Art Gallery Show and A Lesson from Ants??

 Hello World, Kemi Writes here! 

Let's talk about creative mindfulness. Mindfulness, as Trungpa describes it in the book True Perception, says that it is seeing things clearly as they are in reality. Truly seeing reality for what it is can be painful because it is the actual, present reality. Perhaps it's also painful because seeing reality for what it is diminishes your sense of control, but releasing control shows you reality remains as is. 

"In many cases, we try so hard to understand. We are so eager that our eagerness begins to become numbness. We are so eager that we misunderstand things a lot. Sometimes our mind becomes completely blank, and we can't actually communicate. We forgot how to put our sentences together; we forget what to write down; we lose our memories. All kinds of problematic things take place in us as an expression of eagerness, which is a somewhat euphemistic term for mental speediness. (Trungpa, pg. 73)

This small passage in the book absolutely called me out because earlier today (Monday), I woke up feeling anxious and stressed, and I just felt like I had no control over my life, specifically with my day to day routine. There were other stressors, but I felt this one the most and I feel as though I have been so eager to get a "perfect" routine for myself to prove to myself how committed I am to being a better version of myself. But, in doing so, I feel like I misunderstood how my body operates and I lost sight of taking reality as it shows up for me because I was partaking in "mental speediness" in some way. I think I set high expectations on myself with the "perfect" routine and it made me lose sight of perceptual awareness in what I am doing and what is happening throughout the day. It also helped me see how I struggle with letting go of control in other areas of my life. These insights are something I plan to take with me outside of class for sure. 

The senses meditation to open our minds to perceptual seeing made me feel grounded. I realized I would think and say in my head, that "I don't taste anything" when we moved to taste awareness, and I did the same thing with vision. When thoughts like that popped up, I tried my best to bring my awareness back to the sense we were meditating on at that time. Nevertheless, I do feel like the meditation worked😄. 

I really enjoyed the photography activity!!! I found myself starting off taking pictures of a fire extinguisher and a pencil sharpener to stray cats and ants. I also took pictures of things through an opening of a sculpture on campus. I felt like a professional photographer lol. I already enjoy capturing photos every now and then, but this felt different because I went up to some things that I usually wouldn't take pictures of. So, I felt like I was discovering a new way of seeing things truly. I have also never really thought about taking pictures with light, texture, or form in space in mind. Color is something I usually paid attention to. I could really see different patterns, textures, contrast, and a form of union in the photos I took. 

With the whole activity, I noticed how I felt a bit of detachment from the results. I set no expectations and I feel like I was in flow state. I was present and it felt freeing. It felt calming. I felt like my inner curiosity swept me off my feet and led the way to the next object, and to whatever camera setting change I was curious about. I don't feel like I spent much time thinking about if a photo worked or not, I just moved on to what else I was curious about. There was some dissatisfaction with a few photos, but it was very fleeting because I went to what else caught my interest and what camera lighting I was interested in trying out.

I created a couple collages of some the photos I took and you will see them below! I was so happy I got pictures of the stray cats and ants. I used to watch a YouTube called AntsCanada as a young girl, and I was obsessed with how smart and resilient ants were not only as colonies, but also individually. They are social insects and they are very adaptive. Huh, there's a connection here. Ants can adapt to adverse conditions such as threats nearby, floods, etc., so they see reality for what it truly is and in doing so, creative solutions arise and are learned. Dr. Gupta mentioned something today and it was something like, accepting reality as it is can ignite creativity. That is powerful. Wow, ants may have just done some inner child healing for me today, woohoo!🐜

I'll leave you guys with this message; Be more like ants. lol, but the message is to see reality for what it truly is, and there, you will see creative mindfulness.

XOXO, 

Kemi Writes💗📸 

Kemi's Perceptual Seeing Art Gallery, a combination of form in space, light, color, and texture. (if you zoom in, you can see the ants a little better)

Hasta Luego!