THE ARMCHAIR DREAMER

“It’s a safe bet that anyone who’s spent a prolonged amount of time looking at a painting—or failing that, can recall the Seurat scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off—can recognize the meditative power of art. But several artists have taken this idea further, building entire environments meant to help viewers experience deep serenity or contemplation. From giant saltwater tanks to secluded Appalachian outposts, these nine works provide space to guide in focused meditation.” Read full article at link below – (this article has been curated by the Armchair Dreamer)

Notes from the Armchair Dreamer:

Having a place to go in your imagination can greatly enhance your work.

The article shows beautiful and sometimes mysterious places for imagination work. We can develop our own artsy places by:

-Finding them in our community – What building fasciantes you? Is there a special place where you can go and be?  Is there a nature area that strikes you as super cool?

-Use our imagination to remember (visualization) a cool place we have been or imagine (create something new in your mind’s eye) a special place well suited for imagination, contemplation, and meditation.

Take a look at the photos….

Source: From Kusama to Turrell, 9 Artists Who Made Perfect Spaces for Meditation

This type of post is what I call journey writing. Instead of writing an article at the end of a process, in this case reading this book, journey writing posts allow me to add comments as I go along. Sometimes my comments will encompass an entire chapter. Other times, I get to linger on my journey and write more deeply about a passage or two.

At the end of this journey, I write my summary which may include deleting my entries, rearranging them, or keeping them all. Please join me now on my journey through a great classic of visualization-imagination-dreaming literature.

Day One:
I was shocked to see (in the foreward), that in the first three years after the publication of Applied Imagination, more than 100,000 copies had been sold. Although the popularity of this book fell off in the 1960s, I assume that at least half a million copies of this book are out about in the United States. I found mine in a heavily stocked used bookstore (Chamblin Bookmine, Jacksonsville) and it can be found at online booksites….It has been revised a few times but does not have a recent treatment.

Our Unconscious is always churning along, getting inputs from the outside, from our body and mind, and doing its own thing mainly quietly in the background.

We can make the Unconscious more visible by simply asking questions and receiving whatever the Unconscious wants to show us at that moment. The process is simple, but we have to be flexible to simply receive, and here is the hard part, be open to the fact that we frequently can’t explain why one thing came up and others did not.

Enough talk; give it a try now.

Step 1: At a time of your choosing when you know you can focus on what you are doing and what it means, simply ask/instruct yourself:

-Show me something important
-What do you want me to see right now?
-What will tomorrow look like?
-What is just below the surface that you can show me?

Take what you get. Don’t explain it away as: “Of course, this came up now because I had been….” Drop the tendency to claim credit and responsibility for everything that pops up in your mind.  Unless you consciously, and I mean very consciously, constructing imagery (doing visualization), then whatever comes up is being served to you by your Unconscious.

Again, for me, the Unconscious is broadly defined as that which runs outside of our control but responds to our questions and which runs outside of our control but responds to our questions and needs but can seem absent when we have not developed the capability to see/hear/feel it.

When stuff comes up, don’t claim credit for it. It came from somewhere largely out of your control, creatively wrapped with thoughts, feelings, and intuitions, and you are more a receiver than a maker in its presence.

Keep thinking and feeling about this whole thing until you start to feel comfortable with a presence over your shoulder. Yes, you are being watched, but it is also there to serve your needs.

There is the old view of meditation that one empties their mind, and then they are in nirvana. The assumption if we could quiet our mind, then nirvana would arise. The chattering of our worries, planning, the analysis was the enemy.

A brief time doing non-directive meditation reveals that much more enticing than mind chatter are the images that seep into our inner view. These are more than snapshots of some irrelevant street corner or some dreamy unknown possibility. Images become movies, complete with sound, touch, and emotional tone that draws us along. So immersive they are, we lose track of time, the environment around us, our original intent to mediate. We started with the goal of standing off, untouched by our mind, heart, and the world, and instead, we are wrapped up in its drama.

Scenes from the movie on the Buddha’s life, the Little Buddha, capture our struggle not to be overtaken by inner attractions when meditating. Of course, when we are working to increase imagination, we seek out such attractions and linger within them, but that discussion is for another time. Meditation can show us just as frequent and deep our inner imagery is, called or uncalled.

How to Practice Non-Directive Meditation to See Your Inner Movies

This approach comes from a practice called Conscious Mental Rest; at least how I apply it gives a close view of the mind at work.

1. Close your eyes and notice where your eyes naturally go when you let go and rest.

2. Feel the eye muscles and get to know the feeling.

3. Focus your awareness on your relaxing eyes and stop speaking to yourself. Quiet down.

4. Anytime chatter comes up, say “No” and make the chatter stop. Realize that you in search of more important things than your chatter at this moment.

5. Wait with as empty of mind as you can keep. Before long, when you have the chatter under control, and things are quiet, images will seep in. For a few minutes, treat them the same way as the chatter by saying “No” and not letting them go any further.

6. More and more images will show up. When you wish, let go of your opposition and submerge with some imagery.

7. Shake off this imagery and get back to having an empty mind.

This back and forth will show you prevalent imagery is in your mind, whether you are seeking it or not.