Practising Presence 2: Seeing Like an Artist
How has practising presence been for you this week? What drew your attention and invited you into the here and now? What did you notice in yourself?
Some of you have been sharing photos of your practice and I’ve loved the opportunity to honour what you've honoured with your presence. I’ve added some photos to our shared album which you can view here. If you have photos that you’d like to add, please do send them. There’s something beautiful about gathering them together in one place - a shared remembering that re-members us into the present where we all belong. If you’ve been struggling to be present, maybe you can sit with one of these photos for a couple of minutes and see what it draws from you.
Reflecting on my own practice this week, I've noticed an interesting inversion. In trying to be awake for something that will draw me into the present, I’ve become more present to everything. I know this is happening because at the end of the day, I remember more. Not the big things but the small. Things like the colour of the blossom in next door's front garden, the smell of my coffee, the sound of my daughter’s laugh when the dog tried to lick her face, the moment of connection when I met the lady’s eyes at the checkout. It’s a lovely reversal that helps to take the pressure off what happens when I pause what I’m doing and practise letting myself be interrupted. Because these moments of presence are part of a flow of presence that’s accessible all the time, I don’t need to worry so much about what happens (or doesn’t happen). I need help with this because my longing for genuine presence and authentic connection means that in those moments of bringing my full attention to something or someone I really, really want to do it right. Knowing that my desire to be present is what’s helping me be more present helps me relax into enjoying the moment for what it is and loosen my grip on wanting to get some kind of result.
If, like me, you’re struggling with judging your practice (i.e. trying to make it mean something or wondering if more should be happening), I recommend you befriend your breath. When I’ve noticed good-girl-got-to-do-it-right Jen rearing her head, I’ve found it helpful to remember to breathe (obvious, perhaps, but true). I also like to have a few words that I can inwardly join with my inhale and exhale to anchor me in both my intention to be present and my trust that the mysterious and abiding More that I name 'God' is already here. These are breath prayers and this week I've been playing with using words from Wendell Berry's poem The Wild Geese. With my inhale I inwardly repeat "what we need...." and with my exhale "....is here". I also like to use " here I am... in the presence of God".
This week, as well as the ongoing invitation to make a habit of being interruptible, I’m offering you a soak in presence. This is a simple invitation to bring your awareness to one of your senses and savour the present through that sense. If this sense is unavailable to you, please feel free to adapt the practice to suit you. All is offered as invitation and any pathway into presence is just as good as any other.
The sense we’re beginning with is sight. If this sense is available to you, there's a good chance it functions as your most dominant sense. While research at the University of York has suggested that the classical hierarchy of senses - sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell - may not be true across all cultures, it confirmed that visual dominance is a universal characteristic of all languages. And yet, even when we (over)rely on our sense of sight, most of the time we do not see well. Not because our vision isn’t 20/20 but because our looking tends to be less a way of receiving the world and more a kind of labelling practice. Learning the names of things seems to shut down our seeing.
Think about it: how often does our looking turn into an inner naming? We go for a walk and as we look, we think: there’s a tree, there’s the sky, there’s Mr so-and-so, there’s a puddle. It’s all so familiar. We look on autopilot and have to work to notice the variety of shades of green in the hedge, the way the light catches the girl's hair, the patterns in bark, the harmony of shapes in the skyline. We lose the pre-cognitive wonder and awe we once had in abundance as babies and very young children when the world was not so much in front of us to be neatly named and understood but entwined with us to be explored and enjoyed (if you need convincing, watch a baby discover her hands).
The good news is that, even though we become forgetful in seeing things beyond their names, we can reclaim a more wonder-filled way of looking. This is a seeing that allows us to glimpse what Richard Rohr calls the “hidden wholeness” of things and is critical if we are to love neighbour as self. Artists are our guides here because artists know how to see. Not through labels but with pre-cognitive wonder that honours our entwining with the world. As French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty explains, artists recognise that the world is not something separate that we observe but something that we are emerged in, that we encounter. In his essay ‘Eye and Mind’, he writes that painters are birthed through the visible so that their art doesn’t represent the world so much as guides us into the experience of being intertwined with things as part of the flesh or fabric of the world. According to Merleau-Ponty, paintings break the "skin of things” to communicate to us something that goes deeper than we can explain and because of this, art “awakens powers dormant in ordinary vision” so that we see the world afresh, without that labelling tendency that keeps everything at a distance.
These may seem like strange ideas but spend any time trying to draw or paint what’s in front of you and I think you'll get a sense of what he means. As you draw or paint what you see, you begin to really look. You open yourself to the experience, to receive what is being revealed. Eventually, you may even let go of trying to represent what you’re painting and just allow your art making to be a sharing in what you see. If this happens, and you can muster the courage to look at your finished piece without judgement, you’ll find that what you have is not just an image but a portal into the very experience of seeing.
It’s because making art helps us to see that this week, for our soak in presence, I’m recommending that you take a few minutes to draw or paint. Find something that you want to take a long look at, pick up a pen or a paintbrush and let your looking guide your hand. IT DOESN’T MATTER WHETHER YOU’RE GOOD AT ART. Even if you haven’t drawn anything since primary/elementary school, this practice is for you. The purpose is not to produce a great work of art but to help you linger in your looking long enough to really see. To prove that I mean this, once you’ve finished your art I want you to rip it up or burn it. Not because it’s rubbish but because the point isn’t the picture but the act of looking. (If, when you get to this stage, you find you want to keep your picture, you can. Just don't forget that it's the looking - not the art - that's the point.)
This practice doesn’t need to take long and it definitely doesn’t need fancy materials (in fact, you’re more likely to try it if you tell yourself you’re just going to scribble on a scrap of paper for 2 minutes), but if you have a go I think you might be surprised. Every expressive art class I’ve participated in has resulted in people being amazed by the calm, the creativity, the joy that is unlocked when they give their inner artist permission to play.
Whether you think of yourself as artistic or not, have a go and see what happens. Who knows, maybe it will help return you to that childlike way of being in the world when you were present, not as an observer but as a fleck in the fabric of being, tenderly held in the cosmic arms of God.
Jen x
ps If you want to read more Merleau-Ponty, you can find his essay 'Eye and Mind' in the collection of essays The Primacy of Perception (Evanston: Northwestern, 1964). The quotes are from pages pp181-182 and Merleau-Ponty borrows the phrase "skin of things" from poet and painter Henri Michaux.