Friday, June 24, 2016

coy mist





                               The Living Calendar

1 Imagine a cage with a calendar inside. Why is it there? Attempt to remove the calendar from the cage. What happens?

2 Once you have the calendar in your hands, take note of your surroundings for the first time. What is this place? You see someone who is painting over surfaces here. Describe this scene. What are they painting and why? What else is going on here?  

3 Find a spot to stop and examine the calendar. Describe this calendar and what it contains.

4 Now, you are going to plant the calendar in the ground as if it were a seed. Choose a spot, dig hole and place the calendar in the ground. From the calendar grows a portal tree. The leaves of this tree are like portals, and to stand in the presence of this tree is to feel transported. This is a slow growing tree. Over time, continue to return to this spot to revisit the tree. Describe this tree and why you keep revisiting it over the years.

5 Years later, once the tree has become fully grown, you visit it and discover that it has produced fruit: new calendars. Picking one of these, sit down in the shade of the portal tree and begin reading through this new calendar. Describe the new calendar and what it contains. This time instead of just reading it, you edit and rewrite some of the things you see here.

6 As you are sitting under the portal tree, reshaping the calendar to adjust its focus, someone approaches and joins you. Who are they? Read them the new calendar. How do they respond? Give them the calendar, passing possession of it on to them. What do they do with it?

7 The next time you return to the tree you find it has fallen and become uprooted, giving way to some kind of opening that you can literally pass through. You have a sense that if you go through this opening, your memories of past experiences that were key triggers in shaping who you are today will be erased. That being said, describe this opening and why you ultimately decide to go through it. What kind of experience do you have going through it? What kind of environment do you find on the other side?


8 Within this environment, you come upon a set of mirror cubes. Pick up one of these and examine it. Each side of each cube shows you a different version of yourself in a different reality. In addition, each cube has a single black side that is made of sound, which you can hear/feel vibrating. Explain this marriage of sound and matter. Hold the cube up to your mouth and speak into the vibrating black side. Tell the story of your timeline of growth as you wish it could have been. Tell how your reimagined calendar is laid out. When you are done speaking, listen to the black side and hear the voice of another you from another reality whisper back its own reimagined history.

9 Imagine the person you would trust to give this cube to. Suddenly that person enters the scene. What happens? What kind of exchange do you have that leads to you giving them the cube? After giving them the cube, they beckon you to follow them and they lead you on a winding path through this new environment. What do you see along the way?

10 Finally they arrive at a door and stop. Describe the door. What do they tell you about the door?
Regardless of what they tell you, this is a door into the moment. Going through this door will cause you to walk in on yourself where you are now. In fact, you can imagine a door in the space where you now are with two people talking on the other side, one of whom is yourself. How will you receive them if your other self decides to step through the door? Or, switching back to the other side, what fresh perspective on this moment will you bring to yourself? As you pass through the door, allow yourself to completely discard your expectations and everything you were just told about the door.

11 Pass through the door and into the space where you are now, but find it to be completely empty and silent. Stop a moment and listen to this silence. Now imagine centered in your body a point with three lines coming off it in different directions. This is a realignment tool which you can use to adjust and manipulate the dimensions of this place alone. How do you use the realignment tool? In what way do you reshape your environment? What are the limits of what this tool can do? After you have finished reshaping the space, what new purpose does it serve?







 Interpretations for The Living Calendar:

1 How you remove the calendar from the cage represents how you help others tell their story

2 The location where the cage is placed and how the surfaces here are being painted over is representative of an environment or circumstances where you feel invisible, without needs or responsibility.

3 The calendar and what it contains represents your assumptions about where you are headed in life that you are starting to call into question.

4 The portal tree represents even older assumptions about where you are headed that you didn’t even realize existed that are beginning to come to the surface.

5 How you rewrite the new calendar represents your approach to balancing your goals with the goals of others.

6 Your interaction with person who joins you who you pass on the new calendar to represents that part of you that knows what you really intend to do.

7 Going through the fallen tree, having your history erased, and the environment you find on the other side represents a memory of a personal victory that you have forgotten. This would be a small but important victory that you may not have even realized happened, such as a moment of subconscious realization, or a moment when an important idea silently crystalized.

8 Whispers into and out of the mirror cube represent your approach to sustaining collaboration with others over a long period of time.

9 Who you give the cube to and what you see along the way when you follow them represents what you feel will really result from collaboration.

10 The door and what you are told about it represents the thing or belief that is holding you back from taking the next step, the next milestone in your personal calendar.

11 How you alter your personal space and the purpose you give this space represents your understanding of equality.










                         Lessons in Light 


1 Imagine a crooked house that is pitch black inside. It is perfectly sealed so that no light can accidently seep in. One of the rooms inside this dark house is an art studio. Describe this house, the studio, and its purpose.

2 Inside the lightless studio is a creature or animal made of smoke who is sculpting things out of luminous gas. What is he making? Who is he making them for?

3 What happens to these forms when the smoke creature opens the sealed windows to allow sunlight in? How do these gas sculptures change in response to the light?

4 When the studio becomes flooded with light, the form of the smoke creature dissipates leaving the studio filled with smoke. Now the doors to the studio open and guests enter. Who are they and why are they here? How do they respond to what they find in here?

5 Upon examining the sculptures closer, they see that they are covered in some kind of symbols. This is the language of light. Describe these symbols. What is the purpose of this language of light?

6 The smoke that fills the room begins to stir and a voice is heard. This is the voice of the Sun who will now engage his students (the people who entered the room) in a lesson in speaking the language of light. Imagine and describe the voice of the Sun. What does the lesson consist of and how is it taught?

7 The Sun teacher now leads the class in the following imagination exercise titled Lamp Makers.
The students make themselves comfortable and listen as voice of the Sun guides them through these images:
Visualize a potter working at the potter’s wheel. The clay vessel that he or she is making is meant to be illuminated from the inside so it is covered with patterns of holes. What are they making and for what purpose? What topics are they thinking about while they work?
Visualize a weaver at the loom. He or she is making fabric lanterns that are illuminated from the inside by electric lights. What are they making and for what purpose? What subjects are they thinking about while they do this?
Visualize a glass blower at work by the furnace. The glass artwork that he or she is making is to be illuminated from the inside. What are they making and why? What ideas are they having as they create?
 
Repeatedly run these scenes in a looping cycle, shifting from one into the next, into the next, and back again, faster and faster and faster until they start to blend together into one scene. What is this one scene? What is their one creation? What idea is now resonating in their one mind?


Interpretations for Lessons in Light:

1 The dark studio in the crooked house: represents unrealized intentions, or a reoccurring situation that causes you to become out of touch with your true intentions.

2 The smoke creature sculpting luminous gas and who it is making the sculptures for: represents how you respond once you realize your true intentions.

3 What happens when the sunlight is let in: represents a process of personal growth you went through in the past. If you revisit your memories of this time, because of how you’ve changed since then, you will discover a new aspect of it that you didn’t see before that ties into what you are going to do next.

4 Who enters the room and how they respond to what they find: represents the things you do that are almost enough to bring your ambition to fruition but not quite.

5 The symbols on the sculptures. The language of light: represents your beliefs toward challenging transformations.

6 The voice of the sun and its lesson: represents how you forgive yourself for the thing you always fail at.

7 What the lamp makers are thinking after they have been spun together: represents your understanding of the implications of fusing ideas together.







                          The First Field

1 Allow yourself to meditate on the idea of beginnings. What is about to begin? What is approaching on the horizon? What is something that is not understood now but will soon become understood? As you allow this, visualize a field and the sky above it. Describe the relationship of the sky in contrast to the field.
2 Place yourself somewhere in the sky above the field. How are you supported in the sky? Are you floating or standing on some kind of platform? What are you doing up here? Look for some means of getting from the sky to the ground. How do you get to the ground?
3 On the way down you encounter something or someone that is traveling past you on its way up. Who or what is it and what do you do?
4 Once on the ground you walk until you reach a spot where you buried something many years ago. You dig up some kind of object that emits light. What is it?
5 You use the light to scan the field. Wherever this light falls it illuminates invisible things. What do you see revealed?
6 The main thing you are looking for is the remains of an abandoned house. Where do you find the house when you finally spot it and what does it look like? Go inside the house and describe the interior which changes in response to the light. In what way does it change?
7 In your search of the house you encounter a half human half animal hybrid. What is this hybrid being a combination of and how does it react to you? What do you do? After this initial exchange you sit down and eat a meal together. Describe this scene.
8 At some point in your conversation you steer onto a different topic, beginning a dialogue that explores three questions. Who are the people that used to dwell here on this land? Will they ever return? Why or why not?
10 After this discussion the creature gives you a map marked with a very odd symbol showing where the people went. Describe the map and the odd symbol. Understanding your intention to journey to this place, the hybrid presents you will additional items that will be useful to you on your journey. What are these items?
11 You leave the house and find some kind of airship waiting for you. Onboard the airship are other occupants. What is their response toward you like? What is their purpose aboard the ship? Board the ship and go back into the sky.


Interpretations for The First Field:
1 The field and the sky represents how you make peace with role expectations.
2 The means of getting from the sky to the ground represents how you let go of desire.
3 The person or thing you encounter on the way down represents the part of your personality that you have let go because it does not serve you, and by doing so you have set it free.
4 The buried object that emits light represents a part of your original purpose, your original life task/agreement that you have strayed from but are now at last getting back to.
5 The invisible things you see in the field are echoes of possible life paths that are not true representations of your natural core self, but still through contrast reveal some mystery about your natural self you have yet to tap into.
6 The abandoned house represents where you last left off when you veered from your original purpose. How the house changes in response to the light hints at what caused you to veer from your original purpose.
7 The hybrid represents your approach to making predictions.
8 The people that used to dwell in this land represent the first people you encountered, not in reality but through your imagination and dreams, that set examples for behavior that strongly influenced who you are now. Whether or not they are projected to return pertains to just that, the possibility of you literally tapping into that energy again.
9 The map, its odd symbol, and the items for your journey represent your early imagination; the imagination of your child self.
11 The airship and its occupants represent the nature of the support you receive on your journey within this lifetime.
















                                                Making Stars

1 Imagine that you are a chameleon in a terrarium that has been left in a deserted outdoor area at night. As the chameleon, you are waiting for something. Describe the terrarium and the location surrounding it. What are you waiting for?
2 At some point, people in stilt costumes approach from the darkness. How do they enter the scene? Who are they and what is their background?
3 These people reach down into the terrarium and place their hands on you, turning off each of your five senses one by one. As you are plunged into the blackness of sensory deprivation, how do you handle this? Describe this experience.
4 After you have been submerged in blackness, you begin to see light that is not of the senses. Attempt to describe this paradoxical light.
5 Once you have grasped a concept of this light, you can restore your vision by painting over the blackness in these new liminal shades. Imagine that you are painting on a black wall with luminous paint, depicting images of the world as you remember it when you still had your senses.
6 As you continue painting across a broader expanse of these dark walls, expanding further and further down unknown corridors, you begin to encounter other painters doing the same thing. They are people who lost their senses and are now repainting their own environments. Eventually the edges of their paintings and yours touch and bleed over into one another. If you want, you can choose to work together on a combined mural.
7 After you have covered most of the surfaces in luminous paintings, allow the interior space of these corridors and chambers to be filled with an explosion of tiny stars. How do you create these individual points of luminance? Now that the space is filled with stars, walk around with the other painters you have met here and admire what you have created.
8 Lastly, you unexpectedly encounter toy blocks that you did not see before. Describe these blocks, how they are arranged, and what you do next.







Interpretations for Making Stars:
1 Your chameleon self and what you are waiting for embodies the thing that is your light in the dark.
2 The people in stilt costumes embodies your readiness to accept the finality of igniting this light, knowing that once you choose light, the decision is irrevocable, you can never go back.   
3 How you handle sensory deprivation embodies your willingness to shift onto alternate life paths.
4 How you conceptualize the light that is not of the senses embodies how you feel about miracles.
5 How you repaint your world embodies the becoming reality that is nearly about to manifest. It is so close as to be only a heartbeat away, and at same time it is infinitely far away, absolute in its impossibility.  
6 Your encounters with the other painters in the dark embodies your beliefs about vulnerability.
7 How you create the points of luminance embodies the source your creativity originates from.
8 The toy blocks embody your ideas about life that are not fully formed and never will be and don’t need to be.



Saturday, June 4, 2016

acorn



  Here are five examples of what simple active imagination/interpretive symbology compositions can look like.
  I’ve seen these kinds of prompts before for use in therapy contexts, but it seems the basic format can be applied neutrally for creative expression, like something more akin to a genre of poetry or a koan.

Having tinkered around with this basic format a little, I am presenting these without any description or explanation for how this kind of imagination engagement is supposed to work in order to give you the opportunity to form your own ideas about what kind of mechanisms are at work here.

I intend to write more on this topic in the future, but for now these are just some examples showcasing the format. Think of it as sort of a literary tech demo.



Tree House at Night

Imagine and describe the following things:

A tree house at night.
A means of getting up into the tree house.
What the interior of the treehouse looks like and who, if anyone, is present there with you.

Imagine and describe the following things inside the tree house, including how you and whoever may be with you interact with each of them.

A Piano
Light reflecting off of a CD or numerous CDs.
A projector that is projecting something onto curtains swaying in the breeze in front of an open window. 
A paint can with paint that attracts fireflies
A jar of marbles
A mailbox somewhere within or outside the treehouse. Investigate something that is delivered to the mailbox by a hawk.

Interpretations:
The treehouse represents your orientation towards being yourself
The means of getting up into the treehouse represents your spacious self, your orientation towards expansion. 
The interior of the tree house represents your attitude about allowing others to be themselves
The piano represents how you make peace
The reflecting CD or CD’s represent the ease with which you inhabit your personality
The projection on the curtains represents something your higher mind is trying to tell you
The paint that attracts fireflies represents the means through which you adapt to new social environments
The jar of marbles represents how satisfied you are with your personality, if you like who you are and why.  
What the hawk delivers to the mailbox represents the part of yourself you want to broadcast as widely as possible






Corn Maze

Imagine yourself now inside a corn maze. Describe the atmosphere of this place and how you feel about being here. 
As you roam this maze from time to time you encounter some object of interest in between stretches of empty pathways. Describe each of the following things including what context it appears in, and how you and any others present interact with them.

An ice fountain
A hologram of a bird’s nest
A lucha libre scarecrow
A dead end with an archery target
An office building constructed of bales of hay
A wild animal lost in the maze
A mummy in a coffin
Corn in chairs 

Interpretations

The corn maze: How you face the unknown
The ice fountain: How you face the irreconcilable and conflicting points of view that are completely incompatible.
The hologram of the birds nest: Your relationship to the universe
The lucha libre scarecrow: Your willingness to defend your beliefs in the face of uncertainty.
The archery target in the dead end: How you react to threats
The office building made out of hay bales: Willingness to find excitement in the mundane, because it brings humility
The animal lost in the maze: How you master your fears
The mummy in the coffin: How you handle failure
The corn in chairs: How you handle loss








Haunted Art Gallery

Imagine yourself now visiting an art exhibition inside a haunted gallery. Describe this place and how you and any others present feel about being here. Describe their interactions with the art and each other.

As you walk this gallery you encounter the following works of art on display. Each piece on display is haunted by a specific ghost. Describe each piece and the ghost that inhabits it, as well as how you and any others are reacting as they view it.

A pond with death masks
A painting of a battle scene
A statue of a hare
A globe of the earth hanging from a noose
A Tesla coil next to the globe in the noose. What happens when the Tesla coil shoots off multi colored lightning that strikes the globe?
An empty frame with spider webs and description
A collage of glitching cellphones
A broken window decorated with old love letters



   Interpretations

The haunted gallery: Something you think would never happen but how you would respond if it did.
The pond with death masks and its ghost: Value of the past. The lessons you learn from history.
The painting of the battle scene and its ghost: The value of the horrific, its purpose in existence, and what is revealed by it.
The statue of the hare and its ghost: How you cheat at the rules of life.
The globe in the noose and its ghost: What the end of the world will be like. How the world will end, or if it can at all.
What happens when multicolored lightning strikes the globe and how the ghost of the globe changes: How you feel about open contact with non-human intelligences. 
The empty frame with webs and a description and its ghost: How you make peace with the things you will never have the means to create. The value of the things you are unable to communicate
The broken window decorated with old love letters and its ghost: How you believe you can endure through aging.




Riding the Lazy River at the Water Park

Begin by imagining yourself walking through a water park. Describe this environment including details about general atmosphere, weather, time of year, what the rides are like, what the people are like, are you alone or with a group, etc.

You arrive at the line for the lazy river. Describe this. How crowded is it? How long do you wait?

When you reach the end of the line, you see that you begin the river by going down a tube slide. Describe the tube slide and your descent down it.

At the end of the slide you spill out into a river. Describe this new environment as you float down it.

As you continue on, the river carries you through a display of fake ruins. Describe.

Along the way as you are floating through the fake ruins, you reach a point where there is a large crack in the wall that is sucking in water. Describe.

Going through this crack, enter a concrete passage filled with pipes. Describe.

After going through the concrete passage, you find yourself swept down into turbulent rapids that happen to be crawling with many snails. Describe. 

At the end of the snail rapids you end up in another river that you can casually drift down. Describe.

Along the way you encounter a variety of things in the water. Describe the following things as you encounter them, including how you and others interact with them.

A robot in an inner tube
Underwater clocks
A floating phonograph


  Interpretations

The water park: what you want to leave behind for future generations
The line: The confusion you have no intention of stopping. Purposeful ignorance.
The tube slide: Trust
The river: your ability to share and communicate your experiences
The fake ruins: How you view the imaginations of others
The crack in the wall: Readiness to discover a new strength
The concrete passage with pipes: your orientation towards connecting people on a specific task
The snail rapids: your ability to pass through danger
The river you emerge into: how you think others would react to hearing the stories of your experiences.
The robot in an inner tube: how you act when you don’t want to work
The underwater clocks: How you delegate tasks to others
The floating phonograph: How you want to be appreciated for what you do.







Martian Schoolhouse

Imagine now a schoolhouse on mars. Describe.
Within this schoolhouse imagine and describe the following things, including how you and any others present interact with and respond to them:

A diorama
A hamster cage
A blue chalkboard
A Galileo thermometer
A panel of numerous light switches. Play with the switches. What does each switch do?
A window
A teacher and students building a puzzle
A battery printed with a map of mars.

Interpretations

The schoolhouse on mars: The part of you that belongs on the fringes of existence.
The diorama: How you imagine society could one day become.
The hamster cage: What you get out of simple tasks.
The blue chalk board: How you apply simplicity in the face of urgency.
The Galileo thermometer: Your Ideals of government.
The light switch panel and what the switches do: The secrets that you don’t know are already known to others.
The window and what you see through it: Your feelings about the deep future
The puzzle that the teacher and students are building: What will result from unified social groups.
The battery with a map of mars: What is required to carry you into the future.