"Jump" Copyright 2000 (Creativity Card in the Transformational Tarot) Aliyah Marr

A few years ago, I created a Tarot card deck, called Transformational Tarot; this deck was an interactive, online game that I created with the rather esoteric purpose of randomizing the titles to my paintings. By placing images on some cards, and words on others, the game was an experiment on meaning, adjacency, and context.

I never expected my deck to work as a Tarot deck (despite the name) and was surprised when people all over the world reacted favorably — some even told me that it was the best reading they had ever had. The game was created for a person doing their own reading, but a few years after I created the game I found myself reading my cards for people at a cafe.

It was a revealing experience; I discovered a great deal about myself, but more importantly, I discovered a disturbing trend among the people I read. Below is the article that I wrote in response.

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When was the last time you felt joy?”

This is a question I find myself asking people on occasion when they come to me for a Tarot reading. They may be asking about a love relationship, or about their job, but under the surface there is an essential sadness, a feeling of disconnection, of disorientation.

I can feel the empty space that they have inside as I read their cards. And the cards reveal the confusion they have: why am I this way? Is this all there is to life? Why do I feel as if I am a leaf in the wind? Where is the meaning in my life; where is the love?

Women in particular are taught to value relationships above all else: their lover, partner, children, etc. They are taught that their value is determined by the health of this relationship, and by the value that this person on the other end of the teeter-totter puts on them. Or rather, what they THINK the other person thinks of them. In fact, their mood for the day is based upon their evaluation of the last encounter with their loved one.

Love in this sense is a mask for a mirror of self-reflection. This kind of love values the time spent in a relationship as an investment, and sees love as a type of keenly monitored exchange. I hear people speaking of “their needs not being met” — as if someone else should be responsible for fulfilling their needs.

What if our happiness were not based upon these shifting sands? What if love were everywhere because joy is welling up from inside? I think that we can all intuit the rightness of this idea; even that we are all capable of feeling this way: in fact, it is our birthright.

I have an idea that the key to finding our love — our passion — lies in redefining what passion means. The heart yearns for passion because it is what feeds our soul; it keeps us young and vibrant. The heart senses this, and so it looks for it in the reflection of what our society calls love.

But before we can feel passion in our lives, we have to clear out all our self-hatred, our internal blocks. In order to do that we have to be still, empty, silent. We are so used to filling our silences that most of us cannot stand a moment without noise and our own internal chatter. A judge sits on our shoulder; when it is not judging other people, it is judging ourselves, which amounts to the same thing. So when I sense this longing, this emptiness in another, I feel compelled to ask: “when was the last time you felt joy?”. I have witnessed how this simple question affects people: they may not be able to remember — it is so far in the past. Or perhaps the judge that sits on their shoulder has blocked the memory. After all, it asks, what have you done to deserve joy? The judge doesn’t think you even have the right to have a memory of joy. Or perhaps the comparison of that memory to the present moment is too painful.

But, because joy is our natural state — our birthright — nearly everyone has had a moment of joy. It may be far in the past, in childhood; it is usually masked by a kind of emotional calcification of some kind. It is my belief that what usually happens is that the moment of joy happened just before an experience of judgment; such as a child who loves to sing and is shushed by an adult or by other children, telling her she sings badly and it hurts their ears.

So the mind in its shame and shock puts up a kind of protective barrier between the memory of the judgment and the person. I was told by my doctor once that the pineal gland — the master gland of the body that controls all the functions of the body and all the other glands — builds up a kind of crust with the experience of emotional stress. As a result, it cannot function freely, and eventually the whole body breaks down in disorder and disease.

When I ask the question, “when was the last time you felt joy”, the heart remembers, but the mind tries to protect the person from the other memory, the bad memory of judgment and disconnection. Most of the time, the answer is very simple: we can feel joy because it is our birthright. We deserve our own love, which is the same as love for life, and passion for what feeds our soul. It doesn’t matter what it is, only that it is ours; no one can take it from us, or withhold it, because it comes from within.

A personal passion is a kind of new kind of internal dialogue, one that is healthy instead of dysfunctional. Actually, at a high level, it is more than that; it is a way of dialoging with a higher source. I feel it when I work as an artist; I feel it when I surf; I feel it when I write, when I read Tarot. It feels like what they call channeling; it is the experience of opening up and allowing something larger to come through.

Why is it that we leave so little time for the things that give us real joy? The bills, the paperwork, the duties, work: these all take precedent. Joy is simplicity itself, it comes from simple things, it wells up inside from a core of silence within wherein resides the speck of energy that holds our portion of spirit. Joy connects us to all the other specks and to the universe of stars. In it we lose our sense of self without losing our identity or individuality. When was the last time you felt joy? What was the cause?

Trace it back to the beginning, and you will have discovered the secret of life and love.
Copyright February 8, 2006 Aliyah Marr

“We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.” Iris Murdoch

Dream Awake © 2002 Aliyah Marr

We all tend to forget how incredible this world is that we live in, how nature works seemlessly, effortlessly, and without any help. So, the artist is, when he works. There is no impediment between his desire to create and the art he creates.

As magic is in the world, so the artist in his most natural state is a magician. Whether painter, sculptor, musician, actor, writer, he uses the tools of his medium. As he creates, he reflects the magic of nature. Creative thought is natural to man, it is one of the fruits of the evolution of consciousness.

But we no longer live in the natural world. We live in a man-made world of our own creation, layered upon and dependent upon the natural world.

So what is reality? Is it what we see or what we envision? If it is what we see, then we are living only in the world that other people created. If it is what we envision, then we are living in the reality that we are creating today, with our thoughts in this very moment.

Mirrors reflecting into infinity.

Copyright 2009 Aliyah Marr

Field of Dreams © 2005 Aliyah Marr 5x10' mural

There is a well-known phenomenon called “persistence of vision” that describes how films and videos create the illusion of motion.

This visual illusion was discovered when Eadweard Muybridge successfully photographed a horse using a series of 24 cameras in 1878. The cameras were arranged along a track parallel to the horse’s, and each of the camera shutters was controlled by a trip wire which was triggered by the horse’s hooves. They were 21 inches apart to cover the 20 feet taken by the horse stride, taking pictures at one thousandth of a second. (Wikipedia, The History of Film)

A film is just a strip of still images. When it is run through a projector at 24 frames per second, the still images seem to move. The trick is in our minds, not in our eyes or even in the film or projector. Our mind has the ability to string together the still images into an illusion that fools our minds.

It’s amazing to me how the tools that we create can give us insight into perception and into the way our minds work. We can even examine the discoveries that they reveal to understand how we can change ourselves through art.

Reality is only in our minds. We are really just one step behind the pure experience of being alive.

Like a film that looks like it is moving only when run, our idea of ourselves is composed of static frames, moments in time, frozen ideas of ourselves that seem to have a reality and movement only because we believe in the illusion of our thoughts. Allow for the idea that your definition of yourself may not be a static thing, nor unchangeable, nor does it have to be the same from this moment to the next. Tomorrow, choose another image, another set of thoughts, run them through the projector of your mind, and change to please yourself. Use art to do it.

It’s the persistence of your vision, the quality of your images that creates another work of art, or another reality, which is just a dream made real. The illusion of movement and flow steps over the boundaries of time and space into the eternal now.

Copyright 2009 Aliyah Marr

Sound of Longing Copyright 2001 Aliyah Marr

Every now and then I get it. If I can just drop more of my baggage, there would truly be no limits to what I can do or be. It is natural for us to be joyful creators; I don’t know about you, but I can’t create a new future if I am dragging around the past with me. We all do it: we have our memories, our “slings and arrows that flesh is prey to”, and even our prized prejudices that we cannot change.

How many of us define ourselves so well today that we don’t have a chance at changing our present. We do in in innumerable ways: I like this, I do that, I am this, I am not that. Who cares? All these things amount to is a belief system about ourselves and who we are.

In the end, most of us end up being merely a collection of personal preferences and a storehouse for painful or limiting experiences (or rather interpretations) of those experiences. For me, most of these preferences are just academic arguments in favor of our own limitations.

When I was in New York, I used to walk to the subway on 14th street. On the sidewalk somewhere between 6th and 8th avenue, there is a spray painted stencil that implored me to “Drop The Rock”. I have been told that the slogan references the politics of the penal system, which is certainly in line with my interpretation.

Dropping the rock is letting go of the past. It is not about forgiveness, or even about understanding, it is allowing the ego to become fluid, to allow the mind to “unclench” its hold on our spirit. It is not denial, it is not revision; rather it is surrender.

When you realize that no one is asking you to carry around your past experiences and preferences, beliefs, etc. you can finally drop that huge rock. Now doesn’t that make you feel light? Doesn’t that make you want to dance?

Copyright 2006 Aliyah Marr

An etching of a mammoth, called the Patriarch besides finger flutings by women.

“Most scholars have assumed that all prehistoric artists were male, but new evidence suggests women and even young girls produced at least some cave drawings, according to a study in the latest Oxford Journal of Archaeology…”

Read the rest of the article on Discovery.com by Jennifer Viegas:

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/slideshows/women-cave-art.html

Did you make the assumption that Paleolithic (and perhaps all ancient) art was made by males? I did, and I wonder now whether my assumption was made for me by male historians, and by the lingering prejudice of this culture, truly as they say, “Anonymous was a woman.”

"The False Mirror," Rene Magritte

Is the eye of the artist a lens that simply records what it sees like the lens of a camera? How much of what we “see” is due to our filter of experiences and is subject to our emotional/ mental interpretation?

My mother believed that it was the eye that made the artist, that if an eye from an artist were transplanted to another person, that person would be an artist. I always believed otherwise: that it is the mind, and the openness of the artist’s mind that defines someone as an artist.

Now that I have explored the artist’s path thus far, I know now that  it is not the eye that sees. The eye is not the lens of the camera of the mind. Science has proven that the eye sees more than camera lens can, because the eye sees over time and can adjust to minute or major differences in light and focus. What we “see” is a composite image that is assembled in the brain. But more than this, we are seeing what we feel as much as, or more than what is actually in front of us.

People who have been blind most of their lives cannot adjust to the information from eyes suddenly restored to vision. Dr. Oliver Sacks once wrote in An Anthropologist on Mars of a patient whose sight was restored after something like 30 years of blindness. The patient was unable to interpret what he saw, in fact, his brain was not adapted to receive the input from eyes blind since childhood.

Another case study from the same book cited a painter who suddenly lost all sense of color in a freak car accident. The part of his brain that registered color was damaged. Everything looked like a black and white photograph; he was unable to eat because food looked like it was made out of concrete. Although the experience was disturbing to the artist for some time, eventually he adjusted, becoming a sculptor. The man was still an artist because at his core he was an artist. Circumstances simply had changed the type of input, when he adapted to this minor change, he actually preferred the colorless state; offered a chance to have his sense of color restored, he refused.

What an artist actually sees is less important that what she chooses to see.

In a way, the artist aspires only to be what any other creature is; the natural expression of who they are. As a bird sings because that is the way of the bird, so an artist paints because that is the natural expression of the artist. There is no other way to be, in my view. So the eye of the artist is the artist because the artist no longer is separate from what she views; her every action and creation is her art, no longer separate from her self.

Copyright 2006-2009 Aliyah Marr

“The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is ‘man’ in a higher sense — he is ‘collective man,’ a vehicle and molder of the unconscious psychic life of mankind.”

— Carl Jung, Psychology and Literature, 1930

What makes you happy? Have you ever thought about it? Here are a few of the things that make me happy:

"Cumulous Clouds" from the Near/Far Series © 2004 Aliyah Marr

The ocean sparkling in the morning.

The way people dress their toddlers.

Christmas lights on houses at night.

Late night conversation and wine in front of a fireplace in the depths of winter.

Skirts, sandals, and dresses in the summer.

The sound and vibration of a cat’s purr.

A dog who is glad to see me, and sits on my foot.

A child’s laughter.

Surfing in warm water on a sunny day.

A good meal with people I love.

Flirting shamelessly.

Contagious laughter.

Sharing what I love with others.

What makes you happy? Share it with me, share it with those you love, and let the good news about the simple art of happiness circle the world in its arms.

Copyright 2009 Aliyah Marr
(Creative Commons – share with others, include ©)

I found the following story very inspirational; a story about creative thinking and personal power.

Unsung Fortune: A rich man’s secret

March 26, 2007, Philadelphia Enquirer

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/20070326_ Unsung_fortune_ _A_rich_mans_ secret.html

Hal Taussig wears baggy jeans and fraying work shirts that Goodwill might reject. His shoes have been resoled three times. At age 81, he doesn’t own a car. He performs errands and commutes to the office by bicycle. And he has given away millions. Given the fortune that Taussig has made through Untours, his unique travel business, and has given away through the Untours Foundation, you could call him the Un-millionaire. If he so chose, he could be living in a Main Line mansion and driving a Mercedes.

But he considers money and what he calls “stuff,” beyond what he needs to survive, a burden, an embarrassment. In many respects, he’s a 21st-century Thoreau. “Let your capital be simplicity and contentment, ” the sage of Walden Pond wrote. “Those are my sentiments precisely,” says Taussig, who has three children, five grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren .

He directs the Untours Foundation, into which he pours all his profits – $5 million since 1992. The money is used to make low-interest loans to ventures and projects that help the needy and jobless – from a craft store in Hanoi to a home-health- care cooperative in Philadelphia. “I invest in entrepreneurial efforts to help poor people leverage themselves out of poverty.”

“In America, we worship success,” he says. “It’s a shoddy ethic that leads us to value who we are by what we are.” The motto of the Untours Foundation is “a hand up, not a handout.” It provides low-interest loans, here and abroad, to create jobs, build low-income housing, and support fair-trade products: goods such as coffee that are sold at a price that guarantees producers and workers a fair wage and decent livelihood.

http://www.wanttoknow.info/a-unsung-fortune-rich-mans-secret

In 1999, they won an award from Paul Newman and John F. Kennedy, Jr., for having the Most Generous Business in the United States.

The Untours Foundation provides low interest loans here and abroad. Loans are issued to individuals and organizations in order to create jobs among disenfranchised populations, build low-income housing, and support Fair Trade Certified products all through the most environmentally friendly means possible. (Fair Trade certification guarantees a comprehensive form of development including fair prices and wages to producers and workers, land farmed in sustainable ways, women holding key decision making roles, and the list goes on.) We look for projects that are innovative and replicable.

The foundation’s interest rate on loans is one of the lowest in the world: normally the U.S. inflation rate. Most loan recipients have no collateral or track record necessary to borrow money through conventional lending institutions. By giving loans and not grants, the foundation provides a “hand up” and not a “hand out”.

Paul Newman said of the foundation: “Untours’ giving is creative in every sense of the word. Their low-interest loans literally create jobs among the hard-core unemployed and housing in decaying urban centers.”

Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream has said of Hal Taussig and the foundation: “What makes Hal so special is that he combines real kindness and compassion with that practical business side, and that, I think, is the key to making a difference.”

The foundation’s portfolio is quite eclectic. Most loans are under $50,000.

http://www.untoursfoundation.org/

Here are ten more quotes from Parallel Mind, The Art of Creativity. Feel free to pass them along and help me spread the word that creativity is for everyone. Put a quote at the bottom of your email, tweet them, or link with me on Facebook or Linkedin.

It has come to my attention that several people have been putting my material on their blogs without linking back to my original article. They are doing this to increase their content for search engines without paying the author for this content. Please don’t misuse content creators this way. It is one thing to quote someone, and quite another to use their material without paying them or linking back to the original source. This is illegal — an infringement of copyright laws. Please desist.

“An artist doesn’t wait for the perfect tool or circumstances; he can make art from anything and anywhere.” — Aliyah Marr

“The artist sees inspiration where others might see only a limitation or an obstacle.” — Aliyah Marr

“The creative person has a lifelong romance with knowledge.” — Aliyah Marr

“The creative person dares to ask the simple question.” — Aliyah Marr

“An artist passionately loves his subject; every detail & sensation.” — Aliyah Marr

“A creative person loves the pursuit of knowledge, not its possession.” — Aliyah Marr

“Creative thinking cannot live in a critical environment.” — Aliyah Marr

“In order to provide the necessary environment for inspiration, you have to allow for anything.” — Aliyah Marr

“One of the functions of art is to bring the viewer to a different perspective than the one he had before.” — Aliyah Marr

“The creative mood is one of ease, lightness and play.” — Aliyah Marr

Copyright 2008-2009 Aliyah Marr