Art & the perceptual flinch

Stepping out of typical seeing can be helped from the outside. Art is one such help. So is contact with what we usually flinch away from.

Monet, painting the same building over and over

Between 1892 and 1894, Monet painted the west façade of Rouen Cathedral more than thirty times — same subject, different light, different hour, different season. The building doesn't change. The seeing does.

Then look around your own room with that kind of attention — not searching for a "subject," just noticing how light is sitting on things. Take a minute.

Feynman on the inconceivable

Technical understanding doesn't have to preclude open, playful, artistic appreciation. The two can coexist and even enhance each other; conceptual engagement can guide sensory appreciation, and vice versa. Richard Feynman makes this case better than anyone, in his own register.

The perceptual flinch

Engaging without a fixed agenda allows appreciation of more aspects of experience — even uncomfortable ones. What becomes possible if we can appreciate unpleasant parts of life?

This isn't about forcing enjoyment, or finding a silver lining, or convincing ourselves we should enjoy something we don't. Appreciation can arise naturally from relaxing definite ideas about what should happen or how we should respond.

Sometimes a situation seems to impose an agenda, and we lose touch with our felt sense and play out a habitual reaction. The first step out of that cycle is simply noticing where we contract. All of us, when we encounter certain sensations or phenomena, automatically lurch away — we unsee through a perceptual flinch.

The next clip may demonstrate this. It's medical footage of maggots cleaning a wound (a real, useful clinical procedure). The audio is muted. As you watch, see what's present — attraction, aversion, indifference? If any of these are present, can they coexist without any need for intervention?

If this is too much for where you are right now, skip it. Scroll past and return to the closing exercise. The point of the lesson does not depend on watching this particular clip.

The aim isn't finding the right way to see. This is about the possibility of releasing fixation, whether toward or away from something. We can be creative in the ways we see, and we can appreciate the creativity of the ways we see. Relaxing unseeing opens fresh possibilities for perception, and ultimately for action.

Hands again

Back to the very first experiment of Lesson 01 — stroking and feeling your hands and wrists. Notice whether your experience of it has changed in any way.

For the week ahead

Take note of moments when you experience the perceptual flinch — that automatic aversion to some sight, sound, feeling, or thought. Just note when it happens. Whatever else, this is the easiest practice in the course; the noticing itself is the practice.

One more thing

The original course closes Arc 1 with a piece of music and image — a moment to sit with everything that just opened. You can think of this video as the course itself: an invitation into a more vivid, wondrous, unpredictable way of being.

Where this is going

That ends Arc 1. The next arc — Liberated Space — explores meditation as a way to become familiar with vastness, which is another aspect of vividness. We'll meet wonder, boredom, and a practice called Opening Awareness.