Our Divine Human Race

Lauren Mantecon, Portal #4- Heart Chakra, 36 x 36 oil on panel. Go here for pricing

By now us fragile humans can pretty much agree we have a better grasp on the true meaning of division. It’s not just a social construct, but a visceral, and dare I say downright surreal experience we can feel in our bones. 

I’m talking about the division of selves, family, community, and countries. It has begun to feel personal and dangerous. 

For myself, I want to jump on it and ask of myself, and each other, “how do we heal from this?” 

I believe in order to change, we must first question how we actually perceive information.

To actually question our perceptions. This entails slowing down and noticing the language we use day to day, the images we take in, and the words we read. I also believe we need to get imaginative on the perception of how we go about creating in the world.

Bear with me on this, because I’m talking about everyone here - not just those who consider themselves creative.

Our perceptions on creativity can be vastly different. Some might say it’s someone who knows how to draw well, or play an instrument with precision. Another might define it as someone who can express emotive acts of creation. Which one do you take as truth? 

It may just be a little of both- technical know-how merging with imaginative innovation, discernment and logic marrying emotive expression.

What I’m suggesting is that we, as in all of us, need to see ourselves as agents of change from the inside out. The woes of the world are not necessarily outside of us, but born from within us. We get to choose how we construct the realities in front of us. “Don’t like what you see, we can change that.”

There is a simple quote I will never forget that I read once by critical theorist Roland Barthes, “the image has the last word.”

Let’s go a step further with the words of poet Allen Ginsberg, “The warfare’s psychic now. Whoever controls the language, and the images, controls the race.”

We can start easy-  become aware of the words we choose to use when communicating and the images we not only imagine in our heads, but put out into the world. As writer Paul Levy says in his book, Wetiko: Healing the Mind Virus That Plagues Our World.

“Our creativity is not a mere hobby, a side line, something we should indulge in on our days off. The creative spirit is an essential part of our being, the life given oxygen to our soul.”

And our soul could sure use a little creative flexing right about now. Here are some ways we can begin: pay attention to how you perceive information, words and images that are managed and controlled by the outside world. Do you take these in as absolute truth? 

We can sense into our individual and collective unconscious by feeling into our intuition. We all have access to this ability. We can do this by listening deeply to our own inner inklings, dreams and callings. Especially the ones that seem outrageous! The ones that hold tiny seeds of new ways of being in the world.

As Paul Levy adds, “We can begin the practice of translating these changes into communicable language (verbal and non-verbal).” 

This is how we begin to heal the world.  

Thanks For Reading,

Lauren