The Tree of Life—a film by Terrence Malick

A visual journey, the movie travels back to before the beginning—blink and you will miss it, because nothing is nothing; the unknowable; the un-tellable story, not even darkness because light had yet to Become.  Flash!  Gases explode and the Universe is born.  Mother and Father are in crisis after they each receive telegrams.  A spiritual contemplation in a secular world, how, why would God be so indiscriminate?  Why, if faithfully mother prays for the safety and health of family does death come in such a cruel and merciless way?  Thy will be done.

The film starts out as Mother contemplates lesson of her rural youth.  You either follow the path of grace (she), or of nature.  Nature can be cruel and unforgiving.  Grace, the opposite—driven by compassion.  Either way, life is imperfect though.  Yet by choosing to live with Grace over Nature, we choose to temper ourselves, we choose wisely over following instincts.  The eldest son, distant from the father, resembles him during his budding youth.  Experimenting with vandalism, steals something from a neighbor and then is wrought with guilt and shame.

Malik’s ideas are that of a Realist.  His film’s perspective is decidedly non-relative.  A spiritual journey  is a human quest, and as much as it asks who or what is God, it asks who and what am I?  In the film Malik takes us only as far as we know, our journey is quite expansive, and this includes billions of years before we came along on the scene.  From the start of our Universe to the first signs of life on earth, through pre-historic times, and the birth of hominids—this process of birth, death, and new life indirectly tells us why we are here.  I say indirectly because  some of the more eloquent moments in the film are without words.  Malik ends The Tree of Life without a definitive; without cornering the nature of the universe, attempting to tame the wild nature of a 14 billion year process.  Spelled Kosmos (the original Greek spelling and definition) points to the sum total of reality which includes mind and spirit.  That is to say, both the knowable and unknowable.  The Tree of Life also ends with a fantasy.

This latest post is a reply to Maia Conty’s response to my first post:

Romantics, Hippies, and Hipsters; Three Cultural Movements, One Manifestation of God

Maia and I had the opportunity over the holidays to speak more about what the post-post modern or integral art movement might look like.  We both expressed a sincere desire to generate some authentic engagement over this matter, so please take part.

Maia’s Response:

“Douglas! …this is very interesting and valuable!I am particularly struck by two points you bring up; the first has to do with “reaction”. That this last phase, reaching right into our current post-modern predicament, has been defined by ‘reaction’ is a very useful perspective to be aware of when looking for what the next dynamic of Art would be fueled by.

Rather than reacting, would we artists be driven by ‘reaching upward’? How might we express, in our various mediums, a Higher We that constantly strives to reach higher?

The second point that jumped out at me is this idea that our next stage of development would include our own Being as part of it’s delivery (transcending myopic narcissism for a higher level of integrity and the artist including him or herself as part of the process).

This means that the example, the conduct, the delivery of the Artist would all demand that we show up as living embodiments of post-post modernism. This would speak to what a friend of mine recently noted – why is it that there are all these musicians who make some great music, but as soon as you talk to them or hear an interview with them we feel a big let down, because they reflect the typical post-modern laissez-faire vapidness.

I see this in my own development as an artist – that my lyrics have always been rich with the spiritual values of constant development, higher integrity, deeper contemplation to serve making a difference for the whole. I have long judged myself as weak for not delivering these powerful lyrics in the public-cultural arena they were designed to contribute and participate in. I have recently had the insight that the courage to deliver these kind of lyrics, and the capacity to BE them (non-dually) is actually a question of evolution – that evolutionarily the lyrics (the ideas) came before the ability to BE that. In this sense, my Art form is absolutely dependent on my spiritual development.”

My Reply:

Hello Maia! Responding to your two points,  reaching upward rather than reacting is a beautiful way of describing our artistic expression.  Certainly there is autonomy in the creative arts, however, I think that our autonomous position—if we choose—will have a centricity that is either narrow, or (and hopefully) more inclusive.  And if this is the case than I would say when we “react”, it is from this narrow focus (eg. conditioning; gender, ethnicity, class, or orientation, etc.), and the Higher We, well that might be something like approaching creativity from the most vast perspective you/we know of…. the ground of being.  That perspective, non-dual, will transcend all of the “eg’s” I mentioned.  Rather than reacting from our postmodern predicament, reaching upward would be responding to the entire process.  We’re responding to it right now!  We recognize the urgent need to transcend postmodernism (and all of its inherited pathologies) into post-postmodernism, into integral.  We recognize life as an evolving process.

The second point you mentioned is the next stage of development which could be tethering the entire process with the outcome.  Lets define the word Vapid—”offering nothing,” its synonym is “Lifeless”.  As an Evolutionary who has made a deep spiritual commitment to develop, you honor the process as much as the outcome because you recognize the two are inseparable—”we show up as living embodiments of post-postmodernism.  Postulating: Vapidness then is not a concern for you, because your spiritual confidence fills your life with meaning and purpose that is far beyond self fulfilling narcissistic tendencies.

Lastly, whatever the dynamic of Art would be fueled by already exists, and through development, we are essentially learning to recognize that it is already there.  We are not merely subjective artists, we are Spiritual Warriors who happen to be artists; We are Eros in action, and our bow is a paint brush, pen, microphone, or a guitar, or an instrument of brass, or even a drum set.

November 6th, 2010

A Talk on the Romantic Era

by:

EnlightenNext Director of Education Jeff Carreira

Jeff Carreira Speaking in Williamsburg Brooklyn, NYC

What I took away from Jeff Carreira’s awesome presentation was yet another understanding of life as an evolving process.  From that perspective, Jeff enlightened us on how the Romantic era, the 60s cultural revolution, and today’s hipster culture are one manifesting expression. From this understanding, you can see how hipster culture is the latest manifestation of an unfolding aesthetic process.  The following is an essay comprised of some of Jeff’s points, and also what it inspired creatively for me.

Christiana - Sherri O'Connor

Even though this expression of self—be it through creativity and art, or distinct stylistics—is taking place within our postmodern period and loaded with individualism, narcissistic behavior and practices, (and the cynicism) it is nothing “New”.  The Romantics essentially kicked it all off.

The Romantics you could say were reactionary artists, poets, and philosophers, in that, most of their work was in response to rising urban populations, and industrialism for example.  They wanted to do and be anything other than the status quo.  They expressed this with a certain flair for exoticism.

We also face an era of big change and new things. Today, we like to think ourselves as ultra-unique, different, and special too.  And as for artists and thinkers, I guess that would go for our work as well.  With the historical context that Jeff introduced, I sense a clearer vision forming of what consciously evolving art might be influenced by.

First, I think what Jeff was pointing to was a sense of autonomy.  I can best describe this as “Little Autonomy”—highly narcissistic, inspired by a separate sense of self.   And REAL Autonomy—understanding that because the creative process is ever-new, It/We literally is/are Autonomy… without the need to identify with the self.

Second, using the moving train analogy!  The train is a trajectory, always moving forward, the train had a starting point and has never stopped, nor returned.  Now consider our perception of history: we postmodernist like to pick and choose what history we identify with, everything else is (dealt with antagonistically) null and void. Obviously, not really so.  And in that false autonomy of picking and choosing, we misinterpret what it means to be free from history.

Exodus - Jake Messing

In Evolutionary Enlightenment, we understand it to be the recognition of the higher self, distinguishing this from our culturally conditioned self, and choosing to respond from the very best part of ourselves rather than from historically outdated modes of cultural engagement. And, of course, an end to past Karma.

Third, and last, for the postmodern creative lost in her narcissism, she thinks she is autonomous because history ‘means nothing at all’ (either by choice, or by the arrogance of ignorance) and this is her movement–an extreme expression of individualism.  Her train will soon run out of fuel.

Towards Modernity, the Romantics were the lightest thing to happen after some not-so light times.  One of the main expressions of hipster culture (which is greatly influencing culture at-large in America and Europe) is that each person has to be one-of-a-kind.  We’re nothing “New”.  The Romantics were doing the same thing. They were fueled by the need to question the norms and values of that time. What they gave birth to was this massive creative growth spurt, which we are the manifestation of.  They did things that no one dared do, they created a culture together in very small numbers.  While the rest of culture was going off gung-ho in one direction, they boldly stood and questioned the direction of science, and industrialism (think Frankenstein).

Las Tres Marias - Maria Berrio

Jeff creatively shed light on the many gradations between the Romantics, Hippies, and Hipsters.  An artist who engages her creativity in the nature of the Impulse, will transcend and include history to aesthetically find the next expression. An evolutionarily enlightened artist takes it much deeper. She makes the connection in a very profound way, that views herself as part of and as the process itself.  Only by knowing our human history, will we more accurately transcend and include prior manifestations. Her work expresses a trajectory (directly or indirectly), it does so simply through the understanding that a trajectory started somewhere, and she respects that, lets it positively inspire her—and Eros be the inspiration and reason of her creativity.

We should be in complete love with that notion, and let it liberate us. Then what fills us is much more than culture itself.  If we were completely living for the creative process, I don’t think these concerns would ever come to mind—through our art we would be manifesting pure consciousness.  That said, If you have a subjective inkling of something, how would you go about making it an objective Knowing? Until that day comes, we can create “as if”… just like the Romantics did.

]]> http://www.enlightennext.net/creativenlightenment/2010/11/11/romantics-hippies-and-hipsters-three-cultural-movements-one-of-manifestation-of-god/feed/ 8 http://www.enlightennext.net/creativenlightenment/2010/11/05/blog-competition-vast-perspective/ http://www.enlightennext.net/creativenlightenment/2010/11/05/blog-competition-vast-perspective/#comments Fri, 05 Nov 2010 22:30:33 +0000 Douglas Turner http://www.enlightennext.net/creativenlightenment/?p=4 Continue reading →]]> Vast Perspective

The Universe is vast, and therefore so too should our perspective be as vast as the imagination can expand—and then some. The beauty of Evolutionary Enlightenment is its ability to show just how vast existence is.  The image you see, appears to be the interior of an empty bottle.  By all accounts it really is empty of what one assumes it should be filled with.  It is this assumption that Evolutionary Enlightenment sets a corrective path for.

What many of us thought life should be filled with was not necessarily so.  And is probably why we never felt full; thought we were running on empty.  However, in this context we learn that we already have everything we need to create Heaven on Earth.

Life has so much more meaning when we see it through this lens of perspective.  When we see it as full, the bottle is illuminated with a message inside.  There is a path of discovery, as the bottle navigates the vastness of the ocean.  And culture is both the Light House and the place of the intended receiver.

Creativity has a never ending thirst and only when we are able to see ourselves in the world, as having everything we already need, will we be able to quench that magnificent thirst.

What I recognize as an important perspective in the teachings of Evolutionary Enlightenment, is its understanding that creativity is the key to growth.  And to be truly creative to the degree which the evolutionary process needs us, we would have to surrender the culturally conditioned perspective, that we never have quite enough—that there is ‘something else’ that we need. But this is it, we have it all…  Everyone is already filled with Spirit.