Reflections 63

The Appearances of Beauty, a Personal Journey: A Poetics of Sustainability

Leah Carter B.A. Art Hons. Social Ecology

This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Murdoch University, Perth, 2012.

I declare that this thesis is my own account of my research and contains as its main content work which has not previously been submitted for a degree at any tertiary education institution.

______Leah Carter

Abstract

In the context of the unsustainable impact made by humans on the earth and its community of beings, there is an urgent need to re-imagine our place. The exteriorizing effects of objective and rational thinking have led us to see ourselves as separate from, rather than part of nature, and through this dislocation our environment is often seen as a material resource rather than as a source of awe and wonder. The potential of the experience of beauty to heal, deepen our sense of belonging, and guide our ways of perceiving is not fully recognized in the West. In this thesis I ask the question: Can a deepened apprehension of beauty assist us to engage with the losses that are occurring in the natural environment and enable us to discover ways of being that may restore our embeddedness within the community of nature?

To explore this question I undertook a year-long commitment to journal the daily happenings at a small lake on our semi-rural property. I visited the lake each day usually at dawn, noting the nuances, rhythms and interactions of the four elements and the animal and vegetal beings there. I witnessed without anticipating what I might find, and later over time I examined and reflected upon my impressions in depth, drawing understandings and insights from my experience. My intention was to listen for and give voice to what wanted to emerge, to find an order through a reflexive approach to self and other. This was to become a labyrinthine journey that revealed elements of the interior landscape of the lake beings, and my own.

The research takes a phenomenological approach and considers my direct experience of the seen and unseen in a poetic way. My approach goes beyond rational, thinking processes to ways of perceiving that are based on the intelligence of the heart. I found that in acknowledging then passing through what is outer and immediate, and opening to mystery and the unknown, new realizations emerged bringing connections to my perception at a profound level. As part of a depth experience, engaging with complexity in a way that allows for ambivalence and doubt is an essential rite of passage as patterns begin to form.

I was changed by my discovery that making a place for the apprehension of the beauty and the sacred in each thing brought about a deepened perception of the relations between the environment, sustainable ways of being, and myself. I offer in this thesis my lived understanding of the capacity of the experience of beauty to heal, its potential to transform perceptions and lead to a renewed affinity, re-cognizing the agency of the planet as our home.

Contents

List of images vii

Acknowledgements viii

Chapter 1 - Into the labyrinth: the journey of becoming

Introduction 1

The research process 3

The method of photography 8

A phenomenological approach 11

The reflective process 14

The lake: an introduction 16

The journal: an introduction 19

The structure of the thesis 22

Chapter 2 - Journaling the lake: discovering the appearances, seen and unseen

Introduction 24

Being in Place 26 Being subject 28 Being in element 30 Being at home 31 Making home 33

The elements 35 Fire: dawning and the light 37 Materiality and earth 38 Life-giving waters 39 The Moving air 41 Elements as the littoral 43

Interplay and relating 45 Reflecting and responding 47 The dance of quiddity 48

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Rhythm of days 50 Passing ephemeral 53 Patterns and paths 56 Visible traces 56 Unseen traces 58 Shadows and reflections 63

The appearances and beauty 64 The colours 66 Iridescing and luminescing 67 Gesture and particularity 68

Reflection 72

Chapter 3 - Reflecting and understanding: as receptive engagement

Introduction 74

Light and the material body 76

Permeable boundaries and transitions: liminescing 85

Patterning and paths 93

Rhythm and fit 96

Particularity and quiddity 98

Dwelling and receptivity 104

The struggle for beauty 107

Reflection 113

Chapter 4 - Insights into the healing nature of beauty: glimpsing the mystery

Introduction 118

Beauty heals as a poetic embodied experience 119

Beauty heals as a metaphysical experience 124

Beauty heals as it deepens and evokes awe and wonder 126

Beauty heals as it brings us to an experience of empathy and belonging 128

Reflection 133

Chapter 5 - The forgetting of western culture: towards retrieving the fragments

Introduction 136

Questioning the ‘real’ 137

Separation and the loss of belonging 138

The externalizing of experience and the loss of beauty 140

Language as exclusion 142

The loss of the feminine 144

Reflection 145

Chapter 6 - Encountering the liminal: evoking meaning through image

Introduction 147

The way of the symbol 149

The sacred feminine 152 Inanna: tracing a path of poem and praise 154 Sophia: Wisdom 159

An aesthetic approach to meaning: the enchantment of the Celts 161 From Druid to monk 163 Drawing the water 167 The Grail 170

Trans-forming Hermes 172

Reflection 179

Chapter 7 - Continuing the journey: towards transformation and healing

Introduction 180

My aesthetic process – testament to the experience of beauty 181

The language of the image 183

Towards belonging: the process of fit 186

The process of understanding 189

The healing nature of beauty 193

Bibliography 198

Appendices

Appendix A - an afterword 205

Appendix B – Images Series II Water Impressions Attached

Appendix C – The journal, full text - CD Attached

Images

Series I ‘Becoming’

Translucing I 81 Translucing II 82 Translucing III 83

Liminescing I 88 Liminescing II 89 Liminescing III 90

Florescing I 109 Florescing II 110

Illuminating I 115 Illuminating II 116 Illuminating III 117

Book of Kells Folio 130r 165 Unfolding 166

Kaleidoscoping I 177 Kaleidoscoping II - detail Chartres crypt ceiling 178

Appendix B

Series II Water Impressions, untitled.

All photographs are by the author except for the image from the Book of Kells, included by kind permission of the Board of Trinity College Dublin.

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Acknowledgements

This journey has been life-changing and I have many to thank for their support and contributions along the way.

I am deeply grateful to my two wonderful supervisors Dr. Julia Hobson and Associate Professor Alex Main, whose wisdom, generous guidance and constant encouragement enabled me to bring this research to fruition. Thank you Julia for the keen focus, clarification and grounding you brought, and Alex for your skill and patience in drawing me into my depths to explore what was at the heart of this journey. I treasure the many ranging conversations that we have had.

Thanks also to Laura Stocker for your supportive supervision in the early stages of the thesis, Trish Harris for discussions also early on, and Cecily Scutt for your Writing Space which I found so helpful in invoking what was to emerge. To Genelle Jones heartfelt thanks dear friend for reading through the draft and your insightful, sensitive and heartening comments. To Helen Ferrara, Judy Durey, Pauline de Fry, Sally Paulin and Megan Jaceglav for your friendship and sharing the PhD journey with me, and to friends and colleagues at the Institute for Social Sustainability. I would also like to thank Murdoch University for providing the scholarships that have assisted me through the research.

Thank you to Pam D’Rosario who worked with me to find my truths and to integrate the learning, Olive Mason for your lively knowledge and wise understandings and Nirtana Robertson for thought-provoking conversations. To Gary Russell for your help with photo and technology matters, your interest in my topic and encouragement, Des Clemo for troubleshooting so patiently and John Gannaway for producing some beautiful bindings. Margaret McNeil, whose thoughtful questioning led me to new understandings, Sally Meehan for your friendship and the loan of books, and Patsy Hallen whose early influence continues to inspire me. Paulus Berensohn for your example of commitment to a sustainable and beautiful world, and for your creative and inspiring letters. To everyone who has contributed to this journey in any way, thank you.

Finally, deep thanks to my family - to my parents who gave me so many early opportunities, to my children Leighton, Ella and Liz, for your loving and sensitive support over the project; and Liz for your thoughtful insights during our discussions about the nature of beauty and the research generally. To my dear husband Phil for bringing other perspectives, pushing me to find the words - for your love and humour and for keeping the home fires burning through this long but wonderful journey.

And to Charlie, our labrador who has been a constant companion over the time, coming and going, sharing the study.

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This thesis is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Michael Booth, who encouraged me into the research and guided me through the early stages.

Chapter 1 - Into the labyrinth: the journey of becoming

Introduction

This thesis is about the experience of beauty; about the nature of beauty and its potential to heal, and the exploration of an experiential way of understanding. The project inquired as to whether a deepened apprehension of beauty may assist us to engage with the losses that are occurring within the natural environment and their implications for human and other-than- human1 beings, and to discover ways of being that may restore our embeddedness within the community of nature.

The thesis journey has been through a poetic approach and engages with questions rather than answers; it is about my experience of beauty and not based on philosophical or aesthetic/ theoretical interpretations within an established discourse. Rather, I explore the appearances of beauty and the powers it elicits on a personal response level, in the moment of revealing. My process is based on a perception of the appearances of beauty for the revelation of itself, opening to it so as to create an atmosphere whereby it may appear in its own way. Throughout the thesis, in referring to ‘beauty’ and also to ‘the appearance/s of beauty’, I use the terms interchangeably. Such beauty comes through invitation and is soul-based, through the intelligence of the heart2 where we may receive and respond, rather than through will, via the mind.

This thesis begins with the assumption that Western culture with its emphasis on rationality, dis-embodied language and an economic approach to the world has led to both a decline in the perception of beauty and (for some of us) an experience of a

1 David Abram’s term, The Spell of the Sensuous (1997)

2 Stephen Harrod Buhner uses this term in The secret teachings of plants: the intelligence of the heart in the direct perception of nature (2004) to describe the capacity of the heart (which I understand as the organ of feeling and as integrative being) to perceive and respond in a whole and reciprocal way with the presences in our surrounding world.

loss of beauty. Over the centuries a disjunction has evolved whereby we no longer fit as part of the community of nature, seeing ourselves as separate, and living in increasingly surface-based and materialist ways. In chapter five I discuss how such externalization of our way of life leads to a loss of empathy and belonging, and a loss of potential to engage with mystery.

As beauty is apprehended in non-rational ways its experience is not easily verbalized or understood and so it has come to be perceived as non-essential. Economic thinking has contributed to the neglect of beauty because it is seen to be unproductive and costly; however the real cost of the loss or absence of beauty is to be found in the ecological crisis faced by the planet today. The diminishment of our natural surroundings has a profound effect on our sense of belonging, for as beings within the community of nature we too become diminished as we learn of species extinction and habitat loss. Nature’s beauty and integrity can evoke such deep responses in human beings that the environmental losses sustained by the natural world can lead directly to a deep sense of alienation and loss.3 The way we interact with our material surroundings affects our wellbeing and when these correspond there is a feeling of ‘fit’.

In a culture of commodity where surface appearance, volume and the literal are largely assumed to represent reality, and where the rhythm of life is overtaken by speed and efficiency there is less opportunity to experience a sense of the deep wonder evoked by beauty. Indeed, currently our perception of what beauty is tends towards the outer manifestations of life; that is only those things and experiences which are immediately apparent to us. Yet, beauty is revealed in subtle ways, sometimes appearing from the margins, and noticing calls for a responsive way of being, a readiness to perceive what may not initially be visible to us, for to receive beauty there needs to be space for mystery and the unknown to enter. The quality of beauty that is the subject of this study is not just of a surface quality but inhabits

3 Some of this emotional loss as been explored by Glenn Albrecht et al (2007) through his term Solastagia, referring to the acute distress suffered as the result of the negative impact on personal/ local environment through the effects of industrialization and climate change. Whilst sharing these concerns this thesis takes a different approach exploring the aesthetic, symbolic and mythic roots of loss and locates the exploration around the central experience of beauty.

depths including ways of being such as receptivity and empathy, and moves from the realm of appearances to connect us to other realms. Through these processes I suggest wonder, joy, awe and the appreciation of beauty have the potential to re- sacralize the world and heal and transform our whole being.

This thesis explores the vivifying and healing quality of beauty through direct experience. It explores the perception and experience of beauty, the nature of appearances and the insights regarding the inner and outer realities of the researcher that emerged through experience. It engages with the relational nature of accord and seeming contradiction, dissolving perceptions of difference that separate, and instead coalesces differences into unitive and enhancing powers of complementarity. In the broader context this leads to a perceiving of the distinction of self and others in gentler, more inclusive and creative ways.

The research process

The research data is in the form of a written journal and includes a number of photographic images based around a year-long experience of ‘witnessing’ at a lake. This data was then examined and reflected upon to explore ways of being ranging from the cosmological to the particular. So, for a year I took my place beside a small lake on our semi-rural property most usually at dawn, and occasionally at midday or dusk, as a permeable witness, journaling the daily occurrences, actions and interplay of the elements and beings there. 4

A large part of the process of the research entailed the evolution of my understanding and perceptions so that levels of my awareness deepened over the time. It was about becoming engaged in a way that asks for more than the thinking mind – going further

4 Writing about the experience of being at a lake has been done before, for example see Thoreau’s account and reflections, originally published in 1854 of his time living beside Walden Pond (1997). See also Aldo Leopold (1966) for his essays over a year of the seasonal changes in the land around his home and his subsequent ‘Land Ethic’. There is also a rich and diverse body of literature about journeying into the natural world and reflections in the context of the intersection of nature and culture, for example Peter Matthiessen (1980), Annie Dillard (1988), Jay Griffiths (2008) Jules Pretty (2011) Robert Macfarlane (2007, 2012) and others.

towards that which is beyond everyday awareness into a metaphorical way of perceiving, drawing other dimensions into experience. As such this thesis belongs more in the tradition of the humanities than in social science.

My research stance took the form of a porous and responsive immersion and my method was one that engaged on a deeply personal level; what I was exploring and the way that I was exploring reflected one another both in terms of ‘becoming’ as a concept and as my becoming, through my own journey and perceptions. I found that these layers frequently interlapped and this was challenging because it made clarification elusive.

By choosing the process of journaling I hoped to reveal and elaborate the diverse layers of my experience. (Progoff 1963) The intention of the research journal was to witness and experience the lake environment and community: as such I became part of the research concurrently as co-subject and as researcher. Boundaries blurred as I increasingly identified with the beings there and experienced feelings of wonder, empathy and deep belonging. What I witnessed or came to discover at the lake was also a reflection of matters I was perhaps engaged with on less conscious levels. The spaciousness of the contemplative process that was my experience for the year brought the opportunity for profound understanding and insights.

The method of investigation as a journal, relating personal responses to and perceptions of the land, was initially prompted by my concern for the loss of biodiversity and of beauty and as the year progressed and later as I worked through all that that I had witnessed and where those notations had led me, I found that it was also about an inner and an outer conversation. I sat with the land, water and community noting the qualities and tendencies of phenomena as they appeared to me. I was profoundly moved throughout the year by the nature of life there and gradually came to feel at home in my role as permeable witness. What I witnessed on one level shifted as I began to see a pattern emerge in my process. As I had been noting particular things and as the work deepened, the heart of my process of discovery began to reveal itself, haltingly and tenuously.

Much of this research is about experience; discovery and understanding. With regard to my own experience at the lake and the later processes of examining what I had recorded I engaged in both self-aware and self-conscious methods of reflection on the many levels of what emerged from my experience. This is not a unique researcher stance as many models of research, especially in the humanities and social sciences, consciously include the observer.5

As I witnessed over the year I did not know what would come out of my journal; I noted the things that appeared in my awareness and a pattern began to emerge that seemed to be revealing particular qualities and ways of being. The lake community was comprised of the elements themselves and the animal and vegetal beings, and I became aware that each being was quite unique and displayed particular qualities. It was for me to attend, and as I did I began to appreciate the quiddity6 of each being there. I came to wonder at the nature of each and my empathy thus grew deeper.

Asking questions and fostering space for truths to emerge as a method is reminiscent of a Socratic approach; that is recognising that all cannot be known and encouraging conditions for the appearance of hidden, latent knowing. (Progoff 1963) There is a symbiotic relationship between uncertainty and wisdom which goes beyond understanding. When we relate deeply with our surroundings we are faced with new questions about our place as part of the world; questions which can also be personally challenging as we reconsider our sense of self. I gradually became more closely identified with the never-the-same daily round, its anticipations and its surprises and later in examining all that I had written it became clear that there had been, and still is, a dialogue going on between me and the surroundings.

5 We can learn about our lives while simultaneously living them (Rodriguez and Ryave 2002) 6 I came to perceive the extraordinary quality of ‘quiddity’ to be a central attribute of the particular and idiosyncratic nature of the entities, that is the denizens of the lake and the lake environment itself, as well as an element that I came to recognize as an essential part of the phenomenon of beauty. In chapter three I give a definition and expand on the understandings that I gathered of the nature of quiddity, pages 101-102.

My awareness of the significance of the qualities in experience of complexity, ambivalence and doubt were reflected back to me as I undertook the labyrinthine process of finding an order in what I had discovered. This re-affirmed that for me (and others) these particular qualities are an inherent part of a depth experience and have to be passed through, difficult as that may be, and that by passing through these stages at some later point a pattern begins to form. At times, the process seemed to be leading me as I listened closely to what I was witnessing and then listened for what wanted to emerge.

The thesis then explores some of the differences between a poetic response to the world and a rational way of understanding. The contrasts between these are highlighted in chapter three, reflecting on the way in which such phenomena as the four elements, boundaries, and light and darkness (amongst others) are perceived, ranging from their literal apprehension to ways that open to the mysterious. In chapter five I question the tendency within Western culture to quantify, separate and prescribe, and look towards ways that embrace the mobility and integrity of each thing, making a place for life to unfold into its particular potential. Mythic ways of perceiving (often seen as ‘untrue’, yet which can offer deeper truths) draw together in a labyrinthine way symbolic understandings that rational and linear processes are unable to reach, and in chapter six I engage themes that draw from the archetypal foundations of human experience that express this poetic way of making meaning.

The poetic is a shifting and fluid state that invites the voice of uncertainty and the unknown whereas a rational approach valorizes reasoning organized around an order that is predictable and replicable. The poetic and the rational are ways of attempting to understand the world and ourselves and the relationship between both and come from different yet still complementary orientations.

Imagining is one path towards fluid engagement with materiality and uncovering correspondences with our non-rational faculties; it acknowledges the need for intuition in knowing. We need more than reasoning on our journey towards knowledge and understanding.

As the process distilled, as meanings began to emerge I became aware that the things I noticed and their significances were a reflection of the way that I approach the world. What I had found on the level of the beings’ activity and relationships at the lake also related to the way I perceive the world; that is my method and my discoveries were a reflection of my evolving perceptions of the nature of being, including my own.

My method involved re-visiting each word and through this attention to the detail a sense of deeper meaning surfaced and it became apparent that this pattern was verb and process-based rather than noun and product-based; it is a shifting and fluid pattern. Everything was in a state of ‘play’ and becoming. Each word ‘sounded out’ and took on a life of its own, evoking and perhaps invoking something that I then had to attend to, in order to identify. Gradually a pattern emerged tracing the paths that my experience had taken, consciously and less consciously.

This is a challenging approach because it draws together seemingly disparate areas which through time form their own pattern of engagement. I am familiar with this process through my work as a visual artist where the context, concept and materials may go along for a time without a conscious or resolved connection but which over the ups and downs of the settling process begin to coalesce.

Over the years my art has taken form through various media, all tending to address notions of translucence and penumbra through the conversation between matter and light. My materials have ranged through such media as clay and glass to beeswax, charcoal and ashes; sand, vine leaves and rose petals to rice paper shaped with sago. I have used these media to explore and express my understandings about human nature as a part of nature, and my concern about the detrimental effects on the earth and all life forms that result from the forgetting of our roots. I have my own experience of how tenuous the connection to one’s roots may become through the effects of globalization, homogenization and migration and so I find it personally essential to look towards the expression of deep belonging in diverse contexts. I attempt where I can to evoke a direct experience through material and processes that have a minimal impact on the ecology of the earth.

I understand a written thesis as being another way of bringing something new into form and as such my research is a reflection of my process of artmaking. At the outset I was deeply aware that engaging with the experience of beauty as my research topic would necessitate an approach and a language that is mindful of its ephemeral and mysterious nature and so the content and the approach interweave.

My assumption in this thesis is that a holistic understanding comes out of listening closely, by attending as much as possible without other agendas. From the outset my approach was to allow the world to speak to me; as witness my intention was to be permeable, making a place for what desired to be made known. This then is not a study with finite questions and a prescribed approach but rather a report of meanings which began to form through experiential witnessing; the notations of which were then exhaustively examined to bring to the surface images of the main aspects. It has the quality of an archaeological retrieval in that all was not apparent; there was no definitive picture of the extent of my findings rather they were labyrinthine, nested and finally only partially revealed. An imaginal approach is concerned with the apprehension and elaboration of the image and in this thesis is communicated in both written and photographic language. This imaginal approach explores the dimensions of our perceived inner and outer reality bringing it into a form that we may recognize.

The method of photography

The photography was based on the same approach as the journaling of my sojourn at the lake and necessarily required an element of critical awareness in terms of the practice. I did not allow the activities of journaling and photography to overlap for I felt that to retain the integrity of each activity and of what emerged, it was important to address them separately. This kept the meditative and attentive nature of the journaling intact and allowed me to engage in another mode of responding when I was photographing. I found that to photograph sensitively called for a similar quality of attentiveness but also required me to be concurrently responsive to my surroundings and to technical concerns, the latter of which required concentration as the medium of photography as an art form was relatively new to me. The experience

of photographing was central as a personal process of learning, attending to the particular and at times ephemeral nature of my subjects and environment, the mode of engagement becoming as significant for me as the image produced. 7

Initially I questioned whether there is a risk to experiencing opening, listening and witnessing by ‘fixing’ a momentary image through photography. Examining this question ultimately led me to perceive that a photograph could be understood as a ‘pause in time’ and that it offers the potential of glimpsing a transient moment of beauty, for the apprehension of beauty is necessarily transient. The experience of taking these photographs gave me a deepened understanding and greater wonder at the mystery of the beauty within each thing. This was not about the question of the physical ‘how’ of the evolution of species, for example, (wondrous in itself), but rather of a sense of awe and awareness of a mystery behind and through appearances.

The photographs comprise of two series. The main body of photographs – Series I ‘Becoming’8, the images are to be found clustered at particular places through the text: these images do not attempt to convey in either representational or abstract ways but are intended to evoke moments of becoming, to be understood in a layered way. Two images in Series I differ from the main body: a detail from the Book of Kells and ‘Kaleidoscoping II’ (a detail of the ceiling in Chartres crypt), and are included because they each convey in their own way(s) the qualities evoked by the paired image and offer further possible readings.

The photographs of Series II Water Impressions in Appendix B are studies of the waters, engaging ephemeral and shifting presence. At first I was drawn to photograph the phenomenon of the lake as water, exploring its interplay with other elements and particularly with an awareness of presences seen and unseen, and for these images I was necessarily placed at a distance. Later, as I came much closer to my subjects (Series I) I recorded particular moments, gathering a sense of the awe-

7 In On Photography Susan Sontag traces and discusses the practice of photography and the potential of the photograph to influence perceptions ‘…photographs … are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing.’ (1989, 3)

8 These images are about ‘Becoming’ in more than one sense: of coming into being, and in beauty’s context of (a mutual) ‘drawing towards’.

inspiring qualities of nature’s processes and coming-into-being. For these, in keeping with my emphasis on witnessing their particularity I used a macro lens. Although a telephoto lens would have enabled me to record images such as wildlife in flight I felt that this would not quite fit in context with my emphasis on close encounter.

Two further images that are not part of either Series I or II reveal in soft-edged representational form glimpses of the lake environment and are the first and last images in the thesis.

My intention is not to depict as such, but rather to express ephemeral moments, possibilities for intuiting the atmosphere and the elemental energy that lies behind or beyond the image, and most particularly in Series I the appearance of the essential nature of each thing. To the reader, regarding ‘reading’ my images I would offer that my hope is for them to be understood not in a cognitive way but rather as intimations or expressions of be-ing.

This thesis continues on from my previous work9 which explored the potential for healing through deepened human engagement with nature and with beauty; and the proposition that art as a process brings us closer to our roots as participants in the creative unfolding of life. In one way this has developed further in this research for the process of art-making or ‘art-ing’ can be perceived as parallel to the daily creative happenings at the lake. These took form as the play of the elements; as essential activity for survival and also it seems as activity purely of and for itself. Play. It was clear that the beings were fully immersed and in their element, just as in my experience the activity of artmaking is one that can transform our sense of time and place.

9 Honours thesis: Re-engagement with the Earth through Art, Ecology and the Sacred, Murdoch University (1998)

A phenomenological approach

The approach I chose was one that engaged in an embodied way with both the experience of the beings and the elemental conditions of the lake, and also with my own responses to them. It is to attend deeply to and note the detail of all that is perceived so as to bring understandings that engender new insights about the wisdoms inherent in lived experience. Although individual exploration is usually understood to be situated within heuristic methodologies I would like to clarify to the reader that I have chosen to draw upon phenomenology for this purpose.10

In phenomenology reality is comprehended through embodied experience. Through close examination of individual experiences, phenomenological analysts seek to capture the meaning and common features, or essences, of an experience or event. The truth of the event, as an abstract entity, is subjective and knowable only through embodied perception; we create meaning through the experience of moving through space and across time. (Starks and Brown Trinidad 2007, 1374)

To evoke the character, events, moods and atmosphere of the lake I recorded at length the particularities of each thing as they occurred reflecting the essence of their (and my) experience and later examined in depth what they came to mean. In this way a porous and phenomenological inquiry is able to come into form leading towards greater insights into our own and other ways of experiencing life.

I was drawn to the ‘alchemical hermeneutic’ process (Romanyshyn 2007) through which the research and the researcher are engaged in a dynamic exchange and where both are mutually taken in and taken on, so that the voice that would be heard (but that is not normally audible in the context of an objective method) may come through. For me it was the process of listening for the hidden, not readily perceived elements of the work that ultimately enabled the whole to come together. On another level this research approach seemed to hold the space for the gestation of elements that were to be included and yet which needed time to come into form.

10 This process may be seen as an example of first-person participatory action research. See Reason and Bradbury (2008).

My method was one of entering the space as a witness without a prior view about what I would discover. I was conscious of approaching unobtrusively and in a way that allowed me to be permeated by what and whom I witnessed, gradually becoming attuned to the affect and the individual nature of each being.11

As a phenomenological research process, whereby I experienced and explored my own lived experience, the thesis took on a poetic form. Early on in the research process I engaged with four of the works of Gaston Bachelard (1983, 1988, 1990, 2002) that explored ‘the imagination of the four elements’, finding an affinity with aspects of his approach that he termed ‘reverie’, whereby he allowed himself to be deeply drawn into his subjects the elements. It seemed that Bachelard drew a line between the tangible forms of beauty and their inner qualities –

I leave it to others to attend to the beauty of forms while I devote my efforts to defining a beauty intrinsic to material substances; their many hidden attractions, all that affective space concentrated in the interior of things. (2002, 6)

Whereas whilst I too was deeply drawn to the inner nature of things I wanted to experience and explore the inner and outer expressions of the appearances of beauty; that is, in a way that I hoped would engage the whole. All the same my excursions into Bachelard’s world brought much to the way I came to perceive the essential nature of the four elements.

As my experience deepened, so my language reflected both my experience and my perceptions of the myriad expressions there. The deeper I entered into the shared space of the lake the more it became apparent that customary English language could not adequately express all that was happening. It was important that my language evoked particular be-ing, and I found that my words naturally joined up or formed in new ways to express the many moments and moods of becoming, enabling the presence of each being and each experience to speak.

11 The journal process was a solitary one, taking place very early in the morning, with few people if any passing by so that my concentration centred around the beings at the lake and myself. However my intention has been to bring the understandings that I gathered from that world into context with the broader world of human experience.

Language not only reflects ourselves and surroundings but it becomes our reality and we become our language - it moulds us and our relating. Choosing a word offers the opportunity to bring into being ways of perceiving, embodying and understanding the world. A poetic approach invites presence, is inclusive and opens to the world so that diversity and difference can be perceived afresh as new ways of being are explored.

I was aware that a singular descriptive tone would have held my lake impressions within a two dimensional boundary whereas evoking the particularity and quiddity of phenomena emphasized each voice. In doing this I had to honour the invitation to engage, and the levels of willingness to engage, that were offered by the denizens at the lake. I was a visitor in their world, granted (wider or narrower) access, a point that was brought home when photographing. Some beings seemed to allow themselves to be photographed more easily than others but whatever access was granted there was a need for courteous praxis. I constantly reminded myself to ask who, what wants to be written/ imaged, rather than to assume that I had entitlement over the beings with whom I was sharing this experience.

Lived experience of the particular may open us up to greater empathy with the natural world and affect our perceptions and actions. I found that over the year I came to know the place, conditions and the beings more deeply and this brought me into their sphere so that I came to empathize with what I understood to be aspects of their experience. Even so I was keenly aware that my understanding was limited to my human capacity and that their experience was of course not to be perceived as an extension of this.12

This thesis offers a different way of looking at nature and our place within it. I engaged with the research and the lake in an experiential way that was subjective and qualitative, quite different to a philosophical or a scientific objective approach. This

12 In Environmental Culture: the Ecological Crisis of Reason (2002) Val Plumwood discusses the failure of our culture through rationalist thinking to see ourselves as ‘ecological beings’, privileging humankind over other species.

research is about my direct experience, and as such it is unlike any other person’s experience.

At the end of this research as I look back at my year’s experience at the lake much continues and much changes; the seen and the unseen shifting, just as memories and impressions live and pass through -

falling to the ground returning to the roots: a flower’s farewell 13

Some of the animal and vegetal lives, then so present, have gone now and new life moves in; they do not take the place of those from before but take their own place, with their own character and presence. Pasts and futures interweave.

The reflective process

When the year’s journal was complete I began the process of reflecting on the experience of being there, and to consider all that I had noted. I examined the journal to see what were my impressions, the sense and flavour of them, and just who and what presented to me; what things I noted and the way they took on a life of their own. The process of making meaning from my journal notes was intensive as I looked for recurring themes and, at times, apparently tenuous connections, for there had been so much going on and so much recorded. A long, slow peeling away of layers began to reveal the significance of the phenomena. Over time I created categories of significance through a process of combing and re-combing the journal. This was a difficult process because for me differentiating and analysing occurs in a round rather than a lineal way.

As I engaged more deeply it became clear that it was the daily interplay between the beings, the constant shifts of the elements and their effects on each being that I was noticing. Later, when I began to examine and clarify the journal entries these distilled into processes that were about transition and change; the interplay and gestures of

13 Matsuo Basho (2004).

life’s patterns and paths. I found that there were consistently dynamic ‘verbings’, things in process (not fixed objects or nouns) and this developed into an examination of the transitional qualities of the play of complementarity and harmony. Concepts of opposites or fixity did not fit what I had come to understand.

My series of categories of process gradually crystallized forming a body of what I came to know as ‘ing-ings’, representing the becoming that was the centre of my witnessing. On the way I formed classification patterns, the most significant expressing the emergence of life, passage, ephemerality and beauty.

These all occurred to me as aspects of being-in-process, in a state of interplay as part of a cycle which I began to understand as a florescing/evanescing complementarity. The florescing seemed to occur in everything that bloomed, and all bloomed differently – whether a flowerbloom, waterbloom, goslingbloom. Blooming, glowing with refreshed new or renewed life.

The categories gradually distilled into a series of actions or interplays; encountering, florescing, kaleidoscoping, liminescing, rhythming, revealing, translucing, luminescing. Each of these engages a complementary polarity and together they form a cycle of continuous change. Complementing rather than opposing is significant for this work because it represents a sense of responsively shifting states, reflecting life’s rhythms.

I have always understood everything to be individual and particular and the process of reflecting on the journaling at the lake emphasized this, down to each drop of dew or flower centre. This understanding expanded into the psychological sense of things, so that the diversity that is all around can be visualized as an inner as well as outer phenomenon. Each duck and each goose had an inner and outer gestural character which I came to know well through my daily witnessing. In this way a sense of diversity within unity, celebrating difference (but which might otherwise be considered as oppositional) became a way to express potential integration, a way of seeing things as essential in themselves yet also as parts of a whole.

All that I discovered at the lake, all the understandings that took form from them and the insights that came to me from them were based on my experience as reflector; they came together slowly, as I imagined through the layers. In this way discoveries, understandings and insights weave and loop back together gathering form and coherence, cumulatively shifting and re-shaping the journey’s findings. The process has a time-and-depth rhythm of its own which needs to be accommodated, for to push for resolution would be counter to the spirit of my inquiry. For me, approaching the question of the appearance of beauty is to find a way to be present as participant and as receiver of wonder, at times concurrently looking inwards from without and looking outwards from within; a liminal, shifting and reflective place.14

My method of making sense of and integrating what I discovered could be described as feeling one’s way through the dark, exploring the textures and following the scent; a poetic approach in terms of listening, intuiting, drawing on something other than the rational intellectual mind, but rather the intelligence of the heart. It offers a way of perceiving and expressing the world in both imaginal and imaginary ways bringing something new. In this research my context for the term ‘imaginal’ relates to the nature of images themselves, such as textual or photographic form; and for the ‘imaginary’ relates to the process of creating levels of understanding through images that are not tangible, for example, of the mind but more particularly of the heart.

The lake: an introduction

The lake lies on the property where I live in a hills region of Western Australia, originally dug to retain water issuing from springs beneath as an irrigation source for orchards in the early 1950s. In a European context the ‘town’ grew up around a well dug by settlers early in the nineteenth century, and later was the last major pausing place along the railway journey to inland Kalgoorlie for refreshment and to take on water for the steam engine. However the place was and will always be a part of the

14 Robert Macfarlane The Old Ways (2012) has noted that such ‘journeys’ on the land form both inward and outward encounters.

lands of the original indigenous caretakers, the Nyoongar people, although I have not been able to uncover records of their presence and movements in this particular area.

The lake covers half an acre and has now settled into the land, vegetation having colonized its edges. The land forms a gentle slope above and below the lake taking up four acres. There is native bushland over one boundary separated by a gravel road, and a winter creek follows the far boundary and leads to the larger Lake Leschenaultia a mile away that collects the runoff from our lake. The vegetation in the area and the creatures (including me) who visit the lake are a mix of native and introduced from other lands. It is a hybrid place.

The vegetation near the lake includes a variety of eucalyptus trees with cream and pink flowers and trunks and branches ranging from smooth white to the rough dark sap-stained red gums, yellow-flowering wattle trees, water reeds and rushes, a grove of native sheoaks in the middle paddock just below the lake banks, and parkland type plantings of eucalypts including blue gums and swamp mahogany in the lower paddock. There are weeping, bat and twisty willows, and mature carob and paulownia trees in the hen yard. We have planted mulberry trees, apples, a quince, peaches, nectarines, apricots, cherries, figs, mandarins and macadamia trees which are now bearing fruit, and between the lake and the house is a row of dark and light table grapes.

At the front of the house was the remainder of the original orchard: several varieties of plums and oranges, so we replanted the orchard with more citrus varieties, olives, a delicious peach, pistachios and a pomegranate tree.

I chose to limit the study to a finite area literally bounded by the edges of our property, keeping a sense of what is local and particular to these four acres of ground. It is partially native, orchard and introduced vegetation so that what was there and what has been added over time makes up the whole, everything side by side, with the usual push for ground with some species taking over, some struggling to maintain their space, and this was also demonstrated many times by the

community on different levels. The domestic geese and ducks who are not native have made it their home as of course many native black ducks and wood ducks.

The journal is an account of day to day life there early in the morning just after dawn and takes in seasonal changes, cycles and weather patterns and their effect on the vegetation and the creatures who make the lake their home; some inhabiting the place all year and some who are itinerant. I noted the impact that the conditions and the weather made on each being, on the land, the vegetation and the water of the lake. Daily and even minute-by-minute changes in climate affected all of us, and the subtle interplay between the elements and the beings became a constant narrative, immediate and crucial.

The experience of visiting the lake each day revealed a little of each resident’s embedded life within the elements and in relationship with the others, and their daily rhythms mediated through these. There are hierarchies and pecking orders, everyday stresses and dangers that they all seem to negotiate. Each species tends to remain in a group, but not exclusively, and has its particular way of being in the world. There are customary paths trodden, paddled, winged or sounded that announce their presence, seen or unseen; the day is spent productively yet leisurely, foraging, grooming, and resting.

The body of water is the focus for all the beings there; it seems that activities relate continuously to the presence of the water and its edges. Over the year’s journaling I was made aware that the material processes and gestalts take place as a result of the interaction and interpermeation of the four elements: earth, air, fire and water. I noted with wonder the particular qualities each presented in themselves, in conjunction with one another and in their physical and psychological parallels. That is, as I witnessed and experienced daily conditions I gradually came to see that the four elements expressed and encapsulated the experience of life.

Over the year I began to feel at home, deeply embedded there – I would take my place quietly early in the morning and soon settled in under the wattles, where I would not stand out too much. At times when I had been motionless for a while the

creatures would come closer; the birds almost brushing me as they flew by, the turtles would surface nearby to take some air, then slide back down in a leisurely way. At first my arrival each day elicited a minor exodus and I soon learned to appear unobtrusively so as not to cause undue disruption. Once I was settled and if I remained still, activity would soon resume, and I was fortunate to witness their lives closely.

I approached the lake with a beginner’s mind, witnessing and learning, about the environment there, about myself, and about the outside world. I draw on the connections and insights that this experience has offered throughout the following chapters of an ecological approach to the world that speaks both of embeddedness and liminality.

The continuing balance and rhythm of activity and stillness seemed to frame this world, one that I began to feel a part of as I became familiar. There was an integral logic and instinct, a wisdom, which seemed to maintain this balance. This is a particular wisdom that is neither mind-based nor over-reflective, rather an unselfconscious and fluent sense of being in one’s element; a sense of undivided being that is seamlessly engaged with the immediacy of the surrounds. I had hoped that my choice to be limited by the area of the property might lead towards closer engagement with the essential nature of the place, and found this to be so. Being consciously subject to limitation opened up other levels of possibility and insights.

The journal: an introduction

The journal became the data that I then reflected upon and thus sections of the journal are embedded and interwoven throughout the thesis. To make clear when the voice speaking is that of the immediate ‘journaler’ I have placed all excerpts from the journal in italics. The following passages are an expression of my method-inaction throughout the lake journal and also of the poetic and the phenomenological nature of my writing.

For a year now I have been going down to the lake in the early morning and sitting quietly in the environment. Part of this was to become aware of the happenings, the way of life, rituals, rhythms and random occurrences there. It is the centre of the landscape, the elemental sphere, and is the place where beings gravitate terrestrially or aerially. There are springs that bring water to the surface particularly in the wet season, and which flow beneath even in the dry. It settles in most volume at the lowest point that is in the far paddock tracing curved intersecting paths of water, feeding a creek along the boundary and away.

During the winter months the lake fills, fed from beneath and from falling rain and directed runoff from the roofs of our buildings. All flows down into this body, the beating heart of the property. It is a constant changing land- waterscape, shrinking and shallowing in the intensity of the summer dry heat then breathing back in as the winter rains begin to pour in. At the height of summer it is as if the lake is holding its breath, waiting, bracing, an interminable pause where the level is shrunken, congealed, a holding place for bodies, entrapment. This time is hard to bear, the holding and the waiting.

Yet the daily life continues, rhythms subtly changing according to the rising of the sun, the conditions of the air, still, breezy, blustery, warm or cold. The life there wild or domestic revolves around the daily conditions, seeking sunwarmth in the early morning when the air is cold, changing positions for shade with the rise of heat and glare … the beings there are tuned into the daily rhythms.

The water is the heart attracting the comings and goings, the centre. Colours change and when winter is visiting the lake takes on a muted blue-green-grey, fresh, different to any other watercolour in the year. Summer sun picks out sparkles after the midday transit, scintillating, blinding. It becomes amber brown at the most desperate times, when the heat throbs and somnolent bubbles sit semi-hemispherical on a thick membrane. This part of the year is hardest to endure, a slow thickening visceral choking. Feathers are suspended unmoving, slightly swaying upright, trapped; uncanny, silent, unseeing.

The water is the heart, place of exchange. The beings concentrate at the boundary, the place of overlap where land water air and light weave together, processes of attracting absorbing / reflecting repelling. The heart is the centre, yet the periphery forms a rich interactive edging where attention and energy are concentrated. Between the trees and the water, the water and the claybanks, and the depths and the surface creatures cross the boundaries, milling and looping.

The lake calls differently: flying, hovering, paddling, stalking, splashing, plopping responses. Some creatures remain with the water constantly, some are itinerant, occasionally or seasonally visiting. Exotic visitors ephemerally grace the place, leaving again before long. The coots and grebes are almost invariably on the water, scooting and diving, the domestic and wild ducks and

geese roaming to and from the lake. But the edges are where they settle looking out over the water, resting or grooming.

The land and waters represent nutrition for all these beings, a first source. The place feeds me, so that to be down here amongst everything that is happening settles and brings me peace. This is not to say that this place is without conflict for there is much, usually seasonally at breeding time with the potential of new life. The fighting and belligerence is fierce, savage sometimes, merciless. Chasings, jostlings and woundings. One day as I was quietly listening a plopping struggling sound began, turning out to be two small frogs of different colours, wrestling together violently. And the geese and ducks picking on each other, chasing, pulling feathers. Tensions become heightened over the wet season.

This place is the site for greatest peace and conflict, yet the conflict is short- lived. Grudges don’t seem to prevail although there are some patterns of enmity and rivalry. Injuries are shaken off, feathers smoothed and life goes on. I feel such peace at the edges of this heart, listening and witnessing. Time in this space becomes soporific, constantly permeated and punctuated. As the seasons cycle through rhythms change subtly or suddenly.

There is acceptance of conditions, adjustment within the limits of the landscape. For there are limits in place between each creature and each species, groupings and permeations between groupings. But groupings occur, each species generally gravitating towards its own, yet still in conversation with the others.

Even the nature of the lake’s reflection that scintillates, mirrors and agitates the surface where water air and earth meet the light and warmcold, makes new designs and beginnings. It is an expression of inner and outer being as silent, inward, emissions of slow oblique mist rising from the place where water meets cold air are gradually swept away on a breeze or as the sun warms the surface. A changing heart always in conversation. When the wind meets the surface scuds of texture pass over, choppy or subtle. The sky speaks deep below as overhead, passing clouds echo below. And the earth too permeates from beneath, churned, or as the material body. A tyre sits on the heart, joined to the pump for watering the fruit trees. What a return, as the fruit swells, juicy. And the tyre offers a place of rest or refuge to the creatures, an island safe from foxes.

Around the edge a band of trees, gums, some willows, reeds, grasses, pausing places along the way. Birds loop in and out of the cover of the green between hiddenness and exposure, food. So this centre is symbiotic with its periphery, in-between place that offers the conditions of leave and return. This is the free heart, unconditional, a reciprocal centre of permission and movement. Centre and periphery refer to one other, interdependent.

It’s a rhythm and the centre is attended by the periphery, the boundary where the heart is emphasized yet the boundary is celebrated. One morning the darkened shadow of a floating leaf projected through clear shallow water to the claybase, was outlined by a luminous aura of light. On looking more closely it seemed that this light was related to the curve of the water where the leaf and water touched. Another morning reflected light from rippled water travelled in twisting flame-like tongues towards the clay edges, milling and ephemeral. The light varied from strongly luminous edges to softly moving-lit centres. All of this, such deep beauty.

The structure of the thesis

The next chapter tells the story of the lake, the journal and my experience as witness and participant. The year’s sojourn elicited close attention, reflection and learning and at times profound emotion and empathy as acquaintance gave way to kinship; all around a constant unfoldment of life’s patterns. This chapter traces these impressions, a series of moments revealing nature’s unhesitating urge into life; the diverse ways and qualities of being, the powers of the elements and the dynamics of presence seen and unseen, and shares the discoveries made.

The formation of my interpretations and understandings of the year’s journal are explored in chapter three as I enter more deeply the implications of my findings. The wisdoms of the lake that were revealed over the year begin to form into other contexts as I note their profound relevance for human ways of being in the world.

All that became apparent through the journal and the reflections that followed speak of the presence and the healing potential of beauty. Chapter four distils the insights I drew from what I came to understand as the power of the experience of beauty to heal, and engages with ways of being that invite beauty’s experience. Beauty, at this level, leads us to the apprehension of wisdoms and (multiple) truths through a language that touches us in ways other than the rational. The chapter sets out what it means to be open to beauty’s wisdom and to move closer towards an experience of wholeness and deep belonging.

However, culturally we find it difficult to open to this and in chapter five I discuss how our experience is influenced by the conditions that surround us, and how our

perceptions can be limited by the assumptions that we grow through. I question what is often taken to be ‘real’ in the West, and what I perceive to be separation and the loss of a sense of belonging and of the sacred leading to current unsustainable ways of being.15 This relates to the predominance of exteriorized, utilitarian and commodified values over the interior processes of empathy, imagination and the poetic: the diminishment of receptive and responsive qualities of being which maintains unsustainable ways of engaging with the world and which impacts on all of us.

Perceiving in ways other than the literal has the potential to engage us on deeper levels bringing insights and new ways of making meaning. Poetic ways of understanding lead towards the wisdom hidden within imaginal and archetypal processes and so in chapter six I explore the nature of symbolic and mythic ways of making meaning. Drawing from the liminal world of archetypal being I evoke meaning through the image, reflecting on the seemingly disparate traditions of the sacred feminine, aspects of ancient and medieval Celtic culture and the mythic figure of Hermes. These all correspond on certain levels and speak to my way of understanding yet all reflect different approaches, offering insights and bringing about a sense of integration of inner and outer ways of personal and collective ways of being.

In the closing chapter I pause to reflect on the nature of my journey as my way of understanding and making meaning, and as ongoing passage with a sense that the learning continues and has a life of its own. I was changed by my research experience, through my encounters with elemental and other-than-human ways of being. I suggest that a poetic approach that is receptive to complexity and engages with the seen and the unseen allows the fullness and the mystery of the world to touch our depth bringing us closer to the experience of belonging. Apprehending the beauty and particularity of each thing is to become imbued with wonder, enlivened and deeply connected to the world of which we are part.

15 Richard Louv discusses the many and deep losses incurred through the West’s estrangement from nature in Last Child in the Woods (2005)

Chapter 2 - Journaling the lake: discovering the appearances, seen and unseen

Introduction

This chapter discusses my key moments of learning that were gained through the process of keeping a year long journal at the lake. My discoveries encompassed: ways to think and talk about ‘being in place’; the influence and power of the four elements of fire, earth, water and air; the roles of interplay and relating; and finally the appearances of beauty and quiddity. These are all about recognizing the commonality of the experience of be-ing in the world, processes of finding place and belonging, and the wonder experienced in apprehending the beauty that is to be found all around.

I discovered that ‘being in place’ is to be subject to a place and to make it home. Each day was threaded with routine and regular patterns, with novelty and the unexpected. The lake formed the heart to which life gravitated and most particularly the edge of the waters where so much life occurred.16 There was ease and often struggle as each being made a place, yet I found the seamless ease with which they inhabited their favoured elements to be wondrous and astonishing. I learnt that in the process of becoming part of a place one becomes opened and touched by its particularities, and in witnessing I in turn became absorbed into place. I came to notice and respond more deeply to different and subtly shifting layers of everyday lake life; to the atmosphere and the many passing moods.

My second key discovery was that the powers of the four elements of earth, fire, air and water permeated and influenced every aspect of life; seasonal and diurnal conditions directed the round of life. The essential qualities and tendencies of each

16 Edges can sometimes be mistaken for simple boundaries however at the lake they revealed themselves to be places of richness and diversity where many and disparate beings, activities and characteristics interplay. Also see Farley and Roberts Edgelands (2012) for perspectives on potentially rich spaces that may not seem to be part of either city or country and that are often overlooked or forgotten.

element were revealed alone or enhanced in play with others and I began to recognize that these are reiterated in diverse ways through life in both physical and psychological ways of being. Many times the beauty filled me with awe. The elements in their interplay brought to the world of the lake the full range of potential and I became aware that every manifestation, every act and nuance of behaviour is an expression of underlying elemental character or influence.

My third key discovery was found through attending closely to the interplay and relationships at the lake. The lake formed a centre for the lives of the inhabitants and its periphery offered rich conditions for activity as well as the water body, surface, and above and below the water level. Everything affected and was affected by everything else and all was in a state of constant change. Scales of micro and macro revealed concurrently their similarity and their difference and I discovered that through diversity of scale and relative position, and through relation (rather than through difference and separation) it becomes possible to distinguish and apprehend the other.

The lake environment was a site of continual interaction between beings as they initiated and responded to one another. There was harmony and conflict and yet it was the rhythm of accord that I noticed the most; a reciprocal dance of attraction. Groups formed and remained together, certain places and routes and activities in keeping with times of the day were favoured, and this was repeated on a daily basis.

There were constant traces, small signs of presence that continuously patterned the area in a dynamic way. At times these traces were visible and at other times unseen, telling of be-ing; marks or paths made, material or non-material. The traces gave indications of the passage of lives, testament to the ongoing and ephemeral nature of life. Paths and patterns traced the presence and interplay of beings, testament to desire, intent and action.

Reflections and shadows echoed presence bringing together layers of being, constantly shifting. The waters reflected surrounds, the images enlivened by the

changing quality of the surface. Shadows told of the orientation of the sun as it related to each being, emphasizing contour, affording concealment.

Finally, I discovered that beauty came to meet me, tentatively at first, as I became immersed in the environment of the lake and then more fully as details revealed themselves gradually. The particular and quidditous nature of each being emerging and as the time went on the glory of each thing shone. Every nuance expressed a way of being as inner worlds became revealed through outer being; through colour, flashes of iridescence, sound and gesture.

The story of these four discoveries is set out below, illustrated with excerpts from the lake journal (in italics) and in later chapters with photographs interspersed through the text in series. The lake journal as a body of data could have been interpreted in many ways: these four discoveries are my story.

Being in Place

The lake journal is a narrative of my direct experience of a community of diverse beings and of becoming a part of that community. Initially my experience was one of witnessing, and slowly it became one of feeling with and becoming part of the community. Through my gradual familiarity with the nature of the environment and its inhabitants I came to know each being as an essential part of the place. A few of the beings I came to know by name, through a sense of affection – not ‘naming’ in what could be seen as an anthropocentric way, but referring to them in a way that expressed how they appeared to me. The pair of inseparable, creamy-coloured ducks became ‘Mr and Mrs Curly’ - one day I noticed that the male had grown a beautiful curl at the end of his tail, (and also in honour of Mr. Curly, a whimsical and wonderful character in the cartoons of Australian philosopher/cartoonist Leunig17).

17 Mr. Curly appeared in some of Michael Leunig’s newspaper cartoons that drew attention to the possibility of a softer, gentler approach to the world: ‘… Mr. Curly arrived on a bicycle, a large perky curl rising frond-like from his head; drawn that way because it felt right and looked funny. But the curl turned out to be the tender, unfurling motion of nature’s growth; the unfolding consciousness; the way in which the heart reaches out into the world.’ (1991, 6)

Another duck, full of character and who could be quite comical often joined them and gradually became ‘Patch’.

Engaging with the particular begins a deeper awareness and appreciation of diverse presence. We were all subject to our surroundings, were altered by it and as such become more part of it and with time my empathy grew as I came to experience and understand these effects on each being. Every one made their own place usually in ease yet also at times through conflict and struggle. Subjection was balanced by fluency as each being inhabited their favoured element, easy and exuberant, their ways showing an unselfconscious embodiment of the lake surrounds.

In time a sense of fluid attachment seemed to grow within me, deepening as I experienced the embracing qualities of the particular elements that brought a sense of home; like the others I came to settle into my place at the lake. I began to feel an increasing empathy with the lives lived there. I found that through perceiving diversity as an essential part of the whole it became apparent that every thing participates in the world in its own unique way. I found that being porous enables greater immersion in life all around, dissolving boundaries and bringing a sense of deep belonging. Witnessing in this way the particular effects of life on oneself and other beings brings about a tender regard that we share in the same material body, the Earth.

Polarity and tension brought with them a sense of complementarity, a possibility of be-ing alongside and different. I felt increasing empathy for each life through witnessing with wonder the detail of their individual ways of being in the world. There is a connection between noticing particularities and the growth of empathy, so that if we do not pay attention in a particular way to individuals we are unable to feel such empathy for them.18

Through my gradual familiarity with the place and inhabitants I learned that the same bird might have a daily rhythm, visiting certain vegetation; or the same sounds might

18 This resonates with the approach in the work of Nel Noddings (1984) and Carol Gilligan (1982) on an ethics of care.

occur at a regular time of the day. I was struck that what may seem to a visitor to be an anonymous bird and which could be one of many, was often the same bird engaged in a particular routine. As I got to know the inhabitants of the lake I began to feel part of the community there, affected by the goings-on. A highlight was in the season when the blue wren party would hop their path through the underfoliage nearby - this was rare. Later in the day they would make their way past the study window, chattering along and so I began to feel a strong sense of the presence of the different beings, waiting for them to appear in their own particular time and rhythm. I experienced the inherent rhythm in life; that in nature beings respond to time and season, concurrently both limited and empowered.

There are habitual places that the birds and all the creatures here come home to – they have their routines, times, rhythms – they belong here. The particular magpies that come around the front orchard in the afternoon are the same ones who were here yesterday and tomorrow. The butterflies visit their trees, the birds have their patterns and it’s personal; they are in place. Two fat doves are here close together on their regular beat. It is reassuring

Everyone in familial groups. The geese cross the water in an orderly line, gosling in front. They pause at the edge, murmuring softly, heading off again in a line, goose-in-charge leading now. The line breaks as they dip for water

Being subject

The atmosphere revolved around the nuances and shifts of the elements as every being responded to the conditions. We were all subject – to the heat and cold, the wet, the dry or the shadowy early morning mist. The wild and domestic ducks and geese gravitated to the edge of the water to warm up in the early cool, then later gathered once more at the water’s edge in the shaded spots for protection at the hottest and sunniest part of the day. Their movement was in part response to their surrounding conditions and to the other beings.

Every being was subject, living through the conditions there. The other side of the energetic flow of life was the quality of ebbing away, a seasonal stripping back, returning to the earth. I found the long summer dry taxing, waiting and hoping for relief. Like me the other beings would search for the protection of shade. In the dry

summer the surface quality of the lake became thickened and less like water, more like a body with a skin.

Towards the end of the time of no rain the lake became brown and weary, the geese and ducks often left with brown tidemarks on their bellies. Although the lake never dries out the environment seems drained; the endless dry season draining the land and draining me.

the resonance of rain dropping onto the water surface is so different to the rasping sound of dried leaves underfoot; here winter is a time of softening; summer hardens … but if I can be patient I will remember that the dry yields and softens for a time, and things can breathe and bathe again

In the autumn the shedding of leaves, spiralling or blown down formed a thick carpet below the deciduous trees, the inward descent from the exterior of life. This falling away appeared as a surrender as layers were peeled back, not unlike the paper-like sheath enclosing flowers before letting go and allowing the blooms to burst out, the sheath then exhausted and dried out having completed its part, a gentle containing, then a ‘giving way’ to new growth.

Over the seasons I came to recognize the rhythms and to know that everything passes and will return. I felt comfort in the cooler damper months, settling deeper into place.

Good heavy rain again overnight. The water has risen well over the last few days - everything, everyone is drinking. I feel a deep relief

Occasionally there were sad events that affected me; deaths, losses of a duck or a goose to a fox, and the desecration of a perfectly crafted round nest near the shore.

There has been no sign of the Muscovy duck for days. A fox perhaps. She has evaded the fox for years, often sitting on the tyre on the water

Later we found a sad fan of white feathers which I recognized to be Muscovy’s.

As the year progressed I began to identify deeply with the place and the beings and at times the harsh conditions and events of nature challenged me, especially the loss of the gosling who had stolen my heart.

It’s too hard. I can’t manage all this; of it all, finding Gosling yesterday, barely a mark. And today, the peace and activity, everything going on as usual, even without my Gosling. I loved him, little courageous goose. This rural hard energy is too much

Gosling was Matilda’s last offspring, a single hatchling and not so robust. What he lacked in physical maturity he more than made up for in his individuality and initiative. His distinctive voice, a soft yet clear wee-ooo could be heard across the lake as he led the others in convoy to the currently-fruiting trees or across the waters.

Being in element

I was often filled with wonder as happenings occurred all around me - the ease with which each being moved through their particular element – whether sailing and whooping through the air or skitting across the water surface. It was a constant interacting show, and even in stillness the peace would be broken by something seemingly minute and yet which started a cycle of changes.

There were myriad actions, interactions, nuances and shifts and at first there was much learning for me about the ways of the lives there. There were the lives that seemed to form an initial sense of activity – the sounds and gestures of the birds; whether they were most at home in the air and the trees, the land or the water. It became apparent just how they were in their most natural element; the geese, so eloquent gliding, turning effortlessly on the water, seamless, strode purposefully yet with apparent effort on the banks, and whose flight needed a run-up before taking off chaotically, wings flapping feet pedalling, to splosh down in disarray on the water. The smaller wild ducks could fly up into the treetops and paddle smoothly along the water.

Some of the small birds seemed to rely on speed and change of direction – at certain times of the year they formed looping patterns between the trees and the air above the water, a multitude of stitches in the air. The wagtails hopped around the perimeter of the lake, backwards and forwards, the swallows swerving over the water momentarily swooping and dipping then up again at speed. Each creature was fluent

in their own element yet also inhabited others. Gestures, actions and paths formed patterns of their own, each in dialogue with the elements and with other beings.

The trace of each being at the lake revealed a little of the conditions of each life, their way of proceeding through the elements, where they were most in their element, and also the way they traversed those elements in which their being was less fluent. The heron’s slightness and long legs allowed him to wade delicately, and almost weightlessly lift off the ground – there was little need to become immersed, finding his food at the edges, swooping momentarily onto water for prey at other times, spiralling up and away.

There was much to learn from the lives at the lake about how to be in the world, how to take part without being adversely affected by what is going on all around. How to live in an authentic way that is able to fully participate in the world, dwelling fluidly. I noticed the way each being was unselfconsciously in element, primarily a particular element, whether water, air, or earth

The geese re-enter the water together, murmuring, drifting, large orange webbed feet pushing the water back. One of the white ones drifts, one foot a rudder behind him. Effortless.

a young grebe is sitting on water nearby, feet trailing behind; feathers up/ a miniature swan. So agile – she jumps almost leaving the water then slips underneath

Mr. Curly does an arabesque, one foot stretched back, shakes; foot withdrawn once more. Such poise.

Our labrador seemed to be in as much ease, perhaps more, in water as on land, swimming purposefully or exploring the edges.

Charlie is down, takes a drink and splashes, retrieves a stick, and buries it in the dead grasses. Much sniffing. He wades through the shallows, muddying the waters. He finds a rusty picket in the lake bed and pulls it up with strong front paws

Being at home

The fog is becoming denser, lower. I feel at home in this, a blessed relief from summer’s relentless clarity

I learned from the lives at the lake that fluency was in the ability to embrace different elements, mediating between and taking them within. To belong in the world entails the stability of feet firmly yet responsively supported and the flexibility that engages with the whole range of elements together with a respect for natural limits to stay within them. The seamless fluency of being in one’s element was revealed differently through the be-ing of each life.

The geese engaged in gazing - just standing motionless, relaxed. I felt peaceful in their company during these times, all was well, a space of just be-ing in place. They would remain this way for quite a time, then one might shift, murmur softly, or stretch a wing, and the reverie would be broken. The others would begin to shift and murmur, moving off together. They did not appear to be looking at anything particular; it seemed to me rather more a state of deep yet alert relaxation.

The lake formed an ambience of its own, a vital history encompassing the passage of each life there. The body of water seemed to attract passing visitors; often a visitor would take up residence whilst other itinerant visitors stayed only for a short while. During the journal year a pair of black swans flew in and stayed for just a day sailing together over the water, and were a cause of interest to the lake inhabitants. They were gone the following morning. But most visitors stayed making the lake their home.

Sometimes newcomers arrive and adopt the lake, usually remaining (they seem to like it here). A few years ago a very young Muscovy just appeared, an unfamiliar white figure on the lake one morning. She also seemed to be quite tame; I wondered how she got here. She has been here ever since

The place became home to many beings, evolving along with all the disparate lives and activities, each life moulded by the place and each making a mark, leaving a trace.

The water at the edges of the lake is beginning to recede with the warmth, and there are holes in among the tree roots. A marron is sheltering in the biggest hole, still in water, half emerging very gingerly, shoots back underwater when I move

The geese are all resting close by, except the gosling who is foraging; Matilda keeps a watchful eye, following sometimes if he ventures too far away, as a

mother might at a playground. When Matilda first came to us she had been hand fed and so she is less reticent than the others. She seemed to acquire her name early, perhaps because of this; the only goose we have named, except for Quonk, who was here before we first came, with an old white Muscovy duck as companion. Both are no longer here

As the year progressed I began to feel gradually more part of the place and the community. The lake and its surrounds took on the quality of a micro world as I came to feel embraced by the ongoing daily life there.

… sometimes it feels like an island

A rabbit hops out to graze the clover near the hen yard - punctuations of bobbing white rabbit tail, seems to live in one of the big woodpiles Phil has built at the south boundary. (works of art, I love them. There are three and part of a new one now, made up of wood logs at differing stages from green to dry. They tower over me, remind me somehow of Monet’s haystack series.) One year a large gum branch crashed down and sent logs in all directions; it looked like an old ruin.

For me the environment felt most like home as we shared the winter rains

Raindrops pepper the surface… it is steady now and I move close beneath the tree. The leaves shelter me from the rain, still catching, holding the drops

Making home

The spring heralded the time to prepare for new life and there came to be much activity as partners were sought and nests prepared.

The nests at the lake are formed from the lake’s vegetation, knitted, stamped, tamped, flattened and bowled to hold the eggs’ curves, an embrace. They are strong from being formed from available materials, camouflaged, suited. Downy feathers are added to the structure, bringing softness and warmth. Nesting birds select nooks, niches, protected spaces to begin the process, close to the water. The paradox of their vulnerability to predators is a part of wild life, and life goes on even after loss

Most of the year the atmosphere was generally peaceable but as the mating and nesting season arrived there was some belligerence as they vied for position – the usual peace was punctuated with angling, jostling and fighting.

There is much duelling going on at the southern end, shrieking and splashing

An altercation between the two white geese; mild chaos as they all honk and mill

A row erupts as the geese crowd the nesting goose – two pick at her, then there is a fight between two males, all around the top banks, into the water – violent wing flapping, hanging-on with beaks. Even Mr. Curly gets involved, chasing a goose three times his size, who tries to flee from him. Much honking, and finally they begin to settle down. Nesting goose is quiet again and her two guards return, check on her, necks outstretched

Sometimes there was conflict between species.

A standoff between Patch and the largest coot – Patch paddles to within a body’s length of the coot who remains motionless, then a little scuffle – who’s going to give way? … Patch is hovering around the coot, who is steely. After drifting away he heads straight for her, intentionally and fast. She doesn’t move. He gets to within touching distance then dips for water. Coot seems unperturbed. Patch is so much larger. Mrs. Curly approaches, appearing to do the same

The denizens of the lake revealed that wholeness is composed of differing and individual ways of being, and it became clear that harmony is possible when complementarity is embraced. I found that as empathy deepens, recognizing the particular nature of each thing makes a space for the sacred to shine through. At times I was filled with their presence.

I have written nothing for the whole time of being down here, so much is happening, such beauty, I feel such tender affection for all the beings down here

They were each a ‘Thou’,19 present and active, sharing the earth, water, sunlight, air. Each being appeared and was imbued their own quality of quiddity and rightness.

Each life there was so particular, detailed; the rhythm of lives led shifting with seasonal change and I noticed that with attention paid to the detail of each life a sense of connection develops, a feeling for the beings of this particular lake world. Their daily patterns, the way they moved and the paths they retraced were touching. Their peculiarities, the deliberate step of one of the white geese, Gosling’s

19 By this I mean the recognition of another as possessing deep inherent worth, as part of the sacred whole. See Buber (1959)

purposeful independence, Mrs. Curly’s raucous noise … and with this attending and abiding came love.

I discovered that becoming in place required me to re-embody the process of the way I feel and perceive the world. I found that the other beings tended to remain out of sight, obscured until enough quiet motionless space was in place for movement; it became a rhythm that, with enough stillness, resumes. I became aware that my presence was noted and the creatures were cautious, keeping quietly hidden, and so to become co-present my whole approach became quieter, reverent and still. I wondered just how much we humans disrupt their world? They seemed to dwell unselfconsciously yet responsively, belonging to their world; there was so much for me to learn from their ways about how to become embedded and ‘in place’.

The elements

I came to experience the four elements as powerful and pervasive – they influenced every aspect of life. Their effects can be subtle or extreme and their qualities seen in all aspects of life, in circumstances and as personal and group behaviours. For example, the air can be wild and agitating as well as gentle and hardly discernible; the waters refresh and clarify as well as soak and dissolve so that each element contains within itself a range of attributes both contradictory and complementary. The dawn is the time of sidelong glimpses, a gentle yet revealing presence and quality. It is the beginning of another cycle, the moment of the new: ignis, the quickening and the awakening life of another day. The sun, all-pervasive element of fire and light shows its subtlety at the edges of the day and its uncompromising glare in the fullness of midday when detail loses dimensionality becoming flattened. (I discuss, below, the dawn light at greater length than the intense light at the height of the day because I found it to be a subtle and intuitive revealer of being, picking out and enhancing the detail.)

The materiality of earth is the ground, mediator with which the other elements do their work; a register of changes. Matter reveals traces of presence from the unseen, intangible realms and as such is the mediator between worlds. The presence of the

material world enables the unseen to be apprehended – the dance between air, the light and matter can be seen in the dapplings of leaves, breezed, shadowed, lit. In this way I apprehended how the play between different elements brings new possibility. I found as they combined or touched one another that beauty appeared; in the mists, the coloured prism waterdrop, or the waiting atmosphere; an unknown potential.

The waters united, enclosed and reflected life back, constantly shifting, texturing, colouring. The air, initially unseen is the element that joins us all as we share it through our breath. It conveys being and memory through sound, scent and atmosphere, revealing and connecting traces of life through a mobile yet invisible play.

Initially I was struck by the action of the elements in all their changeability – shifts in weather patterns and their effects were sometimes almost imperceptible, sometimes sudden. I found that beyond these meteorological conditions was a world that spoke to me of the very roots of being. The four elements in their individuality and in their interplay are eloquent conveyors and reminders of human and other-than-human situations, and of the power that underpins every part of our existence.

I began to notice the inherent qualities of each element and saw that these qualities were speaking of different ways of being. The quality of water was entirely itself, fluid, deepening, magnifying and softening, contrasting with the air or the earth. I found that elements altered and were altered by one another. The four elements, so strongly contrasting and yet complementary and mutually enhancing express the tangible and intangible foundations of being. At the lake each revealed essential tendencies and qualities in keeping with the experience and behaviours inherent in human and other-than-human nature, and suggested to me that our desires, impulses and actions may be an enactment of potent and archetypal energies which I discuss further in chapter six.

Fire: dawning and the light

Dawn is a time of liminal occurrences, where there is a blending of realities, of the volition of the light and the dark; place of slippage whereby things can shift from being one thing into another. The quality of dawning is so different to the bright overhead light of day when there is less potential for shifting; or to the impenetrable darkness of the night.

The area is still shady-dark on the water … seems dreamy, opaque, absent … the character of the water changes as it is gradually illuminated. A dance.

Sun’s rays are touching the grasses - reflections from the water shimmer on the reeds

Like the dawn, the dusk is also a liminal time and yet it is of a different quality – the light warms and softens as the sun lowers once again casting sidelong beams. But diurnal passage leaves different traces to those left by the passing of the night. The awakening of day brings with it a vital and promising presence.

Traces of colour begin to appear as the light intensifies

Reflections as the sun catches the clay banks across to the west. The geese are highlighted, almost luminous

A becoming awareness of the nature of other worlds and other ways of being present and coming into presence emerged from my experience of the lake each day. The land and waters were in constant and moving play emphasized by the early morning rhythms. From the still and darkened new beginnings came stirrings, shifts, as the soft light roused each life and each detail. The elements combined to distinguish between the flatness of the dark and the appearance of newly revealed forms returned to the world by the soft early light.

Shafts of light between shadows create dimensions of translucency

The world began to slip back into its shape in a gradual and gentle process. The light, the birdsong and traces of movement reflected a new day– every morning they followed the same pattern of unfolding. Each group had a particular rhythm as they went about their customary activities and these rhythms were influenced by the larger seasonal pattern. Gentler light in terms of intensity and angle seemed to draw

out the nature of each thing. As the year progressed I came to see that in response to a less insistent approach the potential of each thing to become revealed is enhanced. Claybanks, blades of grass, the tips of tall gum trees – all became present slowly, beautifully. The detail of each thing became more apparent and yet as the sun rose further into the sky this detail faded back once more – both the bright sunlight and also the ambient light of an overcast sky flattened what was revealed. The most intimate revealing took place with the oblique.

Simple miracles – the sun coming up every morning, tracing, tentative, then fully up but still oblique. I love the way sidelong light draws out what is there – yet so easily overlooked: we see the obvious, what is currently topical

Morning sun tips the seed heads of water grass

Materiality and earth

It is through the mediation of all of the elements that life becomes present and ‘material’ as part of our world and of our subjectivity as one species amongst many.

New formed peaches, still babies already have a fuzzy skin it too holding the moisture, laden I have to concentrate the sensitivity of my fingertips touch lightly my painting finger (the one with the lightest touch according to my high school art teacher) apprehends the fuzzfurryness the sun’s just coming over illuminating every very tiny droplet on every peachy hair

The world of vegetation in its materiality revealed the perennial patterns of disintegration and renewal with the seasonal breakdown of waste and fallings, leaves, fruits, rotted, composted gradually sinking back into the earth from which they sprang earlier … a quicker but related process to that of the stone and clay cycle.

The wattles’ yellow is rusting now, shedding onto the waters The twisty willows are bare now, scribbly lines; the Mulberry is wearing new buds and some have burst into leaf – fresh lime bright

Damp rotted leaves earth smell in the air

Black – deep rich earth old smell. The black clay oozes up, freed like clay slip through water, cloudbursts

The material nature of earth formed the ground for the impressions of beings and of the air, the water and the light, revealing traces of presence. Action passed over or passed through leaving marks seen or unseen, and it seemed that earthy matter as a medium was essential to make present and enhance the appearance of the other elements, just as they in turn enhanced the material.

strands of spiderweb catch the sunlight

The sun touches, glances past the grapevines on the ground and high around the verandas, and over the wire netting near the vege patch. Simple beauty.

Dapples of light reach through the water to the clay base, revealing a covering of blackened leaves, sunk feathers, fragments of ageing vegetation

Water and earth together formed shifting patterns, tracing presence.

Footmarks from the geese and ducks textured the clay,

the overflow advances recedes pushpulling feathers to the edge

Water adds volume, weighs heavily, becomes present, makes substantial

I began to notice the interplay and reciprocal nature of the four elements – each with their own particular qualities. The waters supporting the creatures on or below the surface, yet itself being supported in the curve of a leaf, a rounded prism just contained.

all the leaves’ surfaces are holding so much dew like cups to the brim

Life-giving waters

When the winter rains refreshed and restored the land and the lives I felt restored, filled and blessed, for shortly another season, the dry - would come, a season of waiting, surviving.

the creek runs along our bottom boundary on its way to Lake Leschenaultia and is running strongly today. Ditches filling the veins back towards another heart: from one heart to another

after today’s torrential rain the lake is filling, water gushing in from the pipe that brings the water from the house and octagon gutters, and the ditch that follows the first fence is beginning to pour, flowing down below the wattles, tumbling into the overflow. Saturated colour everywhere

The waters were the heart of my year-long experience, as a centre and in blendings with air, light, and the earth.

the water unites the trees the sky the earth. It muffles blurs the edges, blurs the sounds, dreamy, in-between place Early morning often brought dew and mist intuiting the presence and movement of the unknown.

6am, chilly mist rising high off the lake, has an unearthly sense about it – why is it that mist has that nuance? Slow almost imperceptible rising, dissipating first from the south, across. I breathe out and my breath follows its direction, warm moist droplets … unearthly mist

The denseness seemed to create a boundary around us, enclosing us in a watery ‘otherworld’.

the mist is suspended, an even shroud. The sky is somewhere … not here. Tree tops are obscured behind veils

fog is becoming denser, lower. I feel at home in this, a blessed relief from summer’s relentless clarity

Air permeated with water muffled the sound, yet across the water surface sound was carried, reflected. Reflections clarified in the stillness.

the lake’s still, pure reflection. So inviting, the stillness

the water surface is mirror-still, milky misted

Yet, with a trace of movement of air the quality and appearance of images changed as turbulence broke them into fragments, shifting the mood.

ripples make zigzags of the tree reflections/ moving out towards the lake’s edge tiny rings appear on water/ expand/ gone/ creating a moving pointillist texture over dark reflections

The surface seemed to give way to passing reflections.

clouds ripple across deep under the lake - a crow flies deep in the reflections

more reflections deep below

the surface reflects, yet draws images into its depths

And at times it seemed there was no depth as reflections bounced back.

opaque darkened water becomes an impression of impermeability. A reflection but no depth

opaque water a sense of mercury impenetrable membrane offering reflection only

The light brings the water alive night water seems ominous, opaque; what lies beneath?

At certain times there seemed to be a strange sense of unknowable presence below that was concealed by what was visible.

absence of light can bring a sense of foreboding, of strange unfamiliarity - the dark conceals

The Moving air

I became aware of the air all around; of its power and its invisibility and that like the water it fills and is filled, supports and is supported. The air revealed itself as the unseen container, conveyer and transporter of aromas and particles, heralding change.

- of smoke, of ash, the dead? vestigial traces on the wind, the messenger collecting gathering lifting depositing I became aware of the air as carrier of the aromatic essence of life, and of memory.

wattle blossom …citrus blossom … scent of submerged decaying claybed

The air brought with it the essence of season and presences, filling my awareness and prompting memory and recognition. The seasonal scent of blossom momentarily wafted through or infused the air.

scent of blossom almost overwhelming, permeation body to body

the heady scent of the honeysuckle has replaced the orangeblossom fills the air fills me

Memory was stirred and pleasures anticipated, bringing the world into a deepened place in me as I breathed in the essence of mineral, vegetal and animal earth.

the willows and maple are greening, the Paulownia’s flowers are forming, pendant, exotic. I imagine the scent that is to follow soon, potent, exquisite carnation trace Charlie splashes into the water kicking up black sediment which blooms out tracing his path until he is in deeper water. It emits an ancient, earthy smell

Scent of old earth breezing

aromatic scent of leaf fire far away … and damp autumn smell, rotting, mellowing

I came to perceive the air take on the mantle of enabler and mediator as the effects of air movement became apparent in shifting shadows and dappling light, prompting life. I became increasingly aware of the contrast between the stillness of internal built space and the freedom and expression of shiftings in the open air. The fleeting shadows from flight above me or the nuanced dimming or brightening of light and shade changed every moment. Sometimes inside the house the early morning outside conditions passed through the window and beckoned with the play of shifting shadows, intensifying and weakening, sharpening and blurring as the image passed along the wall. The air and light was so alive, contrasting with the unblinking electric light. The moving air became a conveyor, bringing change on the wind as a messenger, an instigator, and as an agitator.

easterly winds from the desert herald the heat

chill damp air, sign of autumn at last … bringer of the fall. there is a soft westerly air current, it feels gentle on my face

The breeze frees a large feathery seedhead caught against a grass stem floats away a slow billowing parachute

The wind is chill now one feather overtakes scum islands windscoots.

gusts leaves fall feathers sail. dissipate

Sometimes the air was tormenting.

cold wind blows through flesh, chills; through my ears; the leaves

unremitting hard stripping wind skins, shreds, desiccates

And sometimes it was gentle as a lover.

The breeze is silk on my face

Elements as the littoral

The elements revealed themselves as bringers of transition - and much elemental activity was situated in the liminal, and although each has a particular character and quality it is in their interplay and material manifestation that these become most apparent.

Vestigial mist rises visible where light and shadow meet

Wind ripples zigzag kangaroo paw reflections, reminiscent of the twisty willow’s gesture. The branches move in response to the elements but hold the gesture of zigzag chaos, vibrating, electric

The atmosphere blended activity with reflection, so that misty conditions brought with them a sense of inner mistiness, blurring of boundaries between the outside and the inside, and between perception and response. I felt blurry, for my outer senses lost their edge; sound became muffled, vision limited; and I began to allow myself to yield to such conditions, allow them to soak into me and affect my be-ing. I came to welcome the mist as a mellowing, containing gentleness that slowed time and movement. The atmosphere was conditioned by elemental forces and I became aware of the immediate effect of a clear, cloudless sky which seemed to emphasize the distance – less personal than the clouds that moved across creating shapes that made a story as they crossed the sky.

Within the pattern and rhythm of emergence there was transition, the pausing and passing-between of new becomings:

The pause in between, from before the bud to the flower, flower to fruit – the quince has just formed round furry bellies even before the drop of petals

The orange trees are blossoming and the scent permeates my being; the night is exquisitely fragranced. The fruits finished only a month or so ago, and here they are once more after a brief pause – what abundance.

The trees formed a medium between the earth and sky – home to many birds, a grounding yet also an in-between place. A perfect example of the littoral, which was emphasized when their reflections of roots, trunk, branches appeared in the water. The air, seemingly weightless and invisible yet holding the waterbody, and each permeated by the other.

… grey blanket, enclosing yet porous holds this place until it seemed the sky would burst

… waiting watery sky holding, full, pendant poised/ to pour?

It is a ‘body’ of water- it has a skin – feathers and leaves, gently suspended on the surface which ripples sometimes, or almost/ hardly moves other activity under the surface

such weight – the water slowly, almost imperceptibly heaves back, forward

Drops of water hang from the tips of wattle leaf and blossom; the branches are weighted down with water

In the hottest driest summer spell the waters seemed to become less waterlike, an unfamiliar between-element of visceral slime that seemed neither earth nor water.

I feel its absence in the summer – a nightmarish thickening fermenting solidifying. Absence of water, absence in me, no-where

thickened water holding suspended bodies – oozing, breathing in and out, a container for earth?

… underwater debris snakes and settles; home for bodies, a settling; bog bodies

The many faces of the elements that I experienced revealed a world of qualities; at times subtle and nuanced and at other times overwhelming and powerful on both material and non material levels. They spoke of qualities of being and emphasized the shared subjectivity of human and other-than-human experience. Nothing stayed the same for long as shifts took place changing dynamics and patterns of interplay. On a daily basis the in-between times of transition brought the incredible beauty of soft oblique light, misted waters, gentle breezes, and the dew.

dew drop prisms, curved mirror reflections

Seasonally the freshenings and mellowings, the dry and the wet spoke of the ephemeral yet continuous nature of life and each moment brought a sense of the unfolding beauty of the new and the ancient.

Interplay and relating

As already discussed in the previous section the material conditions of beings and environment were constantly shifting in response to the actions of the elements. These changes brought new and sometimes fleeting appearances of semblance or strangeness; the waters creating depths and symmetries that beckoned towards other worlds and summoned other reverie. The collection of images in Appendix B engages with the interplay of the elements in the context of the waters as subject, tracing a liminality of appearance and atmosphere.

The lake surface is broken up by the wind – the water seems to be in constant dialogue with something, a bird, insect, air movement, itself.

Much air movement today, not a breeze so much as moving air made visible by the fast clouds of mist that are moving upwards from the lake surface, fast … I can see them more when there is an interplay of light and shadow

Increasingly I felt the impact of place and beings as my experience shifted from the perspective of visitor to that of participant. The interplay amongst and between beings and place appeared as an evolving dance of contrast and similarity, accord and conflict. The unique and particular nature of each thing was especially revealed through engagement as every quality became apparent and emphasized.

Over time I began to recognize the seasonal and daily rhythms that oriented the dynamics particular to each group, individual, and the place itself. Timing related to directly experienced conditions that engendered an embodied responsiveness knitting place and beings together, and with the quality of order came a sense of grounded harmony as each being reflected back a particular part of the dance.

A squeaky, croaky frog chat is going on just below in the reeds, and is becoming so loud that they sound almost to be attempting to outdo one another

Gosling honks from the top banks, honking chorus as the geese respond

The lake community showed me that life is a weaving of diversity and that opening in a flexible way to difference and the unknown brings about realizations and new understandings that can change the way we perceive the world. Over the year I learned that each inhabitant there was a complex and unique individual participating in a web of relationships, receiving and imparting impressions of being.

Small birds emerge from the wattles, flap and spin over the water, solo dance. One, then another

As I became familiar with the rhythm of the lake community my own rhythm began to knit with theirs – so that my sense of time related more closely with the patterns around me and clock time lost much of its relevance. ‘Lake time’ was about the interplay of the elements and beings, the gradual ascent of the sun, the shortening and lengthening of shadows, influencing all that occurred around the lake.

Slanting sun illuminates through water/ dappled

Initially I felt an interloper yet conscious of my need to share in the space and be a part of it. The creatures went about their daily lives and I began to see the patterns formed by their interactions, direct sorts of interplay - and other patterns such as the subtle or not so subtle effects of the elements on each of us as we participated in the dance.

Down at the lake all is in relation to some other, nothing is separate. The sky and the water correspond, each reflecting the other, moving cloud across moving water. Ripples from moving bodies crossing other ripples and currents

For it was a dance, one that began with the dawn and opened into the day; emergings, pathways and crossings.

Reflecting and responding

Everything formed a nuanced and shifting pattern of contact with others, reciprocal; sometimes in harmony and other times in conflict. This extended to the interaction of the elements with one another – the fire of the sun and the effects of rays of light and the shadow created by material holding or filtering the light.

Refracted ripples shimmer down the banks and meet the water

… the dance between the elements. Just one element is so literal, so real; the permeation of one with another is mysterious and changes everything

The unseen air, always present is sensed and seen through the interplay with the other elements.

Breeze shivers curled willow leaves and poplar hearts down to earth

The wind loosens twigs, shakes out dry leaves, cathartic, yet restless

Wind relentlessly pushes vestigial laden bubbles to the edge. A feather is taken up, a kite, soft zigzag down to water

Through the year every aspect of each thing referred to something other; sometimes strangeness, sometimes similarity. I found semblance between things, so that an iris pod could have been a green frog, a twisting creek a reptile, shadows becoming entities.

A piece of rotted wood anchored by a thread sways slowly sways back and forth beneath the surface, and now has a fish face deep socket eyes, blind, gaping. Charlie who is back in the water digging his stump must have seen what I was gazing at and rushes up plucking my blind fish wood out from the water, drops him on the banks - a piece of rotted wood once more Semblance occurred to me particularly when I was in a dreamy state of mind or when the interplay of the elements became ambiguous – for example at dawn, between stormclouds, in mist.

The water was the primary reflector, returning images in myriad ways; clearly, ambivalently or chaotically depending on the quality of its surface. Rippling water snaked and stretched the image whilst still water returned a sense of resolution and peace. Agitated water sent back an image of interference; restless and unsettled. The beings at the lake made their impression on the waters through their moving reflections, or the physical effects of wakes, splashes and ripples.

The ducks fly full circle over the lake, their reflections deepening with height

Weather conditions influenced the mood of the place, the quality of the water and the way each being acted and responded. The water surface was patterned by air movement, revealing the quality at that moment of both the waters and the winds. Newly repleted waters moved freely, quite differently to the summer-thickened surface that contained the counter-current of the waters below.

There is a scum on the water surface around the overflow extending further today – an almost visible skin, bubbles constantly rising, popping. The skin shivers slightly

Ripples pass beneath the surface build-up

The dance of quiddity

It occurred to me that this was a dance, a rhythmical patterning that shifts in the way of a kaleidoscope, an interplay of pattern moving through asymmetry and symmetry.

The dance is constant. There is the dance of the beings who live on and around the lake – it is interpermeable as each one affects the other: the water on the birds, and their movements creating ripples and reflections. The water is never still – the surface and the depths are moving still dancing but the rhythms are disparate. The beings who visit are affected by the sort of water, its level, and the claybed beneath is affected and stirred by the actions of the birds, dogs, yabbies and turtles. Each being has a particular dynamic yet is intrinsically linked to the whole

Each plant formed, grew and responded to others in its own way and revealed what I came to perceive as its individual nature.

I enjoy seeing the old kangaroo paw stems together with the new ones – at this time of the year they are visited by the birds often, perhaps for the seeds. The stems respond differently to the breeze – the old ones move in a straight, stiff almost elderly way whilst the new ones spring back, flexible. I love the

juxtaposition. The sinuous winding curves in the old stems belie their brittleness

a small bird darts off an agapanthus stem, leaving it springing

I noticed that every interaction revealed something of each participant.

small green bird drops onto iris foliage, turns about, and up again into the wattle. Two more, springing up and down the watergrass stems, picking at the seedheads and swaying wildly

dragonflies milling and chasing close to the water. One lands on an iris leaf, springs off, leaving it nodding

Presence ranged towards energetic activity, and creatures moved at a characteristic rate and in a particular way that seemed to reveal their nature. There was movement of all kinds – almost imperceptible hovering, smooth gliding, arcing, weaving and looping. Such movement appeared seamless without break rather like the bow upon a violin, continuous.

the geese sail back across the water in convoy, murmuring

a twenty eight undulates down to the persimmons

stick dragonfly hovers vertically up to a wattle leaf

There was also a more differentiated quality of movement - dartings and dippings, hoppings and noddings, qualities that punctuated the flow.

the blue wrens are here, one hopping nearby, later whizzing close to my face – their blue tails flicking as they hop in between the reeds

small green birds shoot out of the wattle, hovering midair, fast wingflappings, then dart back into the foliage

here are the Curlys, nodding their way across the water. They catch the sun

… young grebe bounces up to the surface from below There were more extreme bursts of movement still, scatterings that broke the peace or changed the dynamic. The customary rhythm that underscored each day was threaded through with constantly changing events.

four speedy grebes kicking up a splash

as I stand at the overflow frenzied small movement catches my eye; at first appearing to be a frog, who then shows to be one of two. They seem to be fighting, flailing, tussling, savage

twenty eights burst out of the wattles, shrieking

Rhythm of days

There was a repeating pattern that formed around the season, sunrise, warming and cooling, daily rhythms, and each group held together – there was a time to stand at the edge of the water, to groom, to feed, to take a walk, to convoy across the water. There were customary routes taken, down to the lower paddock and around before reappearing at the lower banks of the lake. Feathers from the early morning groomings were transported over the surface to the water by the wind to form a wispy wateredge. Routes altered according to the whereabouts of the tastiest morsels, the impact of the sun and the shade, and each season brought a different rhythm, daily changes in conditions and atmosphere; and daily routines were adjusted to fit.

Time took on new meaning - the rhythm of the elements, early morning foraging, grooming, play, interaction. In the context of the lake there was just goose-time, duck-time, dog-time, grass-growing time …

The ritual of taking a customary place at the lakeside each morning has developed a rhythmical dimension, one that sometimes brings a feeling of deep belonging, and the feeling of comfort, in-placeness sweeps over me

Within the paradox of becoming, the cycle from seed/fruit, shedding and dropping, fresh decay beginning again and again is a seamless process that has a patterned order yet is subject to the vagaries of conditions. This is a dance, a co-operative impulse that is life-death dealing, indiscriminate.

Each being experienced and responded to seasonal and daily rhythms through their continuation and their changes. Itinerant visitors occasionally punctuated the rhythm.

the adult coots are patrolling close to the heron, who takes a few steps. She flies up lightly, a predatory gait, hovering overhead. She circles up then away down the hill/ a twisting eerie call

It was the regular patterns of the domestic and wild geese and ducks repeated or subtly changed on a daily basis that most noticeably marked time.

everyone seems to have a routine – the white Muscovy and her son Patch go grazing next door in the morning, whilst the geese head down foraging in the lower paddock, the creamy ducks pottering together on the lake

The geese were a cohesive group who tended to do everything together. It was only during the competitive mating season when the group broke up, when perhaps there was one female with two males vying for her attention, with the males becoming so adversarial that one or other was outcast and kept at a distance. The rest of the year they shared a seasonal and daily routine that included morning grooming on the top banks, grazing, moving between the lake surrounds, the orchard area and down to the middle and the lower paddocks.

early light and the geese are sunning themselves, one-legged meditations, some sitting, all but one have their heads tucked into their plumage. A goose stretches out a wing and a leg – then sits

the geese are grooming: feet are lifted as feathers are combed through. Gosling has a go then moves off for more exploring. There is always a scattering of feathers along the top banks loose downy feathers breezing down the bank towards the water

the geese are in a row, strolling up to the far boundary. They are late today, perhaps the rain and over-cast have delayed them

… they cross the water in an orderly line, gosling in front. They pause at the edge, murmuring softly, heading off again in a line, goose-in-charge leading now. The line breaks as they dip for water

Their sense of time appeared to be closely linked to the position of the sun through the day, and in the evenings they stayed close to the edges of the lake to escape possible attack from foxes, a pattern that changed if there was a goose nesting as they stayed close, guarding the nest.

The rhythm of the domestic ducks was not so different to that of the geese – their camouflage spot was a thick stand of reeds at the edge of the water below the lake wall from which they would suddenly appear. At times they ventured into the next

door paddock, being more nimble than the geese who generally didn’t attempt to fly over the fence. They were almost always together.

Mr. and Mrs. Curly hop back over the ditch from mulberry corner chattering, and quickly drop into the water, followed closely by Patch. They speed along the water and stop for a little foraging and ducktailing

three upturned tails, flailing feet, wagging and soft plopping as the ducks go about their day

Of the two dogs, it was Bonnie who had a daily rhythm – Charlie was too young at that time to develop a routine. She accompanied me down to the lake each morning, hovered awhile and then went off on her customary walk around the lake, down through the paddocks, skirting the boundary and returning along the top banks.

Bonnie is off on her sniffing trail … back again, her circuit complete. There is much to sniff. Down to the edge, laps up clear water

She continued her daily routine which over time formed a pattern so that now even though she is no longer physically present, her daily rhythm has come to be imprinted in my memory as I recall the way she took her part.

extended goose necks as Bonnie passes close by. She pays no attention to them. … nonchalantly sniffing her way past the geese and back, tail swinging

The passage of time creates an opportunity for the establishment of custom. Now that Charlie has matured he too has developed his own particular routine. Sharing space and time brings the permeation of boundaries as divisions are dissolved and broken down and over the seasons repetitions form and cohere to bring a sense of returning. As time passes into years my memory of the beings there has deepened and settled into layers in my own being, wonder mingling the lively echo of their voices and their ways, with a sadness for losses which live on in my heart.

I found that the cumulative effect of taking my place at the lakeside with the other beings brought me deeply into their world and showed me the individual nature of each life. I gradually understood that these beings co-inhabited this space, and as I encountered them on a daily and a seasonal basis it was clear that they were the same beings who participated in the shared space, had their own rhythms and were familiar

with the particular conditions that we shared. Their interplay brought the place alive, imbued with particular and contrasting being; indeed they were the heart of the place.

Passing ephemeral

The appearances brought physical and visible traces of being and also more ephemeral non-material and often unseen traces. I became aware of the tracks and marks left by passing beings that told of impressions made into earth as well as paths drawn in the air; testament to life’s activity whether solid or ephemeral.

Five wood ducks take off in a wide loop, flash of birds in flight and in reflection

There was at times a constant cacophonous and milling presence appearing on a number of levels. These traces revealed the subtle presence of beings; frogs growling unseen yet audible, the tiny birdwing flutterings in foliage, of the low soft woo-ing of the doves, dispersed so that their whereabouts was a mystery.

Direct traces were those that revealed the physical presence of each being, easy to locate and identify; more ephemeral traces were non-material appearances such as passing shadows or momentary reflections.

The shadows are back, and the light; presence once more

These were ephemeral, giving a sense of presence rather than revealing it in its fullness. At times the less direct traces revealed presence on a deeper level, emphasizing the inner nature of each thing. These hinted of something behind or beyond that which was immediately visible or accessible, of material as the medium for the apprehension of the non-material. In this way the interior quality of a being became illuminated outwardly, conveying and enhancing its beauty and particular qualities.

I perceive the world to be multilayered; some layers are explicit, visible and material and some implicit and hidden. In the quality of deep noticing it is possible to see beyond the physical to the subtle energy fields. The quality of shadow told much

about the conditions of the day, the season, the strength and angle of the sun, the contour and the quality of the object that cast the shadow.

A shimmering light is playing over a patch of reeds, soft busy undulations. The rest are in shadow

So much was apparent not only about the solid object casting the shadow but also about the surrounding conditions by noticing closely, becoming porous to the faintest clues.

Throughout the experience of the lake the discoveries that I made regarding a quality of noticing led to a deepened sense of relational understanding. The particular type of noticing that I developed became embedded in place remaining situated and subject, closely engaged with the particularity and mutuality of each participant. In this way deep connection and empathy was enabled; it became possible to understand much more about the continual interplay between and amongst the lake community.

There was both display and camouflage at the lake. Sometimes it was only through sound that presence became apparent, traces of activity and interaction. The ducks sheltered in the reeds and were discernible only through radiating ripples that pass across the lake.

A rustle as I pass the undergrowth on my way to the seat past the overflow

I am beginning to sense the whereabouts of each animal by the sound of their voices and activities

Small birds in the foliage twittered and rustled the leaves, hardly visible but very present. At times they would dip momentarily out of foliage, looping quickly then speedily returning to the shelter of the trees.

small birds daring each other out of the foliage.

To move fast and in a looping fashion seemed to give them a certain safety yet revealing such exuberance and mastery.

Yabbies, a freshwater crustacean, rarely showed themselves, instead remaining hidden in the holes they dug at the edge and below the waterline, perhaps necessary to protect them from the turtles whose presence was also well hidden as they slowly slid diagonally up to the surface for air before retreating to the depths once more. However, camouflage was not always engaged - at other times appearances shone out, iridesced, glowing almost, reflecting light and colour.

The appearance of new growth was often arresting, drawing attention through gesture and bright colour. Other plants make their presence known through their scent, sometimes directly, sometimes less so. On our property a rock rose has a scent so diffuse that it was some time before I realized that the balsam fragrance that wafts through the garden emanates from its foliage. The scent was not identifiable with the shrub as I came close to it, but rather disclosed a presence like the woo-ing of the doves, unseen, a source of mystery. There are many ways to be present and the absence of visible traces can sometimes heighten another sense of presence.

Vegetation scent, sharp

The air is heavy and aromatic

Over the year the seasons were heralded by traces and signs of change so that as another year came around those small signs became a part of the embodied experience of the place. As the dew returned to settle on early morning foliage the air became crisper and soon the fall followed.

The vines too are on their way – they go ruby and remain for up to two months, such beauty, before falling Water and air blended and as the temperature dropped mists formed. These perennial signs came to signify the progression of the seasons.

As I witnessed with my senses; hearing, gazing, scenting, feeling the outer and inner effects of the breeze, sun, rain and mist I pondered about and responded to the beings. Life there was full, always something happening whether visible or not. The experience became one of apprehending it all as a whole, where the constant interrelating in all its diversity gradually became an affirmation of difference and

possibility. I too shared in the dynamic, making a subtle change just by being there for every being shifted the patterns, directly or indirectly.

It became apparent that traces are in-between the thing and its materiality – evidence of a mark, process, action, thought or feeling; and it is the traces that are most telling. They recount a story of the journey between here and there; each mark conveying a certain physicality, expression and gestalt; so that I discovered that be-ing is verb-ing and not a noun; it is about moving and leaving traces of passage. To understand or relate to the world is to become porous registering the detail of life, tracing the paths and the patterns as participants in a marvellous and dynamic cosmos.

Patterns and paths

The gesture of each being revealed much about their nature and embeddedness within their world. In the transition of moving from one place to another diverse qualities continued to show themselves. The patterns and the paths that formed spoke of dynamic activity leaving ephemeral or more permanent traces. The quality of the patterns that formed and the direction that followed revealed outwardly the quality of inner being. Sometimes enduring physical traces were left on the earth:

along the east edge of the lake there are well-worn sitting/settling spots in the dried vegetation, winding paths down to the water

The morning’s feathers are drifting to the western water edges white featherlined

… summer-hardened impressions of feet of duck and goose in soft clay whereas traces of activity in air or on water dissipated, ephemeral.

wake curves as a black duck paddles an arc the mist is gathering and rising vertically from the surface; dynamic, intentional

Visible traces

During the summer months and on hot days the wild ducks gravitated to the lake’s edge forming a row around the water. When the conditions reached a certain level of

heat they moved away into a shadier spot. The row lined the lake, just as the loosened and blown goose feathers had done earlier in the day.

Feathers line the waterclay edges

The grebes were different, remaining on the water in almost strategic spots, the patterns they created seeming to form punctuations. Their movement was staccato, jerky and fast; they disappeared instantly below the water level and re-appear somewhere else. They shot out from their spot, shoot back in straight lines; soft curves didn’t form a part of their patterns.

A grebe skims straight across to the other side of the lake, a big wake for so small a bird

They would chase others off their spots, their voices reflecting the way they move. Each group – geese, ducks, coots and grebes, all with their group gesture and character, and within that traces of each bird’s individual being.

On the lake ripples became more visible with increasing light, that is, with the reflection of the sky.

The sky in the ripples reflected. Just as blue was reflected in the sphere of dew yesterday.

When the sun was much higher, and the surface sparkled and glittered, every ripple was shimmering with sunlight.

Every being there created marks and paths reflecting particular qualities in rhythm with the capabilities and limitations of each. The most concrete path was that of the ants: they carved a path the length of one side of the lake and another, fainter path they would take in summer, leading to the sweet dropped fruit from the old mulberry tree. Nothing grows over their worn path even during the lush growth of the wet season.

On our return from our walk Charlie and I paused on the top banks by the ant colony – and their path is clearly visible edging the top banks. There are three colonies that seem to be linked by the path.

The participation of the vegetation is no less, and I learnt that it too creates paths and tracings, gestural expressions and formations.

…roots emerge and loop back into the banks, reptilian, wet

The seasons shape life – the summer heat brought a slowing, drying, collapsing tendency, tracing a dry returning and crumbling, then a pause before the magic of the wet season, softening, deepening, greening.

Unseen traces

Sometimes the impressions seemed to be only just there, momentarily florescing and evanescing then gone.

zigzag ripples into another realm

invisible air marks a twisted path traced on water

Flying bird reflections streak across the surface of the lake

I was filled with the sounds some of which I could see the source, others unseen.

Faint trace of buzzing in the wattles

Soft background textured hum of cicadas, muffled

Flapping of wings as someone takes off behind me

Splosh someone’s landed in the water

Sound emitted from particular places, homes, positions around the lake, revealing the presence of whoever was making the sound, and I found that as I sat quietly the direction and progress of the sound became apparent, such as the straight flight of the crows or the dipping of the twenty eights, or the exuberant swerving of the pink and grey galahs. I could sense the swooping of the wild ducks as they descended swiftly, calling from high up in the trees.

Over time the primacy of vision gave way to sound as I became aware of a world filled with the expressions of being, seen and unseen. This new world surrounded

and filled me, layers amplifying and fading, notes and tones, patterns and pauses weaving other stories. Sounds surrounded me and filled me – the source of which sometimes I knew and sometimes not. They sometimes seemed to pass through me, echoing, and I felt porous as a part of the land. As I became infused with this world I realized how much more is possible through being present in this way.

Sounds reflecting the world, honk soft murmur/ flap slow stroll time for foraging, squabbling chasing, splashing, resting goose/ gazing gazing

It is the visual sense that seems to most inform our understandings of the world and although the events and beings at the lake deeply engaged me visually I found that it was the sound there that continuously filled my awareness. At times there appeared to be little sound although even in seeming silence it was never really silent as layers of sound peeled away still leaving faint traces of being, then there could be sudden eruptions of voices varying in intensity and tone, ranges and intensities breaking the stillness.

I never felt alone even in the quiet for there was always some-one there. The sounds revealed as powerfully as the light who was there and what was happening. Sometimes I closed my eyes and noticed more deeply without the lovely distraction that vision can bring. Focused vision differs from the peripheral vision that I came to experience and understand as I learned to receive the seen in its wholeness. In the context of the lake focused vision, useful and essential as it can be, took on less importance as I discovered that much of the life all around could be missed that way, and that by listening receptively with my eyes hitherto unseen beings and events began to appear. And so it was with sound.

… the tuneful bird who sings the same arrangement of beautiful slow notes over and over again. I first became aware of her song more than thirty years ago upon moving to the hills; song so familiar now yet I have only ever heard, never seen her. Her song is in the middle range, ringing out yet neither soft nor loud

I found that as I learned to settle into place I became aware of so many voices - the faintest traces, tiny plop as a frog leapt into water. The frogs built up from one to a host of diverse voices, the sound becoming hypnotic, a deep resonant chanting punctuated with revvs, ribbits and occasional pobblebonks.

growls – monks’ deep chant

They were well-camouflaged in amongst the reeds at the edge of the water, becoming quiet if anyone came too close to their sheltered spots.

I am beginning to sense the whereabouts of each animal by the sound of their voice and activities

The frogs held conversations from myriad spots around the edge of the lake – they were rarely visible only making themselves known through their hidden voices, sometimes singly, other times forming together a rising and falling crescendo. I came to recognize them, invisible all the same.

So many voices …

There is a croaky frog call coming from somewhere

Their calls reached a peak in the late winter and the spring; a symphony of croaky, squishy, ribbitty sounds. With their return a sense of the season would come to mind of the freshening of winter and a feeling of anticipation for the coming spring. As I remained still at the edge of the lake their calls were close by but if I walked around the edge they would cease, well-camouflaged, only resuming when it seemed that all was clear.

At times there appeared to be little sound although even in seeming silence it was never really silent as layers of sound peeled away still leaving faint traces of being.

almost inaudible soft trickling down the incline behind me

there’s a sound of wind-shimmering leaves in the poplar just over the fence behind me

The sound of leaves tapping together in the breeze or the creak of a treetrunk; quiet continuous stories of lives. Sound gradually intensified as groups of beings

conversed, the volume rising and falling. There could be sudden eruptions of voices varying in intensity and tone, ranges and intensities breaking the stillness.

a clear single note from the grebe rings out over the water

flash of emerald and much noise as a pair of twenty-eights rush overhead

a dove flaps noisily out of the wattles onto the top banks

loud laughing call from a distant black duck far across the water

multiple shrieks as a large crowd of galahs starts wheeling - they fly in an arc way to the west. A second large group follows

At times the sounds were just traces conveying presence, close yet unseen or further into the distance. Birdsound emanated from the vegetation, either song or the effect of movement on twigs and leaves - subtle hinting clues that someone’s there; or loud declarations of their presence.

so many voices leaf rustles flutterings intermittent twittering

thud as a gum nut falls into dried undergrowth.

soft quackings, clickings nearby, and rustles as bills search through layers of dropped wattle leaves

Whilst sometimes I felt compelled to focus deeply on a passing sound, I found that as I began to generally absorb the sounds I felt their presence both outside of me and also through and within me.

crows perch and call from a gum tree across the waters. Their calls echo in me

Calling, castanets, buzz nearby. The air is filled with bird/frog/insect sound

Often I felt that the atmosphere infusing the surrounds also infused me. Sometimes I felt exhilarated, other times hollowed, reflecting surroundings and beings.

wood ducks on the water/ crying softly/ melancholy

one lone black cockatoo flying high, calling, plaintiff.

there is an unfamiliar sound this morning; a raspy, muffled screamy sound – a bird? coming from down the hill …it’s unsettling

Tones reflected activity, harmony and conflict. The mood of geese and the ducks was eloquently revealed in their expression through their bodies and sounds.

here come the geese – loud hooting chorus. The chorus builds up and one breaks into a run followed by the rest – up into the air, wild flappings, across to the far side. They become quiet, drink, then make their way back across the water, dipping and sploshing

contented murmurings. They work hard, the pickings must be tasty; it is given full attention. Soft sounds as dried grass is pulled out, beaks pushing, nuzzling … much concentration, murmurings, occasional exclamations

The ducks were expressive and often comical, and like the geese stayed close to their group. There was a hierarchy that sometimes shifted as overt or covert battles took place to establish or maintain positions. Mrs. Curly appeared to relish her position loudly at times as the two males vied for her attention.

raucous laughter from Mrs. Curly

Patch heads for the Curlys who are engrossed, ducktailing. A big Quack! startling Mr. Curly. He jumps. Loud quacking from them all

Sometimes Patch would follow along the banks of the lake, whisperhissing as the Curlys paddled along together.

Patch comes to join them/ some conversation. He leaves/ whispering/ soft duck hissing

Duck and grebe sounds, expressive ranging voices.

soft nibbling noises, low quacking

the Curlys glide towards the far banks/ softly quacking, becoming loud and insistent

low chatter as a group of wood ducks meanders this way, close to one of the young grebes who is making soft regular woop-woop sounds

loud piercing squawks from the grebes as Patch and the Curlys sail across to their spot

The grebes’ voices tended to be loud and staccato, reflecting their actions on the water. At times they were still, sentries on the surface then suddenly dart across the water chasing an arrow-straight path, or momentarily disappear below emerging elsewhere. Their pace was fast or stop, no subtle in-between expression.

fracas breaks out – one of the grebes shoots across to another/ a scuffle of feathers and white underbellies/ shrieks/ and the one under attack shoots beneath the water

the two grebes shoot off, feet skimming the length of the lake. A third joins in, shrill busy birds, small yet making the most disturbance and noise! Just as the lives at the lake chose at times to remain hidden it seems in keeping with a natural order for there to be spaces of unknowing, and that is to become part of a rhythm.

The atmosphere’s different, I am later by less than two hours/ the birds are quieter

A frog softly croaks

Soft cooing/ just audible

Shadows and reflections The lake was a constant register not only of the events on and below the surface but also of its surrounds on all sides. There was so much movement as birds flew overhead, clouds passed, as the character of the sky changed, lightened, darkened, stormed or became still.

Dark elongated reflections streak across from high up

Undulating blue reflections

Brown tree reflections, murky sky. Waiting.

Wind-agitated water blurs the reflections

If I gazed at the water in a soft-focused way, and particularly if the surface was still the reflection became a deep second world, down. Sometimes as a group of wild ducks flew down towards the water their own reflections approached them, just as

when they flew up and away there would be a counter movement down deep below. The reflections became another world.

Clouds appear in the depths

Sometimes I would only perceive the shadows chasing along the ground cast from the airborne movement of a bird, traces telling of the bird’s passage and energy I felt a sense of being a part, the ground where birds and their shadows passed over leaving traces. It became that the presence of these whether visible or invisible seemed to convey that we are not alone, everyone is here.

Fleeting shadows of bird movement overhead

Refractions shadow dance on red claybanks

Traces are in-between the thing and its materiality, evidence of a mark, process, action, thought, feeling; and it is the traces that are most telling. They tell a story of the journey between here and there, each mark conveying a certain physicality, expression and gestalt. The traces at the lake emphasized presence that was not always apparent making me more aware of the hidden and unseen beings and aspects of the world, showing that what is immediately available to our senses is only a part of a rich whole.

Shafts of light between shadows create dimensions of translucency

The experience of beauty is a trace lingering in our senses and awareness, elusive and ephemeral. Yet it is the experience and the memory of such traces that remain and become a lasting invocation of what is possible, the whisper behind the appearances.

The appearances and beauty

The cycle of coming into life and fading back, of rising up then falling down became a constant theme. It occurred in both a chronological and an embodied sense; with the gradual awakening light of the dawn and the perennial passage of the seasons that manifested in the daily conditions and affected every being; mineral, vegetal and

animal. Life manifested from micro to macro scales of being, every one essential, its own particularity shining out.

Just dawn. Cloud cover peach lilac to the east Peach to gold. Gold to silver

Oblique golden light across treetops reflected in lines of ripple

A cloud of tiny insects illuminated against the dark lake by the low sunlight

An almost-frost blooms over the short grass on the top banks

The early morning sounds of the lives at the lake called up the day, rousing. There would be a lull after the pre-dawn chorus then gradually and at first quietly there were rustlings in the leaves as they began their day. The geese and ducks eased into their routine as the sky brightened, with soft murmurings and shiftings. Calling-up the sun.

The day breathes in, dark, and it is the sounds that begin the dawn

Birdsong fills the space. Crowcalls, twittering, chirping

Roosters converse in the distance. Kookaburras. Squawking wattlebird. Distant traffic. Soft honking. Dive-plop

With the progress of the day the light seemed to animate and energize the water, until towards the middle of a sunny day twinkling sparkles intensified into a dazzling shimmering surface, bouncing back the sun.

Sparkles on water afternoon starlight

Bright sparkles reflecting upwards, the intensity gradually falling back as the sun passed down the sky. Sometimes at the end of the day on the western edge of the lake peach and watermelon pink, almost red reflected deep into the water gradually fading back into obscurity.

As darkness fell the water no longer reflected but rather drew into itself until the light began its return. Perhaps that is why night water seems foreboding, ready to absorb,

like quicksand. Strange surface stranger still as the ducks paddled quietly across in the semi-dark, for the water appeared less able to support a body in its absorbing state.

The colours

Water brings the presence of each thing that it touches into deeper being, softening, enriching colour, magnifying. On winter mornings if the air was still water drops clung to every surface, holding, pendant, each drop magnifying colour and detail bringing into focus the pores of leaves and petals. During the winter the local gravel deepened into a rich reddened hue enhancing and enhanced by fresh green, fading out during the hot dry summer.

The claybanks are terracotta after yesterday’s thunderstorm; everywhere is dampened, freshened

Saturated colour. The green we came down in the rain to see, feel. It was marvellous

Over the year the appearance of colour continued to surprise me and fill me with wonder – so many bold and subtle displays of being. The interplay of earth water and sun enriched or washed out the colours, shifting subtly or boldly with the changing conditions.

The glory vine around the octagon is glowing ruby. It fills me with awe - as they fall carpets of red to be swept for compost. I wait each year for the turn and from April to June the red glows, wine in a glass

Colours are deeper, richer just now. Amongst the leaves on the ground are long crescent-shaped eucalypt leaves, faded orange-red, and dotted are blue- tinged gum nut caps, then patches of luminous crops of onion grass, fine, shiny. Here there is a sheoak grove under which little will grow, emphasizing all the more these occasional colour jewels

Water’s deepening effect brought back the life as summer’s dust was washed away and the earth became permeated.

Everywhere is dew-soaked, deeply coloured

And with water’s deepening, new life began to shoot through the summer’s bared earth, and through me. The colour and condition of the waters registered in me as I

felt a rise or fall of hope, the mood becoming joyful amongst the bright smiles of citrus and the luminous wattleflowers. Optimism flowed with the emergence of new light green shoots – and wonder at the contrast of deep violet hakea and the pendant purple native wisteria, deep pure chroma. The most immediate apprehension of this was through the play of the colours in their contrasts and clarities.

oranges against shiny deepest green, illuminated, complemented

There is so much pure lemon yellow around at this time of the year – ripening lemons and limes, wattle blossoms, sourgrass flower

There were many examples of bursting into life during the journal year in the vegetation as it appeared out of the ground, growing and blossoming particularly during the latter part of winter and into spring; everything bursting out, blooming exuberantly.

bright lemon blossoms explode

The colour viridian is a deep bluegreen; often soft shades of this colour appear in the early stages of the leaf formations of Australian gum trees, starting rather more round, bluegrey gradually elongating and becoming more green, less blue. It is the freshening of new green growth, the vibrant beginning of pure colour that gradually fades out turning back into earth grey brown, dried out washed out, energy spent. There is a vitality and potency in the quality of viridescing, new growth urging out of the earth, pushing up pushing out of one world into another. It is about emerging, displaying the inner world to the outer world. The lake came close to this colour in the depth of the winter as it became replenished, a world away from the brown of the end of summer waters.

the lake is wintergreen now, wearing a cool grey greenness, comforting colour – its re-appearance heralds the wet

Iridescing and luminescing

Qualities and seasons showed their changing states, freshening, deepening or fading off; at times light and movement danced together revealing iridescescing greens,

bronzes, blues and reds, a cacophony of colour. Iridescing - no other word could convey the beauty. Iris, goddess of the rainbow.

An iridescent teal feather startling in the dried grass catches the sun, luminous emerald The dove lands on the clay bank, turning from side to side as s/he goes, revealing iridescent rusty orange and green wings and a soft iridescent chest … stick dragonflies rise vertically out of the iris leaves and up into the wattle, the same iridescent orange

So many insects, ants big and small, bees, white butterflies, flies all sizes. There is one on a silverbeet leaf shining rich blue, iridescent in the sun

ants busily come and go, bodies gleaming iridescent purple in the sunlight

The quality of luminescing was not unlike iridescence yet seemed to send out a glow that shone out from within; sometimes it appeared in the lit centre of a flower or in a particular quality of blue, enhanced by the contrast of surrounding colour whether a complement, bright in itself or as a faded neutral foil of grey aged vegetation.

flowers luminous as flame

Beautiful bluelilac moth on the low weeds/ a vivid yellow-orange and black beetle, luminous skyblue dragonfly

A drop of dew shining red, now green

bright blue wren in the dry dead branches on the ground behind me, I’m always amazed at the luminous blue

Gesture and particularity

I became aware that the gesture of each being was a unique expression of their character and quality, whether vegetal, animal or elemental and as the seasons progressed I began to see how each responded to the conditions. Pattern appeared in the daily events of the constant and teeming life at the lake as outer expressions of inner being; the unique quality and ways of each being gradually becoming disclosed over the year.

A week after the first rains new shoots would appear, tender and bright. Some would spike upwards, intentional and no-nonsense, others would creep and meander along

the earth. The kangaroo paw, taller than me twisting and turning as new shoots grew, and as each stalk aged it retained its serpent-like twistiness. The sinuous growth of the arum lily leaves reminded me of an erotic dance, appearing seemingly out of nowhere midwinter, growing into bright fluid greenness, twisting upwards outwards. I felt its quality of exuberance and extravagance as the new growth reappeared, fresh and pulsing with power.

Fruit blossoms unfurled, grass poked up out of the bare clay and became thick and lush in a matter of days. The opening of flowerbuds seems to articulate best this sense of emergence, expressing fresh energy and optimism; and the formation of tender new leaves and shoots.

The life force showed itself constantly in each thing as rising energy that yearned upwards and outwards towards a peak, then dropping back to earth, fading, energy spent.

The sunflowers are taller than I am/ facing their light source. One is fully yellow-open, the other faces are still clasped

I came to understand this energy as ignis, the constant cycle of bursting outwards and into life, then descending not unlike the action of fireworks. It appeared in the vernal season of greening and blooming; and I felt it in the times of the wet when the rains deepened and softened everything before the stripping-away season of the dry. As spring progressed iris spearleaves grew up from the lake bed.

the iris shoots are becoming tall – some show traces of pushing, corrugating pulses – full, vertical intention fresh from deadened litter

Towards the end of winter bright green shoots unfurled through dried grass, twisting up and outwards. As the leaves grew the pattern began to show itself, voluptuous, more than just an emergence from the bare earth; this was an expression of a particular character.

sinuous arum leaves twist, exotic, fleshy … open white tailed funnels drink sun

Every species revealed a particular way of being - soft, harder, straight, convoluting. The plantain leaves emerged, a rosette of elongated leaves and then a straight stem

shot up, forming a seedhead on the tip. Everything that appeared out of the earth revealed a particularity, each thing was essential and unique.

Insects and birds revealed so many ways of expressing their essential being as well as the dynamics of the moment, so much going on concurrently.

a large orange and black insect weaves about the claybank. Busy

a slow bee is staggering between twigs and stones, past his season; he tenaciously keeps going, winding over and around obstacles wood ducks hasten ahead of Bonnie, scatter out of her path

tiny insect hovers, rises, finally out of sight

There were so many directions, gestures and qualities revealing the character and the impulse of each being.

a wattle leaf spins to the ground

the geese are down at the steep banks grooming at the water’s edge – one of the white ones is sitting on the water motionless, then begins to slowly spin on the spot, five or six full turns

two wood ducks glide in a tandem curve, choreographed, skim down together

white butterflies spiralling hovering punctuations

The crowd of pink and grey galahs displayed this sense of effusion when they would suddenly take off, rising together amidst noisy disarray, a pink upward burst, in the seemingly similar manner of the emerging green shoots.

The green pushes through – from involution to evolution – delicate tentative fine shoots of Guildford grass, shiny fresh, luscious blades of grass flopping over with the weight of dew, straight spears of iris, intentional cutting through air

Kangaroo paw stems snaking up, dipping, twisting; broad clover leaves, cups to hold the dew nestling close to the earth

No-nonsense agapanthus stems with spearhead, neatly phallic, yet such an explosive flowering. Stems of plantain twisting subtly upwards, a waving sea

The sounds and gestures that threaded through each day were eloquent expressions of the life that was going on all around, all of the time. Sounds brought the presence

of each life into my awareness, their mood and sense of intent. So too each gesture, for as I became familiar with the bodily expression of each being something of their inner life became present to me, albeit as my own particular impressions of them. The whole lake environment buzzed with the expression of so many beings going about their daily round bringing it alive with their presence.

It’s intoxicating. The colour and fragrance is so enticing, the orange blossom is heady and covers some of the orange trees, an allover white. The water irises are all in bloom now, and surprise me with colours ranging from white cream yellow brick red purple deep lavender magenta all blooming together. Some are upright in gesture, and some are spread out almost erotically, frilly edged. It’s almost as if they are displaying their character – upright and almost prudish through to spreadeagled. They are wrapped in a tight cone with a semi-transparent sheath before unfurling, spinning outwards, then gradually drying out and caving back inwards, until they become a tight curled-up fist

I became suffused with an awareness of life coming up and out of its source – a springing up through dense earth towards sun, through air. Every being expressed this force in a particular way, which in turn revealed what I came to understand to be the inner volition of each being.

All of this out of the earth, every one unique. The upwards rise, pause, the fall. Intention and surrender

Each plant has a gestural character – linear/ no-nonsense, wandering, embracing, clambering, drooping. Quite psychological states really. Surging shooting slow. Traces of effort, energy

The kangaroo paws’ stems are sinuous, contrasting with the straightness of the agapanthus growing nearby – and the twisty willow grows even more erratically. I love the chaos there, different to the even and graceful fall of the straight stemmed willow

Sound, visual form, gesture and scent all offered a sense of the integrity of each becoming a celebration of disparate being, diversity expressed through each. And with each idiosyncrasy there was a weaving with surroundings that found a place, a particular part in the wondrous elemental whole.

Reflection

My experience of the environment of the lake was filled with the rhythm of life, a constant interplay of the ordinary and the extraordinary. I found that in quietly witnessing and allowing their world to soak into me I became deeply embedded in the community and was moved many times by the beings there. Through my engagement with the beings, the seasons, the elements, and through my experience as a witness and participant I found that all is truly interconnected - everything affects and is affected by everything else. The daily round folded out and folded in, and I began to notice the rhythms and daily repetitions that formed part of the fabric of the place and changed as the seasons passed. Through this process I discovered that there are worlds within worlds,20 dimensions that come alive in a mutual dance revealing hidden being and hidden beauty.

The perennial cycle continued as vegetal life greened, rising clear and bright then after reaching a peak dropped away, the colour draining through buff finally to become greyed, vitality washed and dried out. And so it was with the life of the animals, new, vital and energetic ultimately limited and subject to the effects of time and the folding in and out of life’s breath.

The lake showed that life is in a constant state of change and for all to dwell and flourish it was essential to initiate and to respond. We were all subject to the powerful and pervasive influence of the elements; I felt deep awe and learned humility through the limitations imposed and as I witnessed the wonders that occurred on a daily basis. Every nuance became significant, giving clues about the presence of other lives and signified the inherent worth of each being, who all possessed an essential quality unique to them and who embodied a particular place in the lake sphere. Deep beauty dwelt there.

20 At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. T. S. Eliot Four Quartets

The following chapter evokes a second level of the discoveries I made at the lake, going deeper into the implications of my discoveries. The teachings that came through the four elements brought understandings about the processes of life and the unseen order that lies behind the appearances. Through engaging receptively with all that I experienced a place was made for new insights to emerge.

Chapter 3: Reflecting and understanding: as receptive engagement

Introduction

The year’s journaling revealed that transition is an essential part of everyday life for the whole lake environment. All the beings’ rhythms and interactions brought them into constant interplay that changed their surroundings and themselves and each was immersed in their experience appearing generally to adjust seamlessly. The wisdom imparted by the elements and the lives at the lake told of ways of being that were fluid and responsive; how to be in place and yet able to move through boundaries, how to live unselfconsciously according to one’s own nature in interplay with other nature, and how to live within the natural rhythms of vitality and surrender. This includes coming into being and dying away. Bringing in the new is a painful and sometimes traumatic part of ongoing creation and loss, passing in passing out, allowing the old to die back. The natural world expresses this continuously as things appear seemingly out of nowhere to become mature then begin the descent back into ground, drying out and fading away.

This way of understanding develops a sense that real experience is about learning how to inhabit a space that is in a constant state of potentiality, letting the old pass away before bringing in the new. It seems as if nothing could be beneath the hard clay in the heat of the summer, but in the spring first green shoots tall up and out of the earth forming perfect coral native lilies, coming up out of nowhere/ somewhere then dying back after multiple flowerings, to straw to seemingly nothing except perhaps to invisible presence. When the flower seems not to be there it is as much present in its apparent absence as it is in its full colourful splendour, potential awaiting its time.

As experience is received and embodied it becomes reflected; that is passed back, altered by the mediator. A person may receive and be touched and changed, and in their response they give back as part of a process of interpermeation and interplay.

Everything is a reflection, related but never quite the same. The condition of relating is the origin of experience and as such is an essential part of living in harmony: it is integral to indigenous being but is not embraced in such a whole way in contemporary industrial society as we have become increasingly distanced from self and other. Part of this distance is due to our misunderstanding of the material world for instead of viewing nature as the ground of our being, complete and alive in itself we have come to see it as a resource to be exploited.

Relating with the world in a poetic way makes space for particularity to speak, revealing essential nature and inviting communion; the unfolding of one bringing about the unfolding of another in a symbiotic dance. A felt connection developed in the time I spent at the lakeside as I became more absorbed in the lives there. My experience and way of expressing the happenings there deepened into a contextual emphasis and my usual human-referenced language gave way to a more participatory expression reflective of the elements and those around me. My becoming took part with those who shared the space.

This chapter explores the potential of experience to be integrative rather than polarizing so that what we may initially perceive to be opposite may come to be understood as complementary. Over centuries the culture of the West has developed a tendency to divide and separate rather than distinguish and integrate and this has led to dualistic ways of perceiving. There is a tendency to categorize so that things are either one or the other limiting perception and experience to a surface level so that complexity, subtlety and beauty are lost.

It is not general practice in our culture to imagine the possibility of embracing concurrently the intricacies of more than one way of perceiving or being; transitional experience is perhaps uncomfortable for it draws us out of our familiar sphere and into a place where our sense of reality or identity is exposed to the unknown.

In this chapter I take what I discovered at the lake, develop my understandings of those discoveries and begin the process of applying this to human experience: looking towards transformed ways of being yet also acknowledging that the

emergence of beauty can at times be a struggle. As the fruit blossom buds prepare for opening it appears to be an almighty push outwards, intentional and yet seemingly unselfconscious. It is the visible appearance of the upward outward urge, the yearning back into life of blind all-seeing nature, the inevitability of the perennial process that begins afresh the continuing pattern. In the experience of death there is more than just loss, it is a letting go that enables other things to enter. It seems that this is a part of the process of the struggle into beauty; there is the milling agitating effort to come in, which when it does appear seems to be effortless, slipping into the deep feeling place within that longs to be filled.

The aspects of being that I address in this chapter bring together qualities that are relational and responsive to time, rhythm and difference, and validating of diversity and these are all aspects of an approach to the world and to understanding that I term ‘receptive engagement’. This can be read both as a psychological approach to the world and also as a metaphor for the way that each thing is a reflection of other things and is a part of the whole. Whilst the categories signalled by the sub-headings reflect the discoveries set out in chapter two here they are presented in a sequence intended to build the reader’s understanding of my understandings.

Light and the material body

The four elements of earth air fire and water as the ground of being express the archetypal energies that make up our experience on many levels. They each embody unique qualities and are the ‘how’ of being in their essence and their interplay. At the lake the play of the elements formed the foundation and the limits of everyone’s experience, and I found that there were certain qualities and effects that continuously deepened and opened out the realizations that gradually emerged. My understanding of the elements is about an interplay that is contextual and actively engaged in a process expressing the whole round of existence; and about mutual revelation, reflecting and enhancing.

This is in contrast to an approach such as the development of the periodic table which categorizes the originary elements into ‘chemical’ elements, breaking them up

for analysis. Whilst this scientific and objective approach leads to a way of understanding the world it is only a partial understanding. My approach is to engage poetically with the essence of each element in their particular and interactive nature, not unlike the attempts of the alchemists to understand the nature of being as a way towards wholeness. Again this generates a partial and particular way of understanding the world, however it is an understanding that has been lost in much of the discourse of Western culture and this thesis is a contribution to finding a way to integrate particularity with analysis.

At the outset of the research the image of a subtle quality of light and shadow expressed something central about my contention that the focused, objective approach that has been the inheritance of the West contrasts with the more diffuse and receptive ways of understanding held by communities embedded in nature.21 Over the year I began to realize that the approach I embodied affected the way that I apprehended. I learnt from witnessing the creatures that a less focused gaze enabled me to see a more whole picture of what was going on around me. Instead of focusing on an activity that was taking place such as birds darting amongst foliage I found that relaxing my eyes brought me into the world. So much more was going on. As I took my place at the lake I discovered that the beings there were aware on a more embodied level than I was of what was going on around them, and as the year progressed in my settling there I came to see and feel more in place. This approach is to take a stance towards an understanding of receptive engagement. Receptive engagement tells us as much about ourselves in our environment as it does about the other beings who share that environment.

The changing angles and intensities of the light began to speak to me about different ways of being in the world and that it is in the inbetween spaces where shadow and light dance. Shadows initially emerge from darkness elongated with the early light, and reveal details in a way that is complementary to the light. I came to realize that light and shadow are inseparable, and in this particular ‘betweeness’ they were neither overly bright nor impenetrably dark.

21 My photographic process reflects this approach through a more diffuse, less focused way of conveying a sense of the often unseen presence behind the appearances.

Each thing illuminated through this process was also revealed in its three dimensionality by cast shadow, and I came to realize that it was this in-between revealing that brought the world of shape and texture to life. Everything showed a flat dark quality with the trace of new light just before dawn and just after dusk, turning into a different sort of flatness as the sun reached its pinnacle, the light shining straight onto each subject rendering little shadow; just as where we shine the light of rationality we see only the flatness of objects. At a high point on a sunny day little of the water was revealed, everything eclipsed by dazzling reflections – more opaque than the early morning darkness.

My experience of the aesthetic impressions of light’s effects led me towards understandings of what could be termed as the psychological qualities they evoked. At the stage when the sun was highest in the sky there was a noticeable loss of subtlety as everything was rendered present and unequivocally visible. An unequal relationship appeared between the strong overhead light and the object whereby the latter was being acted on with little opportunity for reciprocal response. The effect was a shining-onto whereby the mystery was chased away, a scrutiny reminiscent of an objective and depersonalized philosophy that often seems still to permeate the approach of the West. This approach creates a power inequality that does not allow real understanding, and brings isolation and an inability to relate and resolve difference. In this way the essential nature of what is exposed is not honoured. This understanding of the impact of the experience of light on ways to approach knowledge could be read metaphorically but is better understood as a way of being in the world. When understanding is approached through being in the world as receptive engagement different forms and ways of knowing become available.22

At the lake the appearance of new light gradually brought things to life; initially dark shapes became just distinguishable, flat and monochromatic, but as dawning progressed they became recognizable, taking on form and character. The light would gradually shift from cool to golden. Warmth signifies life – the heat rises, the heart

22 Evelyn Fox Keller’s biography of Barbara McClintock’s relationship with corn and her subsequent discovery of genetic transposition as told in the book, A Feeling for the Organism (1983) is a wonderful example of understanding through receptive engagement.

quickens. Heartening brings us back into life, new initiative and courage. Thus I came to understand that receptive engagement needs and takes courage.

The quality of reflected light was mediated by the surface that was reflecting, whether the waters, beings, vegetation or the quality of the earth. Water reflections ranged from the pure stillness of mirror, to fragmentation, dependent on the surface and the light; it was a dance. An air-ruffled surface dissipated and distorted reflections so that they became something entirely other. So as a way of being in the world we need to consider that the way we receive and texture our interactions may reflect back intensified dynamics. Even surfaces that may seem to be impermeable absorb and then return something of themselves. From this I understood that a stance of receptive engagement cannot be cognitively switched off; the conversation continues beyond our control.

Shadow lends volume to appearance. Much rests on the quality of translucence or opacity of the matter – so that dense material tends to create a definite edge to the shadow whereas a translucent one softens and modulates edges whilst allowing elements of the body to be permeated by the light. Through this modulation both the qualities of the light and of the body become apparent, a conversation of mutual disclosure.

Although there was a dynamic interplay between light and watersurface the midday light appeared superficial because it rested on the surface, rather like a boundary around a heart, revealing little interpermeation between water and light. In full daylight the water was not deeply altered, simply re-turning the light in the direction from which it came, yet in the early and late hours the light’s sidelong glance invited all sorts of oblique and peripheral exchanges.

I found that much was revealed as the early light permeated the surface and below. Submerged feathers, fast moving insects, weed became visible as the light permeated from the side. Detail seemed to reveal itself as the light shone through, a process of mutual disclosing enabled through openness; a metaphor for co-relating in a non- insistent way. Receptive engagement is therefore a way to understand through depth.

This soft shining-through light engaged a partially hidden penumbral quality, one that also became apparent whenever the light illuminated a leaf or petal from beyond. It permeated the material body of the object or surface revealing its own self, reaching out to the margins as the veins of a leaf or the moisture in a petal that shines out. Something of each material thing showed itself and was ‘revealed through’.

Early one morning the spears in a large pot of aloe vera at my kitchen door glowed green, seemingly lit from within. I too felt imbued with the glowing translucence. Later closer to midday the sun shone on them from above rendering them more solid, their former translucence gone. The oblique angle of the light revealed a sense of their clear interior, the over-light just their surface - the meeting of angles forming different relationships.

The quality of translucing relates to the tone in which light and matter interplay. The interior becomes a little more known as the network of veins in a leaf begin to show themselves, the way they reach outwards from the heart of the leaf. And then there is the order of overlay, as the shadowed outline of a leaf beyond is revealed through the one closer. A projection of light and shadow reveals much about the nature of matter and its capacity for interplay, offering another way to receptively engage with the visible and the unseen, the literal and the metaphorical

Liminal states – of body, mind and heart most deeply prompt new realizations, and there is a paradox that it is often in the less ‘conscious’ moments that understandings begin to form. In this way we understand pre-consciously before we move to the rational expression of that understanding.23 The word ‘limen’ relates to the threshold, often a doorway between two or more worlds, and ‘liminal’ describes the state of being concurrently of and between both.

23 This relationship between pre-conscious and rational ways of understanding is comprehensively set out at both the biological and the psychological level in Iain McGilchrist The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. (2009)

At times it seemed that the light that illuminated from beyond became the light from within; emanating through the body. The term ‘translucence’ expressed this transmission most aptly, for it implied the mediation of the light and the material, whereas ‘transparency’ seemed to be unmediated. In the journal year my engagement with translucent light and penumbral shadow led me towards understandings of diverse levels of being; they were imbued with a sense of liminality, and these qualities of the in-between kept recurring. Oblique light and shadow intuitings and revealings seemed to coalesce at threshold times and in threshold places, which were rich sources of discovery.

Generally it is considered that darkness conceals and the light reveals, and this is often but not always so. It is the angle and the intensity of light that influences what is to be revealed. What may seem to be flat when looked upon from a direct angle is seen in all its detail through the oblique, and more of the interior reveals itself when the light is softer. Regularities and irregularities become visible and more of the inner and outer character becomes known, in a connotive rather than denotive way.

To perceive surface as totality is to miss the conversation between outer and inner, the experience of the interplay of complexity and which is a way towards understanding. Revealing and discovering are experienced together. Inner self becomes revealed through discovery of the other; similarly the way something is sought also reveals the seeker.

Over the year at the lake I became aware of continual interplay between beings and conditions – everything was embedded and in a state of flux and my reflections led me towards understanding much of this interplay in terms of ‘liminescing’. Everything seemed to be in a state of becoming, even in stillness, and I found that the best way to evoke in words the nature of the potential which was always going on was the notion of ‘escing’, that is, becoming.

Permeable boundaries and transitions: liminescing

Permeable boundaries and transition reflect that all is in connection and in a constant process of change. As boundaries interpermeate the essential being of each may be retained rather than merged, becoming potentially more than just the sum of the two parts. Being permeable is a state of being responsive rather than passive, a synthesis of creative and receptive being. An example of such being is the interplay between light and shadow, the appearance of each intricately engaged in a dance with one another and the material world.

Everything is in a state of transition, so that what may seem to be ‘opposite’ or ‘opposing’ are particular stages in their passing through. These are temporary stages along a continuum and illustrate the wisdom of the perennial cycle. This implies a sense of fluency that could be attained in a way that might emulate the lake’s inhabitants’ seamless be-ing that I noted was always in accord with conditions as a constant and responsive way of being.

An aspect of my experience at the lake was about the nature of permeable boundaries, of bordering in the sense of the verb, such that shifting and liminal states were apparent as a constant theme. Boundaries can be understood in several ways – as an outline of something, surrounding bordering and a division between things – a defining bordering. Another form and the context of my work is bordering as the overlap and interplay of place. Combinations or becomings such as the bog that dwells between water and ground, mist that dwells between water and air, and the dew that dwells between water, ground and light create something new, other than their separate qualities Generally our sense of borders is about containing, defining, and concretizing however this thesis seeks to synthesize rather than isolate or define, and so the bordering that is the context here is the act of bordering which may bring together. It is that of integrating, bringing back the fragments to their source, to put the puzzle back together - which could also on another level be to heal, to retrieve what has been lost, and to re-member.

Crossing and blending are other ways of thinking about the process of bordering; crossing as traversing from one to another is about division, and blending as merging where things are assimilated. These are extremes whereas the process of interplay retains the integrity of both ‘borderings’ in a way that is complementary and potentially enhancing.

In the early stages of the journal year the lake as the initial subject revealed much about the qualities of water. I witnessed the ever-changing reflective and refractive nature of the surface that was affected by the surrounding sky, vegetation and the creatures. The changes were physical as the surface was windblown or rippled by rain, vegetation, animals or insects; or apparent through the reflected image. With agitation reflections broke apart and came together whereas with stillness the images sometimes appeared as though mirrored. Too much stillness seemed to create a sense of unreality, as though nothing was breathing, relieved only by the passage of a ripple that brought it back to life. It seems that the quality of movement on the waters’ surface signified a sense of the absence or the presence of life. There was a peaceful quality when the surface was quiet but not motionless, contrasting strongly with the sense of deep agitation at times of strong winds that chopped and slashed the water. The waters represented a panoply of many ways of being that extends to and include human ways.

My initial experience of sound, colour, forming patterns and shapes, and the interplay between light and shadow brought the understanding that knowing and being, whether ephemeral or more lasting is an expression of passage through and between one thing and another. The shifting seasons, passing qualities of dawn, day, dusk and night brought a sense of rhythm that told of ongoing change.

The transitional nature of the dawning light passing from shadowy traces through warm beams showed a gradual progression through that particular stage of the early day, revealing as each movement passed. There seemed to be a deeper dimensionality associated with the liminal quality of the passage into daylight that receded as the light whitened.

Liminality is also about what is obscured from immediate apprehension through in part a quality of hiddenness – for example the image of the moon in the night sky sliding behind a cloud, fleeting and ephemeral. Often there is a soft glow around the obscured area intuiting the presence of something luminescent behind. It is an incremental shifting that reveals in its concealing – the clouds move between, not hard-edged but in partially visible shifting layers. The moon’s reflecting is constant for the time that it is proceeding across the sky, differing daily, and even in the ever- changing waxingwaning there is the sense that there are other angles, other moonscapes that are concealed from us.24

The early morning light is related to notions of obscuring for the dawning is a passing through and out of darkness; gradual. The low, oblique shafts of soft golden light are an expression of the beginnings of rising up, catching every detail in the gentle beam. It is a moving out and away from the darkness, but still partially obscured; between-state of both concealment and discovery, or a death birth stage between the darkness and light.

Shadows reveal just as they conceal, for without them dimensions flatten out and appear unreal. A shadow shows the dimensionality of something and it is the light that modulates the quality of the edge. For some parts of the year the early morning shadows of foliage outside the window on the east are projected onto the wall, moving sometimes imperceptibly, sometimes dancing in the breeze. As leaves interplay the shadow definition shifts between clear and blurred. The wall needs no ornament, it’s enough just to reflect back the dance. The leaves’ shadowdance seems to appear particularly as the seasons change, moving along the wall little by little showing the passage of the season.

The dust on the insect screen of the same window reveals shadows in a way that differs to the glass between, so that there is a double image of shadow, first arrested on the screen by the dust then registering on the glass before passing through to the

24 See Dogen’s 800 year old koan: There are mountains hidden in the sky. There are mountains hidden in mountains. There are mountains hidden in hiddenness. (1995)

wall. A combination of moving foliage, light, air and dust is needed to complete the epiphany, just as the presence of matter participates in rendering light translucent and soft. Penumbra seems to have a quality of dustiness about it, permeating the quality of the light.

Shadow is the unreflected inversion of light, complementary but not opposing. It reveals where reflection is not, revealing deepenings whereas reflections show high contour/ highlights. Translucent light and penumbra are interim states both mediated by a body, passing through whilst being passed through.

Penumbra and translucent light permit – they are in part permeable and reflective, allowing for diverse expression and interpretation so that nothing becomes definitive, but potential. They are stages in the continuum that help to inform my inquiry into the relationships between things – they both are and aren’t, embodying the paradox and ambivalence that runs throughout. As images of be-ing not as fixed entities but as shifting states of folding out and folding in they help to express the experience of dynamic interplay. They help to image the liminal state /place /being that circumnavigates but does not describe, rather evoking and intuiting.

The dew that often accompanies the dawn draws together the worlds of light and water and earth – droplets held close to petals and leaves gradually dissipating as the light rises in the sky. The early beams illuminated each drop forming a miniature and inverted image of the surroundings, testament that an image of the surrounding lake world was encapsulated in each drop telling me metaphysically, scientifically and aesthetically that everything is reflected in everything else on many levels.

The sense that the boundary between things is a place of communion became apparent as I took in each detail of the early day. There was no division between the night and the day, no time when it became ‘light’ – it may have been possible to identify the moment when the sun became visible over the trees yet the light had been passing through long before. It is not possible to ‘know’ definitively when the sun rises and I came to understand that this takes part in a more diverse passage of

events, and thus the model of scientific knowledge is limited and partial. Understanding and knowing then needs to include that which is obscure.

As with all seeming antitheses the partnered qualities of making known and obscuring initially appear to be opposed, one being the antithesis of the other, however in their becoming they move through stages of being more and less like the other. Likeness may seem to speak of harmony but for real harmony there needs to be a small disturbance that catches in the light. Their interplay relates to the appearance of mystery – something is revealed to us but only in part, so that complete knowledge or understanding is not possible. Human endeavour through the ages has engaged with the mystery of life and death, understanding that the nature of shifting circumstances is inherent in the experience of being alive. However, as a culture the West has lost touch with the significance of obscurity as part of meaning making. Obscuring is ever-changing, a becoming that can be both diminishing and enhancing. It renders things less apprehendable; less visible, tactile, auditory, or olfactory. It may seem to be a process of making something less than it was, reducing the presence of something, perhaps even appearing to render it absent however it is rather that it is present on another less available level.

When attention is given over time-space it becomes apparent that diversity and similarity makes up the mix with shifting emphases. As I became familiar with the constant movement, expressings and signatures of the lake I realized that each thing was taking part in a whole scape of being, that everything over/interlapped. There was a rhythm between voices, sometimes conversations, sometimes contrasts between qualities of voices, and all conveyed to me that there is a place for everything however different.

At times very early mist rose from the surface of the waters, slow moving through the stillness – an airwater blend that had a life of its own. I experienced a particular atmosphere: physical, mental and emotional at these times that seemed to emerge from the interim space before brighter light melted it away. I felt drawn to its ephemeral qualities that alternately veiled then drew away the veils. Dimensions became flatter or rounder, colour appeared and disappeared; the effect of the mist

was multi-layered. Thus an analytical model of knowing which states that a specific event occurs at a particular moment in time cannot express the experience of transition and change. Science based on this compartmentalized approach can only show isolated moments of a reality that has already passed and never really existed. We form a fixed picture and identify it as our world yet our experience is of shifts and changes, not fixity.

I came to understand that my comfort in the mist is related to its fluid and shifting nature, as a passing-between place. The mist brings a sense of otherworldly presence, a revealing/concealing dynamic concentrating close to the material world but that drifts off on the breeze or dissipates as the light intensifies. It seems to create a place for the presence of the unseen. I felt companioned and in place possibly because these conditions allow for shades and shifts, dense yet apparently immaterial.

These liminal spaces express conditions of becoming rather than states of being, verbs rather than nouns. It is the act of shifting from and towards; the process and the journey rather than the product and destination that had significance for me. The appearances expressed acts of becoming through sound, movement, scent and traces making ever-changing patterns.

Patterning and paths

In the context of the lake patterning relates to a general sense of dynamic change; for example gathering and dispersing, or integrating and fragmenting as a continuum. Patterning reflects being. The particular nature of pattern that enables relationality and understanding is a meandering, labyrinthine way that is not straight, staccato or jagged. Rather it flows, a breathing in-and-out patternpath. A straight or linear path that does not engage with complexity or notice the detail continues through the world without participating or being touched.

Patterning, groupings and paths increasingly spoke of dynamic change so that what might have initially been understood as ‘pattern’ in a static sense became acts of

shifting interplay. Patterns formed and re-formed. My understanding of paths came to relate not only to the material traces of tracks left but more to the gesture and dynamic of paths in action; paths that moved between states or places. I felt warmed by the physical vestiges of passage at the lake, and in wonder at the more ephemeral non-material paths that told of the interplay between beings, their conversations and gestures.

Paths at the lake expressed the inner being of each thing, whether linear and straight, zigzagging, curving, or meandering. Some paths crossed back on themselves like the looping of the birds out of the trees. They could be tentative or intentional, part of a group or individual. The straight paths like those of the crows or the coots and grebes showed a quality that was largely focused and unaffected by what was around them; it was their way. The paths of the ducks and geese were sometimes straight, purposefully going somewhere, or they could be wandering, in a sort of reverie. Their paths were affected by obstacles and other beings and they made a crooked track down the lake banks through the vegetation there. The path of the dragonfly paused and sped, sometimes almost motionless except for the fast movement of wing that held them up in space.

I found the meandering path had the most to convey; about journey and obstacles and the particular ways of the being who made it. Meandering is a process that gives time and space for self and surroundings, allowing a place for others – the movement permitting more connections to be made. I came to see how the physical effects of a meandering path could be aligned to a meandering way of being and perceiving. It is a more receptive way for it requires consideration to be given not only to the intention of the path but also to the nature of its passage through, so that interactions are necessarily responsive and slower.

This drew me back to reflect upon personal ways of being in the world and reminded me that although a meandering approach is not conducive to the efficiency and speed that is valued currently there is a need for diversity - alternatives that offer other ways of perceiving and being. There is worth in slowing down and allowing what we perceive as outer to be received and become inner. The beings at

the lake did not seem to be aware to any great extent of the world as being outside of them; and I began to understand that this is a human construction and that our sense of separation is an illusion that we have inherited and continue to internalize.

As I gradually came to this realization it became possible to inhabit my own ways of being in a new way, allowing my own particular processes to inform me more deeply. The labyrinthine processes of wandering and moving towards depth had more dimension and felt more real to me than the rational focus of straight-line ways of thinking. Understanding (and my understanding of understanding) became then a process of links, crossovers, metaphors and reflections. Reflecting surfaces display an image that may or may not reflect the interior life, and complex life is not always accessible to surface, not always reflected. Understanding emerges through the surface, and as it settles it is absorbed, received once again back through the surface into the deep interior.

In the context of my understandings the surface is a permeable place, made up of many layers rather than just one. What is thought of as being a fine but definite skin that separates and protects can be also a place of diversity where difference and analogy interplay; a surface of layers, like the earth of gravel, sand, clay, rock, permeated by air and water, and perhaps even by light. The surface can be the mediatory space, possibly it is the real liminal space – and although the general sense of ‘surface’ may initially appear to be to be about what is immediately apparent and literal it may indeed be the matrix of the imaginal.

Surfaces become more amenable to relationship in when they are textured, things are apprehended, slowed, given a place. The same happens with attention that is open and not too focused, so that nuances may be picked up. A surface that is uneven, like an obstacle course which needs to be negotiated calls forth slowed attention. That is the beauty of the winding path, where one is much more able to experience what is there because of the in and out movement of the path. Taking the shortest route along a straight path cuts and accelerates the experience, and all other things that are present potentially become lost, out of sight. So it is in the context of the world of relationship – seeing others through a flat surfaced consciousness loses

the detail and the richness and individual quality of each. In allowing the texture of the unknown to present itself it becomes possible to receive real difference. Thus our understanding is enriched.

I am reminded when I recall the reflections of the lake in this way of the Sufi story (Douglas-Klotz 2005) about an art competition arranged to create images of beauty. One group painted a wall with luminescent and magnificent colours, and the other group whose wall was situated opposite buffed and polished their wall to reflect the beauty of the other. This brings the context of reflection into another sphere, one of inner and generous beauty that engages with, enhances and magnifies the world.

Receptive engagement occurs when something of the image to be reflected has been taken in and absorbed, as much as the surface allows, before it moves back out into the world. The inner world receives processes and sends back in a manner that expresses its own quality and that of the other in a symbiotic interplay. So it is that in the reception of a moment of beauty something of that beauty is absorbed and reflected back. Beauty engenders beauty and perhaps it is this quality of absorbing and mediating back that engages it in the world.

Rhythm and fit

Being in rhythm is also about being in harmony – there is a ‘to and fro’ quality that brings differences together and makes them part of the whole. Harmony is about the fit, an active receiving that leads to enhancement and a feeling of repose, perhaps peace. Everything for the moment is integrated. ‘Grace is the courage to be at home in the moving resonance of the present.’ (Keen 1970, 37) Receptive engagement could be understood as beauty’s need; a material medium that is permeable and reflecting that enables beauty to come into presence in the world of appearances.

The fluency of the beings at the lake as they went about their day in rhythm with their surroundings prompted me to reflect on my own experience of this quality of flow - times when I have forgotten my outer layers and become immersed in a quality that is neither time nor space-bound. Re-membering is a process of

fragments returning and becoming integrated once more, restoring what has been lost or separated on a deeper level. It goes beyond a conscious sense of memory and touches on experience that may not be consciously understood. In the context of fluent be-ing my experience of this has occurred whilst immersed, for example relating deeply, making art or writing, when there has been a sense of flow and of accord, seemingly in partnership with other energies. This is co-operative whether in the context of the fluency of the beings at the lake or of my own felt experience.

The action of reflecting is a return through shared space whether the reflecting quality is mirror clear or subtle and diffuse; there is still the trace where something is retained before being reflected back. The shinier the surface the more faithful the reflection, unmediated and singular. But that is only one way of reflecting; a highly reflective surface does not allow much of itself to be pierced or to be affected by the other so little of life may be reflected back - perhaps that is why a softer surface mediates and absorbs some of the other, sending back a gentler reflection that is affected by the impression of the one on the other.

Receptive engagement involves being intentionally present and sensitive to what is going on outside of one’s own self, and this way of receiving becomes convoluted, with more surface to pick up and be picked up. Meandering goes from one direction to another, an inclusive movement that gathers as it goes along.

Between absolute stillness and agitated chaos there is a spectrum of conditions that embody the reflector and the reflected revealing a process that traces the lively non- linear quality of exchange. To reflect one has to receive and to receive one needs to be permeable – and surfaces that are permeable receive more deeply than those that are sealed. Near the lake the bark of some of the native trees is open and picks up and slows much of the water that touches it yet there are others whose bark surfaces seem to repel and speed the passage of the waterdrops. Slowing down enables receiving and absorbing. Leaves with a shiny surface hold a drop of water only whilst there is a hollow to cup it, and the water pours off if it is tipped, but more textured leaves hold even minute droplets of mist within the surface.

Particularity and quiddity

Everything is a particular and essential self and appearance; gesture and voice are expressings of self embedded in surrounds, each is unique yet having a place as part of diversity. At the lake I came to appreciate the deep uniqueness of each being – as I dwelt in the company of the community there I became more familiar as I felt and saw the vital beauty in every being. Through the process of quietly witnessing I was given the time to apprehend the wonder of each so that I became more fully present to them, noticing the details of their lives.

So it is with traditional earth-based societies as they live in symbiosis with their surroundings. Everything is recognized as having a particular place as an intrinsic part of the whole.25 It is the personal that holds our humanity as one group of inhabitants sharing the planet, and as we engage in wonder with the details of otherness we may become better acquainted with our own deeper nature.

Each being at the lake was unique with a beauty that spoke of intrinsic worth unrelated to value and it was demonstrated to me that this sense of worth resides deeply within the integral nature of things. The qualities that I witnessed were of being, in the sense of verb rather than noun, for everything was in a process of becoming. In the culture of the West there is a tendency to convert things from verbs to nouns – into fixed entities which obscure the authentic be-ing of each thing. There is a tendency to understand the term being as a state as seen in the example of a ‘human being’, whereby the term generally means a human person, rather than the experience or action of a human process of be-ing, and in this context the inflexion over time has eclipsed its potential as a fluid experience.

During the time that I reflected on the understandings that evolved from the year’s journal the quality and action of ‘inging’ consistently appeared and conveyed

25 This is not to romanticize earth cultures but rather based both on the necessity of paying careful attention to the particular when sustenance and survival depends on it, and as honouring in wonder and gratitude nature’s phenomena as discussed by Patsy Hallen (Ecofeminism as Reconstruction: Making Peace with Nature, 1992) and Freya Mathews (Reinhabiting Reality: Towards a Recovery of Culture, 2005)

effectively for me the sense that I made of the disparate goings-on at the lake. The term expressed the constant shifting nature of everything in process – the seasons, conditions and beings. Events were occurring, always in the process of changing: from and towards. Again I came to realize that in the West our received idea of ‘things’ has come to be as objects, governed by the sense of a fixed state limiting the way we are able to conceptualize presence. In a poetic rather than a prosaic way things may be apprehended as becoming-themselves so that through a fluid approach an opening to potential comes into play.

Language is a way of conveying meaning, an aspect of the forming process of being. In the context of this thesis language is understood as a means of communicating or imaging for example through tactile, visual, auditory, symbolic ways. It need not be limited to a particular form of spoken language, instead opening to convey in diverse ways the be-ing and quality of ‘things’.26

Human language evolved in a thoroughly animistic context; it necessarily functioned, for many millennia, not only as a means of communication between humans, but as a way of propitiating, praising, and appeasing the expressive powers of the surrounding terrain. (Abram 1996, 263)

Over the centuries our use of language in the West has developed in a way that tends to limit concepts and understandings in turn narrowing the possibility of a fuller exploration of what life may bring forth. As the year of the journal progressed the voices of the beings, that is their gestures and their sounds were an expression not only of their individual way of being but also a reflection of their place within the lake environment.

The belief that meaningful speech is a purely human property was entirely alien to those oral communities that first evolved our various ways of speaking, and by holding to such a belief today we may well be inhibiting the spontaneous activity of language. (Abram 1996, 263)

26 See The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (1987) by David Crystal for his extensive inquiry into the diverse and evolving nature of human language.

I came to recognize to a greater or lesser degree the sound, movement and the rhythm of each being as they each played a role in the encompassing rhythm of the lake, a sort of weaving that was unselfconscious and embedded. Their ‘languaging’ was a reflection of their place in their environment and embodied both their inner nature and the outer nature they were a part of, a balanced and symbiotic dance.27 This is in contrast to the individualized language of contemporary Western culture where our native roots have become obscured behind our more literate, textual ways of communicating.

Much of our current language could be described as disconnected, to the extent that many expressions are uttered without an understanding of their root and original meaning. Hidden layers of meaning are embedded in an inheritance of words that have come to convey something quite different from the original and whilst this is an ongoing and gradual evolution, there is loss. Perhaps this loss is a natural process however it seems to be reflecting a movement towards exteriorized consciousness and away from deeper ways of being.

My earlier forays into the etymological context of words revealed a path through time showing that original meanings have been overlaid or changed direction or angle to arrive albeit temporarily at accepted meanings. The approach of the languages of the West, especially since the codification of them into a formal system and definitions through the creation of dictionaries28 tends towards the literal focusing on a sense of nouns rather than verbs, generally fixing meaning rather than leaving it open to movement. Indigenous oral based languages tend to shift and allow for multileveled expression and contextual understanding, not limited as in the agreed formulas of the West.29 This brings the rich and fluid possibility of a

27 See David Abram Becoming Animal (2010) for his discussion of the language of landscape, animals and birds, and J. A. Baker The Peregrine (2010) showing how language emerges from the land through the author’s engagement and identification with birds.

28 Dictionaries are a relatively recent invention.

29 For further discussion of oral-based language see Keith Basso Wisdom Sits in Places (1996) and parts of Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines (1988).

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responsive language that derives from and participates in the surrounding environment.

There are languages in the world which have no nouns. What we would call a carrot would be a “carrotting”, a house, a “housing.” In such languages, which are primitive, the idea is not lost that, behind the carrot or the house, energy is moving; the divine is actively disguising itself through carroting and housing as mere temporary and perhaps playful attributes of a dancing world, or a terrifying one. (Howell 2006, 20)

Indigenous languages may be an expression of localized sounds, for example of birds, or water, articulating the interaction of the elements and the beings. The body and the breath take part in a way that deeply articulates the sense of the language in both a physical, metaphysical and poetic way.

The process of engaging with the poetic and with beauty led me towards the discovery of the term quiddity expressing the essential and mysterious nature that reaches out and touches us. According to the Oxford Dictionary the original meaning of quiddity refers to the ‘real essence or nature of a thing’ – derived originally from the early term quidditas – that is ‘whatness’ coming from the Latin quid ‘what’ which had developed from scholastic disputes over the nature of things. The sense of this quality began to form as I pondered on all that I found during the year at the lake. Initially I noticed that each thing had a particular quality that was individual and idiosyncratic; the sounds, gestures, forms, and atmosphere of each being. In the context of this thesis it seems that beauty and quiddity are closely connected for deep, authentic beauty is always entirely itself, the expression and emergence of the essence of something, and quiddity acts as a vessel or passage for such beauty. In recognizing the quality of quiddity in every being diversity becomes validated as an expression of the process of wholeness or unity.

The quality of quiddity emanates from an interior state or space, so that even as it shows itself in the external surface of things it comes from within, and that ‘within’ may embody something of the ‘beyond’; in place yet also ephemeral. Interiority can mean solitude but it also relates to the heart of something, the welcoming heart that accommodates and holds a space. So whilst embodying a quality that is unique it also has the capacity to be inclusive making provision to embrace otherness. My

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experience of the lake sounds was one way that I came to understand this diversity in wholeness.

Sound, tone, colour, shape and gesture are ways of communicating the particularity of each being, and I noted during the journal year that every being had a unique way of presenting to the world, a manner that expressed particular energy or spirit.

The combination of sounds and images reminded me of an ever-shifting kaleidoscope; movement and form changing patterns, with symmetry and reflections momentarily coalescing into one order before moving into another. There was so much going on around the water; the dynamic of water and beings in conversation expressed the essential nature of both together with the atmosphere there.

Each sound appeals – the word appeler in French is to call, each sound calling to us according to its quality, expressing feeling, affect and intention. I came to apprehend the voice – the tone and gesture of each being as precious expressions of soul and its diverse ways of being. Part of the role of sounds is to appeal, the voice as an expression of the source of quiddity.

The phenomenon of quiddity contrasts with that of glamour, which I understand to be about the impression that it evokes within an onlooker, who perceives allure from a distance, perhaps even as a projection. Glamour is an expression of surface as an empty shell; it does not hold together the fullness of real being and experience, and is dependent on separation and distance to transmit its appeal, unlike the inner communion that close encounter with essential nature offers.

Besides being entire and of its own essence, quiddity is a vessel that has the potential to receive, hold and re-turn the qualities of others, such as translucent light that has been present throughout this research in the context of a light passing through, a glow rather than a reflection. It’s light is its own, not borrowed, residing within and illuminating the particular nature of the body or material. The light together with the material becomes more than before, bringing into being and enhancing a synthesis of both and revealing the particular nature of each.

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It was necessary to dwell quietly over time, to come to apprehend that each nuance is an embodied expression of being. As the time I spent witnessing the lake events passed, the sense that everything was a quidditous expression of life became clear. I found that perceiving the detail closely constantly filled me with wonder – every face and each event told me something about life that led me towards deepened understandings.

There are many ways to apprehend the world, and it is the micro scale that most often resonates with my way of understanding. The revealings from this became apparent through my photographic work, looking in wonder at the detail that unfolded on a moment-by-moment basis. I found that I understood on a deeper level the way vegetation emerged and took form as a certain eloquent logic appeared, whether spiral, chaotic unfurling or the popping open of round containers.

My experience has shown me that a spiral meandering dynamic expresses the circumambulatory way that realizations take form; it is an unfolding cycle with its own rhythm that cannot be rushed or made to take shape. Indeed, the spiral expresses for me part of the process that I experience in the evolution of learning. At times sudden insights occur reminiscent of the popping bud, and the appearance and unfurling of some of the centres of flowerblooms reveal a powerful struggle to emerge weaving order and chaos as a whole phenomenon; both grace and violence together. The processes of nature taught and reminded me of the potency that underpins the world and the disparate nature of being that forms a necessary diversity.

The be-ing of each thing was an expression of self-revelation, bringing the interior self towards the world, displayed. There was a pattern to every thing; the gesture of each leaf and tree revealing individual quality combined with necessity to fit with the surrounding environment. It was here that I came to understand the integration of beauty and utility as an example of the power and resilience of diversity, and that they exist in the same sphere. The processes at the lake showed that diversity is mutually enhancing, not contradictory and is an essential part of wholeness.

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In our technological and scientific gains the accompanying limitations and losses are drawing us away from authenticity. There is a need to embrace diversity, to live it and see in the detail the beauty of the particular in such a way that it reflects back to us; it is through receiving the reflected image that the being-and- belonging-with quality becomes conscious. Each thing beckons and speaks, expressing its be-ing whereby unity, participation and empathy may come. When the world is apprehended as a seamless interplay of interior and exterior and a continuum of self and other, the quidditous be-ing that underlies the whole begins to reveal itself.

Dwelling and receptivity

In our perception of expanded natural limits we have become less able to inhabit place on a deep level whereas less than a century ago people were rooted in their familial locality, often deeply connected in time. The effect of the increasing mobility of western society is double-edged in that opportunities to expand our experience have led to freedom yet also loosened ties with ancestors and the land. Whereas previously our environment was understood to be sacred, steeped in familial significance and not to be utilized without first acknowledging and honouring the indwelling spirit of place it has come to be perceived as a resource to be used. When we interact with the environment in this way the sacred is overlaid by our material concerns and becomes obscured.

My understanding of the term ‘dwelling’ is the quality of living lightly and reciprocally, inhabiting concurrently the material and the non-material – being at home in all the elements on a physical, psychological and sacred level. Metaphorically it is about being rooted in the earth yet able to ‘inhabit’ the air, akin to the be-ing of the tree (or flower) whose roots draw extensive nourishment from the earth and water and whose branches are aerated and nourished by the atmosphere and the light. It is living a reality that is symbiotic, nourished and nourishing, a permacultural sensibility of mutual appreciation.

I found that as I engaged closely and remained receptive to the particularity of each being more became revealed through the interplay and tone of the surrounding

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conditions as they acted with the subject revealing its vitality, texture and detail. For example in the process of photographing an unfolding flower there was a possible sense of intrusion and incongruence if my approach was too close and straight on, whereas an oblique approach seemed to honour and allow space for the encounter. Softer light is eloquent and conveys more deeply what is there, bringing a feeling of meeting with the surface and what is beneath rather than exposing it. This approach differs from the broader contexts of cultural interaction whereby qualities of relating remain close to the surface missing the subtle and individual nature of each thing.

The concept of shadow sometimes connotes darkness and a sense of apprehension perhaps because light as a metaphor for knowledge is valorized in the West. This may relate to darkness being seen as an unknown, threatening phenomenon whereas light relates to clarity and vision bringing a sense of certainty or reassurance. Because vision has become the primary means of apprehending our world we no longer possess the fluency of our other senses which would otherwise guide us. Darkness can be disorientating and brings the possibility of becoming lost so this has resulted in a culture that relies on visible and external knowledge that is less nuanced and more obvious. Whereas, the soft penumbral shadow that accompanies soft light encourages the mystery to remain present. In this way the private and the unknown can be positioned at the boundaries, shielded from interrogation yet allowing their presence to be felt. Boundaries and interim places afford such a quality of space.

Engagement with mystery is sometimes devalued because we have become accustomed and expect to ‘know’ instead of accepting that there is knowledge, or rather ‘knowing’ that is not available to us. Sometimes the culture attempts to uncover mystery laying everything bare but in so doing the mystery and the beauty is lost to us, receding from our awareness. This can be seen in the sometimes insistent light of the media, attempting to display what perhaps should remain private, leading towards an expectation in the culture of such disclosure; or in the context of spiritual searching where the mystery is eclipsed by literal interpretation.

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In witnessing the play of the four elements I found that that shadow brought with it depth and a sense of unseen presence that far from being disturbing could be embracing and companioning. This is perhaps because the dance of shadow and light reveals material texture so that the nature of each thing, that is, presence, may be apprehended.

Often the quality of darkness has been considered the domain of the ‘feminine’ and the light that of the ‘masculine’, and the literalization of this way of perceiving has narrowed their context. Western science and religious doctrine that have separated integral being into parts – body, mind and soul, have added to this polarization so that it has become difficult to trust our many senses and distinguish the complementarity and continuity of such qualities as light and dark.

An accommodating and receptive way of relating has been considered to be a feminine way of being and on one level this may be so. However, the qualities that could be described as masculine or feminine will instead be distinguished in this thesis as the dynamic and complementary qualities of activity and receptivity which are mutually reflective. Assigning gender terms to these qualities complicates and limits their depth.

Rather than light and shadow being separate entities they are integral. Their activity appears in the presence of the material, so that all are essentially symbiotic; the light, the dark and the world of matter are interdependent. At the lake, shadow afforded protection from powerful sunlight in many ways affecting tender blossom and fruit buds and the ducks and geese who sought camouflage in the shadow of the reeds or who formed lines around the water’s edge on the shaded side of the lake. Likewise the early morning sunlight imbued the ducks and geese as they rested and absorbed the warm rays. It is the subtle in-between qualities that offered the most learning in the context of this research.

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The struggle for beauty

It seems that the struggle for beauty is about the interplay of the chaos and order of harmony coming into being, both revelatory and obscuring. The beauty that I experienced at the lake was always in a process of shifting and intuiting the hidden presence of the divine. As such I found the experience to be indistinguishable from the experience of the sacred.

Of all the ‘verbings’ that occurred at the lake I found that witnessing the process of something coming into life filled me with the greatest wonder and was a daily amazement. The early morning rays of sunlight appeared to bring each thing it touched into a luminous quality of being, gathering intensity before becoming a more ambient and general illumination. This was a gradual blooming, different in the scale of time to the momentary iridescing of the feathers of dove or duck, or the gradual opening up from bud to flower. Then there were other moments of explosions of florescing, iridescing, luminescing as life opened out – gradually as a flower from a bud, or briefly and wondrously as the green parrots burst out of foliage in a flash of emerald brightness.

The act of florescing is ephemeral, yet a part of the continual nature of the patterning of life. I understood these florescings as expressions of a generous extravagance freely spent, giving all in the cycle of coming into being, revealing nature’s perennial and glorious urging into life before dropping back into earth. It reminded me about risk and trust, tenacity and hope. Something deeply sacred made itself known as these momentary bloomings occurred, intimating the mystery behind appearances.

As I began to notice the dynamics of patterns in the processes of forming and re- forming I saw that these were constantly transforming. In passing through the cycle of florescing and evanescing things showed themselves to be in a process of becoming – they appeared, passed through stages then disappeared once more, reminiscent of the transitory nature of fireworks that bloom out, bright then are

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gone. I was struck by the energy and exuberance that accompanied the appearance of life.

As appearances and realizations occurred to me the cyclical nature of these phenomena came to be revealed. There was no beginning and ending, nor opposite states, just different and complementary stages. What we call the fruit is also in part the flower and in part the bud, and whilst it may be useful to name these as parts that is not the knowing of them. Rather in the dynamic process of becoming we pass through stages and realizations, and embodying this form of knowing is an expression of receptive engagement.

Florescing appeared in the explosion of new growth and flowerings; a sense of fresh bursting-into-life, which after reaching a peak fell back surrendering to material earth once more. There was a full and ecstatic quality about it that reminded me of the pleroma, of overflowing. On another level there was an illuminating quality about it that lights up as it appears and then darkens as it is gone, although the context did not always relate to light and matter but also to movement or sound, embodied expressions of extravagance and courage.

The florescing of newly opened buds became another level as the blossoms turned to fruit and the fruit coloured, swelling and ripening. I felt deep gratitude for the flower and fruit gifts that recurred each season. The same bursting into life appeared through the birds’ calling and gestures, seamless and ecstatic.

The act of florescing could be understood as an outer expression and an inner feeling, as feelings of welling-over, deep optimism and grace pass through. Likewise its complement, the act of evanescing reflecting feelings of emptying and loss. Counter-balance occurs naturally in the rhythm of fading away as everything that rises must also fall. Each instance of this at the lake revealed deep truths, that there is always rising and falling, that limitation and freedom are essentially complementary. I discovered this in my own thoughts and feelings as I witnessed

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events and interactions and came to understand that every being was subject down at the lake; life continuously blooming and fading.

Another manifestation of transition appeared as iridescence with the momentary appearance of the teal flash of the wings of the wild ducks. The colours would range through deep bottle green to bluegreen to cobalt to violet with the shifting angles between the ducks, the light and myself; a moment as light encountered brown- creamy grey then bright teal, totally contrasting and yet a part of the whole. Other shifting colour displays also appeared with the bronze orange of the chests of the doves and the deep iridescent blue or green of a beetle.

Iridescencing is an elusive phenomenon and I have a sense that an explanation may tend to demystify it - on one level it could be described as the moving interplay between light waves and material particles, texture - I understood this through my apprehension of the wondrously shifting colours; yet on a another level in the way that I felt so deeply and mysteriously touched by the beauty of iridescence whenever I beheld it. Somehow the event and its experience came together as a communion, not unlike the way I was touched by the sounds of the lake.

Acts of florescing and iridescing are ephemeral, weaving through continuity just as the passing scents on the property appeared and dissipated. At the lake it was scent, so ephemeral, that seemed to pass into a deeper more ancient memory so that my whole being re-membered as seasonal aromas were carried on the air. The scent entered my body just as sound did, yet there was another level of apprehension below even sound. It is easier in the context of scent to recognize that we are not separated from the rest of the natural world. In the West we have become less fluent in the way we engage our senses, and it seems that on our conscious level we may have partially forgotten; yet sometimes in moments of immersion a sense of seamless encounter can occur. At such moments of engagement, beauty may appear.

The coming into being of beauty is a struggle even though it may not always appear to be so; there seems to be an energetic resistance pressing back against its

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manifestation. The creative process of birthing embodies both a longing-into-being as well as ambivalence, for something must give way to the appearance of the new. In my experience the process of bringing a work of art into being reflects this dynamic of nature’s longing as I reach into unknown terrain towards something that exists but not yet on a conscious level. Each creative experience seems to follow this same pattern through a labyrinth of unknowing, where it is through an interplay of listening and longing that something emerges. Magic’d almost, a journey imagined into the material world.

In earth based societies the process of imagining into form through the poetic has always been a way of life, bringing something from other realms which whilst being unseen are understood to be at least as real as the visible world and seamlessly connected to it. In the West it is material form that is understood to be ‘real’, and the unseen as belonging to a realm that is separate and of less significance.

This is in part the struggle for beauty: as Ghalib (Star 1991, 129-130) says the experience of beauty is that of the world revealed, and that this is all the appearances need to do – to be apprehensible, the world mirroring itself:

This world is nothing more than Beauty’s chance to show Herself. And what are we? – Nothing more than Beauty’s chance to see Herself. For if Beauty were not seeking Herself we would not exist …

… Every particle of creation sings its own song of what is, and what is not.

Revealing in terms of beauty’s appearance is a return to deeper realms than surface impression and to a sense of the subtlety of the ways in which this is conveyed. The manner in which revealing occurs touches in a reciprocal way, poetry rather than prose. When there is mutual revelation there is permission and reverence for particular nature. A sense of listening, like Hillman’s ‘Notitia’30 that takes in and

30 ‘Notitia refers to that capacity to form true notions of things from attentive noticing. It is the full acquaintance on which knowledge depends.’ (James Hillman 1982, The Thought of the Heart, and, The Soul of the World , 115)

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takes on the uniqueness and the integrity of each thing, so that potential is enabled when given a place.

Beauty occurs in moments of disclosure when something is imparted about the particularity of each being – the time of budding and unfolding of the fruit blossoms in the late winter and spring was the richest and most engaging part. The blossoming of peach, plum, pear, apricot occurred differently, each displaying a unique quality of ‘flinging out’. Many emerged from tight little round buds, perfect spheres, unfurling in their own rhythm. The petals opened in their own way – the quince buds formed a twisted pink and white flame shape that slowly spun outwards becoming a perfect open rose form. Pink peach petals unfurled from a rounded bud, and it was the activity of bursting out of the centre that arrested my attention – a wild, powerful, a wavy pushing-out. They could have been shouting. Each fruit blossom had its own nature, flamboyant, modest, quiet, noisy. I was astonished at the expressiveness of the way they entered the world – sometimes in struggle, sometimes with ease but always the gesture of plants drew me towards realizing that each had what could be described as a character, a presence of their own.

Reflection

The stillness of dew-soaked mornings offered me a deep understanding. For the dew drops to remain in place the conditions needed to be still – their tenuous hold was easily blown away. These mornings held a magic as multi-colours flashed from each drop. I felt wonder at each drop and this wonder was renewed however often I experienced it. As I looked closely I perceived that each drop reflects an image of its surroundings, and that every image is inverted. Although each drop was an entity, a rounded container, it participated in the whole surroundings. One instance that impressed this understanding most profoundly was of the pendant dewdrop that held a perfect and curved image of the whole lake, the surrounding trees and the sky; a landscape encompassed and reflected back. In just one drop.31

31 See Dogen’s Moon in a Dewdrop (1995)

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This seemed to me to be a perfect expression of inter-being – that we are concurrently individual and communal, and that we participate, affect and are affected by our surrounding world in a constant state of becoming. Part of the beauty of that curved, inverted image revealed that a reflection is always correspondingly altered by the reflecting surface offering other ways to perceive and be in the world, a way of receptive engagement.

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Chapter 4 - Insights into the healing nature of Beauty: glimpsing the mystery

Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. Rumi

Introduction

During the year’s journal I found that as I made room for the slippage between apparent and imaginal reality my perception opened to admit correspondences and analogies that knitted together what could initially have seemed to be quite disparate spheres and ways of seeing. I was engaged in a poetic process, and poetic processes draw us into seeing possibility and potential all around, not only in the exotic and the remarkable but also in the particularity of the everyday. In this way each manifestation or process of nature may be apprehended on levels other than the immediately apparent and specific qualities that are encountered. So for example material nature may also be understood as an expression of psychological ways of being. Whilst chapter three reflected upon the way in which such diverse qualities of being revealed themselves through the gesture, sound and traces of each being at the lake, this chapter takes those understanding and details the insights that I gained focusing on the question that was posed at the outset of the research: what is the healing potential of beauty?

Through the journey of this thesis I now understand that beauty draws us both to the known and the unknown, potentially leading towards a form of integration, bridging and knitting our experience together. I have come to perceive the experience of beauty as an integrative one that brings together the strange and the familiar in new blendings, the non-physical with a deep physical response. It is a unifying force that may seem at times paradoxical and mysterious yet receiving and reflecting beauty brings a sense of coherence and healing.

So how does beauty heal? Beauty heals as a poetic embodied experience; beauty heals as a metaphysical experience as it allows us to pass through the surface of our

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outer being and enter deeper into our interior world, touching us and freeing us to feel its deeper dimensions; beauty heals by deepening and evoking our capacity for awe and wonder; and finally beauty heals as it brings us to an experience of empathy and belonging.

Beauty heals as a poetic embodied experience

At the heart of this research is felt experience; the way that beauty makes its appearance and has potential to touch us and our ways of being in the world. When it is perceived purely as an intellectual experience beauty’s power to deepen and transform us is lost.

With the play of light the surface of a drop of water becomes crystal clear and sparkling, reflecting and enhancing the many colours hidden within the light. In the early mornings at the lake the dew always filled me with wonder, each drop reflecting according to the relative positions of the light and of me; the apprehension of such beauty becoming possible as part of the threefold dance of water, light, and material being, diverse entities yet coming together to bring the beauty into being. Part of this poetic interplay reveals that such processes of co-operation bring about something greater than before, and the beauty in each thing comes to life as we make time and space for its appearance. For me it is such processes and attention that bring meaning: ‘To behold beauty dignifies your life; it heals you and calls you out beyond the smallness of your own self-limitation to experience new horizons. To experience beauty is to have your life enlarged.’(O’Donohue 2003, 30)

A drop of water conveys so much: it reflects, seemingly encompassing the surroundings faithfully, albeit inverted as with our human eye; but also magnifies, revealing greater detail and enhancing the matter it touches. A more archaic sense of the word ‘magnify’ is ‘to act for the honour of, to augment’ (Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, 1996) My experiences of beauty elicit in me a desire to express in my own way such beauty, whether through words, photographs, or other media. To make art is not in any way an attempt to ‘improve’ beauty but to bring it into the light for its own revelation; even so I am mindful that beauty itself has no need to be

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transposed, appearing where and how it will. It is just that through the experience and through the expression of beauty I feel a sense of fitting-together, that something in me has come back home.

For me making art is a way of entering more deeply the experience of the beautiful, making a way for it to enter into my being and the surrounding world. In listening to what wants to emerge and in allowing the potentialities and the limitations of a particular medium to inform the process I find that something beyond my immediate experience speaks, whether through interactive dialogue, or through materials that re-ignite memory and senses. Material and subject are always entwined and in conversation, sometimes as a conscious choice but more often mutually referring to one another and guiding me. Art is a way of bringing into presence the unseen and often overlooked elements of the world, addressing us and re-minding us, bringing us towards deeper insights.32

Two other artists whose processes embody the ethos of the ‘fit’ between humans and our surrounding world, deep engagement and transformation are Francois Davin and Paulus Berensohn. By introducing community groups into the experience of artmaking Davin shares the processes that can offer healing to particular community-and-place related, current or historical conditions or events. This is a way of making meaning that can bring community together and deepen attachment to place. At times the work takes the form of an ‘act’ of art sometimes in the form of a ceremony rather than as just a material outcome. The work is not transferable to another place being engaged through and around the particular themes and concerns of person/s and/ or place. A central aspect of his work relates to mutual gifting, whereby on the invitation of the community the artist is hosted by the community,

32 David Abram (1997, 278) describes a sustainable and embedded art praxis: ‘Genuine art, we might say, is simply human creation that does not stifle the nonhuman element but, rather, allows whatever is Other in the materials to continue to live and to breathe. Genuine artistry, in this sense, does not impose a wholly external form upon some ostensibly “inert” matter, but rather allows the form to emerge from the participation and reciprocity between the artist and his materials, whether these materials be stones, or pigments, or spoken words. Thus understood, art is really a co-operative endeavour, a work of cocreation in which the dynamism and power of earth-born materials is honored and respected. In return for this respect, these materials contribute their more-than-human resonances to human culture.’

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living and working in conjunction with them for the duration of the project; and so a bond builds that deepens the processes of engagement, discovery and healing. Davin has referred to his approach as a form of ‘prayer’. I attended his series of workshops relating to site-specific art in 2007 in which he described his process as bringing symbolic or poetic language to the work, the role of art being to make it visible. His approach of paying attention ‘when something speaks and needs to emerge’ reflected my own practice at the lake of listening closely for what the lake community conveyed. At times his work drew from elements relating to Celtic culture, with an awareness of and emphasis on the significance of the Land as Sovereign, issuing the invitation to engage. This theme resonates with my own sense of the significance of elements of Celtic tradition, and will be explored further in chapter six.

Embodied experience is at the heart of artist Paulus Berensohn’s work celebrating the wonder of the physical and metaphysical nature of the connectedness of the human body and the clay body. Berensohn presented these concepts in his ‘Intuitive Clay’ workshops which I attended in the early 1990s – this was a pivotal time of learning for me as he introduced his praxis that enhanced sustainable and deeply embodied ways of being and of engaging with the planet. An integral part of his process is to journal – (‘the real studio’) as a daily exploration of the experience of being human and of the awareness of other beings’ presence. Formerly a dancer, his material is the experiential being in the kinaesthetic human body and the human experience of clay, engaged in such a way that invites the body of the material to speak; so that rather than directing the processes his emphasis is on the authorship, wonder and ancient nature of the clay itself. He draws on the foundational and sacred connections of the claybody and the human body making unfired work that can be re-integrated into the body of the earth. Berensohn’s processes reflect the ethos of honouring and opening to otherness and to the wonder all around that I describe through the thesis.

Much has been written over the centuries addressing beauty and its effects and at times attempts have been made to rationalize or define it. My understanding through my research is that the elusive and mysterious nature of beauty resists definition for

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it is constantly in a process of interplay, changing in relationship with whatever it touches; its experience is particular to each of us. We are affected more deeply by beauty’s call in ways that cross the boundaries of our usual experience, breaking through the rational to address our innermost longing. It brings us to the edge of the numinous.

As discussed in the two preceding chapters, at the lake beauty appeared over time as moments and patterns revealed presence and agency. I learned that the way in which we approach the world is central to what returns to us, so for example a gentle and indirect gaze brings with it the possibility of insights that are more subtle; to confront is to set in place a quality that remains on the surface, boundaries holding vulnerable and tender being at a distance. I found that as I became porous to the expressions of the beings at the lake and in distant lands, the closer I attended the more I became attuned with the language and languages of place. I felt claimed and embraced in their company in familiar and distant settings.

The appearance of beauty is an open-ended encounter inviting us to suspend rationality and to make space for the unknown; it is ephemeral and elusive drawing us into dimensions other than the familiar. For me it is more often experienced on other levels than the mind, drawing out emotional and bodily responses. Feelings may range through those of wonder, astonishment and awe to deep compassion and empathy and bring us more deeply into our outer and correspondingly our inner worlds grounding and elevating us. Rational analysis and scientific explanation do not fully engage with the deeper significance of a life; the life of any entity may be perceived on another level as a symbiotic bringing-together of a series of profound transformations. To glimpse the quiddity of each thing is to see obliquely its essential and particular nature in a poetic way. Quiddity is a quality to be experienced, not analysed, for it draws us in a way that appeals to the part of our nature that synthesizes, recognizing essence and wholeness.

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Redeveloping the capacity for heart-centered cognition can help each of us reclaim personal perception of the living and sacred intelligence within the world, within each particular thing. It moves us from a rational orientation in a dead, mechanized universe to one in which the unique perceptions of the heart are noticed and strengthened, to a deep experience of the living soulfulness of the world. As the process continues to deepen, it strengthens our spiritual sensitivity and, in the process, helps us gain a deeper understanding of our own sacredness. (Buhner 2004, 121)

Engaging in a way that goes deeper than outer appearances enables us to understand the world we are a part of, so that we come to recognize and embrace hitherto unknown elements of ourselves and others. Perceiving layers that are not initially apparent becomes a poetic practice for we come to understand on a metaphorical and somatic level. Everything we encounter is imbued with possibility as we see one thing in another, drawing correspondences. This way the multi-valence of each is revealed and we become opened and able to acknowledge with wonder the many facets of life. In understanding that there are many levels of being beyond literal appearance we take part in bringing to consciousness aspects of life that may be marginalized or forgotten.

In my own life I found that the insights that emerged over time from my sojourn with the lake community deepened my later travel experiences across the world. In this chapter I include reflections about some of my impressions as both familiar and unfamiliar visitor; and some places were the ground from which I draw my heritage, in part known and unknown. These reflections are included for they revealed to me that the quality of the learnings and the bonds that grew from my time with the beings at the lake subsequently became available in new and unaccustomed environments. I realised that feeling ‘in place’ is possible in new lands for it is not about geographical familiarity but rather that invitation is extended concurrently as we allow ourselves to be included. Engaging with the world in this way helps us to approach the complexity of current dilemmas, such as ecological inequity, more holistically, going beneath and beyond the evident.

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Beauty heals as a metaphysical experience

My understandings of the permeable transitional and liminal ways of being at the lake set out in the previous chapter gave me the insight that a metaphysics of transition and transformation is possible through an experience of beauty. When we apprehend the fullness of beauty it passes through the surface of our outer being and enters our interior world, touching us and freeing us to feel its deeper dimensions. What may seem to be external to us becomes more a part of us dissolving perceptions of boundaries that separate; the qualities of outer and inner are both inversions and reflections of one another.

Beauty dwells, waiting to be discovered, not passively but actively present inviting us into encounter, enhancing and becoming enhanced in relationship. To be receptive to its impression returns it anew. Although beauty is understood to be a part of the extraordinary, it also appears in everyday experience bringing together unexpected juxtapositions that prompt other ways of apprehending the world. There is the beauty that is immediately discernible to us and there is also beauty in less apparent layers of being; we can apprehend qualities in their literal appearance but there are deeper qualities that appear obliquely, intuitings of ways of being that speak to us on other levels. In recognizing the hidden nature of beauty we come to find it in ourselves for we cannot discern it without becoming touched by it.

Outward beauty is immediate whereas what resides beyond appearance comes to be apprehended through engaging attentively, the layers gradually revealing themselves. They are hidden only by the boundaries imposed through perceiving the surface as being all that is there but once we begin to see beyond the surface we find other expressions of being, leading us deeper. In seeing beauty only in outward appearance we miss the rest, indeed we fail to see much of the beauty that is present and apparent all around, including and in particular, the unlikely places.

As I travelled I found in a street in Chartres a little patch of poppies randomly growing out of a dry stone pavement that conveyed more than could be understood in any rational way. There was a sense of wildness, a spontaneous meeting of stone

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and flower. This was not cultivated beauty, just fresh vegetal matter springing out of apparently dry stone, the balance of solid weight and twisting delicacy seemingly unaccustomed yet resolved. I was filled with wonder that something of such beauty dwelt there, unsure why I felt such affinity with it. Again in Ireland a fitting correspondence as wild Valerian grew abundantly from an old decaying roof gutter; the coming-together of paradox and perfect accord.

Discovering the beauty in the hidden becomes a shared process of receptively waiting to find and be found; relinquishing the definite is to take part in the flow of possibility. Material and non-material nature are reflections of one another interwoven in their literal and non-literal ways of being. The concurrence of nature; waternature, sheepnature, humannature, rocknature comes to be more present to us as we apprehend its many layered appearances. By expanding our ways of perceiving to embrace seeing and listening through our hearts we glimpse the wholeness that is at the centre of our experience. Beauty’s presence invites us to do this.

When we listen with our hearts we hear the unseen beauty that waits to be discovered. The beauty in sound encompasses outer and inner being, expressing the particular language and feeling of place. Tones and feelings pass through, emanating from the unseen into and through the world of appearances.

The human experience of sound is one of passage through our being as tones and subtleties register and engage our responses. We hear as much as we are ready to hear. However, it is not only the aural quality of sound but a broader language of being that conveys and reflects its particular yet diverse nature. Becoming sensitive to the expression of place brings empathy, our sensory hearing leading to a deepened quality of listening that draws on our whole being. On my travels the sound of old bells, soft and resonant in so many places re-called memory and a sense of home. The church bells in London and the church clock calling the quarter hour in Hayfield, not far from where I grew up. The sound of the particular voices of regions - the soft Irish lilt, Scots of the Highlands, the various tones of

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Northumberland, Yorkshire, Cheshire and of the south were sounds reflecting place and being place.

So many of the stories of all the lands refer to the push and pull, and the overlay of one people’s culture over another. Sedimentary layers of history, where people have left for unfamiliar lands to settle, bring something new. Diasporas and displacement, emigrants, immigrants. Most particularly in Ireland and Scotland when I listened deeply with my heart I heard the sense of displacement, that inhabitants have been pushed out to other places, and although not outwardly apparent the longings left behind still felt present. History’s effect on land and diverse inhabitants, the elemental qualities that formed the landscapes and conditions of place, and the traces of lives lived over the centuries conveyed the subjectivity of human and other-than-human life, as well as the wonder of it all as beauty’s presence threaded through the layers.

Beauty’s apprehension transforms an outer expression to an inner impression through the way in which an experience is received whether via material or imaginal realms. In Europe I found the thickness of the walls in the old dwellings mediated the light entering from outside softening and warming the atmosphere within; there was no finite point of transition rather it was a gradual adjustment. On a symbolic level such receptive conditions signify welcome, a threshold bringing outer and inner conditions into accord and thus allow a healing to occur through a bringing- together.

Beauty heals as it deepens and evokes awe and wonder

Beauty is to be found in seemingly unremarkable everyday experiences so that through being open to momentary appearances we become attuned to the lovely way that the light may catch something, or to the community generated in moments of empathy. The power of beauty is underestimated if we narrow it to the aesthetic for it also resides in our engagement with the world. Being present responsively and acknowledging the inner being of another brings the beauty out in both; empathy and wonder at the mystery of otherness.

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So being present to beauty drew me in and changed me; in opening to the beauty all around I felt companioned and embraced, drawn into my surroundings. As I became increasingly embedded at the lake I began to perceive the particular nature of presence all around that conveyed the inherent significance of every being, and as my understanding deepened I was reminded that to perceive life in terms of value and utility diminishes the wellbeing of all. In understanding that every being is both entire and an essential part of a larger and diverse whole we too move closer towards a personal sense of wholeness.

The experience of wonder is connected to the unknown; perhaps wonder may be related to the inexpressible – because when we are in ‘wonder’ there seems to be a space that cannot be filled or explained through language. Wonder occurs in the presence of Beauty and it is the sense of wonder that draws us towards mystery. It elicits reverence; we are brought into a space far removed from utility or resource- mentality, and are absorbed into its experience. Wonder, as Beauty, ‘takes us’. (O’Donohue 2003)

So it follows that wonder has the potential to remind us of the beauty that is already there; this thesis was prompted through the wonder that is elicited by beauty. The experience of wonder can draw us out of the mundane towards other realms; it sits alongside the world of the imagination, different to yet still present within the pragmatic and practical aspects of the world. Whilst beauty and the sacred are generally understood to be different qualities for me they are closely related, so much so that at times I find them to be inseparable. The experience of wonder relates to the sacred, so as we behold with wonder the sacred becomes apparent – their presence is reciprocal. When we see in this way it is sufficient to behold rather than to possess; the experience fills us, rather than the need to consume.

These realms are needed in a culture of commodity that revolves around utility – in being open to the wonder of each thing we are less inclined to perceive in a ‘resourcist’ way (Fisher 2002) because we become aware of the intrinsic worth of the thing that sparks our sense of awe. It seems that our capacity for wonder

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becomes enhanced many fold as we perceive the quiddity that is present in each thing.

We wonder at the extraordinary and yet there is also wonder to be found in what may seem to be quite ordinary. Alice Howell (1988) writes that it is the way of looking, open to depth that reveals the wisdom in the everyday attributing this experience to the phenomenon of ‘Sophia’ (discussed in chapter six). This is to see symbolically the traces and clues that can bring meaning, so that the simple experience of our surroundings can convey connections and deep insights. This is not to overlook the initial inherent beauty of a thing but carries us further towards a sense of order that is mutually referential. Meaning can take shape in diverse ways. Attending makes way for the interior presence of each thing to become revealed : ‘This fluency and ease of presence is ultimately rooted below the surface in surer depths. In a sense, the question of beauty is about a way of looking at things. It is everywhere, and everything has beauty; it is merely a matter of discovering it. (O’Donohue 2003, 59)

There is power in outer and inner beauty that draws towards itself, a magnetism that has the capacity to transform our perceptions. It is potent because it addresses and touches us, breaking through the layers that enclose our inner being reaching beyond reasoning to the embodied and numinous self. We are ‘disarrayed’ then gradually resolved into an order that reconciles and settles into place. Being touched in this way draws us out of our surface consciousness and brings us towards our deepest centre. Through astonished wonder or the deepest empathy we are, as we say, moved.

Beauty heals as it brings us to an experience of empathy and belonging

Beauty shines with a light from beyond itself. Love is the name of that light … Yet not everything is beautiful and in a broken world occasions of beauty point to possibilities of providence that lie beneath the surface fragmentation. When we endeavour to view something through the lens of beauty, it is often surprising how much more we can see. (O’Donohue 2003, 203)

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Throughout the travels of this research, I learned much about places, people, and about myself. Travelling usually involves novelty and insecurity with much that is unfamiliar to be negotiated, each place showing its level of receptivity, its particularity amplified. We apprehend the unknown in a different way to the known, initial impressions dissipating as they become gradually more familiar and seeming to change in character as we come into a sense of knowing.

Being permeable encourages conditions for change so that every experience has the potential to open and transform us, each encounter bringing a new dynamic. The experience of beauty is one of opening, altering, fitting and corresponding – allowing us to feel a sense of belonging. We are changed through our apprehension of beauty and we begin to feel a sense of alignment as we let go of our resistance and our customary sense of order. In surrendering to beauty we take part in an exchange that can shake out our assumptions and show that we are part of a dynamic and evolving pattern. There is an order in this pattern which is based on correspondence and complementarity so that what may seem to be contradictory actually affirms. Allowing ourselves to be worked on by the experience brings a sense of fitting together, leading towards integration.

My year of witnessing at the lake opened my consciousness so that I was more attuned to the deep inherence of native being as it dwelt in each new place that I visited on my travels. The familiarity that I came to be so touched by at the lake was equally present and touching elsewhere, as when I approached an unfamiliar place in a receptive manner I could discover a deep and constant sense of belonging in that place. All my experiences whether contained in the close locality of the lake or outside those boundaries revealed that we are always a subject, regardless. As I became familiar with the day-to-day happenings at the lake I came to see a correlation with my own experience of moving in and through a world that throws up life, to be engaged with fully and with an open heart; just as the lake beings lived, responding to every condition that was presented to them.

In the open country of Scotland and Ireland I felt the draw and the appeal, again the sense of in-placeness of the animals and that I was home with them. This was not an

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experience that I could have foreseen because even as I had understood that over time my presence amongst the lake beings was accepted I had not known that such acceptance could have been extended to me in distant lands. I felt deeply included, accepted as eyes quietly and steadily met mine, time suspended as we exchanged regard. I felt a deep belonging as they inhabited and I shared their place.

Similarly, I felt invited in the small twelfth century chapel of St Oran at Iona, surrounded by an ancient cemetery and within which was a small altar and candles for offerings; a quiet and reflective place. Upon passing it the following day I could see through the open doorway and through the dimness the glow of the reflection of the cross on the altar invoking a sense of reaching out. Light emanating from an interior place offers solace and welcome, and I felt held in its presence. The same too in Dublin, where in the window at the President’s residence there is always a candle burning as a welcome to all. As a traveller I was deeply moved to be included and received; my inner being was touched.

The sense of belonging that openness to beauty evokes moves with us and is not bound to belonging to a place, group or family but is the healing quality of belonging in a spiritual way; and at the same time the experience of beauty is a liminal one, bridging the macro and the micro worlds that we all inhabit.

So too the experience of the small and the local, of the old stone-built places in Scotland and Ireland that are so much a part of locality, its colour and texture. Limited in size, hand cut, the stones re-arranged place into dwellings and low stone walls so that the natural features of the land were reflected in the building process, mutually enhancing. These places revealed the correspondence of limitation and harmony that traced painstaking personal presence, and conveyed a sense of the worth of simplicity. Beauty was revealed there, remnant yet also container for the spirit of the place. So many ruins, often becoming covered over with vegetation as it gradually took hold; the blending of mineral and vegetal, testament to previous lives.

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These were traces that communicated the depth of life, of subjectivity to the outer and inner forces of the elements. It was not that these places conveyed a sense of ease, quite the contrary, rather that their traces held a sense of endurance, life and love. Over the land the material and non-material was in conversation with itself, holding the memory.

The local stone that had been dug or quarried maintained an integrity of place revealing that material which had previously been concealed beneath the ground was now apparent, but altered. There was a fitting quality in the traces that echoed restraint and limitation in the context of the personal making of home; this was not a landscape of excess and where ‘resources’ were utilized, rather it had been done in a way that took only enough. Such places hold the essence the underlying spirit of place imbued with and reflecting the passage of life and impressions left behind. Because of their direct and unembellished nature these traces are more accessible to us, shining out and conveying their particular truth and through this we become more able to recognize our own truths reflected back to us.

The traces of life and a sense of human engagement with the sacred were present all the time. Labour and love. And the marks made by human scaled limitation, of the building of dry stone walls, the carefully-built cottages, the barns and the ruins in the wild landscape which were not razed but still present, revealed a beauty of scale and of the rightness of local materials within the limits of need.

An essential quality of beauty is a sense of wholeness where things come together and into accord. The elliptical dynamic of complementaries that took shape during the unfolding of my understandings are an expression of beauty – they reveal an integrity in what might initially seen as polar and opposing qualities but which come to be perceived as moments only in a process of transformation, taking part in a continuous unfolding. Within the variable qualities of things is the realization of quiddity, that is entire in itself and yet that lets go into an ongoing process of becoming.

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Such transforming is revealed when we attend – as O’Donohue (2003) says, we perceive beauty through our ways of looking and we bring about such possibility by inviting and encouraging Beauty into the world. This beauty in its quiddity could also be understood as living towards wholeness or as the process of individuation,33 and in this way, through coming into self-knowledge, our essential selves, we are better able to encourage Beauty into presence.

In Ireland there was another experience of wild beauty in the weather patterns and rock formations; I could not have fully imagined the possible correspondences of rock and water before I unexpectedly came across the juxtaposition of the Burren rock and sea scapes. What would usually be understood as two elementally disparate qualities appeared as the same texture and form, a broken-up, choppy continuity of hard solid rock and watery flow.

The experience of beauty opens us to recognising commonality between random flowerings through stones, rockseascapes and the glint of the bright silver of stormlit water. All are unlikely, appearing to be contradictions, and all invoke a sense of enchantment; the seeming impossible. Always a beauty, somehow bringing things together through difference, an expression of the resolution that doesn’t have to be perfect and that can occur through incongruity or disparity. Within all these disparate points of meeting there is a sense of the presence of deep mystery.

Beauty draws us back towards ourselves and so towards others for it is a reflection of the life within and surrounding us. It is the expression of our longings, at last acknowledged and given voice, still or thunderous. When we find ourselves in the

33 Anniela Jaffe as editor of Carl Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963) included entries on individuation in her glossary of Jung’s terms. Jung: ‘ ‘Individuation’ means becoming a single, homogeneous being, and, in so far as ‘individuality’ embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one’s own self …’ (Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, CW 7, par. 266); and ‘… Individuation does not shut one out from the world, but gathers the world to oneself.’ (The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, CW 8, p. 226)

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embrace of beauty it is no longer strange but instead a home-coming, place of belonging, and it seems that to be home and to belong is our deepest human need.

Reflection

When I embarked on the thesis journey my intention was to explore, experience and to be touched by what is good and beautiful; my passage through discoveries, reflections and understandings became a moving meditation as I paused and allowed the world to form impressions on my being. This was not an aesthetic journey in terms of an intellectual examination of beauty but one that drew me into its unknown terrain, the great interior. In immersing in the depth of beauty’s experience it became apparent that beauty and wisdom are dimensions of the experience of the numinous, ineffable and only to be glimpsed sidelong. In staying open to beauty’s experience we come closer to an apprehension of the sacred.

The insight of this research is that beauty is constantly to be found in the invisible and the visible, its apprehension transforming an outer expression to an interior and deeply felt impression. Beauty is there to be discovered in the most apparent and the most hidden places, always close, and I found that being present to its appearance drew me into it, ultimately becoming changed by it. Beauty is transformative and in the transformative journey of this research I have found that my deep experience of beauty allowed me to come into tune with all that I encountered evoking feelings of deep awe of and compassion for the world.

Journeys are idiosyncratic, personal to each of us. I came to realize that these journeys of travel and of the thesis had led me towards the source of my belonging. In pondering whether the lake journal process had strengthened my attachment to that particular place, and whilst understanding that it had, I also came to a deeper insight that it had led me to apprehend more fully my sense of what is sacred: that

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which dwells behind all this experience, all this life.34 A power that is expressed for me in an elemental language of the interplay of light and dark, water earth and air, bringing my experience into form. The mystery resides there and beyond.

We touch and are touched reciprocally in the way we approach the world and in the metaphor of the nature of oblique light, indirectly and receptively. Beauty is present, found and unfound and brings a sense of unity showing that nothing is separate just as nothing is identical; that all is an intrinsic part of the whole sharing aspects that are complementary yet quidditous.

The elements are the ground of our being, essential and unique forces. The dance between and amongst them reveals the wonders of their contrasting qualities, mystery inherent in their conversation. They may be understood in their macro and microcosmic contexts as the forming of cosmos, the interaction of weather patterns and in other ways that speak of the beings who dwell, echoes and reflections of the many layers of elemental being. Each place speaks in its own way through the language and rhythm of the elemental particularity of place and through those who inhabit that place. Being attentive makes it possible to apprehend each wonder; a personal and embodied engagement that calls for empathy and compassion and one that through its receptive nature may become the ground for transformation.

When we experience beauty we may find ourselves exposed to other worlds; worlds that may seem different and yet which are on other levels a part of us. They are not so different, just appearances from other orientations. For these are the most touching moments that bring us home to the centre of our being, to our heart.

The received cultural understanding is that the heart holds our inner sense of connection, those aspects of life that we hold most dear and yet we tend to perceive the heart as a domain that is limited to feeling only. We valorize the mind as the means towards knowledge, forgetting that deeper knowing is multi-valent, drawing

34 This understanding evolved courtesy of the thoughtful questions posed by a dear friend during a conversation about the research. Sometimes deep realizations come to us in this way - a wonderful example of co-operative insight.

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on all our capacities. Because we have come to perceive ourselves as beings with mental, physical, emotional and spiritual aspects that are separate and hierarchized we have moved away from our sense of wholeness and inner cohesion. The sphere of the heart embodies the deepest impulses of life finding expression through all our endeavours, encompassing all these seemingly disparate parts, the material and the non-material as one concurrent micro and macro cosmic whole.

In the next chapter I look at some of the ways of being that over time have come to dominate the Western worldview - perceptions that are precluding a deeper sense of connection and belonging, and that are reducing our experience of the hidden and the beautiful. ‘One of the first symptoms of the loss of the soul is the loss of the sense of beauty.’35

35 George Russell, in Schenk (1992, 31)

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Chapter 5 - The forgetting of Western culture: towards retrieving the fragments

Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made a personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and the setting of the sun, and cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and equinox! This is what is the matter with us, we are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars, and love is a grinning mockery, because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the tree of Life, and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table.36

Introduction

This research began as an enquiry centred around the experience of beauty and has engaged with ways of being that reflect and enhance such experience, especially in the context of the integrity of our surroundings. For be-ing creates life’s atmosphere. Part of the puzzle of our current ways of being prompts the question of how we have got to this point in our relations with the earth and with ourselves such that the planet, our home, is becoming endangered by our ways of being. How can we have created this?

It seems to me that in the West our estrangement from nature has occurred over time in exterior and interior ways, so that we no longer fit with nature as our home nor with ourselves as part of it. The influences are complex having evolved over millennia but in the last two hundred years the conditions of our experience have been transformed in both losses and gains so that we now see ourselves as being outside of nature’s limitations. We seem to have become ‘normalized’ to this experience so that generally our displacement goes unnoticed; it is often only our inner sense that tells us that all is not well.

The externalized and materialist quality of contemporary life does not make much room for the experience of the unseen or the liminal and we no longer draw on the wisdoms that integrated life from archaic times. The forgetting of the embedded and sense-making elements that previously guided human ways of being has contributed

36 D.H. Lawrence, in LaChapelle (1988, 253-4)

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to our displacement, as we inhabit the surface of being. This is not to suggest that we should return to previous times but to seek ways of restoring and nurturing a deeper relationality.

Questioning the ‘real’

Over the thesis journey I examined my own experience and assumptions deeply and discovered more questions. What I came to understand is that there are many truths; that these are contextual and appear in different ways. Rather than literal truth arising from rational or objective worldviews I found that deeper and more sustaining truths emerged through symbolic, mythic and poetic approaches which were fluid yet felt ‘right’ in an interior way.

I thought about the question of our collective perceptions as a culture of what is real, and particularly about my part in it; about my own assumptions, conscious and unconscious, and what has brought me to them. For I have been aware that the ‘realities’ which I may take to be true and real are perhaps just my particular impressions and projections, layered through time, so much so that it becomes a task to identify and explore them. According to Charlene Spretnak (1997) our perceptions are steeped in the hidden nature of modernity’s influences and we are as fishes in cloudy water, unable to see beyond our conditioned environment. Looking at the evolution of our ways in the West may be to distinguish more clearly the position where we now are and the influences that have led towards it.

In contemplating the genesis and nature of what may be called ‘Western’ experience it is also important to acknowledge that whatever we come to understand is contextual and uncertain. We cannot reliably ‘know’ the conditions of the present and the recent or distant past - knowing is perhaps just an interpretation. It comes back to direct experience and our own awareness which is still on one level a subjective awareness; we are conscious to the degree of our limitation, so that which I might understand to be real is my own perception and may also be threaded through with inherited assumptions. So I came to understand that to apprehend more

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soundly is to become both loosened and less attached to my mental frameworks yet concurrently more deeply grounded.

Separation and the loss of belonging

In a paradigm that valorizes objectivity and proof an approach that makes room for uncertainty and ambivalence is needed. The tendency to discriminate and categorize can oppose rather than synthesize and leads to less appreciation of difference and diversity and thus much possibility is lost. Our emphasis on thinking, rational processes has narrowed our experience of deeper, integrative meaning:

The linear brain cannot perceive wholes – or insides. And the more the brain is used as the primary organ of perception, the more life is reduced. It becomes merely an expression of mechanical forces with no intelligence or purpose, and all life forms are judged and valued depending on their capacity for this kind of analytical processing. (Buhner 2004, 120)

It seems that the West has undergone a process of abstraction moving upwards and outwards away from the sustaining earth. An objective approach has tilted the balance away from relational and felt connections which has led to a cultural sense of separation and loss of soul.

The cult of the ironic, distanced observer, aware of his awareness is no replacement for the unanaesthetized heart which characterized the earlier centuries. Without soul there can be no relationship; without relationship there can be no soul. (Lane 2003, 127)

Instead of a richness of diversity there has come to be a generalized ethos, a homogenized accord. Paradoxically the era of the ‘individual’ does not seem to have produced original and creative change; the Western worldview seems to validate the individual but in a more superficial rather than deeper sense. This is leading away from our roots, outwards from the particular and the idiosyncratic towards universal yet less connected ways of being in the world. (Hillman 1982)

Experiences of being adrift, of alienation and loss are becoming common, and the losses are many layered and can lead us into deep ontological searching.

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…Logos has in many ways transformed our lives for the better, but this has not been an unmitigated triumph …When we contemplate the dark epiphanies of the twentieth century, we see that modern anxiety is not simply the result of self-indulgent neurosis. We are facing something unprecedented. (Armstrong 2005, 133-134)

By re-engaging with more earth-based experience we may come to identify more closely with the deeper meanings of being human. Andy Fisher offers

… three hermeneutical (or ‘sense-making’) principles … for getting our bearings. The first holds that we are ordered by nature to participate ever-more widely in the world: the second that our language is always a ‘singing’ of this world: and the third that all phenomena intertwine or mirror one another as a common ‘flesh’. (Fisher 2002, xviii)

Whereas in early and archaic cultures the action and interplay of the elements influenced every aspect of life ranging from survival to making meaning, in the West humans no longer experience the full import of dependency on and subjectivity to earth’s conditions. Advancements of knowledge in science and technology have brought many benefits insulating us from nature’s power but in some ways we have become anaesthetized; our senses less tuned to our material and non-material surroundings. Our apparent independence has brought about a loss of reverence and awe so that nature has come to be seen as a resource. It seems that through a separation from the sustaining roots of our belonging we have lost a part of ourselves leaving a deep sense that something essential is missing.

As people gradually come to see the contradictions and complexities inherent in the current ecological problems they may experience feelings such as shock and outrage, and sometimes the awareness of such apparently intractable difficulties can lead to a lack of feeling, or a sense of impotence or being overwhelmed. Remaining aware of our embodied responses, inhabiting them and also moving through them is to become more able to respond. (Macy and Brown 1998, Nicholsen Weber 2002)

Another aspect of our current difficulties relates to the loss of participation in nature; our experience of the Land (in a broad sense) has become incomplete because generally we do not acknowledge the essential reality which I understand to be not only material but also spiritual; a way of life for earth-based cultures. To contemplate early and indigenous cultures is not to imagine that we can return to

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such ways of life, but we may retrieve some ways that can help us to engage more deeply with the earth and with our experience as part.

The externalizing of experience and the loss of beauty

There has been a gradual externalizing of our significant structures, institutions and psychologies; and emphasis is placed upon the growth of trade and ‘knowledges’37 rather than on wisdom and engagement with the sacred. The externalizing force has been so great that the general sense of inner life and the sacred has been diminished with an overall loss of reverence. Ordinarily this in itself could be seen as an expression of the perennial rhythm of expansion and contraction, but current unlimited growth seems to be approaching the point where a balance may not be restored. Water, for example, which for eons was considered a blessing and the source and sustenance of life has come to be perceived by some as a marketable resource.

The ‘market’ paradigm is driving a sense of competition and alienation, which manifests in excessively outward-oriented behaviours, moving away from relationship.

…capitalism and industrialism have introduced numberless benefits: spawned original technologies, stimulated the use of new materials and encouraged improved health and unprecedented material abundance. But one of the first and most depressing casualties of an overpowering industrial culture is the growth of the spirit of utilitarianism – and ugliness... (Lane 2003, 129)

An emphasis on utility and monetary value (quantity) over beauty and inherent worth (quality) leads towards a diminishment of experience. We seem to have forgotten the power of beauty.

37 I am using the plural, and inverted commas in the context of knowledge here to indicate what I perceive to be the current tendency towards large volumes of disparate and unconnected pieces of information. By ‘wisdom’ I mean a quality of knowledge that is rooted in reflexive insights of experience.

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… the recovery of beauty is important as a movement toward healing the wound in the modern psyche caused by the separation of appearance and being. The symptom of this separation, Cartesian doubt of the world, reveals the anxiety of consciousness without a home. Without a sense of dwelling, the modern mind is constantly on a journey, incessantly focused upon the horizon in search of meaning. The purpose of the recovery would be to bring consciousness back to dwelling. When meaning is seen in appearance at hand, then beauty provides a habitat for consciousness. (Schenk 1992, 145)

Part of the experience of beauty is in making a space and allowing ourselves to be imbued by its potency. Lewis Hyde writes of the implications of the two contrasting modes of market economy and gift economy; that the gift encourages closeness and creates bonds whereas there is no need for connection or relationship with commodity; the ‘market’ approach emphasizes getting over giving.

Because of the bonding power of gifts and the detached nature of commodity exchange, gifts have become associated with community and with being obliged to others, while commodities are associated with alienation and freedom. (Hyde 1983, 69)

It is simple to make a value judgment of a commodity through comparison but difficult [and undesirable] to place value on something to which we are emotionally attached (Hyde 1983) Through perceiving nature as kin and of intrinsic worth, that is beyond value, it can no longer be treated as a resource.

A society that is organized primarily to serve the expansion of capital – rather than to serve life – must increasingly exploit both humans and the natural world, and so generate a state of psychospiritual ruin and ecological crisis. (Fisher 2002, xix)

Rational and objective ways of perceiving the earth and our relationship with it loosen our connections. Humans have become increasingly caught up trying to ‘manage’ the earth; and managing, even with the intention of putting things right, may compromise nature’s ability to return to balance. Perhaps it is time to relinquish such attempts (especially if this is done in the context of ‘resource management’) and instead allow nature to teach us, to perceive the world as a site of wonder and inherent wisdom.

Commodification has also come to influence the general perception of the qualities of beauty so that it has become trivialized and seen as a surface quality rather than in its full ontological significance. The current emphasis on productivity has led to a

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diminished apprehension of both the value and the worth of the processes of the arts. This can also be seen in development and the methods of building where an emphasis on speed and economy has impacted on the human potential for inner and outer wellbeing. Just as our natural surroundings have the power to return us to ourselves so too can our built surroundings when harmony is reflected back to us. Architect Christopher Day believes that our buildings have the potential to mould not only our lives but also our ways of being and our perceptions of the world and our place in it:

Beautiful places are invariably underpinned by ‘rightness of place’ – ecological health. They have integrity, wholeness, balance. Their spirit of place is reinforced by our valuing it. All this radiates back to us, for the spirit a place emanates affects how we feel about, hence define, ourselves. This shapes how we act, even who we are. (Day 2002, 113)

On the other hand an environment that is designed and built without care shows a lack of regard for human experience that can in turn elicit feelings of apathy and disconnection. Environments built with care and empathy reach out; there is a reciprocity in beauty and our appreciation of it that is engaging and inclusive.

… there’s an universality about ugliness. In everything ugly, there’s something of disrespect, cynical disregard. An anti-reverence that verges on blasphemy … Conversely, something about beauty has to do with unstintedly given care, compassion, love. No wonder natural beauty induces reverent, even religious feelings. It is about spirit.’ (Day 2002, 113)

Language as exclusion

In considering ourselves to be within nature rather than outside of it we may begin to see that our constructions including our lifestyle and language have evolved away from the direct experience of our surrounding world so that we no longer experience the wholeness of being. The way that we have come to perceive reason to be the most reliable way of operating in the world, to look and communicate objectively, without the balance of poetic and embodied connections to our surroundings has brought about a separation from our integrated selves. The advent of literacy has given rise to the capability to disseminate knowledge more broadly and whilst this

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has engendered new understandings it has also drawn us away from close participation. We have gradually come to abstract our speech and hence our perceptions.

Only by overlooking the sensuous, evocative dimension of human discourse, and attending solely to the denotative and conventional aspect of verbal communication, can we hold ourselves apart from, and outside of, the rest of animate nature …If we are not, in truth, immaterial minds merely housed in earthly bodies, but are from the first material, corporeal beings, then it is the sensuous, gestural significance of spoken sounds – their direct bodily resonance – that makes verbal communication possible at all. (Abram 1997, 79)

Language affects the way we understand. Some have suggested that the more rational and definitive languages are thinner than earth-based tongues and so do not convey the depth of meaning that is possible through body and image-based language. The rationally-ordered alphabetical form of Western language influences the way we perceive and understand, so that we have become increasingly separated from the deeper roots of meaning. Earlier embodied and evocative languaging that integrated our senses with our surrounding world contributed a sense of belonging.

For example the ancient Middle Eastern language of Aramaic38 was based on symbol and metaphor, embedded in experience and reaching further in its meaning than the more rationally based Greek and Latin, showing that a poetic way of languaging can evoke deeper ways of understanding and making connections.

Unlike Greek, Aramaic presents a fluid and holistic view of the cosmos. The arbitrary borders found in Greek between “mind”, “body”, and “spirit” fall away. Furthermore, like its sister languages Hebrew and Arabic, Aramaic can express many layers of meaning. Words are organized and defined based on a poetic root-and-pattern system, so that each word may have several meanings, at first seemingly unrelated, but upon contemplation revealing an inner connection. The same word may be translated, for instance, as “name:” “light”, “sound”, or “experience”. (Douglas-Klotz 1990, 3)

A poetic way of expressing experience helps to return us to more grounded ways of making sense of life, which on one level may seem paradoxical because at times the poetic has been considered to be less real and closer to dream than day-to-day life.

38 According to Douglas-Klotz (1990) Aramaic is still spoken in the Eastern Church and in some areas of Syria.

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However, because it touches everyday realities it can give voice to the full range of life’s myriad experiences, from contingency through to beauty.

The loss of the feminine

I have left the issue of the repression of the ‘feminine’ towards the end of this chapter because I find it to be the most far-reaching, encapsulating the other issues raised. This imbalance has developed over millennia (Spretnak 1991, Howell 1988). The archetypal qualities of masculine and feminine are experienced in both the male and female psyche and so this is a deep wound to both genders. The imbalance, that is the over-masculinization of the culture filters through our worldview and is not always recognized as such having become so entrenched.

The crisis of modern man is an essentially masculine crisis … As Jung prophesied, an epochal shift is taking place in the contemporary psyche, a reconciliation between the two great polarities, a union of opposites: a hieros gamos (sacred marriage) between the long-dominant but now alienated masculine and long-suppressed but now ascending feminine. (Tarnas 1991, 443)

In using the terms of masculine and feminine I am referring more significantly to qualities of being rather than specific genders, so that in an integrated setting interior, grounded and receptive qualities complement and are complemented by exterior, cerebral and active qualities; these are different, interdependent and symbiotic, all part of life’s generative and degenerative rhythms. The polarization brought about through the emphasis on abstract and outward-oriented qualities has brought about many losses: of connection, feeling and embodiment, wonder and reverence; and a sense of not belonging. The apprehension of beauty, and the processes of the imagination and the poetic have come to be devalued through an emphasis on reason, science and technology. We need a balance.

It has been said that this repression is part of ‘patriarchal’ ego development, that all stages have required different conditions to develop, and the ego could not develop without this transition. (Whitmont 1983) This may be so, but perhaps now is a time for a rapprochement that restores diversity and encourages complementarity.

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My process seeks to integrate differences whilst still retaining their essential being; for perceiving complementarities as polarized opposites misses their crucial and archetypal qualities that embody aspects of one another. Because the significance of relationality and interiority has been negated for so long I engaged with a concern to restore the balance. This is not to replace the current exteriorized paradigm with an ‘opposite’ but to draw attention to the possibilities of a mutually receptive, responsive, active and at times even arbitrary way of being. A deep shift.

To address the current ecological, human and other-than-human crises asks for a ‘metanoia’ - a turn-around, a new way of perceiving earth and our companions in nature.

If we wish to reinstate the Soul of the World in her original glory, we will have to do more than introduce environmental remedies, which, however well-meaning, tend to stand at an equal and opposite pole – that is, to be as literalistic as the damage we do. We have to cultivate a new perspective, or seeing through; and a sense of metaphor, a seeing double. We may even, if we are to shift our obdurate literalism, have to let in a bit of madness, give ourselves up to a spot of ecstasy. We can always make a start by trying to develop a better aesthetic sense, an appreciation of beauty, which is the first attribute of soul. For the way we see the world can restore its soul, and the way the world is ensouled can restore our vision. (Harpur 2003, 285)

Reflection

As a part of the developments that have had both positive and negative effects the culture of the West has lost connection with the earth. This has come to influence the way we perceive our place in the world. It can be difficult to instigate change when the bases of the problem are on some levels registered within yet still largely hidden from us. To become engaged once more entails letting in the discomfort of new and sometimes shocking realizations, allowing them to pass through us and affect us, and on into the world towards healing. To move into and sustain more balanced ways is to suspend what has become an externalizing worldview instead embracing a freer, deeper and more creative approach that opens to new possibility. Through this research I have found that by opening in this way, allowing my own depths to be ‘sounded’ I moved closer to becoming restored to myself and to my surroundings.

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In the following chapter I explore ways of being that draw from the hidden, imaginal, imaginary and symbolic aspects of experience, that continue to help me to make meaning. Whilst other writers (for example Berman 1981, Jaynes 1976, McGilchrist 2009, Tarnas 1991) have examined in depth the evolution of the human philosophical, scientific, industrial and religious paths of the West I chose to engage with areas that relate to the heart - the imaginary, poetic and mythic aspects of the human journey. These are approaches that do not receive ready credence in our times but that have the capacity to bring us into a deepened experience of being human. An imaginal or ‘mythic’ orientation elicits from us a suspension of more singular and prosaic responses taking us deeper into the mystery behind life’s appearances; this is not to read mythic themes literally but rather to draw understandings and insights that are relevant to current times. These are archetypal truths, mobile and allusive that bring meaning and vitality to life’s experience.

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Chapter 6 - Encountering the liminal: evoking meaning through image

Interiority, or inner presence, reflects the way in which everything in the universe organizes a self and exhibits a dimension of subjective spontaneity … By this principle, the universe is a collection of subjects, not objects. Nothing is inert or dead. This wisdom helps us learn how and what we sense, feel, imagine, and experience. On the deepest level, these voices deal with knowing our self. (Douglas-Klotz 1995, 95)

Introduction

This chapter explores lost and forgotten ways to make meaning in Western culture; those aspects of being that derive from an inner orientation; from the archetypal, the deeper ways that operate behind usual daytime wakefulness that may seem more akin to mystery and magic. These are the ways in which I make meaning, a meandering path that gathers a sense of the surrounding landscape as I pass through rather than travel across traces of the archetypal world.

The notion of ‘the archetype’ can be difficult to apprehend and there have been many interpretations of the term, and amongst others Jung offered diverse possibilities. In the context of this research I understand the term to indicate the mysterious and potent influences behind the processes of the experience of being; not just in the realm of human experience but in every aspect of matter and spirit. I found that there was a strong sense of archetypal presence in the phenomena of the four elements as well as in dynamics of and between the lives at the lake during the year of the journal.

Moving away from rationally-based tendencies and towards evocative and poetic ways of relating with the world is to re-find deeper roots and to discover meaning in the symbolic. In contemporary culture myth is most often viewed as fiction rather than truth, as our popular use of the term ‘myth’ – that is, untrue, attests; it is the literalizing of perception that has created such misunderstanding. In seeing ‘truths’ in the context of myth as diverse and fluid much richness and meaning is evoked.

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I have drawn from three significant archetypal or mythic sources that nurtured me in making meaning, and my process through this particular part of the research journey was both imaginal and imaginary. Imaginal in that I am informed by the image, allowing it to confer its own presence and vitality; and via an imaginary way, suspending any sense of specific ‘truths’ so that a fertile space is made for whatever insights may come.

The sources which I discuss below guided me to engage in a symbolic way with the experience of ‘living from the heart’; they appear from the poetic tradition of mythic story, and speak to themes that have oriented human understanding for millennia. In this chapter I draw from them as a way to make deeper sense of my research experience; they each bring particular yet also shared ways of making meaning and together they integrate my ways of understanding. In drawing insight from such themes it is important to understand that they related to particular cultures, geographies and times,39 and are not to be understood literally. However, their foundational truths have relevance to contemporary times where they have the capacity to illuminate our questions and quandaries.

And so in keeping with the ethos of this research I offer my sense of making meaning which is also a way of coming to know my self. A symbolic way of making meaning brings together diverse layers of understanding, connections gradually forming in an integrative way as I come to perceive the significance of aspects of my experience.

The first source that has nurtured me through this long process is the sacred feminine. To belong we need roots that nurture us with a common sensibility of our human limitation and that honour the legacy of previous human experience, so we can grow into the height and depth of our potential. For me the ways of the sacred feminine are not delicate but robust and resilient, open to life allowing it to leave its marks, generative, degenerative and arbitrary; yet also encouraging us into life, placing beauty before us and companioning us through life’s events. The stories and

39 Joseph Campbell (1964) found that there is a range of themes that are universal through human cultures and yet all of which have their own particularity.

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symbols of the sacred feminine convey to me a sense of potent inner presence and an innate wisdom that I find to be fading from today’s culture of exteriority.

My second way of making meaning within a culture that valorizes rational ways of being is through the poetic and enchanted aspects of Celtic culture that were guided by inner processes of knowing and the powers of the four elements. For me this is an approach that expresses contradiction and elemental truths through a poetic orientation as a way of living and as expression, and offers me a sense of deep inner logic. By exploring the powerful Celtic stories around the sacred waters and then revisiting this in the medieval Celtic theme of the Grail touching on Parzival’s journey seeking the transformative ‘stone of heaven’, I find a renewed sense of our symbiosis with the elements that both mould and transform our experience in overt and hidden ways.

There would seem to be no such ‘logic’ in the phenomenon of Hermes, my third way of making meaning; the archetypal figure who confounds understanding on the one hand yet leads towards it on the other. The ambivalence that Hermes embodies has come to represent a truth to me, for I have found that each thing presents and prompts diverse ways of perceiving. Hermes taught me that to be agile and responsive to life is to be flexible, flowing with rather than resisting, the carrying-out of which can be easier said than done. But in allowing the processes of disorder and loss to touch us ultimately something new and transformative emerges. A way to find belonging and fitting.

The way of the symbol

Truly understood the entire world is one great symbol, imparting, in a sacramental manner, by outward and visible signature, an inward and spiritual essence. (Raine 1967, 115)

In much earlier cultures to perceive in a mythic way was to make symbolic connections that gave meaning and integrated the experience of life ‘… likeness had been experienced as identity, so that a symbol was one with the reality it represented.’ (Armstrong 2005, 123) At the present time we identify more closely

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with what we perceive to be immediately and palpably ‘real’ so that our apprehensions tend to be of an external nature, not reaching into the hidden potential of what lies beyond our experience.

To make in ourselves a new consciousness, an erotic sense of reality, is to become conscious of symbolism. Symbolism is mind making connections (correspondences) rather than distinctions (separations). Symbolism makes conscious interconnections and unions that were unconscious and repressed. (Brown 1990, 82)

A symbolic approach makes connections in an analogous or relational way and thus integrates layers of understanding as they gradually point towards one another. This was very much part of my process as I worked through my discoveries and then my understandings of my time at the lake. It was some time before the connections began to come into form but as they did there developed a deepened sense of what and how I witnessed; I came to understand imaginally and on a deeper level than I would have if I had perceived each morning’s events in a non-reflexive way, and through this approach I came to know and love more deeply the lake, its surrounds and its inhabitants.

Alice Howell (2006, 37) writes that ‘symbols help us find insights at the factual, intellectual, emotional, and mystical levels … the elements give us so many hints for asking the right questions of our lives, our actions, thoughts, and intentions’. I found this to be so; the character and interplay of the elements expressed archetypal qualities of being that could be recognized on many levels and had much to convey about the nature of being, whether human or other than human, abstract or proximate. Through engaging with aspects of particular mythic archetypes that express interiority, relationality and wisdom I hope to evoke the possibility of a metanoia, another way of perceiving.

We become opened up to greater depth by affirming not just the literal but also the symbolic aspects of experience, to what is apparent and what is beyond, so that meaning emerges from another level. The rarefied path of entering a liminal space is potentially transformative, but we need time, and to be prepared, for there are dangers to negotiate. We are entering the unknown, a world to which we are close yet from which we are also estranged. The way this unknown sphere may be

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approached is through the mode of the imagination; the intelligence that is between rational and sensory intelligences.

By perceiving through a poetic eye/ heart, we begin to apprehend significant yet diverse ways that the world may speak to us. Some of the themes I engage are of a spiritual nature yet it is not only the spiritual aspects that are at the heart but also my main threads of interiority and the imaginal, and so these interweave. Myth in this context is at times the intertwining of fragments of history and symbol, and so entails attention that allows for slippage and that does not seek fact.

I was drawn towards the archetypal influences behind our experiences as a way of tracing the path of our becoming, because for me it is our being and becoming, our perceptions that are at the deep centre of the world we experience. In addition to all that we may learn from existing and previous indigenous cultures and by returning to elements of early civilization relating to the current West there are indicators that viewed in imaginal ways may bring together some illuminating connections.

To see mythic themes as archetypal, timeless and yet continuous can run counter to some religious understandings, particularly the traditions that have set the appearance of the divine in historical terms. Following a theme literally can divert from its essence because it becomes fixed and no longer free to speak to different experience, different times. My understanding of an archetype is the mysterious expression of a quality of being, the unseen ‘drive’ towards particular yet universal human experience, that sits beyond our everyday awareness.

So much of our history in the West tells of the attempts to pin down what is essentially un-pin-downable, yet within mystical traditions that dwell at the edges of orthodoxy the sacred is experienced in embodied, radical and often ecstatic ways. Such mythic and imaginal approaches to the sacred offer a deeper sense of contextual truths, enhancing and affirming the diversity and multiplicity of inner and outer experience.

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The development over millennia of more prescriptive traditions could be seen as a reflection of our evolving exteriorization. It is other aspects, the freer and life- enhancing qualities that I perceived in the more hidden approaches which resonated in my imagination. To me they feel alive, luminous and full of the richness of life’s potential and many threads wove a pattern that touched me.

There is a deep reason why universal myths abide, becoming the ground of all religions of the world. As Jung pointed out, they are not “untrue stories,” but rather are always true of the psyche unfolding in sacred time and space, always now and here. They are the literature of the collective unconscious. (Howell 2006, 6)

Within the aspects that I elected to explore that engaged the imaginary I found an emphasis on qualities of interiority and contemplation, that is, the individual journey towards wisdom: and empathy, openness and ambivalence through a poetic orientation.

The sacred feminine

Staying with the personal method of the thesis I engaged certain archetypal themes and mythic aspects addressing meaning and ways of being as they speak to elements of my background and life experience. As I was drawn towards mystery, the hidden and the repressed, the life-affirming nature of beauty and the poetic that beckons and draws us into our ‘truths’, so traces of the archetypal ‘sacred feminine’ over the ages began to appear. I engaged with aesthetic expression whether image or text within sacred traditions that convey the mystery of human experience. I was filled with a sense of the transformative potential of beauty that was pointing towards, rather than attempting to show the mystery, for the experience of beauty and the sacred is not definable. It seems to me that we each have our own journey that can lead us to towards what is personally illuminative; and this was my journey.

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Feminism and psychology, particularly where it is influenced by the thought of Carl Jung, have contributed a great deal to the quest for new forms of religious expression which give value to the feminine … Their heritage is the mystical tradition which always exists uneasily at the penumbra of formal religious definition. In these systems myth is seen as a primary vehicle of truth and is valued as a symbolic form expressing spiritual content or beliefs which, by their very nature, cannot be stated literally. (Griffiths 1994, 125-126)

Much has been written over the years about the polarities and the relative positions of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ ways of being. Receptivity and relationality may appear superficially as ‘feminine’ qualities yet perceived more deeply and in an archetypal way they also imply the wisdom and beauty that are in potential through the diverse aspects of being human.

In this way it becomes possible to imagine wise and life-affirming ways of being without homogenizing or reducing the enhancing and complementary nature of difference. In understanding experience as embodying the whole range of life’s phenomena, that is the actual and metaphorical powers and effects of the elements to which we are subject we are able to move closer to our human potential, personally and collectively.

The ethos of this research is one that evokes the ‘feminine’ and this is so as to bring a balance to the current paradigm; I suggest that by recognizing that we are made up of elements of both masculine and feminine qualities, it becomes possible to work more effectively towards greater harmony. Such engagement is personal and inclusive questioning our private and public assumptions and can lead towards the realization that complementarity is able to open up accord. My context then is from the perspective variously understood as evolving self-understanding, knowing as ‘gnosis’, or as Jung’s ‘individuation’40 which are illustrated through the particular cultures and mythic perceptions and personifications of the sacred feminine41.

This way of making meaning perceives in adjectival ways; that is, in terms of active, receptive and responsive ways of being rather than polarizing our experience as

40 Also see Chapter 4, p.132.

41 These have Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek, Christian and Celtic roots amongst many.

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‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ qualities, introducing dynamic and changing relationship so that we are less inclined to fall back into dualistic modes of thinking, understanding experience as constantly shifting.

Instead of a discussion of divisions brought about through issues of gender my research seeks to integrate diverse ways of being as valid and enlivening contributions to diversity. Because receptive/responsive/relational ways have come to be seen on one level as having less value and power in the current Western worldview so they are needed all the more to restore the balance. To assist in restoring this balance I found it important to trace the gradual diminishment of the feminine as the quality of interiority becomes more remote, and also to point towards particular mythic or mystical themes which reflect a continuing presence or a resurgence.

Inanna: tracing a path of poem and praise

The archetypal and sacred feminine can be traced beginning with early Middle Eastern roots through figures that reflect human experience and aspirations as far back as the earliest Great Goddess. She can be perceived and understood in ways that engage with the essential grounded realities of the material world in conjunction with the less visible psychic world, bringing them together in a way that draws the interiority of experience back into the world.

The mythic themes that I engaged in the research process all relate to transformation in different ways and are about acknowledging and integrating what we see as not part of ourselves; the lifegiving earth that is often seen as ‘dirt’; the repressed shadow, (Jung 1963) - that is all that we may not want to recognize; and approaches that seem opposed and contradictory. The figures of the sacred feminine along the journey through power, subjection and oppression as articulated through Inanna and Sophia and echoed in the Christian story of the Grail reflect our humanity back to us.

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The Great Goddess was seen as both life-giving and life-destroying, understood as the underlying and divine power of life that brought complexity and contradiction, life and death. These qualities become potent and complementary when perceived in an archetypal context underlying the range of human experience. The multiple nature of the Goddess reveals different faces. On one level the Great Goddess represented the breadth of elemental power, feminine yet also encompassing attributes integrating the relationship between and complementarity of active and receptive aspects of being, however the historical story tells us that this came to be reduced as the externalizing patterns of dominance and warfare came to predominate. (Harvey and Baring 1996, Wolkstein and Kramer 1983, Spretnak 1978) This imbalance has continued into current times.

The phenomenon of the sacred feminine embodies a sense of ‘soul’; both of the human experience as subject to the material world and of human experience of the spirit, so that instead of two separate realms they become interwoven. The constant theme is the integration of the earthly and the divine in an ontology that mixes both spheres. Such a powerful symbol helps to make sense of the arbitrary, paradoxical and mysterious nature of being.

She is the age-old symbol of the invisible dimension of soul and the instinctive intelligence that informs it. We live within her being, yet we know almost nothing about her. She is everything that is still unfathomed by us about the nature of the universe, matter, and the invisible energy that circulates though all the different aspects of her being. She spins and weaves the shimmering robe of life in which we live and through which we are connected to all cosmic life. (Harvey and Baring 1996, 14)

The poem42 of Inanna, an embodiment of the Great Goddess and who was known to have been honoured in Sumer Mesopotamia from Neolithic times, millennia before the civilizations of Greece and Rome evokes this mixture of the feminine soul of the world and the limited human earthly capacity to engage with it. It is also one of the earliest and most powerful renderings of the transformative story of ‘descent’ as an expression of the experience of the disparate sides of the self and encountering the Other in the self.

42 Wolkstein and Kramer’s (1983) translation and interpretation of the poem originally carved onto clay tablets nearly 4000 years ago.

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The poem recounts the descent into the underworld of Inanna, ‘Queen of Heaven and Earth’, her suffering and death at the hands of her other half/side, namely her sister Erishkigal who is ‘Queen of the Underworld’. The poem articulates the sublime journey towards self knowledge and wholeness, invoking the loss of Inanna’s familiar self into darkness through the divestment of the ego and all external effects to face other, unknown aspects of herself.

For me this theme expresses elements of the experience of the journey of testing and ultimately coming into our essential/ true selves, facing the terror or wound and allowing it to make its mark on us. That is, the necessity of opening to it and allowing it to really change us, our ways of perceiving ourselves and others and our place amongst others through the transformative quality of compassion.

The beauty that emerges from woundedness is a beauty infused with feeling … Most woundedness remans hidden, lost inside forgotten silence … Where woundedness can be refined into beauty a wonderful transfiguration takes place. For instance, compassion is one of the most beautiful presences a person can bring to the world and most compassion is born from one’s own woundedness. When you have felt deep emotional pain and hurt, you are able to imagine what the pain of the other is like; their suffering touches you. (O’Donohue 2003, 190-191)

As a theme that has been present over thousands of years it is still relevant and essential as a way of recognizing current concerns as we examine our ways of being and their impact on ourselves and our surrounding world. The power of this poem of Inanna is, in part, that it shows me that when I choose to deny or flee from the terror of my own woundedness I project this wound onto the world. In making sense of where we find ourselves today I see on one level the fleeing of our culture from the descent into the underworld.

The poem addresses not only the journey towards human integration but also relates to the dynamic complementarity of difference and speaks to the sometimes latent sense of inner presence within us all.

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… it is … especially towards [the goddess’s] culturally repressed aspects, those chthonic and chaotic, ineluctable depths – that the new individuating, yin-yang balanced ego must return to find its matrix and the embodied and flexible strength to be active and vulnerable, to stand its own ground and still to be empathetically related to others. (Brinton Perera 1981, 7)

Inanna’s story relates not only to women but to also to men in current times as we struggle towards transformation, to re-find our inner truths that may on some levels seem to be intractable; because as I understand it we inhabit our assumptions until a time comes when we begin to question and challenge them. Along my own journey I have experienced arduous periods through processes of creativity or personal trials, seeming paralysis whereby nothing makes sense, swinging between no-feeling and painful desperation. At times I encountered this through the journey of my research as I struggled to identify the direction the work was moving or the validity of connections and disconnections. I felt profoundly challenged, deeply ambivalent about the work and about my ability to bring it together; indeed no less so about the nature of my deepest self. And yet by remaining in that place for as long as it took I found that it can become a fruitful journey towards discovery and deeper understanding.

The process of initiation in the esoteric and mystical traditions in the West involves exploring different modes of consciousness and rediscovering the experience of unity with nature and the cosmos that is inevitably lost through goal-directed development. This necessity – for those destined to it – forces us to go deep to reclaim modes of consciousness which are different from the intellectual, “secondary process” levels the West has so well refined. It forces us to the affect-laden, magic dimension and archaic depths that are embodied, ecstatic, and transformative: these depths are preverbal, often pre-image, capable of taking us over and shaking us to the core. (Brinton Perera 1981, 13-14)

As I reflect on my own experience all the figures in Inanna’s story could represent parts of me and of my struggles towards transformation, and in understanding the themes in this way it becomes possible to see other aspects of myself for each element in the poem has something to tell about our perceptions and experience. I recognise that Erishkigal is indeed an element of the dark, unspeakable and detached aspects of my experience and innermost self; Ninshubur Inanna’s faithful servant the aspect that perseveres, holding firm and keeping things together, and Inanna’s faithless consort Dumuzi perhaps representing the element in me that may not acknowledge but rather wish to avoid the harsher realities of life.

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A significant aspect of mythic narratives is that the various characters and elements relate on a multivalent basis, so that it is not only one particular theme or figure that can be identified with the self, but all, bringing diverse aspects of our experience and our being into awareness. The mythic approach to making meaning allows us to link our own psychological journeys and developments with the collectivity of humanity. I find these symbols powerful and they touch me in ways that I cannot explain rationally. Perhaps it is their evocation of the mystery that we know/don’t know that lies behind their appearance.

The cultural diminishment of the integrity of the sacred feminine elicits in me a deep sense of loss and frustration; and like many others both male and female I have come to detect traces of my own interior sense of dispossession. In a way it helps to understand that the evolution of current ways of being are a reflection of the loss of the potency of the Great Goddess. This is shown for example, in the classical Greek Olympian myths which validate the power of the male gods, separating the former Goddess’s potent qualities which become diluted into deities of lesser significance.43 The masculinized Olympian legacy has far-reaching consequences for over time a perception has come through to us of a less worthy, less empowered sense of feminine being, her true power and deep knowings having been eclipsed and buried.

Whilst it may be impossible to historically trace the transition towards an ethos based on Logos, the effect can be seen in a diminishment of the feeling aspect of being, a great loss to both women and men. In losing the balancing and complementary aspects that are essential for a sense of belonging it is no wonder that we live in a surface way. It is as though there is something we know we have forgotten which is dis-orienting us within a lifestyle that does not readily enable a

43 Spretnak (1978, 18): ‘The invaders’ new Gods, the Olympians, differ in many ways from the earlier Goddesses. The Pre-Hellenic Goddesses are enmeshed with people’s daily experiencing of the energy forces in life; Olympian Gods are distant, removed, “up there.” Unlike the flowering, protective love of a Mother-Goddess, the character of the Olympian Gods is judgmental. Olympian Gods are much more warlike than their predecessors and are often involved in strife. The pre-Hellenic Goddesses are powerful and compassionate, yet those whom the Greeks incorporated into the new order were transformed severely.’

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‘remembering’. The memory is deep but we have moved away from our interior knowing, and are left uneasily inhabiting the surface.

Sophia: Wisdom

The archetypal figure of Sophia, (or Hokhmah),44 known as ‘Wisdom’ has passed down through time both as a religious figure and a philosophical concept. She is the ethos of interiority, relationality and empathy: the wisdom that grows out of lived experience, the nature of our limitation in material form. The presence of empathy indicates that experience is shared and elicits an understanding that we are not alone, and that it has all been experienced before.

The hidden or marginalized aspects of our experience that may be repressed or ignored influence the way we are in the world, relating to the liminal qualities of being, that connect us; the archetypal experience of Sophia is an integrative element because whilst the part that is neglected may at times seem to be veiled to our awareness it is nonetheless a potent counterpoint to the bright ‘attended’ side. In this way I find that feelings of sorrow, yearning, and loss have a place and return me to the Ground, to my roots, reminders of the continuity of human experience and of those who have gone before. On another level Sophia represents the converse, a way that celebrates beauty and the bright feelings of joy and hope that bring lightness and a sense of trans-ition - it is through integrating both that we become prepared to embrace wholeness.

Historically even if tenuously the sacred feminine has continued to be honoured in Western culture though often taking cryptic and hidden forms. So for example there was a retrieval of ‘Sophia’ in the Middle Ages at the time of the building of the great cathedrals of Europe. When I visited the medieval cathedrals in Paris and

44 The phenomenon of ‘Wisdom’ or ‘Holy Wisdom’ was present in early biblical and philosophical contexts. Sophia was the archetypal personification of ‘Wisdom’ in Ancient Greek culture, Hokhmah in Hebrew culture. Douglas-Klotz (1995, 97): ‘When we confront that within us which experiences, we enter the presence of Hokhmah, Holy Wisdom, the breath of awareness from underneath and within.’

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Chartres dedicated to ‘Notre Dame’ I sensed a feminine and hidden presence in the detail of glass and stone, and most especially in the crypt at Chartres.

Sophia is an expression of both the experience of exclusion and the source of belonging, the unseen and sometimes forgotten archetype of the feminine behind life’s experience whether joyful or wretched. I relate to her aspect of exile, a sometimes vague, sometimes acute sense of loss that seems at times to be a part of my human experience.

In her exile she is named ‘the Widow’, and the ‘Stone of Exile’ (Lapis Exulis) the ‘Precious Stone’ and ‘the Pearl’. Some of these images are inherited from the earlier goddesses and are rediscovered in Alchemy and the Grail Legends. (Baring and Cashford 1991, 641)

In this context Robert Sardello (1992) refers to Sophia as the ‘Soul of the World’ suggesting that the wounds of dispossession and not belonging may also become healed through our close attention to and acknowledgement of the world as it is.45 This is challenging in our action-oriented paradigm because often we perceive that the ‘world as it is’ needs ‘fixing’, and it is difficult to accept that at times there may be nothing tangible to be done. To contemplate this level of acceptance can bring anxiety for to dwell alongside a problem without actively initiating change is to submit to power that would seem to be outside of oneself. Yet in facing the world in this way interior processes may be given the space to uncover new realizations. This is not to negate but to enhance the value of taking action, infusing exterior ways of responding with deepened insight. The process of such relinquishment is articulated in the descent of Inanna into the underworld and also reappears in the story of the Grail where Sophia appears as the neglected Land and Sovereign, to become transformed and healed ultimately through compassion and empathy.

45 Mathews (2005) expounds this concept in depth in her chapter ‘Letting the World Grow Old’.

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An aesthetic approach to meaning: the enchantment of the Celts

Most often the early Greek and Roman cultures are considered to be the significant influences that founded Western societies, and our emphasis on making sense in ways that are based on reason derives from them; indeed their legacy has profoundly shaped our culture. However, reflecting on the divergent nature of Celtic and Roman perceptions may bring deeper understandings of the influences on our ways of seeing and how a shift has the potential to create change.

In keeping with the poetic and ambivalent nature of the method and content of my research I draw aesthetic and ontological threads derived from the ‘Celtic’ tribes that journeyed from the east to the far western edges of Europe (Megaw 1989). I use the term Celtic advisedly for little is really known about them. There were many diverse tribes throughout Europe but it is the blend of the native cultures (which existed before the arrival of the Celts) with Celtic cultures in Ireland and Scotland in particular, that relate to my research, which is the context of what I term ‘Celtic’.46

Archaeological traces of Celtic presence on mainland Europe reveal a deep engagement with the cyclic, interrelated and mystical nature of the surrounding elemental world. (Megaw 1989, Bain 1977) These traces convey less representational, freer and imaginative expression contrasting with the Roman sensibilities of the times, and I found that their renderings of beauty, the poetic, the sacred and what I perceive to be their apprehension and celebration of the inherent contradictions and open-endedness of life related closely to my evolving understandings.

I chose to contemplate these Celtic elements in my research as I am deeply drawn to them perhaps because like many others they form a large part of my roots and where

46 Drawing on earlier Celtic culture is my way of identifying with my own indigenous history, but this section of the thesis could be seen to apply to many indigenous cultures in the world.

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I feel most at home. For me this is not a nostalgic attraction but a recognition of the deeply embedded approach to the natural order and the elemental powers that underlie and give meaning to life’s experience. Whilst I value and am drawn to these elements of Celtic culture I am also aware that the times of the early Celts and the Christian Celts were fraught with contingency and violence (Cahill 1995) and so recognize that the aspects that I engage cannot fully represent their lived reality. Contrasting differing ways – loosely the Roman ‘civilized’ with the more ‘wild’ Celtic47 ways is to be aware that these are part of eras unknown to my experience and so drawing analogies or contrasts is to imagine - a metaphorical and at times symbolic process as a way of making meaning.

Within Celtic traces there are themes of transformation, the poetic, and approaches that reveal a sense of interiority which are more deeply real to me. This contrasts with what I perceive to be over-rational aspects of the Western worldview that are unable see a value in the processes of the imagination and the creative yet hidden potential that surrounds us. The Celts and some other Middle Eastern traditions have kept the symbolic and imaginal aspect alive whereas the more dominant Roman approach evolved more rational and utilitarian ways, perceiving reality and value only in what is tangible and definable. The ethos of these disparate ways of being can be seen in their art, where the Celtic engagement with mystery and the fantastic contrasts with the representational and more literal nature of Roman sensibilities. From the latter we have inherited a tendency towards straight lines, mechanical and technological thinking and from the Celts the interior and labyrinthine modes to be found in traces of folk tales, poetry and dreaming. In their extremes perhaps these represent our sense of order and disorder, yet whilst it is clear that each needs the balance of the other, I lean towards the meandering Celtic ways that take me into my own interior depths and those of the world.

These contrasting ways - of the heart that opens towards receptivity and interiority, and the mind/intellect that opens towards exteriority and action together bring

47 Whilst I have chosen to contrast certain qualities of these cultures it is not my intention to stereotype or romanticise them as has been done in the past but to draw an imaginal sense of contrasting expressions of being. This is the sense that I ascribe to them, not as a definitive description but in terms of qualities of being.

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something greater still if the difficult journey of integrating heart/body/mind can be undertaken. This is a main theme running through myth and folk story and a constant thread over millennia which continues into current times, and a central issue in my research.

From Druid to monk

Celtic culture was largely oral until the arrival of Christianity (Matthews 1989) so what we might hope to understand of the culture cannot be taken as ‘historical fact’ (an idea which is questionable anyway) in the way it tends to be in alphabetic or literate societies. Initially this seemed contradictory in the context of a research process but I came to realize that it is in keeping with the nature of oral culture and is more fitting to my method than selective and written narratives fixed in time which can never represent the diversity of the voices of the past.

Hence it was the art that formed the spirit and soul of the culture as they related to my experience and research rather than verified evidence that I drew from in my exploring; such interpretations might on one level seem to be arbitrary however they are in keeping with the un-prescribable nature of an image-based approach.

In some instinctively creative way, Celtic thought and imagination recognized the lyrical unity that beauty effects and requires, and managed to link huge differences together within a unifying embrace. It avoided the dualism that separates soul and senses. (O’Donohue 2003, 51)

During a time of transition between the demise of the Roman Empire and the flowering of the Middle Ages Celtic Christianity, a blend of Christian and native spiritual practice synthesized a sense of spirit, beauty and order.48 These monastic communities were based on contemplation and reflection, and they continued the symbolic and imaginal element of the earlier Celts. For me a deep sense of the sacred shines out from the illuminated Holy Books that they produced, most

48 In How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995) Thomas Cahill describes how the monastic communities kept scholarship alive after the fall of Rome until the resurgence of culture and learning in medieval times, preserving the knowledge that would be the basis of current Western society.

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especially the Book of Kells49. The scribes and artists brought together biblical themes with animated, earthy motifs integrating wild and sometimes even humorous imagery with text in a complex yet ordered way; a beautiful synthesis of logos and imagination.

The symbolic quality deepens the experience of looking – the labyrinthine nature of patterning, fantastic creatures appearing to inhabit more than one world, seemingly endless knotwork and intertwinings appearing to be without beginning or end that express in other ways the experience of mystery, connectivity, and nature’s seasonal and cosmic cycles. These expressions seem to come from a liminal place, tracing an ethos still immersed in and reflecting the inherence of spirit within the natural and elemental world - by including a visual image (overleaf) I hope to convey their depth, power and beauty.50

This labyrinthine patterning is reflected in my process, how I journey in order to make meaning. For me it is a cumulative ‘gathering’ of impressions that gradually form connections, some manifesting slowly and painstakingly, others appearing in a flash of insight. But it seems that for such connections to materialize I need to be immersed in a quality of time and space that does not function in a linear or rational way, so allowing for the process of gestation. When I reflect on the term ‘labyrinthine’ it is about a sense of subterranea, dark and disorienting, where I can no longer rely on visual or mental intelligence but instead have to ‘feel’ my way and learn to trust other senses.

49 The Book of Kells (the original, around 1400 years old, is housed at the Library, Trinity College in Dublin) has been described as one of the great treasures of the West.

50 There are other places, other cultures and other artworks that in their shapes, colours, subtleties, and rhythm also show what I have here called the Celtic aesthetic: for example in Middle Eastern cultures there is a correlation with aspects of the art of Byzantine and Islamic traditions conveying the numinous in ways not expressed through representational means, but through sense of geometry that integrates space and form (or matter and spirit) in a way that implies or evokes the mystery and the beauty that dwells behind phenomena. However, as a person whose roots lie deep within Celtic culture I have explored my own place.

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In this way deeper connections rise to the surface, which indeed I found as I revisited my discoveries at the lake, the understandings that followed and the gradual insights that emerged. For me, the Celtic aesthetic is not only in the production of the art but also in the process – one that valorises independent action and emphasizes personal volition. This may seem anarchic but in its deeper sense entails the arduous journey of finding personal truths, and the nature of such a journey calls these interior truths into awareness bringing perhaps less need of external constraints.51 This is significant to my processes of understanding for it highlights the tensions between ways of being based on relationality and mobile imagination and approaches that draw from regulation and definition. It seems to me that the former is life-based whereas the latter contains and arrests the movement of life. In contemporary times regulation and an over-reliance on law brings with it a loss of personal initiative and responsibility, creating separation and alienation. To heal we need to be able to trust in life.

Drawing the water

The mythic theme of beauty linking the Land and the feminine52 occurs especially in Celtic story whereby the element of water signifies enchantment and life-giving power and where the theme of the integration of active and receptive qualities leads to the healing of the personal and collective wound.

From ancient times springs and wells signified the source of life; these springs and their locations were revered for it was understood that life depended on the wellbeing of such sources. The springs that had been protected from contamination through the mythical guardianship of numinous female figures became vulnerable

51 ‘… There appears to have been no dualism based on good and evil. Before the introduction of Christianity the Celt was essentially amoral, preferring to believe that the inner motion governing his own life was also leading the universe towards some justified end … any judgement as to whether an action were good or evil was to be made with due regard for the circumstances surrounding it by man himself. There was nothing fearful about life.’ (Markale 1976, 297)

52 Sovereignty, as the Goddess of the Land, whose autonomy and honour was to be respected by those seeking union. (Matthews 1992)

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through the gradual loss of reverence as they became subsumed into a masculinized system.

In earth cultures there is a sense of enchantment that is grounded in attachment to local surroundings; the presence of a genius loci,53 sanctified place and elicited gratitude and a sense of humans’ place as part. However, in today’s world reverence has given way to a pragmatic worldview based on materialist values. Re-engaging mythically may help us to address this loss in ourselves and the imminent loss in the world of that most precious life giver: clean, sweet, fresh water.

The Celtic myth of the Damsels of the Well is an expression of the losses sustained through domination and disrespect.54 The Damsels were guardians of the wells and would appear and give refreshment in golden cups to weary travellers; however according to the myth King Amangons and his men raped the Damsels and took away the golden cups. The maidens no longer appeared and the land and waters were laid waste, the earth silenced. ‘… ‘the voices of the wells’ were lost, which represented the voice of the Goddess of Land.’ (Matthews 1992, 215)

This myth evokes in me sorrow at the betrayal of trust and the abuse of the love and generosity of the Damsels, the theme still playing out in our society. The heart is touched and broken whenever defenceless beauty is defiled, whether perhaps through such injuries as the premature wound to a child’s innocence, or the destruction of animal habitat. Injury to the Damsels as the spirits of the waters, and other mythical water guardians leads towards the depletion of the life-giving source in material, psychological and spiritual contexts.

53 Moore (1996, 81): ‘The genius loci – genius of the place – reveals itself slowly and enigmatically … “Genius” derives from the same word that is in “generation” - it has a begetting and procreative function. From the genius loci flows abundant life, and so we are ill advised either to act counter to its nature or to neglect it.’

54 This derives from a medieval Grail story, L’Elucidation, cited in Matthews (1992)

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The Damsels of the Wells are the original Grail-Guardians and their nourishment is freely available. Dwelling in wells and rivers, they were the sisters of Tiamat. After their rape, not only were their spiritual services no longer available, but the rivers of the land dried up and all became the barren Wasteland. These watery damsels, familiar to us as Ladies of the Lake, korrighans or Melusines, are the signature of water: as Wolfram remarks: ‘We see by means of water.’ (Matthews 1992, 216)

In contemplating the symbolic nature of the waters we come to see beyond reflection, dimensions through depth that clarify and magnify; ephemeral and changing impressions. My experience of the waters during the year’s lake journal led me into such reflection bringing new and deepened levels of perceiving. I found that water together with another of the four elements engendered other phenomena; mists, for example - the shifting interplay of water and air transformed the surroundings merging and softening the atmosphere visually and aurally so that boundaries could no longer be defined, yet paradoxically creating an other, almost dreamy world. It seemed to suspend time, in a similar way as the labyrinthine process of the research itself.

The waters, whether they are the internal waters that form our human bodies, the external waters that flow through our rivers, wetlands, lakes and underground caverns or the symbolic aspect of the waters that flow through us to connect us to the wellsprings and to our surroundings need to be cared for and replenished.

Water most closely resembles the invisible fluid or energy in which all life comes into being. Just as the embryo is suspended in the amniotic fluid of the womb, so we are suspended in the invisible matrix of life … In mythology, the longed-for treasure is often to be found across or beneath the sea, or is imagined as the Water of Life. In dreams, immersion in water is, symbolically, to enter into the dimension of the Feminine, the dimension of the instinctual soul to be renewed, cleansed, restored. (Harvey and Baring 1996, 17)

The stories change but the message has been with us at least since the times of the Celts, who understood the urgent nature of guarding the wells. As illustrated mythically it is our behaviour that is at the heart of the problem, and for the waters to flow once more and before we can really deal with our outer conditions requires of us inner change. Our apprehension of the deep significance of such waters is receding as are the elemental waters themselves. Conditions are becoming increasingly dry here in South-western Australia where I live; the drying up arising

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from climate change and its causes. To regain a sense of transformative beauty and to heal our environments we need to understand the losses of our exterior and our interior worlds and the ways they are connected.

The Grail

One rendition of the myth is given in the story of the Grail which tells that much later the Knights of the Round Table heard about the atrocity suffered by the Damsels and set out to take vengeance on the perpetrators on their behalf, but unable to find them, they came instead upon their (mixed) descendents wandering the earth, wretched and homeless in the Wasteland. There could be no peace or joy until the lands and waters were restored and the Knights, instead of exacting their plan of revenge elected to search for the lost Grail. And so began their quests.

Lindsay Clarke’s (2001) rendition of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s story of the Grail quest55 recounts Parzival’s arduous transition from naivete and unconsciousness as he gradually learns that to become who he is destined to be, he must find his heart. The Grail that Parzival seeks is the ‘Stone from Heaven’, said to have been brought to earth by the angels who had remained neutral at a time when there was a war in Heaven between light and darkness.

‘… in that stone’s pure substance are wedded the virtues both of darkness and of light. Such is the singular nature of the Grail, and from that mysterious conjunction flows all the bounty of the earth.’ (Clarke 2001, 134)

The story expresses the challenge we face in searching for where we belong in the world, and the hard and at times seemingly intractable obstacles to be negotiated. For me it expresses the difficulties encountered on the way to realizing that I am after all many things, among which may be qualities that I might prefer to see in others but not in myself; it is confronting and deeply humbling. And yet by softening and recognizing the flaws that we share somehow we move into a space of healing.

55 In the twelfth/thirteenth centuries the story of the Grail was written by Chretien de Troyes then taken up by Wolfram Von Eschenbach, reflecting the renewed theme of the sacred feminine as embodying the Land, and the need for humans to live respectfully and in balance. (Clarke, 2001)

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Parzival embarks on the journey in an unprepared, and exteriorized, rational way, unaware of the potential of the inner nature of coming-to-know; in his naivete, trying to ‘do things right’ he misses the clues that are put before him pointing to the real significance of his quest, having to undergo many lessons before he comes close to realizing his destiny. However Parzival is ultimately guided by the wise hermit Trevrizent -

‘Yet life will not be ruled by our intentions. And perhaps that is just as well, for which of us is perfect? … But then perfection is not asked of us. Life wants us rather to be whole, my Parzival. To be wholly ourselves. And for that we must admit our darkness as well as our light. We must strive to hold them together as a stone from heaven does.’ (Clarke 2001, 138-139)

In the context of the personal journey looking towards wholeness rather than perfection leads to living in an authentic way, and perhaps approaches the experience of beauty in its deepest sense.

Reduced and empty, Parzival realizes that he can do nothing. It is only when he reaches this point that his inner being arises, becoming filled with deep sorrow and compassion for the Fisher King: ‘And there in the immediate presence of the Fisher King’s intolerable suffering, he felt utterly powerless that, for all his manly strength and proven valour, he had nothing to offer but compassion now.’ (Clarke 2001, 204) - sparking the transformative moment that would lead towards the integration of his inner and outer self.

Parzival’s story is about the journey from innocent youth towards maturity and ultimately transformation, the state of being that is beyond duality and which points towards the integration of our brightest and darkest experience. These seemingly opposing ways of being are echoed through the terrifying figure of Cundrie the boar-headed sorceress, dark and monstrous, yet who also embodies the inverse as the beautiful Grail-keeper. In the same way the juxtaposition of beauty and the sorrowful, neglected and diminished elements of Sophia appear in the story of the lost waters of the Wasteland in the form of the Damsels and their descendents; and again in the wounded feminine figures in Parzival’s story.

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Throughout his journey Parzival is paralleled and balanced by others; Gawain whose amorous adventures contrast with Parzival’s modesty, and Fierfez his dark- skinned half-brother, both symbolizing disparate and as yet unknown aspects of himself which become conscious as he is mellowed and deepened by his experiences of opening to the world. The story tells that it is the journey, the way we approach and are changed by the world that is the point, rather than the object which we seek.

In most of the Grail stories, a question must be asked if the waters are to flow again and the Waste Land is to be redeemed … What matters most is the asking itself – regardless of what the answer might mean, or even whether there is an answer. For the question is about the reason for the suffering and about the nature of the Grail mystery … Only individually can answers be discovered; not only by means of asking, but more than that, by living and suffering the question. (Whitmont 1983, 173)

As generally appear in mythic themes there are threads running through Parzival’s story that remind us that through the intensity of our search for insight it helps to be flexible and light-hearted and not take life or ourselves too seriously. A trace of levity even through the most burdensome experience can bring a freedom to perceive and act creatively and imaginatively, as the sage and trickster Hermes teaches us.

Trans-forming Hermes

Wisdom, then, is the art of balancing the known with the unknown, the suffering with the joy; it is a way of linking the whole of life together in a new and deeper unity. (O’Donohue 1997, 238)

The archetypal Greek Hermes and Egyptian alchemical Hermes represent complex and multiple aspects and I have not engaged with them comprehensively for to do so is beyond the scope of this thesis; I will draw only on particular aspects that are relevant to this work. So far I have written about mythic figures and themes that embody contradiction and transformative potential, yet also express the feeling qualities of interiority such as empathy and compassion. Whilst the figure of Hermes relates largely to interior and hidden processes connecting to the unknown

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this quality of ‘feeling’ is on sensing and intuiting rather than levels; Hermes brings connections but these can be emotionally detached, fluid and even treacherous.

This is another way of being, potently pushing change and disruption towards what is new, creative and generative but in a different way to feminine generativity which is emotionally relational. Hermes’ way is instinctual and at times irrational, yet also mentally agile, slipping across the surface rather than going deep. The tradition of the sacred feminine is an orientation of the heart rather than of the mind. Inanna’s descent, the Gnostic influence in the Grail stories, and Sophia are all threaded with transformative symbolism. However it is also possible to see aspects of Inanna in a hermetic manner:

She represents the liminal, intermediate regions, and energies that cannot be contained or made certain and secure. She is not the feminine as night, but rather she symbolizes consciousness of transition and borders, places of intersection and crossing over that imply creativity and change and all the joys and doubts that go with a human consciousness that is flexible, playful, never certain for long. (Brinton Perera 1981, 16)

Perceived this way it seems that the qualities of Hermes and aspects of the sacred feminine have more in common than might initially appear. Early in the research process I found that Hermes offered much to contemplate on many levels and embodied qualities expressing the sense of the liminal, shifting, paradoxical and bewildering nature of much that we experience, understood on the one hand to personify duplicity and bring confusion and on the other as messenger and guide though the ‘underworld’ or less conscious parts of ourselves.

The roots of hermeticism go at least as deep as ancient Egypt where it was a highly developed mode of knowing, analogical knowing, knowing through similars. Our most common way of knowing derives not from similars but from opposites, knowing through a division between the knower and the known. Analogy proceeds through a conscious incorporation of the knowing into the known and of the known into the knower, resulting in “living thinking” or mythical thinking. Verification of this way of knowing depends not on accumulation of facts, but on whether or not the subject of interest comes alive, whether it enlivens the knower. (Sardello 1992, 170)

Hermes helps us to understand how to inhabit seeming paradox and difference concurrently, accepting and celebrating the essential and inescapable conditions of

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life, and this came into being in my own human experience and as revealed in that of the beings at the lake.

To identify too greatly with anything can lead to fundamentalism, and often it is desirable to suspend judgement. Having grown up generally embracing certain ethical and moral understandings, realization of the amoral nature of Hermes was shocking yet also rang true; for it becomes clear that to go too far in any direction is to identify with its antithesis.56 What is at one point admired or idealized can just as easily become demonized; there is a fine line if one at all. Thomas Moore (1992, 54) tells us that ‘fundamentalism is not only a problem in religious organizations, whereby the power of religion poetically to generate a sense of the sacred is lost; it is also a block to imagination in our own psychologies and in personal life.’

The experience of integrating diversity gradually enables us to feel comfortable in a range of contrasting realities so that we perceive similarity rather than difference, yet the culture of the West bases understandings on difference. By developing a practice of invoking accord through making connections we can begin to integrate our surroundings and relationships.

… hermetic consciousness … consists of the capacity of “seeing through.” The invisible flow of back and forth connections, relating one thing to another, is seen through the visible diversity of phenomena making a kinship among all being. This mode of consciousness is not a natural gift but must be earned through experience, through the discipline of creating connections between opposites … The point at which these two cross constitutes the hermetic moment of intuition. The practice of intuition requires the development of the ability to concentrate without effort. (Sardello, in Stroud 1995, 150)

To be able to concentrate with ease and draw from our intuition may be to emulate the sense of being ‘in element’ in the context of the denizens at the lake that I noted during my time with them. It seemed to me that there was no separation between the urge to act: to fly, paddle, or dive, and the actions that followed. There was a seamless quality about the way they were. Perhaps for humans part of such a process is in learning how to be concurrently open and responsive, flowing-with: trusting our senses and letting some of our defences fall away.

56 Jung (1960) termed this phenomenon ‘enantiodromia’, whereby over-identification with one position or direction leads to a switch towards its opposite.

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Hermes’ amoral aspect is about the subversion of the perceived ‘right’ way of being, shifting the status quo, and is echoed in the Celtic tale of Parzival in that moral values alone are shown to be inadequate to the mystery of life, and that we are called to find within ourselves the depth of our own authentic being.

So to learn to embrace ambivalence, to acknowledge that inner and outer being is inherent one in the other enables us to affirm the experience of otherness and to gradually understand that our knowing is also our unknowing.

Every daimon who appears at a boundary – whether between day and night, at the turning of the year or at crossroads, on bridges or shorelines – is the face of Hermes. This is why to come to terms with daimons is also to develop a hermetic way of thinking, a borderline perception which sees this world and the Otherworld simultaneously – which sees the one in the other, and vice versa, intertwined like the serpents on Hermes’ thyrus. (Harpur 2003, 209)

Paradoxically to move towards wisdom in this context is to come to know ourselves in a more fluid way, a felt experience that takes us, rather than us directing – and so, a labyrinthine path that is both above and below, past and future.

… this image is a version of something very deep and basic to the Greek imagination, what the Greeks bequeathed to us signifying the task of humanity: “Know Thyself.” The bearded snakes evoke that kind of wisdom, to come to the full wisdom of oneself, the capacity to look at ourselves in our full nature. (Sardello, in Stroud 1995, 138)

Part of understanding ourselves in our fullness entails recognizing that through our earthy and humble roots we are an inherent part of the rest of the visible and invisible world. This is about wisdom, and the process of ‘night’ intelligence is indeed different from ‘diurnal’ intelligence, more a sensing faculty that brings together correspondences and analogies, so that something hitherto unknown comes into being.

Throughout the centuries alchemy has been popularly perceived as attempting to change ‘base’ matter into gold but can be more significantly understood to have been concerned with the transformative quality of spirit hidden in nature as Wisdom (Howell 1988, Jung 1963). Also for example as the ‘Wisdom of the Stone’, the focus in the tale of Parzival. The processes of Hermes relate to alchemical

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dissolution and re-integration, bringing the processes of disorder and resolution into our experience.

The lived experience of Hermes energy is treacherous, unknown and risky and entails negotiating potholes but it is the experience of facing these that helps us to grow and gather courage for the next adventure; it’s about being alive, touching and being touched, allowing layers to come away rather like a snake’s skin, relinquished and ultimately renewed.

And so I found that part of the learning is to encourage a sense of self-trust especially in my interior world rather than relying only on the apparent ‘factual’ reality of the exterior world. What we see may not always be ‘real’. This is especially challenging in current times where the received Western worldview verifies reality as objectively perceived rather than as permeable, contextual and mobile. Refreshingly Hermes in his trickster capacity alerts us to the danger of taking things, and oneself, too seriously so that our best intentions at times become subverted; bringing us back to ‘earth’.

Although the phenomenon of Hermes may not appear to relate directly to beauty the conflict inherent in coming into beauty is part of the hermetic process; the experience is an important element of becoming. Beauty is not only about harmony and order but essentially embodies disorder as a part of coming into being. Aspects of the chaotic directionality of the wild birthing power of nature was revealed to me through my photography of nature’s becoming, the process of which is a struggle, expressing not just beauty but sublime power. For me this brings a deeper sense of the arbitrary nature of life random and ordered, raw and exquisite. Beauty in its materiality is an epiphany of the light and the dark sides of the sacred generative forces of the feminine, manifesting through her poetic and mythic appearances.

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There is complementarity between the archetypes of the sacred feminine as in Sophia and Hermes,57 for both are at the foundation of our experience weaving wisdom; the sacred feminine representing life’s shared experience of being subject, yet also with potential to be transformed by our materiality; and Hermes the element that introduces us to the unknown pushing outwards, towards change. Sophia is the Ground, the earth that may be celebrated or ignored and the experience of our innermost emotional and embodied feelings that connect us to the rest of the world. Hermes is the shape-shifting agent of change, renewing and transforming the world, and in the moments we sense the play of their intertwined processes perhaps we come closer to the mystery.

… the deepest passion of the Western mind has been to reunite with the ground of its own being. The driving impulse of the West’s masculine consciousness has been its dialectical quest not only to realize itself, to forge its own autonomy, but also, finally, to come to terms with the great feminine principle in life, and thus to recover its connection with the whole: to differentiate itself from but then rediscover and reunite with the feminine, with the mystery of life, of nature, of soul.’ (Tarnas 1991, 443)

Reflection

These mythic themes, of the interdependence of humans and our surroundings and the beauty that manifests in a balanced and reciprocal relationship between the active and receptive elements of human experience have for me an immediacy and deep relevance to the ecological, relational and personal crises of our times. In my research I drew on these particular symbolic figures and themes in an imaginal way, to explore and integrate aspects of interior potency, the more hidden elements that have come to be seen as being of less significance than the heroic and exteriorized archetypes along the developing path of human awareness. Imaginal and analogical processes offer rich ways to encounter the mysterious Ground to which we all belong connecting us to the deeper and archetypal elements of human experience, so returning us to more participatory ways of perceiving that celebrate and validate the multiplicity of beauty’s experience to heal and transform.

57 Robert Sardello also discusses their complementarity in Facing the World with Soul (1992)

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Chapter 7 - Continuing the journey: towards transformation and healing

Introduction

This thesis began both as a celebration of beauty and concern for its loss in our experience of life, and for losses of the natural world. The year’s journaling and subsequent reflections brought together insights relating my own inner and outer experience, the beings at the lake, and a deepened appreciation for the elemental ground of being that supports us all. It was an experiential journey based on my concerns for the wellbeing of the natural world through a poetic, art-based approach. This way of perceiving the world and our place in it enhances and deepens our perspective at both the local and the global ecological levels. In opening to the beauty that is to be found all around we are touched and permeated by the wonder of what lies both beyond and within, so that we become part of the community of being. In this way we come into our deepest ‘belonging’.

The health of nature and of humankind as a part of nature and the imbalances that have accrued over centuries are becoming increasingly critical as issues such as climate change, species extinction and loss of habitat are impacting the life of the planet. The formerly close relationship between human and other than human beings is becoming attenuated because of industrial and economic imperatives that do not see the worth that is inherent in all of life; the inequity is grave and deeply distressing as a worldwide and localized phenomenon.

The beings with whom I share the lake are not abstract or anonymous species but are creatures with their own agency and particularity, and the specific ecology of their environment is affected. The symptoms of climate change are becoming apparent; the lake did not fill up last year even after good rains following the dry winter of the year before, and some species of native vegetation were lost.

Attempts to address these issues tend to centre around finding ways to halt the symptoms and are often based on the premise of science and technology. However,

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diverse approaches from other orientations that address the deeper causes are also essential. My way has been through a personal approach that both encompasses and engages with the feelings of the heart and which critically examines our own ways of perceiving and being, and their impact on us and the surrounding world. Without a foundation of deepened reflection that includes poetic and symbolic ways of understanding and making meaning as explored in this thesis practical attempts are unable to adequately address the complexity and enormity of the issues we face.

In this final chapter I express the way that I have learned how and where I fit, through the struggle and joy of the research journey in the hope that this will assist others in their journeys towards understanding and belonging.

My aesthetic process – testament to the experience of beauty

In my earlier thesis which I referred to on page 10 I explored and developed my understanding that aesthetic experience and the perception of beauty on deep levels offer potential for personal and planetary wellbeing, and discussed the experience of art-making, as well as engagement of the imagination with what may initially seem to be the everyday as a way of enhancing understandings of our inner and outer worlds. ‘Beauty can be so many things, everyday artefacts becoming imbued with meaning just through the way we perceive them … it is the enjoyment of the ordinary, not just the extraordinary which can begin to animate us once more …’ (Abstract). The earlier research looked towards re-integration through porosity and belonging, the experience of dwelling fluidly, embracing ambivalence and restoring our creative aesthetic capacities. In this way I evoked a retrieval of a more deeply embodied reception of and response to the world.

There are diverse ways to approach the world and each is a particular expression of life. The journal reflected the particularity of life at the lake through a poetic orientation. Perceiving in this way brings different levels of being into awareness so

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that we see beyond the literal. Instead of a contained reality other possibilities begin to form so that we see dimensionality rather than a singular factual plane. This is to perceive the dynamics of life in terms of ‘verbing’ – everything being in a process of change and interplay rather than as a fixed ‘noun’ entity. In this way we become able to engage with the many ways that things might appear, open to their particular self-expression. This approach listens for the particular life in each thing and for other traces that convey presence. At times it can seem as though nothing is forthcoming but by waiting in an active and porous way a place is made for the appearance of something. This way is less structured than the ‘scientific’ way, but it reflects the nature of the imaginal landscape; for something new to become revealed we need to dedicate a space for unknown possibility.

The process of artmaking is another way of apprehending the world, and of conveying what is not always expressible in human language; at times it is not possible or even desirable to express through words for they can limit or form boundaries around our experience. Words can deflect us from our elemental ways of sense-making that derive from the unseen and vital pulse of life. As a way of understanding art takes us into spheres that reveal alternatives to rational and scientific methods of making sense of the world, going beyond reason to form deep connections that may not otherwise come into being.

Such connections may reflect feelings of wonder, or the sacred, bringing to consciousness apprehensions that can alter our experience. When we express our sense of the beautiful we are touched by it and through us others may also be. For me, behind the process of making art there is a need to express and share the images of beauty’s appearances, re-turning them to the world.

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The language of the image

In expressing my experience of the lake environment I used the written word and the non verbal language of photography. I found that whilst the dimensions in the latter revealed the apparent, they could also indicate or allude to the unseen. Initially I was exploring the life of the lake and its denizens through the effects of the four elements, especially water as the heart, and at first I photographed the qualities and changes of the waters, movement and ripples, surface reflections and the depths below in concert, indicating multiple presences. As the process progressed I began to photograph very closely exploring the quality of each thing, and found that each forcefully conveyed its individual nature and affect. I began to perceive archetypal qualities coming through, ways of being that spoke of life’s round, such as the themes of florescing and evanescing, and others.

Part of this exploration entailed much learning - ‘listening’ with all my senses, and realizing that what was before me had more to convey that I might have imagined. As I tuned into the daily rhythms, the moisture, the angle of the light, its strength and its coolness or warmth I learned to wait, to patiently watch for the minute-by- minute changes that were taking place. Through the lens the qualities imbued by the effects of the elements revealed much not only about the interplay of beings and surroundings but also about the foundational and mysterious powers directing life, bringing surprises and moments of deepest wonder.

I found that bright light tended to eclipse, creating over-strong contrasts, whereas my context was a gentler encounter that invited more intimate conversation. My process of photography became a practice of abiding, just as I did when journaling the lake, porous and making space for whatever wished to reveal itself; a different way to that which I touched upon in Chapters 2 and 3: the tendency of bright and direct light to overwhelm, even dazzle, so that the potential to become revealed remains obscured.

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The water became mentor as I witnessed close-up the water drops reflecting, magnifying, inverting and deepening, so that those particular qualities became a subject and a metaphor for material, psychological and spiritual ways of being. I marvelled at all that water drops could convey; reflecting the light of the sky through to the darkest of shadow and revealing a pattern of rhythm if several drops occurred close together. It became apparent that the water reflects from its surface, the exterior, and magnifies from inside, the interior; qualities complementing one another in conversation with the outer world. I saw that where the water drop touches a leaf it magnifies the pores, all the more apparent through the water’s lens. Then the wonder of the drop inverting the image so that the light of the sky juxtaposes the material of the leaf, each enhancing the qualities of the other. A metaphor for how to be in the world.

My photography praxis became a space for self-revelation of the subject and of myself, also subject and this seemed to be more than a two-way encounter. The questioning and learning about the nature of the subject of the photograph brought reflection and learning about my own (human) nature as correlations and deepened insights emerged. Nature’s patterns express life’s ebb and flow on every level revealing the wisdom of the elemental round.

Through the photography archetypal processes started to come into view. One example is the coming into being of the flower, revealing beauty and also at times the wild sublime. One morning whilst photographing an emerging peach blossom the outreaching power of the flower’s centre was arresting; the concentration of the particular aspect of the seeds and pollen at the tips of the stamens serving to blur the rest, revealing powerful intentionality. Usually the rate of such movement is not initially visible to us, appearing to be still, but on this day I became profoundly aware of its dynamic, akin to the tracing of firework sparks through the sky. The urge is direct and radiating but the action is of a gradual uncrushing and disentangling of seeming chaos, a re-ordering of the fronds of stamens reaching outwards towards the world.

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The dynamic of the spiral becomes visible in the growth direction of the Arum Lily in an expanding spiral, also appearing in the twisting affect of the Quince flowers before opening up. Peach blossoms open from the centre in a cervical way as the outside bracts are gradually pushed outwards by the spherically advancing bud before the stamens burst forth. In a similar way the wattle flowers explode from a bunched-up holding, a few antennae initially flinging out before unfolding round buds. The process is powerful and violent in its beauty; a birth, ultimately followed by the gradual loss of vitality, drying, crumpling and falling away. I found the photographic medium enabled a deepening of my awareness of these archetypal forces.

In my art praxis the materials that I use directly relate to the subject matter so that the inner and outer dimension of the subject weaves together material and context. The intention of this approach has been to evoke a direct physical and non physical experience of our world. My work refers to our ways of being as a part of and in relationship with the world of nature, so as much as possible I try to not disturb the natural balance by electing to work with materials that may be borrowed from and returned to the earth without impact.

And so in reflecting about ways to express my experience of the lake’s nature I wanted to give voice to the deeper and sometimes more hidden qualities that I had begun to encounter. I chose to photograph in a manner that engaged with more than what was initially apparent; an image may appear pleasing and even beautiful but it was also the metaphorical and sometimes metaphysical significance of the gesture, the archetypal be-ing, that drew me; and the closer I got the more exciting it became.

In coming closer it was essential to approach in a respectful and non-intrusive way, which meant not looking in a literal way but rather an open and inquiring way. For I found that character and personality were expressed fluently by each subject and it was my task to be alert and attentive, ready to receive, and so in every conversation I wanted to approach obliquely and not to confront.

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Later when I looked even more closely at the images, phenomena that I had only glimpsed before became more apparent; paradoxically through the micro view it becomes possible to perceive the presence of worlds beyond worlds. Micro and macro interweave, relative, and at times seemingly interchangeable. The sense of the sacred in the context of the very personal portraits of each moment intimates the detail operating beyond and behind what it is that we perceive. The presence of mystery has been at the heart of the insights that emerged from the photographic experience.

Towards belonging: the process of fit

The experiences of my journal, travel and thesis journeys led me into my own inner depths and the depths of my surrounding micro through to macro world. My experience of the passage through this research altered and deepened the way I perceive the world and my place within it. The questions that ran through the thesis process were still the ones that were present at the outset, deepening into further layers of inquiry. In coming to the end of the research process those questions - about the experience of beauty, the nature of beauty and its potential to heal, and the exploration of an experiential way of understanding have shown that a sense of belonging, and embeddedness in our surroundings may be restored through opening creatively to interiority, relationality and mystery.

As realizations become conscious we bring them into the world so that new realities and their implications may become woven into life. If experience has not passed truly into life it is still in potential; each thing is in process and at different stages but to live out what we discover enables it to become present in the world.

In yielding to the trials, facing the pain and allowing ourselves to be ‘worked over’ (Romanyshyn 2002) on many levels we re-enact this ongoing theme finding where and how we fit; over time the conditions and the story might vary but the underlying experience remains the same. Themes such as this are archetypal in that they lie

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behind our experience – they form the conditions which we experience and are subject to.

I have found that the question of belonging, of ‘where does one fit?’ often arises through life’s experiences, particularly perhaps for migrants like me who may have grown up in other lands. My human questions and deliberations contrasted with the fluid responses of other animals as I negotiated complex mixes of time and context, and I learned that remaining present and permeable to the immediacy of life leads towards a capacity to become part of the rhythm.

The question of beauty is also one about wisdom, grounded in the experience of life, and in this way beauty, wisdom and the sacred interweave reflecting one another. As the research proceeded there was a constant sense that these are implicit in the receptive and generative elements that are at the heart of ‘becoming’.

Part of the journey for me in this research was to reflect on my world and my place in it, as a researcher and in a personal way, and so questions arose over the time about the landscape and the evolution of my own story. Many questions collected around my inner life, my feeling, intuitive and spiritual ways of making sense. As such I re-turned to the experience of my inner processes and recognized that it could be seen as a journey looking towards belonging, of attempting to see how things fit. For it seems that finding our place and becoming a part, and especially following the path towards what we love is at the heart of all things.

The journey showed that everything is particular and has its own beauty and over the duration of this research I came to see the appearances of beauty everywhere. Sunsets, specks on the ground, shadowed silhouettes – these convey more than their outer appearance. Beauty’s presence has come to be a constant companion along the way, so that I now need never feel alone, or disinterested, or hopeless. It is always there shining out in many stories and as I listen with my senses and with my heart I am companioned. I have learnt that through all the difficulties – the pain and the losses that confront us in life, the presence of simple beauty can elevate us from hopelessness into a space of shared belonging, hope and renewed intention.

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The experience of the thesis changed me in that I have come to know that to apprehend in a poetic way that is not dependent on rational ways is valid for it brings us towards the world, to a sense of fitting together. The poetic process has sometimes been seen as not of the ‘real world’; dreamy and ungrounded, yet paradoxically its fluid and un-pin-down-able quality lends a sense of being grounded. This is because as we enter spheres beyond the reasoned and literal we encounter truths that may be perceived only on these other levels. There are many truths to be found in ways other than the rational – our bodily senses tell us more about ourselves and our world and as we listen to them, so we become present to other stories and other ways of being. In this way we come to perceive other beings as imbued with their own agency, as fellow beings sharing place in their own way.

From the beings at the lake I came to learn new ways of inhabiting my body – seeing peripherally or in an unfocused way so that what had formerly been invisible came into view; hearing with my body and not just my ears so that I discerned underlying tones and rhythms. In learning to be still and receptive I became sensitive to presence and subtle movement, and found that being this way encouraged the others to venture out. It allowed me to fit in with others.

The concept of ‘fitting’ then is more about accord that is fluid and responsive, rather than a mechanistic ‘clicking into place’ as for example in pre-formed jigsaw pieces. The elements to be integrated do not necessarily have a fixed shape, rather they respond and change in the context that we perceive them to be, so that integrating/ the ‘fit’ is better understood as a dynamic and ongoing process rather than an event.

At the lake as I witnessed the life and agency of each being; the rhythms and pauses and the immersion in their world was constantly changing through their movement, sounds and moods. To live authentically is to be directed by elemental truths, to be both held to and enhanced by them. And so I have come to know that my own presence and agency also matters within the whole in that as I am affected by my surroundings so I too leave traces. I have come to feel more able to dwell within ambivalence and complexity, at times still challenged by a desire for resolution but also in the knowledge that everything is part of the rhythm of change.

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Through my immersion at the lake I recognize that time is contextual and particular. Mechanized and digitized counting of hours and minutes had no relevance as the beings went about their day and in their own rhythm according to the season and the daily conditions. When one is immersed, clock time can cease to have relevance and a natural rhythm seems to occur. The lake rhythms were fluid, responsive and diverse with a particular quality of time for different beings. Inasmuch as regulated time is a necessary part of human culture, the quality of time that embodies the rhythm of being enhances the experience of dimensions that may not be initially apparent.

I understand now more deeply the implications of multiple truths, that there is no single approach but many and so conversation is essential; over the time my becomings and learnings were in constant metamorphosis. Engaging and questioning on deeper levels assists elemental truths to find their way to the surface. The understandings that have emerged from the research are mobile and not to be seen as a final word, for there are no final words. This has not been a scientific, objective search for definition or proof, but an immersion in the atmosphere and realms that make up the many truths of our experience.

The process of understanding

As I drew on my direct experience at the lake and on the work of other thinkers to address my concerns through the thesis journey I was always questioning and forming my understandings through a qualitative and subjective approach. As such my learnings informed me on a deep level, clarifying and crystallizing my perceptions, however to reach any clarity I found that I had to undergo deep ambivalence and uncertainty. It may seem paradoxical that the process of becoming clear entails such a winding passage through these phases but it is a part of the pattern of my experience. To remain open to transition and change is part of the journey towards wisdom even though its passage can be bewildering or confronting.

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My journey of understanding began as witness to the life at the lake, taking in and then gradually forming insights. It was a process of mutual self revelation for in opening to the experience of what and who was there also opened my being. All that I learned of the ways of the lake could apply to human ways; how to live as part of the whole within the limits of nature.

In this way my understandings formed and continually deepened over the journey of the thesis. I found that there are others on parallel journeys and revisited writers whom I had read long before I began this journey and rediscovered their insights whilst discovering new insights. These writers were also looking at human ways of being in the world so that over my thesis journey I came to see that many of my concerns are shared.

Apprehending the significance of all that I witnessed entailed a slow drawing together of the interplay of elements and beings as they appeared on their many levels. Not surprisingly matters regarding ways of being were in the foreground telling of the agency and particularity of each phenomenon. As I proceeded I discovered that the year brought a deepened awareness of the implications of change; the nature of ephemerality within continuity. The truths that the lake experience conveyed began to sink in more deeply as I continued to reflect.

Reflection led to a gradual comprehending, slowly building on the lake experience. It seemed that as I approached, unravelling, I began to perceive the nature of complementarity, a deeper reality than our customary senses of opposites and difference. The process became a descent, a mutual sinking of the learnings into me and me into them. Understanding in this way is gradual, a knitting together of what comes to be known, realizations quickening as hitherto unconnected aspects coalesce. Connections gathered incrementally as levels came into accord and at times it seemed that there was nothing happening, then sometimes a realization came as new air rushed in, a moment of inspir-ation.

The forming of my understanding was a coming together of mind and matter, not a rational step-by-step logic but rather a way of entering obliquely into the question.

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Intellect forms a part of understanding together with feeling and also the quality of sensing on another level that is concurrently embedded and liminal; that is to say perhaps partly earth and partly spirit based. As such the mode of understanding was a reflection of the particular world which I was attempting to understand. I saw each thing through my eyes and based on my own experience; another might perceive differently.

In the context of knowledge there are different realities: information and wisdom. This thesis has been a journey of looking for wisdom, not information; wisdom is interconnected and inhabits depth whereas information is more a collection of independent pieces of facts. Beginning with a surface apprehension we continue gathering experience towards wisdom, a gradual metamorphosis, the unfolding of something – a flower perhaps, or a being, inhabiting space in an increasingly deeper and complex way. Or on another level a realization may lead to a change of approach from a literal towards a metaphorical way of apprehending.

To understand in a way that might lead towards wisdom necessarily engages with complexity – all cannot be known and as such it is a journey through layers of knowing and unknowing. In this way we are brought face to face with ambiguity and paradox. The nature of complexity is alive throwing up new realizations in the mix. To be ‘certain’ is to attempt to box in this vitality instead of allowing it to come into being; deepened levels of understanding acknowledge that nothing remains the same.

Wisdom is an evolved and elusive form of knowing, not limited to that of the mind or the body; rather it is a knowing that resides in every aspect of being. We may think of wisdom as perhaps embodying qualities such as ethical being, balance and comprehensiveness, yet there is also a fundamental quality of being that underpins the whole of life’s experience; the wild and primal wisdom of nature.58 This is a way that is not bound by human language or informed by ethical or moral principles but is beyond logic, intricately ordering and re-ordering the patterns of nature.

58 See again Basso’s Wisdom Sits in Places (1996)

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The transformation of my ability to understand occurred across two different journeys, one proximate and local the other across the world, both bringing me to new understandings of the ways the world expresses itself. Everything personified agency and particularity, vital and participating in the pattern. The sustained nature of my engagement in life at the lake changed the way I perceived so that later in Europe I felt a deepened affinity for and wonder at the expressions of being that I encountered. This quality of inhabiting place in a particular and embedded way correspondingly elicited in me a sense of what it is to dwell. Native presences spoke of emergence from and symbiosis with the land and it seemed that through their grace I was granted a sense of belonging.

The direct and unmediated nature of simple places brings a sense of beauty that takes us into the unseen and at times approaches the spiritual as the material becomes less focal, deepening our attention as it is drawn away from the sensory. I felt at peace in the quietude and mystery of darkened spaces just softly lit; the chapel in Iona and the candle flame in the window in Ireland, my experience perhaps intensified because I was passing through.

I found that the itinerant nature of travel heightens the sense of seeing-for-the-first- time, that initial impression that shines then fades with familiarity; not that this detracts from the wonder for each impression becomes absorbed into our knowing. It is possible to experience again that quality of wonder by remaining open to the detail that life reveals.

My gradual embeddedness at the lake and the feeling of inclusion that I experienced on my travels distilled into a feeling of belonging initially in the context of participation in place and deepening into a belonging in the sense of an unseen source; material and relational embeddedness transforming to include the sacred.

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The healing nature of beauty

How beauty heals was the initial question from where the research first began, not centred around the sciences but through an experiential and poetic approach. I began the research relating ways of being to ecological balance, the personal and the collective for it seemed to me that the approach of humankind in the West has been evolving in such a way that we have become distanced from our essential selves and from our surroundings.

What is it that ails us? What are the wounds that keep us held at a distance from participating in the community of nature and experiencing our full human potential? It would seem that we are longing for something that is missing, yet we increasingly seek to fill this void with ‘things’, material and non-material. But there is no satisfying this need as we continue to consume without giving back to the earth which is our home.

We have become strangers, separated from the deepest connections that for millennia have held us in place. Our lack of ease with nature is complex having developed over time and presenting many faces. Materially, emotionally and perhaps spiritually we have become deflected from our natural affinities with the elemental world, no longer recognizing the scale of our limitations as our sense of independence, together with our valorization of technology, tenuously insulate us from the realities of nature’s power. It seems that through such emphasis on rational, disconnected ways our capacity to ‘feel’ has been eclipsed so that we have become less able to relate as embodied beings, and this loss is compromising our ability to feel empathy and to understand the full significance of our actions.

In our separation we are forgetting the sacredness that is inherent in nature so that reverence is lost, leading to a disregard for the beauty and quiddity of each being. How can we hope to belong if we desacralize and reduce our home and those of others to fragments? When we create or alter environments that deny the possibility of beauty its absence conveys a lack of caring; the loss of the experience of beauty is

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alienating for it diminishes our connection with our surroundings so that we feel excluded rather than embraced.

So what is needed to heal such wounds? Becoming open to diverse ways of being makes it possible to begin to understand how to dwell within the sphere of nature as co-inhabitants, encouraging and enhancing the wellbeing of the world we share. In approaching the broader world in this way we may then become mindful of the current and historical error of perceiving the world and its community of beings as a resource to be harvested. We may realize that there is no need to over-consume in the face of the extravagance and generosity of nature’s processes, learning to trust that there can be enough for all. Recognizing the natural world as kin and apprehending the worth of each thing is to become a part of a reciprocal world. In reaching out to the world we also reach out to ourselves bringing a quality of being- with that begins the healing process.

Although it has been well known for several decades that our ways of inhabiting our world are causing increasing harm to fellow beings and the environment, rational explanation and scientific evidence have not changed this pattern to any great extent. It may be that these explanations appear extraneous, not an immediate part of us and together with the apparently overwhelming complexity of it all we seem to remain in a sort of stasis. The anticipation of the potential pain, confusion and grief involved in facing the enormity of ecological loss can itself have the effect of maintaining inaction and apathy. And yet, by allowing the hurt to touch us, and asking the difficult questions of ourselves we make a place for empathy and compassion. In undergoing such experiences as joy and sorrow we may gather courage and become more resilient. Empathy and compassion are expressions of deep and relational beauty.

Over centuries in the West the phenomena of beauty and the poetic have come to be perceived as non-essential, at times considered indulgent in the context of pressing problems. But it is through our apprehension of beauty that we may become more whole, deepened and opened to possibility, so that our approach is transformed as it moves towards inclusion and depth. The experience of beauty is a dialogue, a

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mutual reflection; in allowing ourselves to be imbued with a sense of beauty’s harmony we in turn become transformed and enlivened, taking part in the moving dance of life.

Certainly my odyssey towards beauty was drawn by a deep need to encounter and express my experience of it, what I understand as the human need for beauty and the apprehension of its revelation. I was changed by my experience of beauty – it deepened my awareness as it revealed the worth of every thing, micro through to macro; of the purple iridescence of the ants close-up, their industry and their teamwork, through to the quality of water’s presence as life-giving source, drop by sparkling drop. Beauty became an intimate and felt companion, neither abstract nor external.

The research engaged with ways of being that might enhance or enable the becoming of something new. A quiet and invitational way can lead towards change for in noticing and nurturing the detail of the everyday that which is often overlooked can become transformed. A poetic way is able to appeal to the interior, creative element of understanding as we recognize albeit dimly something engaging us on other levels; the mystery that lies behind appearances. This thesis then is both an exploration of how beauty can heal our being in the world and an offering of a way to heal our wounded and limited relationship to the experience of wondrous beauty.

The intention of this research was to explore the perception and experience of beauty, the nature of beauty and its potential to heal. This was to engage in a deep way with the natural world to begin to understand how humans might retrieve a sense of belonging within rather outside of nature. My research journey revealed to me the archetypal and originary qualities of the elements (leading to a sense of deeper meaning) extending to the whole of nature, initially as the perception of outer appearances in their materiality, through to the perception of beauty in more hidden forms. The inner qualities of beauty shine out – integrating and bringing us back to our deepest core. My discoveries revealed much about the diverse presences of nature so that what was a personal and direct study drew me through my own outer

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and inner landscapes to those beyond, revealing the transformative nature of the personal experience of beauty and love.

My study of the lake environment showed that life is in a constant state of becoming and so too the understandings that formed are alive and changing, not definitive. The journey of discovery and learning of the thesis, and beyond, has a life of its own, not to remain the same. To come to this point of the journey is to pause, knowing that this is once again a liminal place, concurrently reflecting yet stepping- off.

New levels of understanding continue to come up through depth to the surface. My particular journey has been through a poetic and aesthetic way of perceiving bringing another perspective and making space for the unknown. In this journey I have not tried to ‘examine’ beauty as that would be to quell the life there. All that can be done is to make ready for sidelong glimpses, to be open and alert, peripherally aware. This research has been a joy as well as a challenge, for the question of beauty is one that lingers always at the edges of my experience. I came to understand that the appearances of beauty may be perceived in many ways – through the way we see and hear, feel and imagine; the way we and others might inhabit beauty, or the beauty that might come through each of us.

The capacity for beauty to heal is to be found through the simplest of everyday experiences and its apprehension makes it possible to perceive the world on imaginative levels, bringing into play the sometimes unseen, unspoken or marginalized elements of life’s experience. In this way something new and profound is enabled to emerge, particular to the times and that when engaged illuminates, softens and heals divisions and prejudices. Our world is so diverse, with so many different ways of making sense, and reasoning and conversation can only reach ‘so far’; yet when the quiddity and mystery of each thing is experienced division dissolves in wonder. To be open to beauty sets aside those aspects that might detract from fully participating in the adventure of being alive, as we become imbued with the wonder inherent in life around and within ourselves.

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With beauty may I walk With beauty behind me may I walk With beauty above me may I walk With beauty below me may I walk With beauty all around me may I walk … Navajo Indian prayer

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Appendix A:

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an afterword

At the ‘close’ of this journey (which is not so much an ending as a pause along the way) I would like to reflect on some aspects of the project. Because of the very personal nature of my topic, and individual-centred task my research process is appropriate to a personal and individual enquiry. However whilst this has been my own particular process it might not be appropriate for other individuals and tasks.

The research began as a deep concern for the declining ecology of the planet and the loss of diversity. I asked whether the experience of beauty might touch us on deeper levels, and so restore a sense of belonging within the natural world. I wanted to explore the power of the apprehension of beauty to bring about transformed ways of perceiving and being. Externalised or pragmatic approaches, being amongst the root causes of our environmental losses are inadequate as a way towards resolving them; it has been said elsewhere that it is not possible to solve our problems with the same mindview that contributed to causing them.

For me beauty and the sacred, and their experience are inseparable. However I recognize that not everyone shares my feelings about the importance of beauty, and quantity and economic growth can be the priority for some to whom beauty may appear to be extraneous and not essential. There is pressure in contemporary society to keep up with the pace, not to linger, risking a shallowing of experience leading towards a loss of meaning.

The daily journal at the lake limited the collection of my research data to a finite area, an in-between place, at the edge of town and the edge of country. With the lake/shores, and native/introduced species it was a rich and nuanced environment to witness. The littoral, the edge, is where activity is concentrated as I found as I settled in to record the daily happenings. The inner, contemplative manner of approach and data collection is also on the edge of thinking: I found that calling for a dialogue between thinking and feeling revealed insights not only about my surroundings but also my interior landscape. Because gathering the data entailed close proximity and daily repetition, and was limited to a small and particular place

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the solitary nature of my approach enabled me to witness and become embedded in the experience of the place. Rather than a survey, or multiple case studies, my choice to witness and to be a subject myself meant that I would be both researcher and participant. This in no way curtailed the quality of what I found – on the contrary, it meant that I had the opportunity to engage in greater depth.

What I found was that I learned more about the ways of the beings and about my own ways than I could have anticipated, my discoveries becoming a source of insight on scholarly and personal levels. As part of the process of reflecting on my data, my discovery that the way I gather understanding tends to be labyrinthine taught me to be patient, to stay close and alert to my experience. Gradually a realization began to form affirming that indeed amongst the many ways to approach the world, a poetic orientation brings valuable insights that contribute to the whole. Such processes can be slow, discoveries and connections emerging between occasional leaps and frequent long pauses, so it is difficult to anticipate timeframes, which is challenging in our paradigm when time is of the essence. A poetic, less direct way of perceiving is not always seen as being ‘realistic’ or of value because it does not produce in a literal way, however it is in the inner, hidden places where the new germinates.

By ‘listening’ in this way fresh insights are enabled to emerge: over time the process led me to reflect on and come into awareness of elements within myself that had hitherto been partially or fully hidden from me. Becoming aware of the way we perceive the world, and keeping in mind that others may perceive differently can bring deepened understanding of self and other – and that diversity makes up the whole. Whilst enduring uncertainty and allowing space for ambivalence may appear to some to be a less effective method of inquiry I found it enabled me to touch deep truths that would have otherwise been out of my reach.

Because my research questions pertained to the transformative potential of the experience of beauty this engaged with ways of being in the world and as such the self-reflexive nature of my method suited the project. Throughout the research content and method reflected one another, often seemingly inseparable, making it

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difficult to distinguish between them. But that is the nature of permeable boundaries. My method was in context with my research project and my perception of how to approach it, just as other researchers’ projects would necessitate other methods - similar topics addressed by another researcher would yield other fruit.

We each perceive ‘beauty’ in our own way. During the research process I noticed that if the topic of beauty came up in conversation, often the other person became animated as they reflected on what beauty is for them. It appeared to be close to their hearts, seeming to evoke a sense of deep recognition on some level. There are so many ways of apprehending beauty, and it occurred to me that a project that concurrently inquired about people’s perceptions, experiences, memories of beauty, and invited them to engage in depth where they might explore these further in a way of their choosing could offer much.

Through the research it became clear that the quality of ‘beauty’ I was exploring appeared not only on aesthetic levels but also in the context of ethical being: receptivity and empathy, ultimately bringing a reciprocal sense of belonging. Through the lake journal of my direct, daily experience of the particular nature of each being I found that my connection to them grew, a sense that I am never alone, sharing in their belonging. Realizing that such re-connection as participant in the community of nature is possible has been transformative, and has affirmed my understanding that the experience of beauty does indeed have the potential to heal.

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