Art as transcendental resonance ...

I believe all art forms have the potential to create transcendental resonance out of the dissonance of my isolation ... an isolation "produced" by my having sought identity in things I own rather than in relationships within my community of extended family and friends ...

I use my writing ... plus reading poetry aloud ... to merge my consciousness into the transcendental.

What do I mean by that: "merge my consciousness into the transcendental"?

I turn off my mind's ongoing discussion with itself and let it explore its depths as deep as the art will take me. My awareness comes out of the biological existence of my life-form ... and its biological evolution ... a connectedness stretching back to the dawn of life. I have a sensitivity to the variations of my environment ... going back eons. Words are a late arrival in my mind ... in evolution time.

Walking among Henry Moore's large sculptures in the New York Botanical Gardens this fall ... I experienced connectedness with the transcendental nature of the cosmos ... I 'knew' that the expression of human existence was fashioning ongoingness with unity expressed as love out of the chaos of integral systems interacting randomly.

Others express similar experiences with music ... and — in my opinion and from my childhood experiences from going to church regularly — music is recognized as deepening the spiritual experience ... which to me is feeling or sensing connectedness to the transcendental nature of the cosmos ... in the moment ... now ... turning off my mind's ongoing discussion with itself ... thus — philosophically — completing the concept.

Posted By: hglindquist I 'knew' that the expression of human existence was fashioning ongoingness with unity expressed as love out of the chaos of integral systems interacting randomly.

Let me explain my pov ... for those who may be new to some of these concepts.

Death and decay fertilizes new life in a myriad of life-forms from microscopic bacteria to giant sequoia, which in turn feed numerous small animals ... and this food chain thriving on a planet bathed in a daily cycle of sunlight ... creating wind and rain as well as energizing life ... everything in its own definable "system" ... that in a chaotic mix of periodic, random, and randomly periodic interaction with other systems ... produced/produces the environment in which we evolved/evolve and now live ... amidst a gigantic universe of known systems contained in the cosmos of everything.

We humans "make sense" of our environment in order to live ... we learn how to feed and take care of ourselves ... and to nurture our children, our offspring ... the next generation ... to whom we feel a strong bond of love ... love being the desire that we want positive outcomes for the object of our love ... (thus hate is wanting negative outcomes for those we hate) ... as we try to anticipate the future, first as seasons and cycles ... to now where we know that our sun will someday expand and consume our planet ...

I believe the strongest bond of love is between parents and their children. Love is what guarantees the survival of the next generation. Therefore, love is a "glue" of the transcendental character of the cosmos ... a positive expression of ongoingness within the cosmos. Without it, the strong parent would prey upon the weaker child whenever the going got rough ... as we see in some other life-forms ... it is the emergence of love that allows us to exist with hope of a future for our life-form continuing to expand our understanding of our environment ... out into the universe ... giving us a chance at surviving beyond the existence of earth as an environment.

Now ... a couple of things ... it doesn't matter to an existentialist — myself — whether or not the cosmos had/has a purpose in the emergence of love. Love has emerged out of existence ... much as awareness has emerged out of existence. What matters is whether or not we BELIEVE the cosmos has purpose independent of existence ... which for many is the belief in God. I do not believe the cosmos has purpose outside of its existence.

And at another level, it seems that the "tribe" is the smallest social unit that can guarantee the survival of the human species ... because of the need for a gene pool sufficiently varied to provide healthy offspring ... which interjects the dimensions of social boundaries ... and the evolved sense of loyalty to one's own tribe versus the tribe on the other side of the river or mountain or whatever separates us.

I believe over the eons of evolution we evolved the capacity to intuitively recognize our "tribe" and feel an emotional bond with members. My hypothesis is that it is the loss of active engagement of these emotions when we become "non-tribal" that creates the sense of ennui requiring constant stimulation in so many modern young people. This ennui is compounded when our emotional bonding for identity becomes connected to things we own rather than relationships with other ... because we do not get the emotional "feedback" necessary to have the "climax" of engagement ... except from our dogs ... which, in fact, goes a long way toward proving my point.

Art provides a transcendental resonance that engages otherwise "unconnected" emotions in a satisfying and fulfilling real experience.

Notes:

- Details of my trip to the New York Botanical Garden are at Henry Moore sculptures at The New York Botanical Garden.

- The first part of this post was first written as a comment in the End of Life Issues blog on Maplewood Online.