the awakened eye is the eye that perceives without labeling
– we could also call it the innocent eye,
or the eye of beginner’s mind

[This is where I put on another cap – the one that’s splashed with color and whiffy with linseed oil.  Since some of you might well be artists too, I’m posting these links for you.  I hope you’ll visit the website and its blog.]

Many artists and artisans have understood that the practice of drawing, and engaging in creative encounters in the visual arts, can – by making explicit one’s conditioned responses – open the mind to another way of seeing, a way that transcends habitual dualistic assumptions.

Nondual awareness occurs when consciousness is no longer divided into subject and object; when an inexplicable wholeness pervades and one’s actions flow seamlessly from and as that Oneness.  Yet we have no language with which to speak of this seamlessness – even the phrase “encounters with nondual awareness” (the site’s subtitle) invites confusion, for, within the encounter there is no entity separate from that nonduality.  Logically and experientially it is impossible to speak of subject and object, and yet speak one must.

Throughout history there have been – and still are – many wise teachers who speak of this transcendence of duality as one’s original nature – an a-priori ‘beingness’ which we seem compelled to simultaneously seek and reject.  Their teachings are sometimes referred to as advaita, which means “one without a second” – or more simply, nonduality.  Regarded in this wider context the awakened eye is synonymous with the awakened I.

the awakened eye website and its blog have been conceived as places where ideas and teachings on this topic put forward by artists, educators, scientists, philosophers, sages and saints, can be accessed; a rich and varied smorgasbord of offerings.  No claim that the visual arts have exclusive rights to either the ‘eye’ or the ‘I’ that awakens is being put forward – they simply happen to make up my personal creative milieu, the playground in which I first encountered the mysterious merging and began a lifelong attempt to make sense of it.  Writers, poets, athletes and performers are similarly familiar with this experience of merging, often referring to it as flow.  Indeed it seems so common in human experience that it can hardly be seen as unusual.  Why then, is it so elusive for most of us?  Why does it vanish the minute it’s stalked?

Read more at the awakened eye …

Your comments and feedback are very welcome.  Enjoy!