Monday, 28 July 2014

Reflections on Beauty from the AoC Group in South Africa 26 July 2014

What do we find beautiful?

Naughty little kiddies are beautiful, because they have imagination, light and life.

Nature, art, cupcakes and food, the sea is beautiful, and so are people and animals.

Beautiful art makes me inspired.  I appreciate inner beauty - when you hear about kindness and empathy, that inspires me - not necessarily to create, but to live life, and to give back.

Walking on the mountain, just off the path, there was a young couple watching the sun go down - totally at ease and at peace, and it was lovely to see people getting nurture from nature, and being recharged by it.  It made the whole world feel complete for that moment.

Beauty is subjective, but it can appear anywhere, in touch, beetles, birds, but also the sharing of it with other people, which deepens interactions and means that it radiates out in layers.

Beauty as encouragement

Performance is encouraging, not necessarily to do, but also to watch.

Dancing eg Step Up 4, makes me feel like I'd like to dance.  If I could sing like some people do, I'd sing forever.

Live music, jazz, intimacy between the performer and the audience, passion, melody, flowing and recognizing the songs.

Music. like the earth, has a rhythm, day and night, and the ocean has a rhythm, and these rhythms are in music too.  And I'm unable to not respond to it.  It calls you to do something, to interact with it, and you want to connect.  There is a beat like hooves, or a heart beat.  It inspires imagination.  We connect with the music and become absorbed, taken away into a hypnotic state.  Music makes me want to write down visions, always nature based and forest related.  Squirrels pattering, water, leaves rustling.  Clouds and waterfalls.  Landscapes.

Poems have sounds, rhythm, metre, and I can't believe people can write so well.  I want to put it on the wall.  Rituals, holidays and coming together feel beautiful to me too, and particularly when there is ceremony.

Appreciating beauty

When we notice beauty, it makes you wonder about the fast pace of your life, driving everywhere, where the world zooms by.  When you walk, you see flowers and plants and walking makes the word different.  You see flowers like highly charged stars.  Fur lined leaves on plants.

Made things like buildings, clothes, textures, are a form of creativity to me.  I think they show expression and humanity.  Old buildings, new buildings, architecture and jewellery, and houses in New York, old houses with trees, and the city centre with tall buildings show a mix and show how the past lives with us.

Fynbos in flower on the mountain have pink flowers like bells, flowers are sometimes dry and you can rustle them.  Some plants look like ballerinas, then there are snow drops, daffodills.  Leaves can be smallish and sandpapery with a strong aroma and a herbal, peppery smell.  Some look like hundreds of pointing shields, and some have textures like silk and velvet.

There's all of the effort and love which go into art and beauty.  Everything is the result of someone's work and care.  In nature it comes from a creator, way beyond what anybody can do, but what people do is remembered through eras of history because it matters so much.

Poetry and metaphor help you relate to the imagery and see connections between different things.  The world becomes linked.  Hearts become wild animals, and it helps you connect to the wildness and soul within you.

Openness to beauty - what makes us open?

Beauty is just there, and I respond to it, unless I am frustrated.  But even then, my senses are always switched on, and so when I smell something, it gets me out of what I am thinking.  Smells are about memory.  But I think beauty is a part of us, because it even comes into dreams, even though dreams are just images.  I dream of flying and seeing beautiful things.  In real life, beauty is sensual, touch impacts upon our senses.  We have lives where you have to fit into society and work, buy food, and you have a sequence or rhythm of events, but beauty pulls you out of automatic life, and a different sequence comes into being, outside of mundane thinking, and gets you lost in the world of senses for a little while.

Walking makes me open to beauty, because I take time for it instead of going somewhere for a purpose.  Life is what happens when you are making other plans.  Birds look at you with black eyes, while eating fruit.  Plants rattle. But you have to be respectful, because if you just put your face into the plants, you can frighten little spiders who live there.  You have to move slowly and be careful.

Walking clubs are a way of sharing, but sometimes people talk about work.  So being alone, clouds, wind, mountain, sound of birds, self crunching on the ground, smell of damp earth, the sun on the rocks, places where the water runs down.  Frogs come out and croak sometimes.  Secluded areas have beautiful sounds.  There is green moss.  But I am also able to see beauty when I look at the patterns on hot, sun baked earth.

Shapes and textures open my heart.  I think there is beauty in a cup of coffee somebody makes for you, and then food, and an appreciation of having food.  Detail fascinates me.  But so do fruits, chocolates, strawberries and pomegrannettes.  The body shop, texture, drawing with texture, glitter, having fun.  When I watch people create with care it makes me curious.  I know people can go beyond how things are and into what could be happening.  Becuase there are things in life we don't know yet, and I don't know what they are.  But I know we can do things which we feel would be right, even if we know it isn't in place yet.

I enjoy creativity, people are interesting, and what they create is the result of perseverance and hard work.  People have so many creative ideas, textures, and they create something for everyone.  Little things, books, writing, jokes on books which make me smile, make me feel open.  I like alternative worlds and difference.

Beauty, life and capitalism

I think it's hard to put a price on imagination.  I feel uncomfortable about that, because we kind of say what inventions are right by giving an abstract value to them.  And the things people make, and the efforts they put into them feel far more valuable than the money they get.  I don't know what we can do, or if we should barter.  We could exchange creativity, effort or work rather than money.

Beauty can't be possessed.  You don't have to take it or have it, because it is right where it is.  If you pick the flower from the plant and you take it, you stop it growing and being in the right place.  So letting go of ownership/possession is important.

Appreciation of beauty feels more important than having things to take and store away.  If you buy it, maybe you just put it away and want something else.  So somebody put in an effort, and you don't really appreciate it.

The idea of buying and selling animals feels wrong.  You should prove your own worthiness to share in their lives.  We can't own animals, we can only be their companions.  But people sell animals.  Puppies belong to their mothers, not to people.  And they don't belong to new owners either, they belong to themselves.  Swapping money for animals and so changing animals for stuff feels wrong.  Everybody who has an animal should honour them, not feel as though they own them.  But buying animals feels wrong.

Animals as food, when they are living creatures with a soul feels strange to me.  There are the bushmen ceremonies with prayer, which feels as though they value the animal.  But factory farms and processing animals by making them live in prison style means treating animals badly, and without empathy and care.  If we knew animals we would never be able to see them as just part of a system which was about killing them or eating them.  We turn them into objects.  We can't be aware of what we are doing and then still eat the body of animals with ease.

People aren't different to animals.  We can't communicate with other living beings, only ourselves.  It's just we're clever.  And we can abuse that cleverness.  We live in a world where we value cleverness but I think we need to live in a world where we value kindness.

Wednesday, 23 July 2014

'Return of the Goddess' By Edward C Whitmont- quoting Colin Turnbull, in Africa, with the pygmies : From Nicci Attfield




One night in particular will always live for me, because that night I think I learned just how far we civilized human beings have drifted from reality.  The moon was full, so that the dancing had gone on for longer than usual.  Just before going to sleep, I was standing outside my hut when I heard a curious noise from the nearby children's bopi (playground).  This surprised me, because at nighttime, the pygmies generally never set foot outside the main camp.  I wandered over to see what it was.

There, in the tiny clearing, splashed with silver, was the sophisticated Kenge, clad in black cloth, adorned with leaves, with a flower stuck in his hair.  He was all alone, dancing around and singing softly to himself as he gazed up at the tree-tops.

Now Kenge was the biggest flirt for miles, so, after watching for a while, I came into the clearing and asked, jokingly, why he was dancing alone.  He stopped, turned slowly around and looked at me as though I was the biggest fool he had ever seen; and he was plainly surprised by my stupidity.

"But I'm not dancing alone," he said.  "I am dancing with the forest, dancing with the moon." Then with the utmost unconcern, he ignored me and continued his dance of love and life.

By contrast, the author considers this testimony by the elderly Yeats:

Seventy years I have lived
No ragged beggar-man
Seventy years I have lived
Seventy years man and boy
And I have never danced for joy.

Thursday, 17 July 2014

Pan and the Concept of the Soul by Nicci Attfield

Ian McCallum is a jungian therapist who works in Cape Town.  He's written a book called Ecological Intelligence, which looks at the need for nature in the lives of people, and he looks at the way the divide between nature and people can be healed by seeing our deep evolutionary roots, and awakening to the ecological intelligence which exists within us.  Ian McCalllum believes that our connection to nature is a part of our genetic make up, which is why we feel as though natural places are within our blood.

Although western culture shapes us, and is a part of us, Ian McCallum calls for us to remember Pan, the pagan god and the personification of all of nature.  Pan was playful.  His name means 'All', and he was cast aside and said to have been killed off with the birth of Christ.  Many years later, when spirit and body became divided, James Hillman would say that soul lost it's place on earth.  Soul, the earthy, moist and feminine aspect of life was replaced by the more masculine perception of spirit.  However, in his image of the soul's code, as encapsulated by the acorn, Hillman shows that we are meant to grow down into the earth, as well as up into the heavens.  The loss of soul brings pain to people.  Soul is earth bound, and McCallum explains that in order to heal the wounds of spirit, we need to access soul.

The modern feminist movements, as well as environmental movements are said to be a rebellion against masculine values, and the repression of soul.  However, Ian McCallum explains that Pan, the pagan god of the wild (and of soul) has not been killed off at all.  Instead, he has hidden within the very depths of the human psyche.  He remains within the shadow, and his repression is symbolized by the stiffled instinct to spontaneity, and the raw or wild parts of the psyche.  Civilization has subdued Pan, and our connection to the wild nature, the fields and the earth has been stifled, but not killed.

Ian McCallum explains:

 It's time to shed our prejudices against things that are wild, untamed or unconverted, more especially our animal nature.  Historically, almost every animal - from the fabulous beasts, the phoenix, sphinx, centaur, to birds, sea creatures, insects and domestic animals - has in some way, struck a cord in the human psyche.  How can we forget them?  (p102-103).

Link to James Hillman:  psychology is afraid of soul:  www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFng0WCJ8X8

Ian McCallum:  Ecological Intelligence:  Rediscovering ourselves in nature.  Africa Geographic.

James Hillman:  Soul Code.

Lesiba Baloyi:  Psychology and Psychotherapy redefined from the African Experience.  Doctoral Thesis.  Unisa.

Monday, 7 April 2014

Muizenburg South Africa 5 April 2014







Agents of Change and the way the process breaks down the divides has been very inspiring (and even made a slight crisis in a way).  I have never experienced people feeling so open and free to talk, or sharing the bonds between us in such an open way.  I can only think it is about breaking out of work/social identity.  It is something I would love to keep doing, because the process has massive impacts on my life and the way that I want to see and relate.  A person in our group spoke about the very gentle non-invasive process last time, and it is that way, but it's also the emotional meaning which gets shared without any defense, and the way the public interact so freely which has been so inspiring...Nicci 5 June 2014 


Global warming is part of the earth's cycle but there is a need to adapt our day to day activities.  
Change is inevitable but  we reflect on why and what will happen.  So there is a need for awareness, but also an explanation, if this then that, action and reaction.  There's a ripple effect.  So the idea of social sculpture creating an awareness without imposing ideas needs to happen on a more regular basis.  It's almost like a silent protest (in effect it is).  The sculpture element would be much stronger if more people participate.  Eye contact is an important skill to get people to interact, because people are inherently shy!



 For me, this process was very different to the last one.  I enjoyed facilitating.  The thoughts which came up, based on the theme, how do I work in the world, connected to vulnerability.

In part, today related to a recent twitter debate where a writer of satire was called misogynist, and the vulnerability I associated with putting work out and my own feelings of vulnerability at getting involved in the debate.

Wearing the very bright orange jacket I felt both protected and exposed at the same time.

I'd positioned us out I the way of the main beach and the surfers, and I wondered if this was related to my own feelings of vulnerability.

We were. Very accepted by the public, who were shy to approach us, but also congratulated is on our efforts.  We felt very welcome, though the public was as shy as I was.  All in all, there was a sense, for me, of shyness, interaction and acceptance, which recurred throughout the process.




The idea of global warming is overwhelming.  You, one, versus the billions of people out there;  can we as a collective change?  Will my singular being have an effect (globally)?  Yes, butterfly effect does happen far enough - does it effect enough people; enough to change them to make a difference?

People are shy.  Children are less uninhibited and more curious.  Although I think of the above, it does not upset me or make me despondent because I believe in God; who is in charge of everything.  That does not make me irresponsible but even more with a sense of responsibility.  If someone gives you a gift, do you go out and destroy it?  I don't.

On the beach I realized my insignificant size in the world and how small are my related worries.  At the same time there was the realization that small things can have big impacts and so I must be cautious of my impact on the world.





I contributed to the project/sculpture by taking photographs.  That way I can bring in the skills I have.  It is interesting to take photos of the members of the social sculpture as each of them think in their own and different ways.  I understand better how tall 3m actually is by trying to fit in the poles in the photographs.  3 m is. Very big difference.

Everything is very quiet and peaceful.  All I can see is the wind, the sea and the playful screams of children.



One member of the public thought we were life savers and asked if he could swim.  We became aware of the power of jackets/uniform from this.

Person one:  this is a capitalist world.  We rely on fossil fuels.  I worry about political will in a political world.  People are capable of creating change, but politicians and commerce block possibility.

2). Is global warming a natural process, like the ice age, or do people add to it?

3). Global warming film festival showed me the dangers of the ecological state of our world.  I've started recycling and dividing my rubbish.  If everybody does a little bit, all the parts make Iona whole.  But I hope the water level doesn't rise too quickly because I don't want to move out of Cape Town.

The thing with nature, it needs to be really bad before people take notice and start changing.  It needs to effect them directly, eg flood.

Throwing out our fridges helps.  There has been a nice age before.  Why should there not be another one?

Well done, it is a great job you are doing!

All Photographs were taken by Danny Attfield.



Thank you to each Agent of Change for collaborating and to Nicci for shaping and guiding this AoC process in South Africa.

http://nicciattfield.wordpress.com/2014/04/05/agents-of-change-project-south-africa/

http://nicciattfield.wordpress.com/2014/05/31/the-spaces-between-us-how-do-we-work-in-the-world/

Tuesday, 15 October 2013

MAP 2013, Eastfield College, Dallas Texas, 7 October 2013




 -Mine started off with a sense of I was sure I knew everything in my life and that there were only one/two routes possible for life. Within your explanation, “potential-thinking process,” I caught myself believing everything I have only been taught. I came to the realization that all choices/situations have limited to unlimited opportunities. At first, I questioned, “What made him believe he knows what he is speaking about?” I had always seen point-of-views from my military aspect and never truly my own. After seeing that, I questioned everything I have ever learned and how it was set up to “herd” me through assembly lines to work until I die, which reinforces that I am just a number. I asked myself if it was something I truly believed in, or was it psychological warfare to say it until I gave in to believing it? Then, I began looking at everyone else. I began seeing numbers, instead of people, built to keep this machine well oiled. I began doing everything that everyone has ever tried to prevent me from doing because I knew that I had done my best for him or her, but lost my sight. Now, my sight is back and my dwindling flame has been refueled to help any and every one who has their hand up, whether they know it or not, and fight for humanity as a whole again . By Gerrod









Because of my current viewpoint on climate change I felt that the AOC process perhaps would not affect my thinking in a profound way. Throughout the process I tried to connect directly to my concerns.  I know that climate change is imminent and that it will have catastrophic effects, so for me this wasn't like having a lightbulb go off.   However, the process of donning the life preservers, holding the 3 meter sticks, and writing in the AOC journal assisted me in creating a very direct and bodily connection to the fact of sea levels rising and the potential effects.  It wasn't difficult to come to a realization about climate change or to know that it affects me on a deep level.  What was difficult was the act of remaining open and connected to my concerns, an integral part of  the AOC process.  I've since realized for me that the in order to connect to my conerns I need to remain present with both my mind and my body.  This project has driven me to strive for connectedness and being present. By Iris.




Tuesday, 16 August 2011

AOC Portland Milo State Park, Chinook Camp, Lewis and Clark Eco-phsycology group 16 August 2011

























































 I have to say that I do not have a lasting impression of the exercise.  I could have benefitted from more frontloading about the relationship between visioning a change in the world and the thought I was to hold onto.  I did not write anything, as it was to positionally awkward to hold the depth gauge and hold a notebook.  Instead I preferred to simply hold the gauge, often changing my hand position to see how this felt (I liked holding it high, like a staff).  The most interesting thing I did was change my field of view.  I was on the edge of the group and would periodically change positions so I was looking at the group, and then facing out away from the group, so all I could see was nature.  It was interesting because it elicited feelings of being alone, versus amongst a group.  So, this is what I have for you.  I hope this feedback is useful.  Feel free to ask me any follow up questions.
Matt