Metaphors for the mind in art

[trenton]

I am currently working on a book about self love. I finished my first draft for chapter 1 but I'm going to expand on the artworks and metaphors behind them. This chapter discusses how the mind constructs illusions through meaning, stories, emotional attachment, and so on. It ends with practical techniques for recognizing and breaking out of illusions.

The first painting I used was " the treachery of images. " it is famous for "this is not a pipe." The metaphor behind it as understood in this chapter is that the mind creates images and models of reality but then mistakes those models for reality itself . In the context of self love this can be applied to what you believe about yourself, who you are, and what you are capable of. Your thoughts about what reality is ultimately blinds you so long as you are attached to a model, thought, or perspective. The mind gets lost in itself and its illusions.

I have a drawing I'm going to make for this chapter to expand on this metaphor. I wanted to draw a hand reaching out of a black abyss and through a chaotic sea and into a white light in which the hand disappears and fades. This is how I think of the mind in terms of grappling with truth. There are many layers of meaning behind this image I want to make.

Part of the meaning behind it is that seeking truth behind the domain of relativity leads to the mechanism by which truth is sought being deconstructed for it itself is a construction. The mind creates various lies and stories to try to grasp truth, but all of them ultimately collapse into nothing. The truth is too profound to be grasped through conventional thought and sense making. The ego is seeking freedom from itself and it is using mind to get there only for all of its illusions to fall apart.

Do you know any other paintings or artworks that symbolize how the mind works and how it constructs illusions? There are many perspectives I could I use to expand on this and it should become a very interesting chapter.

Thanks for any help.

[LastThursday]

The obvious ones that spring to mind are Salvador Dalí and Maurits Cornelis Escher (M. C. Escher). Escher's tiling's are a good example of how we extract meaning out of perception, where one form morphs and interlocks into another in a gradual manner. And Dalí is a trip into the subconscious mind and how dreamlike reality is.

The impressionist Claude Monet is also good for deconstructing reality, in that it's not made up of clearly defined stuff, but lots of amorphous colour and shapes; we just interpret those to give us a definite sense of the world.

You can also look up artists who employed Tromp-l'oeil in general (like René Magritte), this is a way to produce three dimensionality on a canvas. The idea being that our three dimensional world is a construction or a "trick of the light".

 

[Schizophonia]

[Nilsi]

Not visual art, but Jorge Luis Borges’ short stories align well with your vision - especially The Circular Ruins, where a man dreams another into existence, only to realize he himself is being dreamed.

You can read it here: The Circular Ruins – Jorge Luis Borges

[trenton]

@LastThursday that sounds good. Do you know the names of any particular pieces or can you find the images?

[LastThursday]

I'd hate to do your homework for you, but, here are some to start you off with:

Dali:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swans_Reflecting_Elephants

Escher:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_and_Water_I

Monet:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Artist's_Garden_at_Giverny

Tromp l'oeil examples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trompe-l'œil

[trenton]

@LastThursday thank you for the pictures. I will definitely want to read about the background behind these.

[trenton]

I am making my own artwork that could be used to describe the mind. I tend to use a combination of Psychological and Spiritual symbolism often involving an abyss, blood, chaos, and a divine light.

https://photos.google.com/u/1/photo/AF1QipNqB9aGdpP_DsPS3D6cI-3KhgBWQwnrtbasTR0

I can't get the picture posted in here directly, but here is the link.

There are several layers of meaning behind it. Part of it is that the ego is seeking freedom from its own inner chaos and wounds. I tried to symbolize the domain of relativity and the domain of absolute, but it seems to be more strongly leaning on the psychological side rather than spiritual side. I'm not sure how else to draw relative and absolute truth.

What do you think of this attempt?

[Ninja_pig]

[Letho]

@trenton The Ouroboros, is the mind eating the mind in the very literal sense so without creating my own depiction I can't think of any better well known metaphor, the Ouroboros is the structure of thought itself. That is, the very mechanics of the mind self-consuming, self-generating, recursive. By understanding the Ouroboros in this sense, one in the very literal sense is given one of the most valuable keys to the kingdom of personal development. Many people look at the Ouroboros with degrees of understanding and find that sufficient enough, however like anything a degree asks of the rest of the degrees that remain, but because we often perceive our judgements with such finality, it is like looking at the oceans surface from the sky's great heights and believing our perception to hold the full 'degrees' of the ocean's depths. It's simply not possible and therefore I will give you a stepping stone to what I personally mean. Your consciousness likely operating as most others has three primary strata's constantly in contact with one another, sensory, cognitive and emotional all feeding from and to an energetic equilibrium. Your judgement of any one experience acts like an anchor on the degree of operation of the ouroboros regenerating and evolving your experience to the level that those three channels feed perception independently and interdependently; Perception <---> Judgement, open perception, open judgement; open both, open Understanding <---> Experience, open both, open Consciousness <---> Growth. Ouroboros, is "Conscious access to consciousness feedback loop", get it, all feedback, aka those three channels, feeds backwards into consciousness to then rebegin its projection thereby constantly altering the interface upon which you experience reality through recursive improvement. Again, degrees of understanding, let's break things down to greater literalality. Reflect back on every sound, visual, emotion, mental wandering, imagination, energy, sense, thought, inclination of consciousness you've personally experienced up to this point while reading this reply and ask yourself the following question: How much was my awareness anchoring those experiences in a way in which I was growing from them? That 'anchoring point' reflects your own unique 'Ouroboros superposition' of consciousness growth. 

Intelligence is neither singularly cognitive nor static; it is a self-referential engine that evolves by erasing itself and that being said when mind models reality, mistakes the model for reality, then dismantles it, each iteration encoding the failure of the last, its unique 'anchoring point' across the intersection of those dichotomies of consciousness within that triad, is going to be reflective of the ongoing broad growth of consciousnesses intelligence. This action, is a mastering of consciousnesses learning function. 'Learning' is this consciousness functionality self-embodied, as such, 'Identity', undertakes an enormous experiential shift, aligning more with its truer self for the simple fact that 'learning' is more aligned with how consciousness is meant to function rather than being the byproduct of a lack of learning occurring within consciousness from moment to moment; ergo, ideology is the opposite to true self as its antithetical to the organic operation of consciousness.

@Ninja_pig's image of course is another a kind of 'ourorobos' however I'd say that the hand drawing the hand, is a lower level symbolically, though equally are far better than their negational opposites of course; uniquely, I would say that the hand drawing the hand has greater commentary on how the path of personal mastery is not without a path to mastering precision, the snake eating itself by comparison focuses more on the evolutionary function that needs to be found, optimised and mastered. 'Found' especially in the context of how modern culture acts as its own maze most have to traverse through before they grasp increasing degrees of artworks like these. Further on your own depiction @trenton, the hand is reaching through chaos toward light but in touching it, dissolves. The seeker disintegrates into the sought; ideology or evolution? Without understanding higher degrees of the ouroboros, often people resort to social identities in balancing this understanding until they reach higher degrees where social affiliation is a counterweight to personal dissonance. Disintegrating into the sought is not the annihilation that creates the dissonance but transformation, truth is not acquired, it is the dissolution of what seeks to hold it, will it become a narcissistic ideology or will a consciousness go to Greater Degrees? The mind cannot possess what is beyond it; it can only become it by ceasing to be what it was.

This is the rhythm of cognition, of being itself; cycles graduating cycles rather than judgments merely resolving psychological uncertainties. The Ouroboros does not only consume; it regenerates. Each disintegration is an expansion in disguise. Thought moves in recursive cycles, but the cycle is a spiral, never returning to the same point, always integrating its own dissolution.

Self-love, then, is not an attachment to any version of the self. It is the recognition that identity is provisional, that growth requires disintegration; that the love is a cycle in itself, you learn the operations of the brain, the heart, the gut, greater energy centers and consciousness further, upon each cycle a new level of learning is mastered upon how to author and regulate your own energy towards higher experiences of consciousness, our only truth, and our action a measurement of this alignment. To love the self is to allow it to die and reform, endlessly, without resistance. The highest act of intelligence is not to cling to an image but to move with the rhythm of transformation itself; that's the essence of the minimum of degrees of understanding that one must either sit back and observe the oceans surface until said revelation enlightens them or what is more likely, they dive into the oceans depths and master these greater degrees of the blue for themselves. I recommend diving in, especially in the presence of the millions of others that can do nothing else but sit back because each persons 'sitting back' is resolving each others own dissonance, break the consciousness pigmentation of social alignment with maturity and that'll be your line upon which others will be able to reach for in the ocean as a life line to know traverse the ocean the same.

Edited Tuesday at 10:43 AM by Letho

[LastThursday]

@Ninja_pig classic Escher.

@trenton your link didn't work.

Edited Tuesday at 01:16 PM by LastThursday

[Letho]

7 hours ago, Letho said:

@trenton The Ouroboros, is the mind eating the mind in the very literal sense so without creating my own depiction I can't think of any better well known metaphor, the Ouroboros is the structure of thought itself. That is, the very mechanics of the mind self-consuming, self-generating, recursive. By understanding the Ouroboros in this sense, one in the very literal sense is given one of the most valuable keys to the kingdom of personal development. Many people look at the Ouroboros with degrees of understanding and find that sufficient enough, however like anything a degree asks of the rest of the degrees that remain, but because we often perceive our judgements with such finality, it is like looking at the oceans surface from the sky's great heights and believing our perception to hold the full 'degrees' of the ocean's depths. It's simply not possible and therefore I will give you a stepping stone to what I personally mean. Your consciousness likely operating as most others has three primary strata's constantly in contact with one another, sensory, cognitive and emotional all feeding from and to an energetic equilibrium. Your judgement of any one experience acts like an anchor on the degree of operation of the ouroboros regenerating and evolving your experience to the level that those three channels feed perception independently and interdependently; Perception <---> Judgement, open perception, open judgement; open both, open Understanding <---> Experience, open both, open Consciousness <---> Growth. Ouroboros, is "Conscious access to consciousness feedback loop", get it, all feedback, aka those three channels, feeds backwards into consciousness to then rebegin its projection thereby constantly altering the interface upon which you experience reality through recursive improvement. Again, degrees of understanding, let's break things down to greater literalality. Reflect back on every sound, visual, emotion, mental wandering, imagination, energy, sense, thought, inclination of consciousness you've personally experienced up to this point while reading this reply and ask yourself the following question: How much was my awareness anchoring those experiences in a way in which I was growing from them? That 'anchoring point' reflects your own unique 'Ouroboros superposition' of consciousness growth. 

Intelligence is neither singularly cognitive nor static; it is a self-referential engine that evolves by erasing itself and that being said when mind models reality, mistakes the model for reality, then dismantles it, each iteration encoding the failure of the last, its unique 'anchoring point' across the intersection of those dichotomies of consciousness within that triad, is going to be reflective of the ongoing broad growth of consciousnesses intelligence. This action, is a mastering of consciousnesses learning function. 'Learning' is this consciousness functionality self-embodied, as such, 'Identity', undertakes an enormous experiential shift, aligning more with its truer self for the simple fact that 'learning' is more aligned with how consciousness is meant to function rather than being the byproduct of a lack of learning occurring within consciousness from moment to moment; ergo, ideology is the opposite to true self as its antithetical to the organic operation of consciousness.

@Ninja_pig's image of course is another a kind of 'ourorobos' however I'd say that the hand drawing the hand, is a lower level symbolically, though equally are far better than their negational opposites of course; uniquely, I would say that the hand drawing the hand has greater commentary on how the path of personal mastery is not without a path to mastering precision, the snake eating itself by comparison focuses more on the evolutionary function that needs to be found, optimised and mastered. 'Found' especially in the context of how modern culture acts as its own maze most have to traverse through before they grasp increasing degrees of artworks like these. Further on your own depiction @trenton, the hand is reaching through chaos toward light but in touching it, dissolves. The seeker disintegrates into the sought; ideology or evolution? Without understanding higher degrees of the ouroboros, often people resort to social identities in balancing this understanding until they reach higher degrees where social affiliation is a counterweight to personal dissonance. Disintegrating into the sought is not the annihilation that creates the dissonance but transformation, truth is not acquired, it is the dissolution of what seeks to hold it, will it become a narcissistic ideology or will a consciousness go to Greater Degrees? The mind cannot possess what is beyond it; it can only become it by ceasing to be what it was.

This is the rhythm of cognition, of being itself; cycles graduating cycles rather than judgments merely resolving psychological uncertainties. The Ouroboros does not only consume; it regenerates. Each disintegration is an expansion in disguise. Thought moves in recursive cycles, but the cycle is a spiral, never returning to the same point, always integrating its own dissolution.

Self-love, then, is not an attachment to any version of the self. It is the recognition that identity is provisional, that growth requires disintegration; that the love is a cycle in itself, you learn the operations of the brain, the heart, the gut, greater energy centers and consciousness further, upon each cycle a new level of learning is mastered upon how to author and regulate your own energy towards higher experiences of consciousness, our only truth, and our action a measurement of this alignment. To love the self is to allow it to die and reform, endlessly, without resistance. The highest act of intelligence is not to cling to an image but to move with the rhythm of transformation itself; that's the essence of the minimum of degrees of understanding that one must either sit back and observe the oceans surface until said revelation enlightens them or what is more likely, they dive into the oceans depths and master these greater degrees of the blue for themselves. I recommend diving in, especially in the presence of the millions of others that can do nothing else but sit back because each persons 'sitting back' is resolving each others own dissonance, break the consciousness pigmentation of social alignment with maturity and that'll be your line upon which others will be able to reach for in the ocean as a life line to know traverse the ocean the same.

 

 

Pretty rad, in the promising sense. 

Just made an https://invideo.io/ account and tested this out for the first time.

All I literally did was copy and paste my comment into the prompt engine and this is what it produced.

Given I didn't initially share any art as requested...