anavami Center

Anavami CenterShape-shifting may sound like an ethnographic study where a shaman transforms into animal, while in truth it is fundamental to our everyday experience. Shape-shifting allows for the ability to change form or identity at will. It is a part of spiritual practice, parenting, the arts and just about any aspect of life that is carried to artistry. Compassion and empathy are ways of shapeshifting.

My friend, who does large scale landscape says the way she chooses the plants is to run them through her body. As she imaginally becomes like the plants she can see if they are appropriate for the overall plan- how is she (as them) through the seasons, as size, as color, as movement. Closing our eyes is actually a powerful tool we have all used, where we have felt for a moment that we are there doing it ourselves-as we watched ice figure skating or dancing, swayed to music, “run” the track or thought through a difficult problem. Einstein mentions imagining as integral to his theory of relativity where he pictured himself riding a light beam had him gain insights that he was not able to gain through logic alone.

Anavami CenterIn-bodying Marking this week focused on becoming-like-something with which we had a natural affinity. The words of David Abram, Becoming Animal, set the stage for the exploration in this Imaginal Field:

“The boundaries of a living body are open and indeterminant more like membranes than barriers they define a surface of metamorphosis and exchange. The breathing, sensing body draws its sustenance and it’s very substance from the soils, plants and elements that surround it; it continually contributes itself, in turn, to the air to the composting earth…breathing the world into itself, so that it is very difficult to discern, any moment, precisely where this living body begins and where it ends.”

Abram’s words helped participant to have a body sense of those times throughout our lives when we have changed shapes, like playing as a child, intimate moments with a loved one and being absorbed in a book. In the current ecological crisis movies like Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life and Louie Schwartzberg’s Fantastic Fungi make it much easier to access feelings of belonging to the earth as never before.

The following marking pieces are explorations of being-like something else by participants in last week’s marking sessions. Many found a new sense of making-marks that stemmed from the new perspective. The experiences were varied but there is an embodied quality in the marks that shows through as sensing.

 
Majio
 
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Blog #2C In-Bodying the Field, Reciprocity: Flirting and Animism

Anavami Center
Anavami CenterThere is a way to explore animism in the practice Marking by flirting. The definition of animism we are using it is the essence of an object or entity. It is the spirit that energizes, even if at first it is beyond our sensorial recognition. Rather than a belief we are cultivating more an attitude or practice as we become comfortable and adept in the Imaginal Realm. You could also say that it is a poetic approach. Poetry of the plastic arts, music, literature and performance all seek deeper and meaningful connection through the intelligence of the imaginal realm. Through marking we explore the reciprocity of the life and essence of the field in relation to flirting.

Flirting can be subtle or blatant, social, sexual or aesthetic behavior involving spoken, written word or body language communicated in creative exchange by one person to another. We are extending it to what we usually think as objects. It suggests an interest in deeper relationship or simple unfolding amusement. In the spirit of Reciprocity notice what catches your attention, your eye, or perhaps kinesthetically, your body. Not just people or objects but how the light slants through the trees, the stance of a crow, a gesture that brings back a memory. Because flirting goes back and forth you need to give some space to whatever you are flirting with to respond. Let your imagination start an exchange. Give the encounter some leeway to play, transforming into new possibilities. Engage in the exchange for deeper relationship in the Imaginal Realm.

Anavami CenterSome approaches in Transpersonal Psychology and Process Therapy look at physical symptoms not as pathological but invitations for creative encounters that offer important insights and information. Arnold Mindell talks about symptoms as dreamings. They have important information for guidance for assimilation and integration. Flirting is a way to engage secondary process, which at first lies outside of our immediate awareness. If our true self is nonlocal, then anything that catches your attention is you, an edge of the bigger-you. Flirting goes back and forth, so take up the baton.
 
 
 
 

Majio  
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In-Bodying the Field Blog #1A: Introduction to In-Bodying Marking, Yielding: Gravity/ Levity with Bear of Gravité Poem

Anavami Center

Gravity/Levity-Yielding with Bear of Gravité Poem

Anavami Center, In-Bodying the Field explores not only marks, but entries into marking that for a practiced artist can redefine relationship to materials, images and the world. For the unpracticed it begins a fluid interaction with the world that in time will transform your present definition of art and your participation with it. For everyone it has an impact on how we see and perceive ourselves in the world. The work that arises from this kind of exchange is playful, adventurous yet ever risky. A challenge to most by not trying to be right or good. It flies in the face of the social norm and to most hits at the core of self-identification. At the same time, it opens new ways to witness creating.

Five years of implementing and exploring in this way I have found that I am much more aware of my relationship to everything in my world. I am not separate, nor could I be. Like many of you I have known this theoretically for a long time, but it has not been alive as it is now. I am not making art but participating in the creative exchange with which I am in relationship.

In this six-month series we start with the basics of marking making as yielding that orients us in space. Our mind/body is a fluid edifice of incessant motion that sources our capacity to mark in the greater field to which we belong. As we gain deeper insight, experience through exploration into markings it becomes clear that it is fundamental to all exchanges of information, communication and expression. Using our body, transmitter, receptor, and archive, as the template of the Universe…. the history of evolution of our planet is within us we will explore the template of the cosmos through what is most intimate to ourselves. The intention of this work is to discover our individual voice as we develop expression of the poetry as we live on the planet at this time.

Investigating gravity in our marking circle, both somatically and in terms of shapeshifting, a series of somatic experience with poems arose for me. The first being:

Blue Winged Bear, mixed medium, canvas, 3’ X 6’

Blue Winged Bear, mixed medium, canvas, 3’ X 6’

Bear of Gravité

the great Bear of Gravité

            sat on me this morning

                        like the Chinese ghost

who sits paralyzing you in your bed

I appealed to her blue feathered wings

            to flutter and lift into the air

                        but not the slightest movement

                                    nor levity

In time I found my way into her vast heart

            Huge—full of stars and planets

                        un-named things of color and darkness

 I did nothing there….

for a long time…. but feel into the space

and when I was no longer pinned to the bedsheets

I got up for a cup of tea…

Majio

 

Shadows, Markings, and Synesthesia

Anavami Center

Transformational Painting Circles

On Fridays 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Join us in large format acrylic painting sessions getting in touch which our instinctual side. Moving beyond the Skeleton Woman Story https://anavamicenter.com/transformational-painting/ to the medial partnership.

Marking Session at Studio & on Zoom:
In-Bodying the Field: 6 months of Mark-making from January

We are exploring mark-making as a medium to change how we have learned to perceive reality. Marking in this sense is an exchange, an interaction as marks must be received as well as made, whether on paper, a city road or in a conversation.

Books of Interest:

The Coddling of the American Mind, by Jonathan Haidt & Greg Lukianoff
This is a book for anyone who is confused by what’s happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live and work and cooperate across party lines.

Fabric of Wholeness: Biological Intelligence and Relational Gravity, Carol Agneessens, through experiential dialogues, draws us into the body to view the pulsating and vital interplay. She concludes that gravity is fundamental to the development of biological intelligence — the glue that holds together and organizes our fabric of wholeness.

Websites of Interest:

https://www.moralimaginations.com, collective imagining to increase radical kinship with the human and more-than-human worlds, present, past and future.

https://strangerworth.com
Paintings by Pamela Holmes

December Sidebar

Retreat 2022:

San Miguel de Allende Fall, accepting registration.

Shadows, Markings, and Synesthesia


Paper ‘mask’ used in monoprint

In Anavami Studio we see marking, not only as a foundation of the visual arts but as metaphor and at the same time an appearance of our relationship with the world. We are exploring mark-making as a medium to change how we have learned to perceive reality. Marking in this sense is an exchange, an interaction as marks must be received as well as made, whether on paper, a city road or in a conversation.

Our working definition of mark-making is leaving a residue or impression with movement or pressure. This can be any kind of physical trace, but also a mark can be left on one’s emotions, intellect or psyche. Marks are conduits of information as they are ways of interrelating not in the world but with the world. Our marks are informed by the very matrix in which we live. The greater field is alive, impressing on us as we in turn to press back leaving marks. There is a mutual yielding as well as a mutual learning, as we exchange information. This yielding is more than allowing. It requires an ability to give as well as receive. Just as in traffic sign, yield involves a slowing our trajectory in order to be aware of others movement and speed, which everything in the Universe has. It is a different dynamic to halt at a stop signs where you expect to take turns. The giving and receiving in mark-making as in traffic has consequences.


Monoprint using ‘mask’

I would also suggest that marks are not flat two-dimensional residue on a surface but more like your shadow stretching before you, deep blue on the asphalt. That shadow fills the space between you and the elongated mark staining the street. It is actually voluminous. When something enters the space between you and the pavement, a cat or fire engine, in the moment it is changed. Their light is disturbed. There is a vulnerability in the distance the shadow travels. There is a life force in that volume, a textural signature of its source. Like the mark it is porous, open to vicissitudes of the time and place. It could even be said to have an intelligence. There is more intelligence around us than we are like to recognize. In times of crisis an extended understanding of intelligence is valuable.

In Hidden Blessings, Psaris talks about life crisis, no matter the age as an opportunity to awaken. She goes on to say that the success of any life-crisis-transformation depends on our ability to allow the soul (ourselves) to evolve beyond the ego structure encasing it. Our ego is not only anthropocentric, judging intelligence and power as human based but also biocentric, projecting that only living things have consequence especially is they are human.


Print from folded ‘mask’

Just as habit does not recognize the volume of a shadow ego is blinded to the psychological function of its shadow, a metaphor and expanded perspectives. At this time in history, our world is in crisis with the need of sweeping new perspective. For most of us the best thing that we can do is tend our own garden, which in actuality calls for persistent courage to redefine our place in the world. Crisis asks for marks of a new order that stretch habits of identification. The ego’s shadow does not see what it is projecting on others without careful scrutiny. In shadow work we see how anything that riles us has much more to do with ourselves than the other. We can only see, literally and figuratively, the fullness of our shadow through imagination.

To tweak those perception that are so ingrained we need to cultivate the imaginal domain. It is much more a part of our life than we acknowledge. Dream worker, Jeremy Taylor described that space between conscious and unconscious as not-yet-speech-ripe. We know but it takes imagination to bring it to consciousness. The more that we call on the space between knowing and not knowing the more that it is available. In this province, as witnessed in any craft that reaches artistry, fundamental truths brought to vision. Marking is more than the flatness of streaks and strokes on a page. There is a qualitative difference between a shopping list or a poem.. And yet there are poems that are really shopping lists and shopping lists that are poem depending on how the imaginal is sparked.

Not imagination but the imaginal realm stretches our senses. In synesthesia, a neurological condition, information meant to stimulate one senses instead stimulates a different one altogether or several —music is seen in colors, architecture has a taste, or sound appears as shapes. We all have a little bit of this, for the channels are informing each other far beyond our expectations and habits. We expand our sensitivities in the imaginal, which adds another layer of information and relationship to how we exchange with our world. The volume of shadow, yielding as a way of encountering the world, the extended understanding of intelligence and crisis as opportunity are all ways of create by changing how we perceive reality.

(A mask is used in printing to block the ink from the plate to the paper. The shape of the mask was from the photograph of the shadows of two people standing together.)

 


These two diptychs incorporate pieces torn from the earlier prints as way of developing and finessing the image in collaboration with the field.

Majio