Evolutionary ‘creation’ means that organisms improve, not because of the designing hand of an external God, but rather through the unceasing movement of creatures interacting with others that occasionally results in notable improvements. Some writers have projected a guiding will onto the earth, with the revelation of humans as a manifestation of its consciousness. This goes a bit far, in my mind, blending science with superstation in one story. As I’ve written elsewhere, I prefer to keep them distinct. Weaving inputted intentions into the scientific narrative puts a magical agency in the planet, which only makes us wonder about the location of its brain and the mechanism of expressing a terrestrial will. Certainly humans, with all our terra-deforming activity can’t be the highest expression. Not yet, at least.

Be that as it may, the notion of unplanned discovery leading to the creation of something wonderful is intriguing. It’s a dynamic I’m looking to emulate in painting. This is not a scientific experiment, but rather an artistic one aimed at realizing a different type of personal awareness, one that has symmetry with the evolutionary process. It is also nothing new; painters do this all the time.

Look at the work of Van Gogh – you rarely see strict outlines. Rather, there is a hail of brushwork that both integrates and separates forms. Line is not indicating boundary; rather your mind is perceiving patterns and interpreting them as forms. A wave of green-black becomes a cypress tree, and a similar pattern in blue becomes sky and clouds as the brush work swirls within the boundaries of the canvass. It’s a kind of discovery through brushwork. Vincent was very connected with the earth and those who toil it. It’s no surprise that his art broadcasts a message of organic life that is nevertheless not a descriptive representation of individual things.

The human mind is rather analytical, and Vincent’s letters are replete with reflection, comparisons and analysis of the work of others. Yet he was able to oscillate between analysis and execution. For Vincent, growth as an artist can in the execution itself. His strong will precluded a scientific approach. There was a relentless will that drove the action of painting, and you can see this manifested in the frenetic brushwork itself. This speaks of the principle of life finding a new existence. Vincent mutated the way we see – no one had ever perceived through art like he did. Today, after you take in his canvasses, you cannot go outside and see things the same way.

Is this mimicking the evolutionary discovery process in art? How do we teach others to make similar discoveries? The thinking that brought the Vincent’s innovations is not the thinking that will bring the next. Rather, the lesson is the discovery process itself. It’s an attitude, a methodology of discovery. The rational Vincent set himself up to be able to explore. It is possible to get in the exploration mindset through a controlled process that allows discovery to playout within the ‘world’ of the canvass.

To similarly achieve this, we just need to define conceptual equivalences. Since we cannot mimic the entire evolutionary process, we can setup a micro-session. The idea is to conceive of you hand and brush as a creature, and constrain exploration within the canvass. Think of the act of pushing paint around the canvass in terms of this metaphor: the ‘creature’ is exploring its boundaries, being attracted by certain things (other colors), assimilating with its surroundings, pushing here, giving way there, being assertive and defensive in one area, and merging, blending in other areas. The behavior is determined by a number of factors, including the color loaded, perceived associations and contrasts with other colors and the ‘boundaries’ of the composition.

The goal is to become one with your brush, letting it lead, exploring surroundings, allowing intuition and the ‘laws’ of art govern your reactions. The visual energy of the loaded color will react to other colors and forms. Conceive of your brush as a perceptive creature, as the ‘active agent’ in its own world. Do not guide it by a preconceived design, but let your inner conditioning as an artist, based on experiences from the past, guide your reactions. Be very mindful of every turn, of surroundings, of what your active agent wants and needs, how it reacts. Don’t think of your hand as the executor of your mind’s plan. Rather, let your mind be the mechanism of perception and response to what your hand is doing. Add and remove color, blend or differentiate. Execute intuitively without analytical reasoning. We can’t quite describe it because the process is both intentional and not rational. You shouldn’t be thinking ‘the form turns, so I need to make it darker’, or ‘here is red, which needs to be enhanced by the application of a compliment’.

That would be like having a pro basketball player thinking ‘now I’m going to take a shot, so I have to have my feet plated and my elbow under my hand, bend knees first and let the jump flow with a final flick of the wrist’. The masters of basketball or any sport do not deconstruct their movements when they are ‘in the zone’. The movements are just natural. For the master, whatever they do should be done. There is no need for a book of instructions, or coaches planning every play. Their actions are normative by definition. Masters do what they do because they are masters; they don’t act to be justified. In the same way, allow yourself to get into an execution zone. Get in ‘creative creature mode’ as you execute brushwork.

Not every mutation in nature yields pleasing results. Likewise, sticking to this discovery mode may not immediately yield artwork that should be framed. You may not be a master yet. Nevertheless, the process is more about how you think and perceive than it is about the outcome. By allowing your fingers to do the thinking, you will be present and open to responding, and the process will be teaching you based on outcomes. It is trial and error, unfolding as a dialectic when you interact, discover and then step back to understand, reload your brush and go back in. As you get into an action-response rhythm, the act of painting becomes meditative. An evolving progression that builds a work of art from the inside-out.

The discovery mindset will remove boundaries and pre-conceived notions and lead to unexpected ‘mutations’ of the subject matter. As Michelangelo ‘freed’ the figures inherent in the blocks of marble, so you too will release a work that is both yours and beyond yourself. This is a mystery in art, as the creator is not really a designer, but more of a responder, a liberator of worlds. You get the sense that you are participating in a slow revelation.

Nature is full of recursive patterns – the spirals of galaxies are mirrored in the spirals of conch shells. Fractal branching can indefinitely recursive. Your creativity, when in discovery mode, is a recursion of the creative process of the earth and the universe. That revelation is mystifying and wonderful. It will give you a new sense of being, and an empathy with the creative process of nature.

— Roy Zuniga
Kirkland, WA

Copyright © 2016 Roy Zuniga

Painting is creative precisely because it differentiates, explores highlights, loses and finds forms represented by a variety of strokes of paint and color. Art renders the artist’s perception, not of what he or she sees with his eyes, but what is projected by the mind and will as notable. This is not strictly a reflection of reality, but a recreation by the directed hand of the artist, who is exploring.

By choosing to perceive the work of art, the viewer in turn participates in the both the exploration of the artist’s handiwork and the outcome he or she came to. The work is notable to the community if it was exhibited, and then perceived by you, the observer, who explore and move on. This is the ecosystem of meaning, where meaning is defined as the perception of notable events. You have to make a selection in order to perceive, and evaluate to accept the notable. This is akin to how evolution happens, when certain notable traits crucial for viability are selected through an exploratory process.

Mother earth tried billions of molecule combinations before arriving at one that enables photosynthesis, for example. Artists create by exploring a domain, one area at a time. The evolutionary principle that gave us photosynthesis also works for aesthetic creation. Pushing paint around with an exploratory mindset is akin to the biological process that gave us critters.

In an afternoon painting session we can imitate what the earth did in a million years. In this sense, we behave like the earth does. Explore through creation, accepting and rejecting what to perceive, and evaluating what to recognize as notable, and as an artist, you are a recursive instance of ‘earth-thinking’, which in turn is an instance of ‘galactic-thinking’, and so on. In other words, through exploratory art you are expressing creation through an accelerated version of the creative process that made you.

Nature does not have a systematic set of experiments that it executes to evolve itself, like a planned research project has. Evolution is not centrally directed, as atoms, molecules, cells and organisms interact with their surroundings according to their own agency. Creatures are not really planning life out. They just move about as best they can. Moreover, the discovery mindset is the antithesis of looking for revelation. You are not discovering when you are looking for an authority to interpret and prescribe life for you.

Evolution advances when things stick together in new ways during the various epochs of life. From the way the elements were formed from a few primal molecules, to the way life evolved from single celled to multi-celled organisms, to the way multiple species of primates, and eventually humans evolved. There is a kind of meandering about with chance meetings triggering new interactions, responses and eventually a stickiness of things that get along well until notable transactions result in a meaningful process.

Have you had meandering thoughts as you walk, without trying to have a specific outcome, you just think about life and things, and then somehow come to some worthy insight or conclusion? If you wander through the galleries and find art, you learn to see in a new way. Wander outside after being saturated with new ways of seeing, and things look different. The experience of perceiving the work of art can change the meaning of something that you had seen in the past. In other words, the present has changed the past because now you have recognized something as notable that previously was undervalued. In this process, you changed the meaning of your own past by more or less choosing which works of art to look at.

Exploration is not linear; we can evolve creations from the past. The early work of an artist is given context and meaning by the late work. How we resolve our remaining existence on this planet will give meaning to all the struggles and achievements that came before us.

This pattern is happening to religions that once brought us meaning and drive. When we realize that the world view is not sustainable, what we elevated to being notable is no longer so. For example, the religions that propped up an extractive industries diminish in value as we find we can no longer drink the water or breathe the air because of them. Thus religions with immutable truths are routinely changed in the mind of the newly ‘no-longer-believers’, and that’s okay. Letting go of the old is the flip side of becoming available for the new. That is the essence of creative evolution.

— Roy Zuniga
Kirkland, WA

 

Copyright (c) 2016 Roy Zuniga

Disclaimer: what follows is a human-authored myth. Any association with science is unintentional. Although this story may contain insights that are true for you, the author makes no claim to universal or exclusive Truth. Side effects of reading this may include cognitive dissonance.

We long to be connected to something out there that can’t be pinned to a location. Sure we try, for example by talking about ‘the ascension to heaven’, etc. The more we think about that, the more nonsensical it becomes. Where exactly is this platform in the sky?

On earth, we strive to attain a sense of place, of where we are. We compare our physical self with people, places and things around us; we increase or diminish our sense of importance and worth through correlations. The comparison game is what we do, and depending on how we visualize the prescient void, we can either build ourselves up, or tear ourselves and each other down. We sense we can influence the comparison, and so influence the outcome. We feel lifted up when we believe we’re doing well in the comparison, that we’re ‘doing what we’re supposed to’. We feel depressed and worthless when we fail God.

Moreover, how we succeed or fail in our earthly comparisons impacts our spiritual comparison. If a parent always put you down, you will feel put down by God. On the other hand, if you were the apple of Daddy’s eye, you will be succeeding with God. Thus the belief we bring, makes the difference. To succeed with God, therefore, you must change your comparative belief.

We can’t really compare ourselves with our spiritual source, which is not any of the things around us. Yet because we’ve been programmed for comparison as finite agents in this culture, we can’t help but to compare ourselves with that distinctive spiritual something ‘out there’. How to get a handle on it? How do we really interact with it in a meaningful way?

To make the comparisons with this other presence, we need real images, so we make up representations of aspects God via prophets, saints and mythological creatures. Myth-making goes hand in hand with the intent of our beliefs. We attain a system of spiritual comparison that leverages perceptible icons, imaginable heroes and villains to anchor our comparisons, according to the belief we bring. The approval or disapproval of parental figures in our youth to a large extent determines how we believe. That’s why religions spread geographically, passed on over generations. If you’re not satisfied with what you inherited, how do you change your beliefs to attain a positive comparison with God? It takes a lot of mental and spiritual discipline. Do this you will be changing the game you grew up with and hopefully find a better center for your being and a good life. Many do in fact onboard to another religion. We must realize that this whole religious game is there just so we can get up in the morning with a sense of purpose.

The thirst for meaning and the fact that there is a comparison game going on clues us into the fact that there is something else going on. We must become aware of the mechanisms of perception for this ‘other’ presence. We are receivers and transmitters, and we don’t sense how the information flows though us. How do our prayers get to the other side? We know we are connected, but we don’t see any wires, so to speak, or perceive the transmissions themselves. This is because it happens at a level of being we can’t perceive directly. It’s like looking a leaves waving from a distance. We assume there is a wind even if we’re not feeling it directly. This flow to the other can only be described by metaphor.

Let’s give this ‘other plane’ a name. I’ll call it ‘Uranthom’. We’ll also call the traditional comparison game we play on earth ‘malgod’. I want to replace malgod as my primary mode of obtaining meaning and importance. We may have to make up more names for other concepts later. To keep it simple, this will do for now. Uranthom is the place, and malgod the game. Both will be defined as we explore the ideas here.

Let’s think Uranthom as a plane of existence devoid of time. Our interaction with it can be thought of in terms of spiritual transmissions. Keep in mind, this is only simile and not accurate from an engineering perspective. Instead of meaning by comparison with others on earth, let’s look at meaning by quality of the experience transmitted to Uranthom. We could combine the comparison games by sharing the quality of experiences with others. However, we’ll keep the two games apart for now, and assume that the Uranthom transmissions are for their own sake. Others may be involved, but the goal is not to have them validate you by comparing each other’s experiences.

What exactly is being done with these experiences on Uranthom is not something we have any firsthand knowledge of. Perhaps we are the eyes and ears of God, and since he’s bored being Other, he built in a connection with creatures so that He could know everything that happens through us. Uranthom could be a massive accumulation of information that God uses for his own assessments. After all, how do you know you are all-knowing? We can explore the Uranthom mythology at another time. For now, let’s concern ourselves with the phenomenology of the transmissions.

Since we are concerned with meaning, not every transmission to Uranthom is the same. Some matter more than others. I appreciate excellence. Others may have a different intuition. Experiences necessarily involve other people, places and things. We can consider them transactional in the sense that one thing interacts with another and there’s an exchange of some kind. You can’t really have a meaningful experience without interchange, which is foundational to our sense of existence.

In this life, we can choose to engage or not. Other things and people will either respond to your action, or poke your inaction. In either case, there is action/reaction and these are experienced by both parties in the transaction. The meaning of the transaction is subject to interpretation, as there is no true ‘fact of the matter’, there is only perception of the importance which is imputed by the actors and the spectators around who happen to be watching and who are also impacted by that same transaction.

Actors transact with other actors, who in turn push others, and on the game goes on, as we all bounce around existence like kayakers in a stream. We can apply our will through the paddles, for example, and influence where whether we park our kayak in a safe eddy to rest, or drive head on into the whitewater. We have that choice, and either is important based on the interpretation you give it.

Whether you are a watcher or an action maniac doesn’t matter. What matters is the meaning you impute to it. You may work in a corporation and be ‘winning’ by not being the CEO, or alternatively only ‘win’ by becoming the CEO. It is up to you. Of course, if you can’t become the CEO due to lack of qualifications, then that’s not a game you want to play. We all adjust the games we participate in, but not all adjust it in a way they can win. Many will adjust the game, but not enough, and so they are always losing.

Finding a romantic partner in life is a similar game. Those who are in a lifelong marriage have adjusted to their partner. Those who value freedom may orbit around another, but never quite fuse their lives. Both can be happy. Miserable is the one who wants a lifelong partner and picks a partner who only wants to orbit. She may bend the rules of the game to accommodate, but if she doesn’t change her own game fundamentally, she will be miserable in the unfulfilled co-dependency.

Defining your game means selecting the people you interact with so you can have successful transactions. Transactions with the wrong people may be collisions and ultimately both parties will learn. So both defining the game and picking who to interact with can have a huge impact on your sense of importance and place in the world. Getting in a zone where both the game and the transaction partners are in harmony means you have found peace in life.

In a way, conceiving the metaphysical Uranthom, the metaphorical ‘plane of the other’, is an example of a transactional relationship. Lack of transactions is lack of meaning, and not all transactions are meaningful. Sitting without interactions can be quite miserable (unless you’re a meditative monk), and so we disturb the peace by interacting with others. We get to decide what is notable. For example, as an artist delighted with artistic excellence, high quality paintings are meaningful to me. Great art, as I’ve written elsewhere, is art that connects you with a perceived personality. For you, on the other hand, it might be meaningful to jump off a high mountain in a squirrel suit, drive the fastest cars, complete a round trip to the North Pole or sign at Carnegie Hall.

I want to eliminate the sense of linear progress that is required by the malgod game, where continual improvement is required, and riches can be amassed. Richness to me is an aesthetic moment. Achievement is not imputed to a lifetime; it is likewise a moment. A great achievement in a career does not define you for life. Neither does a failure. There is no need for forgiveness; we may learn from failure or pay the penalty for our actions. Once the transaction has played out, you are the tabula rasa, the blank canvass on which to paint your next great experience. This is a project-oriented existence where you define success, and it can change from project to project.

Uranthom has no time, and it is not finite in any sense. We can only talk about Uranthom in metaphor, so we’ll think of it as a plane. Notable experiences appear as blips of varying sizes on this surface, and the size of the blip corresponds to how notable the experience is, and each of us gets to define what notable is. Prayer and heartfelt affirmations of experiences are our way of identifying what we consider notable.

Uranthom is not cyclical either, since the notion that all things originate from nothing and dissolve back to nothing is nonsensical to me. Such a view makes existence a meaningless game, and any sense of purpose, progress or success is perceptual only, i.e. it has no objective meaning other than being an example of an archetypical behavior in the mind of God. No, everything we think is notable appears in Uranthom. We project importance to the ‘timeless’ event.

Since there is no time in Uranthom, we don’t even have to use words like ‘timeless’ and ‘eternal’. By definition, what we chose to project to Uranthom abides and becomes the core of our soul that we can interact with during our lifetime. It only follows that we can access these notable experience ‘blips’ on the plane of Uranthom at any point in our life. You can access lessons you have not yet experienced because the plane of Uranthom has them all simultaneously. Even now, if you chose to receive all your experiences, you can, including ones you’ll project in the future.

Note that even horrific experiences can be projected and received, so that we may be forewarned and avoid certain types of situations. Note that the reception is devoid of details. I can’t see great paintings I will make because those exist in time. However, I can tap into the emotions and evocations of my notable transactions. There is no need for death to do that. Thus without projecting experiences, spiritual life is dull. We must experience and project and we will develop a drive for more.

Learning from both the negative and positive experiences evolves our consciousness. The collection of these is our consciousness. In our lifetime, we can share our notable experiences with others so they can perhaps evolve their own consciousness. Thus we have collective improvement as humanity.

Uranthom is not finite in any sense we would understand. It can receive transmissions indefinitely, as far as we are concerned. Everyone can transmit. Moreover, what is meaningful to one person in a human-to-human transaction may not be meaningful to the other. I’m not interested in creating another rule set-based religion.

The myth of Uranthom provides principles that help me focus on the quality of aesthetic creations and the transactions that influence their creation. I can get into a zone when creating without regard to time, and this experience has deep meaning because I can project the best onto the plane of Uranthom. I also don’t have to worry about a career progression, or the feeling of inadequacy that not having an artistic trajectory brings with it in the traditional model. You are insulated from the insulting eyes of those who might judge you.

The plane of Uranthom also provides a framework for change, as we can adopt new goals for meaningful experiences and likewise cast those on the plane of Uranthom. It provides a framework for recasting your life from time to time, which is essential not only in our various life stages, but also in times where world-view shifts are required for us to keep the possibility of differentiated experiences on a healthy planet earth.

— Roy Zuniga
Kirkland

 

Copyright (c) 2016 roy zuniga

Building faith around something you want to hold sacred requires defining success criteria. Otherwise, how do you know you’re focusing on the right behaviors? How do you know you’re done?

To start, we’re not talking about creating an entire religion. Religions impact our sense of the Holy, elicit certain emotions, like awe, wonder, fear and reverence. They provide us with ultimate meaning. Religions are associated with cosmologies, origin stories, an ontology of spiritual beings, dogma about the nature of God and life after death, existence before birth, social norms, rituals and holy days, and the identification of exemplary believers and saints. They address universal themes like reconciliation, brotherhood and forgiveness. They use archetypical characters, like the Devil, angels of light, sages, tricksters, etc. Some participants have religious experiences they assert have physical manifestations, like ‘baptism in the spirit’, accelerated healing from sickness, and deliverance from spiritual forces. Religions have a corresponding rich body of art and literature. They cross geographical boundaries and can extend across the world. Incubating a new religion takes many years, even lifetimes.

The urgency of the climate challenge should shift our focus to changing crucial behaviors in order to reverse environmental degradation. As the environmentalists say, we’re now at ‘decade zero’, meaning that if we don’t drastically change greenhouse emission this decade, it will be too late to avert catastrophic climate changes. Thus taking time to create a broad religion seems like the wrong approach for now. What we need are tactical shifts in beliefs that impact crucial behaviors. We can call these ‘cultural micro shifts’, i.e. a modular faith building.

Let’s review a specific example:

• Crucial behavior – consume less fossil fuels
• Supporting values – high standards for the environment (clean air and water, etc.), reverence for the earth and its creatures
• Success criteria – no fossil fuel used in daily transportation

As this case illustrates, cultural micro shifts aren’t necessarily easy. They can be a big deal for a given individual. They are ‘micro’ shifts because they don’t require the person to change any other dimension of their life or religion, although inevitably there will be a cascading effect. The shifted behavior is in fact somewhat of an arbitrary definition for the sake of measuring progress.

For me to achieve this shift, for example, I have to change a good cross-section of my value system. I drive an SUV and feel entitled to have the option to go off-roading if I want. I feel entitled to drive alone to work, and to go out on a whim. I see this as part of many rights as a consumer. I value my freedom, and it’s very hard to change that mindset. This is where we can apply the tactics of community mythology in order to:

1. Gain awareness of the existing and new values, where they conflict, and where the shift that has to occur.
2. Envision alternate outcomes – use the power of story and art to paint a picture of a better life with the new values. In other words, create a sense of that alternate reality that is very specific to the person and their community. Think of this as community-driven propaganda.
3. Embrace, embellish and enact the new story – become a true convert, and socialize the new behaviors to others. Become an example and an activist, i.e. a ‘saint’ and an ‘evangelist’ for the micro shift selected.

Each of us can use our talents to build up the new storyline. If you’re an artist, you may create a film, write a short story or paint an image to drive home the negative of current behaviors, and the positive of the future. Repurposing your talents is the same type of thinking societies adopt during times of war, when factories and technologies used for civilian life are retooled for making arms and vehicles. We are at this level of urgency with regard to the climate. Business as usual is not an option. To win the race against climate disaster, we all have to retool our decision making.

Thinking about climate change as a mission reminds me of when I forsook art 30+ years ago to become an evangelical missionary. For two years I joined 300 young people from 35 nations on a ship visiting 18 countries. While my fine art production came to a standstill, I did apply my artistic talents to becoming the ship’s printer and a graphic designer. Thus the idea that we can personally retool our talents for a period of time for a cause is something I have first-hand experience with. I left everything to join the mission, and it was exhilarating. Now I’m thinking about retooling my art production for a different cause: the viability of a biodiverse ecosystem.

— Roy Zuniga
Kirkland, WA

 

copyright © 2015 roy zuniga