Subtle Gestures
I recently learned that the etymological meaning of the word aesthetic relates to sensual perception. To think and feel at the same time is a rising capacity that flows from our senses. Felt awareness is how beauty becomes restoration.
It is the model of the rhizome, with its wiry roots and disinterest in hierarchal structures that has been teaching me how to perceive attachments. Rhizomatic learning is without a beginning or end but is always a process of making-with (2013).
The knots of interconnection are vast and plentiful. I am learning that agency looks less like severance and more like sustained transformation, which is both active and generous in the participation of how we shape our connections and in turn are shaped by them. Vulnerability demands both hands open to receive its gifts (hidden defences will not do).
The meditations below are subtle gestures. Ideal for labyrinths and emergent capacities. I offer them to you with a wide heart.
1. The desire to tighten the grips that our awareness (however small) has begun to loosen is an affliction that some Buddhists call “nostalgia for samsara”.
2. Ask yourself: if the departure of the spirit lengthens for each hour you spend online, do you wait while it walks itself home or go and find it?
3. Suppose that the crossroads are where spirits linger on their journeys.
4. The ability to completely incarnate within one’s lifetime exists. “Anything dead coming back to life hurts.” - Toni Morrison
5. Paradox is an acquired taste.
6. The harmonics of our history are thousands of years old. There are generations of voices within us, a world unto itself, conversing. Our thoughts are one form of this sound. There is a trick of tone that throws the voice of others into our throats. Listen closely for its ruse.
7. Spiritual vertigo is sustained through the misrecognition of “being the first”. We begin in the middle of a path. Find your footing through interrelatedness.
8. Life force is the kinetic fluency of creation.
9. Each facet of a jewel turns itself anew with a change of direction. This is the wisdom of equanimity.
10. Structure is flow: Where there is movement, there is the current of life, the running water of the river. Water in a vase is the disintegration of structure.
Sources
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (2013). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Bloomsbury USA Academic.
Morrison, T. (2008). Beloved. Vintage Books USA.