creativity | Ascension Lifestyle

04 Dec 2021
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Want to Boost Your Creativity and Be a Better Collaborator? Think About Why the Sky Is Blue

It’s probably been a long time since you lay on your back in the grass, looked up and wondered, Why is the sky blue? Or since you took the time to consider a question as difficult as, Where does the universe begin, and where does it end?

In 2013, education innovator Sugata Mitra received the million-dollar TED Prize to develop an online learning platform for schoolkids, based around big questions like these. But the big secret is: It’s actually fun for adults. By tweaking Mitra’s idea, you can get in touch with your inner child — while building important skills. Here’s how to do it.

Step 1: Set aside an hour to recharge your curiosity.

At the heart of Mitra’s School in the Cloud is a simple method known as a SOLE session. SOLE stands for Self-Organized Learning Environment, and it capitalizes on two incredibly abundant commodities: curiosity, and information on the Internet. A session begins with an open-ended, thought-provoking question — for example, What would happen if insects disappeared? or, Why do languages die out? Kids spend 40 minutes doing online research in groups of four or five, sharing one computer and jotting down their findings. Then all the groups come together for 20 minutes and discuss their discoveries.

Why should a busy adult take the time to pursue a blue-sky question like this? Because most of us spend our days living in our own information silos, and it’s good to step outside of them. In pursuing knowledge for knowledge’s sake, you’ll undoubtedly learn something new — or maybe you’ll revisit a subject you’ve avoided since high school (hello calculus!) and shake the cobwebs off your old learning, or reignite a passion you’d forgotten about. In doing research for the session, you’ll be forced to consult multiple sources and quickly find credible information — skills that are essential for critical thinking. And in the process of working with others, you could pick up tips, whether it’s a keyboard shortcut you never knew existed or a great YouTube channel to follow.

Step 2: To come up with a question, think big — really big.

By the time we’ve reached adulthood, we’ve long since stopped posing knotty, complicated queries — there are just so many more pressing professional and personal questions to answer. “Adults are more curious about the practical aspects of life,” says Mitra. “If somebody says, ‘Here’s a cheaper way to buy a house,’ we’re interested. But if the same person asks, ‘Why do we live in houses? What made us move out of caves?’ that isn’t as intriguing.”

So how can you find your own meaty questions to unpack and explore? The easiest way: Ask a kid, or think of the last stumper — Why do we hiccup? How does a car work? — that a child threw at you. What’s essential is to use a question that no one in the group can answer easily. It’s OK to pick one that’s related to your work, just as long as it’s not one that goes through your mind on any given day. For example, Mitra recently ran a SOLE for school principals in Hong Kong and their question was, What is the future of exams?

Step 3: Agree to disagree.

A SOLE is a safe space to practice what management expert Margaret Heffernan calls “constructive conflict.” Disagreement and friction, far from being forces to avoid, can fuel learning and innovation by making you consider alternate opinions and approaches. Before beginning a SOLE, participants should be reminded to speak their minds and not worry about butting heads, Mitra says. This prompting can help us adults transcend standard politeness, and get us over another potent fear: looking dumb in front of others. “With adults, there’s often an initial period where everybody’s stiff. Someone will say, ‘I’m not very tech-savvy’ or ‘I don’t know anything about this’ and takes a back seat,” Mitra says. Assure people that any and all answers are welcome.

Step 4: Draw on the wisdom of the crowd.

One other major obstacle you may encounter: competition. Many adults are simply accustomed to working solo — to us, working together often means doing our own tasks while colleagues focus on theirs — not, usually, all of us doing the same thing together. If we have the same duties, we tend to compete, consciously or subconsciously. A SOLE, on the other hand, is about discovering and deploying the expertise of the entire group of people. “When ants build a bridge, it’s not each ant working alone,” Mitra says. “It’s a thousand of them building it together.”

In a session that Mitra ran with a group of 15 professors at the UK’s Newcastle University (where he is a professor of educational technology), he spotted a problem right away: “After getting their question, they each took out their computer and started working alone.” His quick fix: He restricted the group to a single computer per small group — the same setup as in the eight School in the Cloud learning labs in India, the UK and the US — and the dynamic changed. “They appreciated the fact that in a group, they could get to a more nuanced answer more quickly,” says Mitra.

Step 5: Repeat as needed.

Besides using SOLE as a team-building exercise at work, you could focus a session on brainstorming potential uses for a new piece of software, device or tool, says Mitra. Another potential application that he is exploring: SOLE in senior centers. At a nursing home in the UK, the participants in a session impressed him with how adeptly they drew on each other’s strengths while researching the question, What will be the effects of Brexit? “In one group, there was one woman and three men. The woman had Parkinson’s and said, ‘My hand shakes too much to use the mouse, but I can read very well,’” recalls Mitra. “So one of the men operated the mouse, and she read out loud.” The group ended up having a lively discussion that pushed far beyond standard answers.

“It’s a strange thing, how our minds change over time,” says Mitra. “Life seems to take away that wild curiosity we have as kids.” This, he says, is a shame. “I’d rather hold on to the big questions.” Wouldn’t you?

Original article here

27 Nov 2021
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The seven types of rest: I spent a week trying them all. Could they help end my exhaustion?

“Are you the most tired you can ever remember being?” asks a friend. Well, yes. I have it easy – my caring responsibilities are limited and my work is physically undemanding and very low stakes – but I am wrecked. The brain fog, tearful confusion and deep lethargy I feel seems near universal. A viral tweet from February asked: “Just to confirm … everyone feels tired ALL the time no matter how much sleep they get or caffeine they consume?” The 71,000-plus retweets seemed to confirm it’s the case.

But when we say we are exhausted, or Google “Why am I tired all the time?” (searches were reportedly at an all-time high between July and September this year), what do we mean? Yes, pandemic living is, objectively, exhausting. Existing on high alert is physically and mentally depleting; our sleep has suffered and many of us have lost a sense of basic safety, affecting our capacity to relax. But the circumstances and stresses we face are individual, which means the remedy is probably also individual.

The need for a more granular, analytical approach to fatigue is partly what prompted Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith, a physician and the author of Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity, to start researching and writing. “I wanted people to take a more diagnostic approach to their fatigue. When someone comes in and they say they’re hurt, I can’t treat that without having more details: what hurts, where does it hurt, when does it hurt?”

Sacred Rest dates from before the pandemic, when Dalton-Smith’s practice was already full of tired patients. “People would come in saying: ‘I’m tired all the time’, ‘I don’t have energy’ … lots of non-specific complaints. Nothing where you could give them a pill; things that needed lifestyle changes.” Simultaneously, Dalton-Smith was struggling to combine intense career pressure with parenting two toddlers. “I was experiencing some burnout-type symptoms,” she says. The book starts with an extremely relatable account of her lying on the floor, her kids snacking in front of the TV. “I never knew how hauntingly healing cold wooden planks could be,” she writes.

Her fatigue prescription is to incorporate seven types of rest into your life: physical, mental, emotional, social, sensory, creative and spiritual. I am dubious. Sacred Rest has a classic off-putting self-help book cover (a jetty shrouded in mist), talks about the “bread of self-disclosure and the wine of community”, and focuses heavily on God (there’s a clue in the title). Then there is the fact that any attempt to take a break over the past 18 overloaded months has left me feeling miserable and unmoored. I confess this when I speak to Dalton-Smith over Zoom.

“I don’t like resting,” I tell her. “I get listless and sad and feel a failure.” She is not surprised. “For some people, rest is almost uncomfortable. It’s almost as if their psyche fights back against it because of the new sensation.” She would never, she says, recommend a three-day silent retreat to a completely frazzled patient. “For someone who is actively burned out, that’s almost traumatic.”

The book is not, in fact, about that kind of complete withdrawal; it is about incorporating enough moments of rest to stay functional. That may be a depressing indictment of end-stage capitalism: Dalton-Smith is thoughtfully critical of society’s inability to take a preventive approach to its “burnout culture”, commoditising sleep (“It’s a billion-dollar industry, we have speciality pillows, weighted blankets, all of this stuff”) rather than focusing on the root problem. It is, however, refreshingly realistic. I gave the seven types of rest a whirl over a week, to see whether I would feel less tired – whatever that actually means – afterwards.

Physical

As a lazy, desk-based homeworker, I am rarely physically tired. I do, however, get stiff and achy, sit for far too long and pretzel my body into terrible shapes. Dalton-Smith advises incorporating “body fluidity” into my day with hourly small movements. It’s easy and rewarding to set a phone reminder to roll my neck, clench and unclench my hands, or stand up and rock on my heels. Even better is the advice to “choose to be still on purpose for five minutes while lying down.” I do this on the sofa, under a blanket; the hardest part is getting up after five minutes.

I am a poor sleeper, so Dalton-Smith’s “bedroom routine” advice (the usual: dim lights, comfy clothes and no bedtime screens) is mainly stuff I do already. I follow her recommendation to add some stretches before bed; I sleep well the first night but after that I am back to my usual tossing and turning.

Mental

Mental fatigue – that befuddled, nervy, brain-fog feeling; forgetting what I was doing, and missing important things because my concentration is shot – is my constant companion. “Brain like damp Weetabix,” a friend calls it, which feels about right.

It is chastening how easy it is to improve my focus with a basic technique: time spent blocking out “low-yield activities”, such as email and social media, and periods of concentration. It dovetails well with the hourly movement breaks from physical rest, too. I am quickly conscious of how instinctively reactive I am to the most recent – not the most urgent, or the most important – demand; how the chime of a WhatsApp message chips 10 minutes off my concentration, leaving me foggier. I feel idiotic not to have realised this before. Usually when I try something for an article, however beneficial, I abandon it instantly once I finish, but the 25-minute focus, five-minute distraction timers on my phone have become a permanent fixture.

Emotional

Dalton-Smith has an online “rest quiz” to work out your rest deficits; by far my worst score is for emotional rest. It also turns out to be the area I find hardest to address. One suggestion is to identify people who “drain” you; as an introvert, I fear that’s everyone. Another tip is to “risk vulnerability”, against which I have an almost physical reaction: my mask is there for a reason! The third is to “cease comparison”, but comparing myself unfavourably to others is my main hobby. None of these are exactly quick fixes. I probably need therapy, but failing that, I ask Dalton-Smith for help.

She suggests writing down what I am feeling, if confiding in others feels too exposed. I sit in a cafe and write down everything I can think of that makes me feel angry, scared, ashamed and sad. It takes a while and I really hate it: it feels as if I have forced all my worst thoughts to the surface without any plan for what to do with them. Maybe it doesn’t have to feel good to do me good, and maybe if I sustain it for a while, I’ll feel the benefit? I am reserving judgment.

Social

I assumed “social rest” would mean opting out of socialising for a while, but Dalton-Smith’s social rest means spending time with people with whom you can be your unvarnished self.

Thankfully I am seeing my hairdresser this week (as a wig wearer, this is a very rare treat). We have known each other for 25 years and he sees me at my most vulnerable: bald and scared of what he’s about to do with his scissors. He is also wonderful company. Punctuated by the totally misused phrase “long story short, Em”, he treats me to a two-hour monologue on a variety of feuds, scandals and gossip so entertaining I leave feeling more energised than if I had had a transfusion of something unethical in a Swiss clinic.

After that, I have a leisurely lunch with my best friend, the woman who knows my worst qualities and nastiest thoughts. We eat like pigs, lapse frequently into silence, and discuss both really important stuff and the rising tide of water in the bottom of our fridges. It’s deeply restorative. She’s my emotional rest too, I realise.

Sensory

I know exactly what sensory input exhausts me: sound. Almost any noise – the battery bleep from a neighbour’s fire alarm, a distant engine, the bathroom fan – can obliterate my focus (while writing that sentence, I told the dog off for licking himself too loudly). My husband has been a brilliant WFH pandemic colleague, but the man is loud: a volcanic sneezing, expansive yawning, loudspeaker telephoning one-man band. It has been challenging.

This is no surprise to Dalton-Smith. Analysing data from her quiz during the pandemic, she saw “a huge uptick in the number of people who were experiencing sensory rest deficits”. People confined to the house with small children in particular, she says, were exposed to constant noise and even some adults “irritated each other to death. That non-stop hum of somebody talking in the background causes you to get agitated. That’s what sensory overload does to us.”

I am pretty much on top of my noise sensitivity: this article comes courtesy of a “peaceful piano” playlist that masks my least favourite noises without commanding my attention. But this week, I also try to ensure I appreciate the moments of silence when they happen, and to be conscious that when I feel depleted and stressed, noise is often the reason.

Creative

I haven’t had a decent idea for at least two years, so I think it’s fair to say I am creatively burnt out. I instantly love Dalton-Smith’s advice to “build sabbaticals into your life”. That’s not a month-long writer’s retreat; it can be as little as 30 minutes, doing something you choose, away from the grind.

I decide on lunch at my favourite cafe, then a gallery trip. After checking my email on the bus – a mistake – my lunch becomes a working one, as I do an urgent job. But after that the fun starts. I wander slowly around a ceramics exhibition, which is both transporting and inspiring. Afterwards, I drink a hot chocolate as the late autumn light fades, looking at people and shop windows and even having a conversation with a man about his dog. I feel like a different person for a while, as if there is more space in my head. I still have no good ideas, but looking beyond my usual environment and doing something I have chosen feels wonderful.

Spiritual

Dalton-Smith is clear that you don’t need to share her – or any – faith to incorporate “spiritual” rest into your life. “At the core of spiritual rest is that feeling that we all have of needing to be really seen, of feeling that we belong, that we’re accepted, that our life has meaning.” That might come through voluntary work, or other activities.

I have no faith, and finding what gives me those feelings seems a longer-term undertaking. Instead, I turn to the only spiritual thing I know well: a Quaker silent meeting. I was educated by the Quakers, a faith group whose conception of God is simultaneously so expansive and so minimalist (they believe there is “that of God in everyone”), it’s hard to feel uncomfortable about it. Silent meeting – an hour of silence, interrupted occasionally by anyone who feels moved to speak – is the only kind of meditation I can manage. I turn up, get a warm, no-fuss welcome, sit down, and enjoy the silence. Sometimes I examine my thoughts; sometimes I look at people’s jumpers. I can see the blue sky out of a window; mainly I look at that. It’s the deepest peace I feel all week.

Do I feel more rested? I am not miraculously restored and razor-sharp, but that’s not a realistic goal, or even the aim of the book. It is another week of poor sleep, but I feel as if I have a bit more in the tank than usual, which is pleasant. I find it useful, too, to analyse what sort of tired I am, and to have a toolkit to address at least some kinds of fatigue.

Of course, there is an unavoidable flaw in this experiment: I am resting for work purposes. That gives me sort of “permission” to rest, while still, actually, working. Could I embrace rest purely for myself? I should: this is basic maintenance, not self-indulgence. We can’t function forever fuelled by adrenalin and caffeine, fogged brains scrabbling to function, nerves frayed like a cheap phone cable. Sure, we can sleep when we’re dead, but a little rest before that would be nice.

Original article here

18 Oct 2021
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14 Colonial-Era Slang Terms to Work Into Modern Conversation

Hope you’re kedge and not gut-foundered, but if you are don’t get too macaroni, a simple snack and some Adam’s Ale should do the trick.

When you think of Colonial America, soldiers marching to fife and drum and Benjamin Franklin flying a kite are probably what come to mind. But the Colonial Period—which stretched from roughly 1607 to 1776, starting when America was just a group of colonies on the east side of the continent and ending with the Revolutionary War and the signing of the Declaration of Independence—was a fascinating but complicated time in which settlers from England forged a proud new identity. These new settlers brought the English language with them when they came, and whenever English finds a new home, it often takes on a new life. America was no exception. Here are 15 slang words that were recorded in and around this period of American history.

Kedge

What It Meant: Doing well

In you lived in a country town in Colonial-era New England and someone asked how you were doing, you might have replied, “I’m pretty kedge.” It’s a bizarre but wonderful term that essentially means in being in good health—but it also kind of sounds like something a teen in an ‘80s movie would say.

Cat’s-Paw, or to Be Made a Cat’s-Paw Out Of

What It Meant: To be a dupe, to be used as a tool.

This colorful expression came from a fable, The Monkey and the Cat, where a monkey persuades a cat to pull chestnuts out of a fire, promising the cat its share. Spoiler alert: The cat doesn’t get any. So to be used for someone else’s gain is to be made a “cat’s paw out of.”

Chuffy

What It Meant: Surly or impolite

If someone is short with you, tell them they don’t have to be so chuffy. It’s a strange, old word with obscure origins, and one that sounds a bit softer than “jerk.”

Scranch

What It Meant: To crack something between your teeth

Though this apparently “vulgar” term sounds like it was named after what it sounds like to crack something with your teeth, it supposedly comes from the Dutch word, schransen.

Gut-Foundered

What It Meant: Very Hungry

This word, which dates to 1647, is believed to be regional Newfoundland slang. Gut-foundered could easily become a new hyperbole for us pampered moderns to employ, like “starving.”

Fishy

What It Meant: Drunk

Possibly no one invented more ways to say “drunk” than colonial Americans. Benjamin Franklin alone compiled 200 ways to say it. Fishy was meant to also imply the way the drinker looked: “Bleary eyes and turned-down mouth corners make a drunk resemble a fish,” writes Richard M. Lederer, Jr. at American Heritage.

Macaroni

What It Meant: Fancy

When Yankee Doodle called that feather hat “macaroni,” he wasn’t being a weirdo. Macaroni was a term used at the time to refer to a particular men’s fashion from England that was intentionally flashy, over-the-top, and androgynous.

Twistical

What It Meant: Unfair or immoral

This word—which according to 1848’s Dictionary of Americanisms was primarily used in New England—feels like it could just as easily have been invented today. Slip it into conversation in the next time you experience something unjust.

Savvy, Savey, or Sabby

What It Meant: To know or understand

While we still use this word to mean something like “literate” (computer-savvy), in Colonial times, it was actually used more like the way Jack Sparrow uses it. So you might say, “I don’t want to come to work anymore, savvy that?” According to Merriam-Webster, it’s derived from sabe, which means “he knows” in Portuguese. This became sabi in Creole, and later, “savvy.”

Adam’s Ale

What It Meant: Water

If you’re feeling thirsty for water, try using this slang term that was popular on both sides of the pond in the Colonial era. To quote a 1792 American poem by Philip Freneau, “In reason’s scale his actions weigh’d / His spirits want no foreign aid / Long life is his, in vigour passes / A spring that never grew stale / Such virtue lies in Adam’s Ale.”

Shaver

What It Meant: A young or adolescent boy

To call a boy a shaver was to imply that they were young enough that they just started shaving. Which is fitting, if a little condescending—like they’re not embarrassed enough already!

Jollification

What It Meant: Celebration or merrymaking

It’s hard to even say jollification without sounding like a reenactor at Colonial Williamsburg. And though jollification sounds like it would be a good thing, it seems like there was also such a thing as too much jollification: The August 10, 1772 edition of The Pennsylvania Packet used the word in a morality tale about a man named Hilario: “What jolification [sic] could be complete without Hilario? Cards succeeded cards every morning to invite him to dinner, to routs, to dances; his only excuse was prior engagement, and he had not resolution to withstand the temptations.” By the end of the tale, according to Children In Colonial America, “a life of cards, women, and wanton spending slowly whittled away his wealth … no woman would marry him, and even his good looks had failed him.”

Simon Pure

What It Meant: The real deal, authentic, untainted

A delightful phrase that rolls off the tongue and could be dropped into many modern sentences. And when someone asks you, “who the heck is Simon?” you tell them that Simon Pure was a Quaker character who has to prove he’s the real Simon Pure in a 1718 play by Susanna Centlivre called A Bold Stroke for a Wife.

Circumbendibus

What It Meant: Roundabout

Of all the ways to describe something unnecessarily roundabout— like someone telling a rambling story or taking a weird road when driving somewhere—this word, which dates to 1681, might be the most delightful. It also shows how much we fun we had and still have with language, combining prefixes and suffixes to make new words.

Joe Gillard is the author of The Little Book of Lost Words, and the founder of History Hustle.

Original article here

06 Oct 2021
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Japan’s Unusual Way To View The World

Withdrawing my hands reluctantly from the slowly spinning bowl, I watched its uneven sides slowly come to a stop, wishing I could straighten them out just a little more. I was in the ancient pottery town of Hagi in rural Yamaguchi, Japan, and while I trusted the potter who convinced me to let it be, I can’t say I understood his motives.

Smiling, he announced, “it has wabi-sabi” – and whisked the bowl away for firing. I sat, contemplating the lack of symmetry and wondering what on Earth he meant.

As it turns out, failing to understand this phrase is not unusual. A key part of the Japanese Aesthetic – the ancient ideals that still govern the norms on taste and beauty in Japan – wabi-sabi is not only untranslatable, but also considered undefinable in Japanese culture. Often muttered in moments of profound appreciation, and almost always followed by the word muri! (impossible!) when asked to expand, the phrase offers an unusual way to view the world.

Originating in Taoism during China’s Song dynasty (960-1279) before being passed onto Zen Buddhism, wabi-sabi was originally seen as an austere, restrained form of appreciation. Today it encapsulates a more relaxed acceptance of transience, nature and melancholy, favouring the imperfect and incomplete in everything, from architecture to pottery to flower arranging.

Wabi, which roughly means ‘the elegant beauty of humble simplicity’, and sabi, which means ‘the passing of time and subsequent deterioration’, were combined to form a sense unique to Japan and pivotal to Japanese culture. But just as Buddhist monks believed that words were the enemy of understanding, this description can only scratch the surface of the topic.

Prof Tanehisa Otabe, professor at Tokyo University’s Institute of Aesthetics, suggests that the ancient art of wabi-cha, a style of tea ceremony established by tea masters Murata Juko and Sen no Rikyu from the late 15th to 16th Centuries forms a good introduction to wabi-sabi. By choosing common Japanese pottery over the popular (and technically perfect) imported Chinese examples, the men challenged the rules of beauty. Without bright colours and ornate designs to rely on as signifiers of accepted beauty, guests were encouraged to study subtle colours and textures that would previously have been overlooked.

As to why they sought imperfect, rustic pieces, Prof Otabe explained that, “wabi-sabi leaves something unfinished or incomplete for the play of imagination”. This opportunity to actively engage with something considered to be wabi-sabi achieves three things: an awareness of the natural forces involved in the creation of the piece; an acceptance of the power of nature; and an abandonment of dualism – the belief that we are separate from our surroundings.

Combined, these experiences allow the viewer to see themselves as part of the natural world, no longer separated by societal constructs and instead at the mercy of natural timelines. Rather than seeing dents or uneven shapes as mistakes, they are viewed as a creation of nature – much as moss would grow on an uneven wall or a tree would curve in the wind.

“The aesthetics of wabi-sabi opened our eyes to everyday life and gave us a method of handling what is common in an uncommon, aesthetic way,” Prof Otabe said, highlighting the importance of acceptance in Japanese culture, a society forced to contend with devastating natural disasters on a semi-regular basis. Rather than casting nature solely as a dangerous and destructive force, it helps frame it as a source of beauty, to be appreciated on the smallest of levels. It becomes a provider of colours, designs and patterns, a source of inspiration, and a force to work alongside, rather than against.

It is the inevitable mortality embound in nature, however, that is key to a true understanding of wabi-sabi. As author Andrew Juniper notes in his book Wabi Sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence, “It… uses the uncompromising touch of mortality to focus the mind on the exquisite transient beauty to be found in all things impermanent”. Alone, natural patterns are merely pretty, but in understanding their context as transient items that highlight our own awareness of impermanence and death, they become profound.

This idea brought to mind a story a Japanese colleague told me when we discussed wabi-sabi. Visiting Kyoto as a teenager, she had hurried through the grounds of Ginkakuji, a wooden Zen temple with quiet gardens, eager to see the more famous Kinkakuji, an ornate temple covered in gold leaf and perched above a reflective pond. Bright, stunning and glamorous, it lived up to her expectations, a far more impressive beauty than its traditional sister temple.

A few decades later, however, she returned to find the gold garish and, while it was certainly eye-catching, there was little beyond the immediate gratification of the gold leaf. Ginkakuji, however, offered a new fascination: the aged wood held countless hues and patterns, while the Zen moss and dry sand gardens offered a frame for nature’s many shapes. Unable to appreciate these things as a child, she had grown to see the ravages of time as a deeper source of beauty, far greater than a two-dimensional flash of gold.

Intrigued by the personal element of this appreciation, I contacted artist Kazunori Hamana, whose unique pieces are often considered to have an element of wabi-sabi. As we walked through the grounds of his tumbledown farmhouse in the rural idyll of Izumi in Chiba prefecture, he agreed with the need for age.

“You have different feelings when you’re young – everything new is good, but you start to see history develop like a story. After you’ve grown up, you see so many stories, from your family to nature: everything growing and dying and you understand the concept more than you did as a child.”

This appreciation for the marks of time is a key feature in Hamana’s works, which he chooses to display in derelict Japanese farmhouses. Explaining that the wooden doorframes have been blackened by years of smoke from the irori (an indoor hearth) and pointing out how the mud walls have started crumbling, he says he feels the history of the houses lend a fitting backdrop to his pieces, avoiding the cold duality of impersonal white gallery spaces.

Creating sculptures with natural clay from Shiga, an area with a reputation for high-quality clay and a long history of pottery making, Hamana embraces the important wabi-sabi concept of mutual creation between man and nature.

“I design a little at first, but clay is a natural thing, so it changes. I don’t want to fight with nature so I follow the shape, I accept it,” he said.

Not only does he allow nature to aid in the shaping of his pieces, but in their later appearance too. In an overgrown bamboo forest in the farmhouse grounds, he showed me the pieces he’d chosen to leave outside, buried in the undergrowth for years at a time. There they’ve developed unique patterns from extreme temperatures and surrounding plant life, as well as being occasionally broken. Studying them closely, I found that this simply added to the beauty of each piece, with the cracks offering another opportunity to add to the story.

Often associated with wabi-sabi is the art of kintsugi – a method of repairing broken pottery using gold or lacquer. The process highlights, rather than conceals, the cracks, allowing them to become a part of the piece, too. When his daughter accidentally broke some of his work, Hamana said, laughing, he decided to leave the pieces outside for a few years, allowing them to be coloured and shaped by nature. When it was repaired by a local kintsugi specialist, the different colours created a contrast so subtle, so uneven, that could never have been intentionally created. Embracing the effects of nature and allowing family history to be visible in a piece creates a unique value for something which would, in many cultures, simply be discarded as worthless.

In fact, the term ‘perfect’, which stems from the Latin perfectus, meaning complete, has been placed on an undeserved pedestal in many cultures, especially the West. Prioritising flawlessness and infallibility, the ideal of perfection creates not only unachievable standards, but misguided ones. In Taoism, since no further growth or development can take place, perfection is considered equivalent to death. While we strive to create perfect things and then struggle to preserve them, we deny their very purpose and subsequently lose the joys of change and growth.

Although seemingly abstract, this appreciation of transient beauty can be found at the heart of some of Japan’s most simple pleasures. Hanami, the annual celebration of cherry blossoms, involves parties and picnics, boat rides and festivals, all beneath the often already-falling petals, considered as beautiful in their haphazard patterns on the floor as they are on the branches. The pure acceptance of a fleeting beauty that would garner no more than a few photos in the West is something of an inspiration. While the appreciation may be tinged with melancholy, its only lesson is to enjoy the moments as they come, without expectations.

The dents and scratches we bear are all reminders of experience, and to erase them would be to ignore the complexities of life. By retaining the imperfect, repairing the broken and learning to find beauty in flaws – rather than in spite of them – Japan’s ability to cope with the natural disasters it so often faces is strengthened. When my bowl from Hagi arrived in the post months later, its uneven edges were no longer a defect, but instead a welcome reminder that life is not perfect, and nor should I try to make it so.

Original story here.

01 Aug 2021
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August Artist of the Month: Audrey Keenan

Artist Statement: Audrey Keenan

Audrey is a Scottish artist who paints abstract Expressionism angel art. She began painting on the anniversary of her daughter’s death, and found it was healing and therapeutic. In the last three years she’s been awarded 13 international art awards, including The World Golden Cup 2020 Art Award, Oscar dell Arte, Golden Palm 2020, and Leonardo da Vinci 2020.

Audrey has been featured in a collection of art magazines and invited to share her work in galleries and exhibitions all over the world, including London, Ireland, Sweden, Korea, Dubai, Italy and the USA. She’s also designed with an Italian fashion house.

Recently Audrey was appointed ambassador to the UK for Qatar International Art Show in October 2021.

Her art gives a message of love, peace, and hope from the etheric realms. Her wish is that the viewers are comforted by her creations.

Find Audrey on Twitter: @Angelhealingart

Instagram: Audrey Keenan

01 Jul 2021
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July Artist of the Month: Cuffian

Hi! I’m Brendan and my art name is Cuffian. I started painting during lockdown to lift my mood. I had never tried it before and now I can’t stop. I paint abstract art from a happy place – it’s like a beautiful puzzle that I have to solve and find the balance. I’m very excited to participate in the upcoming Qatar International Arts Festival. You can find me and my artwork on Twitter. Just smile and search for Cuffian!

27 Jun 2021
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The Infinite Intelligence Internet

Sentient intelligence exists all around us — all the time. Plugging your brain (your stand-alone computer) into the infinite intelligence internet gives you insights and understandings, but also extraordinary abilities to activate and accelerate potential, possibilities, genius, innovation & transformation.

The invisible infinite intelligent internet is made up of many facets, things like …

the sentient universe,
the quantum field of possibilities,
the genius field where ideas are waiting to be plucked,
Nature, the Earth and all her life forms,
the collective field of human knowledge, experience and realities.

Infinite intelligence is a sensory experience, not at all like the logical workings of the unplugged, stand-alone mind. Once plugged in, you are able to sense and read fields. I’m not just talking about empathy, although that’s a starting point for some. I’m talking about full blown knowing combined with the ability to activate, accelerate and actualise potential, possibilities and transformation, as well as to pull ideas and innovation out of thin air.

My video below will explain this more and walk you through how you can do this for yourself. Once you’re plugged in to the infinite intelligence internet, a whole new exciting world awaits you, one in which you are a source of exciting new creations and limitless possibilities to enhance life on this world.

About the Author:

Soleira Green is passionate about innovating a new future now, bringing genius, connection, greatness and the miraculous into the game for us all.

17 Jun 2021
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Innovation … How to pull ideas out of thin air

Innovation does not come from a finely trained mind. The opposite, in fact. Innovation is about pulling ideas and possibilities out of thin air. It’s an invisible art form, you might say. It takes…

• You being willing to brush away all the box load of training you have.
• Opening up wildly to something new pouring through you.
• A willingness to unleash that something deep inside you (let’s call it genius, shall we) and to pour that out into the world.
• A boldness of initiative to call an idea forth for all to see.
• An alignment to great things coming through you now.
• A willingness to play and bask in what I like to call the quantum field of possibility.

It’s here in this field, this ‘cloud’ of the unformed potential of us all, that brilliance awaits us all. Anyone and everyone can access this field, and anyone and everyone can be an innovator in whatever area of expertise calls to them.

When you call a new idea or possibility from the ‘cloud’, sometimes it comes to you fully formed and ready to roll into the world. Sometimes it comes like a drip drip drip, until some time later you discover you’re standing right in the middle of a brilliant idea, a revolutionary solution, a genius new that’s never been before. This is INNOVATION! This is what will reshape our world in the coming years and decades as the human race discovers its ability to engage in the creation of new possibilities with benefit for us all.

About the Author

Soleira Green is passionate about innovating a new future now, bringing genius, connection, greatness and the miraculous into the game for us all.

01 May 2021
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May Artist of the Month: Bradley Buxton

About the Artist:

I am a self-taught artist who picked up my first brush in lockdown, August 2020. I just felt an instant peace as I brushed the paint in different directions. I have taken elements of my life and principles and applied them to acrylics on canvas.

I’m brave with the brush and don’t hold back, including bold strokes and colour. I’m not afraid of failure, as I can start again if not happy, and I’m never offended by someone’s opinion: art is there for opinion, and everyone has one. Someone may see or take from it a different picture or story, and that’s fine.

I am from Norwich, Norfolk, and am very lucky to have grown up in such a beautiful county filled with nature, wildlife and colour. I’m very grateful to have my art featured here alongside so many talented people.

If you wish to keep up with what I’m up to, you can find me on Twitter: @BradleyBuxton

I’m also a singer-songwriter, and you can find my music on SoundCloud: Bradley Buxton

See Bradley’s art featured in Norwich Evening News

22 Mar 2021
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The Dandelion Principle

One spring I volunteered at a botanical garden, spending many days uprooting what to my untrained eye looked like lovely flowers and plants, because they were “non-native.” This particular garden cultivates only indigenous plants, so any errant seeds that have the misfortune to blow in and bloom are routinely removed

I found myself apologizing to the blossoms I pulled, innocent flowers who happened to settle in the “wrong” location. And I began to contemplate how much of our sense of borders and boundaries trickles down to everything we express as a species. While I’m not a horticulturist, my sense of deep ecology evolved out of my own healing journey.

Living Beyond the Lawn

Growing up in suburban America, I observed fairly rampant homeowner disgust with the dandelion, scourge of suburbia’s well-manicured lawns.

Much later, I discovered that dandelion is one of the most healing herbs available to humanity, offering itself in abundance wherever we may dwell. It’s a supreme liver tonic, known to help detoxify the body’s “processing plant.” In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), the liver equates to anger. If you want to release that pent-up rage in a healthy way, the remedy is probably available, free and easy, right in your own backyard.

Dandelion can act as de facto compost, gently surrounding and helping to decompose back into rich loam that which no longer serves. Yet we curse the weed and uproot it, spray poison to keep the green carpet unsullied. When we can stop “livin’ for the lawn,” focusing predominantly on the external, and make the subtle shift from ego mind to Universal Mind, we see with great clarity the incredible gifts all around us. Our teammates are everywhere, in the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms — if we have eyes to see.

Reimagining Inclusivity

As we move ever deeper into our collective rebirth process, we’ll be releasing people and places that no longer resonate with our lives now, and preparing to welcome in the new. Doing this with lovingkindness is our mandate. It’s a ripe moment to ask, who or what in my life seems like an outsider? Am I willing to look again, to enlarge the lens, to see beyond imaginary borders, to become inclusive rather than exclusive?

The Dandelion Principle says that where some see a weed, others see an herbal ally; a tonic not a toxic.

Where in your life is the medicine you need staring you in the face, masked as an undesirable…and all you need to do is shift your perception?

Below are seven practical steps to enlarge the lens this spring (fall, for our southern hemisphere allies): to slow down and look with the eyes of wonder, like a child. You’ll find many more on my mp3/CD, What You Need to Know Now: A Road Map for Personal Transformation:

Keep a journal. Buy a beautiful blank book and a pen that feels comfortable in your hand. Then allow yourself to write whatever and whenever you want. No one else need ever read it unless you choose to share, so send the censor packing! Journaling is like ingesting dandelion leaves with your pen — a great way to purge emotions and discover what really matters to you. And writing by hand is very different from writing on a digital device.
Dance your evolutionary process. Do you instinctively sway as you talk, or dance around the room when you get excited? Express your change process as flowing movement. Maybe it’s yoga, or tai chi, or free-form dance.
Make art. Are you a natural with a paintbrush or clay? Splash your emotions onto canvas, pour them into a mold, sketch them into being. Remember, this is art from the heart: done for the sole/soul purpose of enlarging your own vision.
Sing! Is your voice your most powerful expressive tool? If you love to sing but don’t know any songs, make up nonsense words to tunes you like, and sing them — in public. This is also a fabulous way to break free of the “What will people think?” trap.
Be in Nature. Sit by moving water. Sit inmoving water. Sing while sitting in a stream!
Prepare a meal that is as aesthetic as it is nutritious. As you combine ingredients, imagine that you are cooking up a grander vision for your life.
Hush. Spend a day, alone or with others, in total silence.

About the Author:

Amara Rose, Managing Editor of Ascension Lifestyle, is widely published in health, business, lifestyle, and new thought magazines, both digital and print. Visit LiveYourLight.com, where you can also subscribe to her monthly e-newsletter, What Shines.