The Gaze

Thu, 4/15/21 7:02AM • 50:40

Inspiration

How does the work that we're doing in meditation impact conversations around culture and institutional transformation – and more specifically, how does it relate to how we look at art, documents, and even language?

I am reminded today of a conversation that I had when I was in college with a friend of mine, who was an English major. It was the season when the MFAs were starting to put up their work, and we were going to see the art show together. As we were walking through the halls of the art school through a series of dense paintings, I remember my friend stopping in front of one of them and just standing there for a moment, by herself. Afterwards, as we were walking along the sidewalk, she turned to me and, much like confessing, she said “Jessica, I don't know what to do in front of a painting...” Compared to the media that we consume these days, standing in front of a painting can feel so... ancient, from a bygone era like the 17th century.

Intro

Before I became trained in meditation, I was trained in looking at paintings for long periods of time. The way that your eye navigates a painting, image or exterior object in front of you is analogous to learning to direct that gaze inwards. For me, it’s almost a prerequisite. When you scan the body – sweeping through top/down, down/up –  you are learning to look slowly, to take in the body’s landscape. 

Over the course of my own work with meditation and art, I've developed some tools that bring the yogic inner gaze practices to exterior objects. One of these is based on the practice of trataka, which comes from the yogic tradition, where it’s considered a cleansing tool. In trataka, you use a single-pointed gaze to focus on a candle flame, virtuous image, or exterior object as a way to cleanse your mind by cleansing your perception. In this practice you apply energy to the translation of visual objects, and using your gaze, you can transcend the elements. 

To explain how this works, I’ll share with you what it was like for me to go through the process of becoming literate in ancient languages. When I was teaching Sanskrit, I would have students hold up a piece of dense Sanskrit and just look at it in an open-eyed meditation, and guide them through the process by which your perception – the energy of your perception – can change as you gaze at the text. For most people, Sanskrit looks like a beautiful graphic (or maybe a cool tattoo). Before learning how to read Sanskrit, just looking at it on a page, for me, felt like I was hitting my head on a brick – dense and immovable. But as I started learning, little elements started to emerge, that I could make out as letters within the image, and those elements started to connect into patterns, forming words and sentences – so that gradually, the image became text. 

Over the course of eight years, as I continued to learn to read this language, and then to translate it, I felt my mind go through a process of transcending the elements. In the ancient transmutation of elements, you go from earth element where it’s a dense kind of looking, to the water element where it starts to flow, to the fire element where there's analysis, to the air element where there's a lightness and a fluency, to the space element where there's a sense of the whole container. Finally, you reach the sixth element, which is consciousness. Through this sequence, you reach a mastery of that which you're gazing at. 

Meditation

Choose an image

Find a painting in your room, an object on your altar, or even a photograph of your ancestor. You can also use an image on your phone, but make it full screen so that there are no distractions. If you choose to keep your eyes closed – it is more difficult – but you can just lie down and bring to mind a favorite painting you're familiar with, or sculpture, or installation. 

Settle the gaze

Start to position your body in a place where it can settle. As your attention settles on this outer object of focus, feel your body and breath settle. As an act of transcendence, prepare to release your gaze from its mode of consumption.

Let your gaze settle on the image,

Slowing your relationship to your perception of it

Along with your gaze, feel your body settle, and your breath settle

Feel all three arriving simultaneously

Become like Earth

Allow your eyes to embody the quality of earth, and let the quality of earth to inform your gaze. As you do this, realize that your gaze is an expression of your body.

Allow your gaze to become like the quality of earth

Let it be grounded, stable, slow, rooted, and rhythmic

Feel this quality of earth arising in both your body and your gaze 

Like you are earth, all the qualities of earth

And look upon this painting like you’re walking on the earth

Slowly moving through it, step by step

Become like Water

As you deepen into the quality of earth, you can let the quality of earth soften and become more liquid, as you allow the earth to transmute into water. You use your gaze and this outer object to generate bodily expressions of fluidity simultaneously, and go from walking on earth to swimming in water,  

Sink into the quality of earth, then feel start to  soften, to melt, and dissolve 

Let your gaze become more fluid now, more water-like

Allow your gaze to move across the painting like water

Notice where it wants to move, or if it wants to stay focused on a single point

Dive into the painting, like it's suddenly made of water

Let the edges of the painting be a frame for the body of water

Start swimming in it, as if it were a pool or lake

Sometimes the water flows, and sometimes it is still

As your gaze moves across, or stays on one point,

Feel how you transition from flowing water to resting water

Now, as if you were in a Roman bath, with different kinds of pools

Visit the cold plunge, hotspot, or whirlpool sections of the image – go back and forth,

Allowing the contours of the image to feel like water, to invite you in 

And you go in and soak – you steep in it, like a tea bag

Feel how you are less separate from the water now, 

And notice how your gaze is simultaneously a full body experience

As you swim through the image, feel a new kind of mastery developing

You are swimming and navigating, more fish-like now

Fire

If you've ever been underwater, and you see a sunbeam pierce the water, there’s part of the swimming pool that's lit. We’re going to step into that illumination, and allow the water to transform into the element of fire. Fire is heat, light, and the energy of digestion and of an analysis that is fully embodied, and  transcends the ordinary analysis that is based in the head  

As you steep and you soak, notice a ray of light piercing the water

And let this light arise in you, this light of insight,

And letting your gaze create threads of light through the piece

You notice things – an edge lights up

Now allow your gaze to become fire itself 

As with fire, let your gaze pierce, heat, cut, cook, and burn

A criticality is arising – but it’s not from a critical place

Rather, feel how it arises organically, from illuminated insight

As your gaze moves across the image, you catch sparks – the sparks of creativity 

And you allow your whole self to be lit up, to catch the fire 

Feel the passion of the person who made the image burning through it

And let your gaze trace the countless hours spent, in every brushstroke or pixel

As you receive the fire, you feel it light you up from inside – 

This is the kindling of creative energy

Air

As you allow the fire to spread across the image and take flight, you take flight, transmuting fire into air. There is a sense of freedom. And there’s a sense of familiarity, because it’s a familiar landscape

Now allow the fire to take flight and follow the flames up into the air

As they rise into the air, you let your imagination also take flight

Let yourself start to sweep and swoop – like a bird in the sky

You fly through the sky, and allow your gaze to soar

Soar like a hawk, dipping in and out, soaring above a landscape you now know

And as your gaze soars, you feel a sense of freedom

You're in the air, high above, but your gaze remains ever so sharp,

Sharp enough to see the tiniest of movements on the ground

Space

As you feel a sense of freedom, you develop a cosmic perspective of the stars, transmute air into ether. 

As your gaze soars and flies, you fly even higher, pulling out so high,

You go from a bird flying, to becoming a star in the sky

Consciousness

From space, you enter into the realm of insight, of wisdom. Some systems have five elements and leave the sixth element implied. Consciousness is the sixth element – the unspoken element that allows for the perception of the other five. Your gaze and experience of the image has been part of your journey to consciousness. 

As you shine in the sky, just allow yourself to be held by the cosmos, by culture 

And bask in consciousness, in sheer awareness

Hold consciousness in its sheer and present form – and stay there for a few moments, 

Realize that you've received the transmission of the art object

Closing

You've taken the image into sacred memory – allowing it to move from consciousness in your body, to the space of your body memory. You arrive back where you started – earth,  and reflect on how every expression of art, of creativity, enhances the very ground of being, of being human. 

Close your eyes now, and feel the image like a bright light in your mind

Feel how it’s now a part of your inner journey, as it was for the artist who made it

Feel it in your breath, in the air, in the fire as you processed it, 

As you’ve lit it up with your insight, and as it has lit you up with its light

Feel how your body has been soaking in it, and feel yourself firmly grounded

As you allow all that you've received to now find its way back down to earth 

Find the ground, the ground at the base of every canvas

Find how you've built this entire journey of perception on the ground of your very being 

Notice how the practice of seeing has enhanced your grounding in being human

And anchor your humanity 

Om ah hum. 

Om ah hum. 

Om ah hum.

From The Daily Muse Meditation Series

copyright Make Conscious LLC do not reproduce without permission.

spoken by Jessica Kung Dreyfus

edited by Faith Chiang and OTTER.ai