When Zen master Su Bong came one year for his retreat he had his usual bag of presents for Tongo and his family. Tongo was digging out thistles near the earth dam. Su Bong gave him the gifts. Tongo thanked him, picked up his spade and started digging again. Su Bong was so impressed. ‘That’s the way to live your life,’ he said that night. ‘You don’t need monk’s robes, just say thank you and get on with your work.’

As I reach the last few pages of the book, the tumble drier sounds its song. Whereas normally I might be tempted to “just quickly finish the last few pages”, I put down the book and go to the tumble drier.  I empty it, fold his socks and place them in the drawer.

As I do so, I fully realize that this is what I am doing. 

This might sound simple. It is and it is not. It is mundane and it is profound.

After closing the drawer, I decide to tweet.  

I fold his socks, then place them in the drawer. #thismoment

— Linda Hollier (@lindahollier) May 7, 2013

Continuing the musings I have been engaging in lately on the usage of Twitter to promote mindfulness, I am struck once again by the incredible potential it has to aid one in becoming aware of what is happening right now.  Often when I watch and note to myself what I am experiencing it sounds like a tweet!  

I return to my book, finish it, and then decide to write this blog.  

In preparation, I pick up my ipad, read many of the tweets with the hashtag #thismoment and then google the concept too.  

I discover an article from two days ago, in which the CEO of Twitter, Dick Costolo, urges graduates to “Be In This Moment”.

Ironically, Costolo didn’t learn this lesson while at Twitter, a platform which in many ways embodies the very philosophy of “being in this moment.” He learned it as an improvisational comedy student in Chicago before, as Costolo puts it, “the internet happened.”

Listening to the video incorporated into the article, I am aware of synchronicity, and then realize it is always there but we do not always see it. 

Making my way to my laptop, my mind begins to wander and I note its wanderings. 

I recall the the piece I once wrote entitled, “The Dalai Lama and Synchronicity” after I saw him in The Hague. I think about impermanence and then recall that I noticed upon my return to Dubai last week that the old "Hard Rock Cafe" is no longer standing. That blog must be about a year old.

Not wanting to hold onto these wanderings too long, I note them, let them go, and then sit down to type.

The mind throws in one last attempt - Remember the blog “Booma Dollies and Onions”; you wrote this piece about watching the mind! Seated at my laptop by now, I look it up, but its message very quickly brings me back to this moment. 

And so I write this blog and you read it. Are we separate? Are we different? Are we one? Are we the same?

Or is there a point where we can go beyond labels and opinions? A point where we can see differences but move past them? That is the point when the wonders of life make themselves known without a need for understanding. 

Right now, this moment, the words appear on my screen as my fingers tap out the letters.  Your eyes move across the page as you read.

I turn to glance out the window

The Burj Khalifa stands tall

The sun is shining.

I discovered that Bloomingdales’s Home is hosting a Design Days Dubai offsite installation until 16 April 2013.  The entrance has been transformed into an interactive work of art entitled “City Within”, by Antonio Pio Saracino

To quote the pamphlet which accompanies the exhibition:

“Composed of multiple hanging lightweight translucent polycarbonate sheets that create the shape of a box and convey the idea of an ephemeral city versus the physical city: this is the metaphor of the contemporary digital city that is not made with tangible space.  The empty space inside the installation is originated from carving out the shape of a dimensional city landscape”.

This resonated so deeply with much of what I attempt to share on my website here2here that I have returned on more than one occasion to enter the space. 

What fascinated me about the installation was the fact that the artist had carved out the shape of a dimensional city landscape to create the “City Within". He had created a physical landscape and a mental one which therefore enabled me to enter it with my body and my senses. 

The installation also confirmed that although the digital city is experienced, it nevertheless has its own architecture. As was the case in this work of art, existing architectural forms are often reference points for the indescribable characteristics of this city within. My writings often use arches and corridors when I refer to cyberspace and my iphoneography art is created using technology and photos of architecture. 

In my last blog post I looked at cyborgs, and so I was encouraged to read how architect, designer and artist Antonio Pio Saracino is creating visually poetic forms that encourage dialogue on the role of technology in our lived environment

"Technology is like a second ‘skin’ that we wear on to extend our bodies in order to re-imagine new behaviors and to enhance our memory and senses. It is increasingly central to human civilization and in my profession technology is an advanced tool used to re-imagine design and the world we live in. In my everyday life, I believe you have to know when to turn technology on and wear it and when to turn it off." The Ecstatic Design of Antonio Pio Saracino

"My work however also highlights some aspects that will never be affected by technology, in particular the quest for the most important things: sensitivity, poetry, our feelings. This is why I do not try to glorify or stigmatise technology, but rather to create emotion-provoking objects capable of representing the values associated with the product." Interview with Antonio Pio Saracino

Dialogue on the role of technology in our lives is essential. The recent conference, Wisdom2.0, is just one example of the advances being made in this dialogue. 

"The City Within" from "Corridorsofcyberspace"

Architecture is a response to physical, emotional and spiritual needs. It also reflects the way humans see themselves at a particular point in time. 

In the Baroque age, for example, the Baroque ideal was to represent emotional states of being. In Baroque art, scenes flow into each other and seemingly into the space of the viewer, who determines the centre of the spectacle at that moment. 

In cyberspace, we are able to enter streams of words, sounds and images and we choose what to focus on. The centre is constantly shifting. In the current transformation age cyberspace is in many ways baroque like as we attempt to portray the senses through technology. 

Saracino understands this. His keen insight into the need that exists in this age to experience rather than simply cognitively comprehend, has led to Saracino being involved in designs such as a recent one in midtown Manhattan where tweets were displayed on the interactive art installation in order raise awareness of HIV/AIDS

Living between Rome and New York, Saracino has experienced cross-cultural contamination. An architect, designer and artist, he cuts across disciplines. I am delighted to have discovered his work.  

Cyberspace or here2here, is definitely a city within. Every time we communicate by means of technology we enter this mental space. May we do so responsibly as we realize that we are co-creators, co-designers, co-architects and therefore co-artists of this special we-space. 

Robb Smith, in a TEDx video entitled “The Transformational Life”, explains how throughout the ages the tools of the time have gone hand in the hand with the size of communities.

In the hunting and gathering era, the average size of a community was 40 people. When the digging stick was invented, plants could be cultivated and they provided food for a community of about 1500. The invention of the plow in the agrarian age supported a larger population of about 100 thousand people and the invention of machines such as the printing press and the steam engine in the industrial era of the 17th to 19th centuries, allowed societies to grow to about 10 million people.

This exponential growth continued with the invention of the transistor in 1947 and the computer revolution of the next decades. The early 1990s saw the coming into being of a world wide web of 100 million people. High speed data networks and the spread of smartphones mean that today almost 7 billion people have the possibility of becoming a single society.

We say the world has become smaller, but in actual fact communities have become larger.

As I walked from the metro one evening recently, white cords dangled from my ears and connected to my iphone which I carried in my right hand. The music which accompanied me paused briefly as I took an incoming call. A little while later I stopped to capture an image on my camera roll, and as I did so, I suddenly saw myself as if from afar. This was accompanied by an overwhelming thought - “I’m a cyborg now!”

The separation between being online and offline had suddenly disappeared. The boundary between these two worlds blurred and they suddenly collapsed into one.

No doubt the experience was greatly influenced by a fascinating TED talk, “We are all cyborgs now” by Amber Case, which I had recently watched, but nevertheless, I was filled with excitement and gratitude for the fact that I was living in an age where people can interconnect in real time by means of a little handheld device.

A 1960 paper on space travel defined a cyborg as an organism “to which exogenous components have been added for the purpose of adapting to new environments”.

It is interesting to note that whereas the invention of previous tools had enabled humans to extend their physical selves, current technology allows for the extension of the mental self.

“here2here” took on an added meaning as I realized that the “virtual” and the “real” world were no longer separate for me. They formed a wholeness which brought with it new dimensions I could not have imagined even five years ago.

"Avatars"

My iphoneography art is an attempt to express these dimensions. Created with apps, the outcome is not fixed at the start of the process. Patient flicking through numerous adaptations of an image I am working on allows me to intuitively choose the one I feel most appropriate. The end image is an expression of the experience of being in cyberspace, as well as an example of being a co-creator with the apps and technology at my disposal.

I look at this world as it looks back at me, and suddenly I am looking as the world.

This looking is accompanied by a deepening sense of responsibility and I am reminded of the question asked by Wisdom 2.0:

“How can we live with greater presence, meaning and mindfulness in the technology age?”

The objective of the conference, @Wisdom2conf, this year, was to address the challenge of our generation: “to not only live connected to one another through technology, but to do so in ways that are beneficial to our own well-being, effective in our work and useful to the world.” I can highly recommend the 2013 videos. (One of my favorites is Jon Kabat-Zinn being interviewed by Melissa Daimler of Twitter).

The technology of this age brings with it the temptation of distraction and addiction when we do not realize the need to be grounded. Checking in with our inner and outward experience regularly and mindfully helps us to maintain this groundedness.

“Without a connection to the earth and to the physical body, all signals become static”. Steven Vedro in “Twitter, Ambient Awareness and Spiritual Practice”.

I share Robb Smith’s opinion. We are no longer in the Information age. We have entered the Transformation age with all the opportunities it offers us to look not at the other through all the perspectives being offered us, but as the other.

Related blog posts:

Digital Archways

Corridorsofcyberspace

Cyberflanerie: Deep Listening in Cyberspace

January has seen the UAE and many other parts of the world covered in blankets of fog at various intervals. It has affected travel, has had much written about it in the news and has been photographed by many from ground level and up high; all as if it has wanted to gain our attention.

As I was travelling on the metro and looking out at the fog, I recalled a work written by an anonymous mystic in the 14th century, entitled “The Cloud of Unknowing”. The fog certainly depicted an unknowingness and got me thinking about “unknowing”.

When moving within the confines of the fog, the knowledge of where something is has to be suspended for the experience of being acutely conscious of the surroundings one finds oneself in. What is behind one and in front of one is hardly visible. Experiencing the immediate is of paramount importance before one can move forward.

The mind too is so often filled with thoughts of the past and concerns for the future, that the present moment is missed. The fog is a reminder that the present moment is all there is, and as such should be welcomed with non-judgmental awareness. The fog is a reminder to be mindful.

The awareness of the present moment as experienced when being mindful I see as “unknowing”. Becoming aware of that which is incoming through all the senses, experiencing bodily sensations, noticing what one is feeling and thinking, is not a knowing with the mind but an experience of the heart.

In a blog post entitled “In the Fog, Mindfully”, Marguerite Manteau-Rao, @MindDeep, reports on the use of mindfulness meditation, as developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn, with people suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease. One gentleman reports on how it has helped him by saying that,

“Within the daily fog, I can once again find my way, comfortably myself...”

It is easy to confuse objects for something else when moving around in the fog. So too in life, we often mistake our thoughts and opinions for reality. Not taking the time to pause and notice what is actually happening leads to the repeating of old patterns of behaviour. Reacting becomes the order of the day instead of responding to the current situation at hand.

Mindfulness as an “unknowing” is not an attempt to get rid of thoughts. Instead it is a stepping back from them to watch them from an inward spaciousness. At times, with practice, the mind quiets down.

Adjusting one’s way of looking in the fog enable us to see exactly what we need to see at the right moment. Mindfulness or “unknowing” allows us to discover countless opportunities for compassion and kindness not visible to us before.

The fog has something more to share with us. Moving within the fog, (see more pics), it often suddenly parts and we are given glimpses of what is beyond it.

There is also something beyond the fog of the chattering mind.

Jan Birchfield in a recent excellent article in the Huffington post called “Innovation and the Quiet Mind” writes that

“when we quiet the mind through contemplative practices such as meditation, we eventually discover that awareness or consciousness exists beyond it.”

Mindfulness is gaining in popularity as more and more people are realizing that experiencing something fully is far more valuable than mere knowledge about it. We need more and more to “unknow” what before we were convinced was exactly so.

In a world filled with unique problems of the times, knowledge alone will be insufficient when attempting to solve these problems. Innovative ways of being are called for. Where will they be found?

“True innovation, along with any act of creativity, draws from this infinite field of intelligent awareness that exists beyond the mind. This is sometimes called pure awareness.” Jan Birchfield.

In this field of pure awarenes lies realization, innovation and creativity.

The fog is lifting.

Wandering down alleys and streets, watching people while soaking in the sights, sounds and smells, fills me with joy.  At heart I am a flaneur, a person who walks the city in order to experience it.  

This morning, instead of going on a walk to discover and photograph more skyscrapers in Downtown Dubai, I made my way by metro to visit the souqs in Deira. I have visited this area many times and love to wander up and down the various alleyways known as sikkas. 

As I made my way around the Grand Deira Souq I noticed a sign I had not seen before: Museum of the poet Al Oqaili. Following similar signs I came upon a small museum which still had much construction going on on the outside. I discovered afterwards that the Al Oqaili Museum has only been opened this month.

I was welcomed in and made my way around the restored home of the poet.

 Earlier as I wandered I had tweeted, 

Smells of spices as I wander through the souks. #mindfulness #flaneur

— Linda Hollier (@lindahollier) December 11, 2012

Now on the walls I found a poem written by Al Oqaili about Dubai containing these words:

“Its scent captivated me since I was a little boy.

For it I left all valuable things.”

As I explored the home of the man who had been both a store owner and a poet, and whose work is highly valued in Arabic literature, I had a sense that I was meant to find this place. The poet’s table, his displayed writings, the quiet atmosphere of the courtyard, the teak doors and the restored gypsum ornaments, invited me to reflect again on the creativity that not only lays at the heart of silence, but flourishes when curiosity abounds. 

Al Oqaili had travelled about before settling in Dubai so he must have been curious. 

Recently, Anthony Lawlor tweeted the following:

Curiosity is the guiding impulse of flaneurs. cc @lindahollier

— AnthonyLawlor (@AnthonyLawlor) December 1, 2012

Further tweets by him read as follows:

Curiosity comes from the root to care. To care about life is to be curious.

Simply being present to what is as it is = a great adventure

Curioser and Curiouser is the natural response to noticing what is actually happening. 

The last tweet reminded me of my blog called “Linda in Wonderland” and made me realize again how much we need to encourage the natural curiosity of small children instead of stifling it.  Melissa Davis, the mother of George Davis, a fellow flaneur (both in the here and in the here2here of cyberspace), writes in an update to Mindfulness and Flanerie: 

Years ago I read a NYTimes op ed that shared the unscientific findings of a city dweller observing adults accompanying small children around a neighborhood in Manhattan. She reported that the majority of them pushed strollers which ensured timely arrivals wherever the adult was headed. She contrasted them with the handful of adults who walked – meandered – alongside their youngsters, stopping to examine every interesting flower or bit of flotsam along the way. She pointed out that there was nothing more important for a child that age to do than poke along – and through – every curiosity.

Right now we need to foster a generation that will ask questions, search for answers and create solutions.  Unfortunately most of our current school systems merely offer education - the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, and fail to encourage true learning. 

In a recent Huffington post interview entitled “Mindfulness in the Modern World”, Jon Kabat-Zinn states:

All the interesting stuff is found on the edge between knowing and not knowing.

NASA’s Curiosity rover has landed on Mars. Thirty-five years and 11 billion miles later, Voyager 1 has finally reached the edge of the solar system and will next enter a magnetic highway .

The realms of cyberspace appear to be limitless, and there too we will need to explore with care and curiosity. So fellow cyberflaneurs, not only do we need to listen deeply but our ascent needs to be noted for having at its heart, a deep sense of curiosity. 

This blog post has not been an easy one to write. For weeks now I have been thinking about and researching the concept of the cyberflaneur, a term which has been around since at least 1994. With logic and reasoning I have approached the topic, searching for a common thread or one particular aspect that could form the core of this post.

On Monday evening I awoke in the middle of the night, an unusual occurence for me. After lying awake for more than hour with thoughts whizzing through my mind, I decided that if I was awake I should perhaps use the time well. As my blog was still uppermost in my mind, I made the decision to simply lie there and listen to all the information I had gathered. Instead of trying to manipulate it, I would listen to it instead. Perhaps it would offer me the clue I was looking for.

The second I made that decision, the title of this post was clear to me and all the pieces I had gathered began to fall into place. I listened and then after a while picked up my ipad to note what I had heard in case I forgot some of it by the morning.

Although the flaneur made his appearance in the 19th century, and was a term used to refer to the people who strolled through the city in order to fully observe and experience it, the flaneur truly thrived as a literary device.

Just as the artists of the time captured the essence of city life in sketches, the writers of the day began to use the flaneur to comment on the changes in modern day living which evoked both fear and curiosity. The flaneur was the narrator in literature, standing outside of and commenting upon, the events being described to the reader.

The life of those times was speeding up and the flaneur took the step back to observe and find meaning in what was being experienced. In current times, the speed of technological innovation is exponential, and there exists a deep need to make sense of it all.

Today as we move through the speedy spheres of cyberspace - the limitless mindspace we find ourselves in when using technology to communicate - I believe it is the perceptive attitude of the flaneur that we should seek to cultivate. Therefore I have chosen to focus on the practice of cyberflanerie rather than on the figure of the cyberflaneur, real or imaginary.

"Networked Awareness" from the gallery "Corridors of Cyberspace"

This practice will require a deep listening, whether it be to visual, aural or textual images.

Last week I tweeted a link to a group of monks singing Gregorian chant on national television. I copied George Davis, @virtualdavis, who incidentally is a fellow flaneur. Unbeknown to me George was in the process of preparing for a workshop on digital storytelling.

In our follow up twitter conversation I received the following:

@lindahollier True. A blog post is coming plus inclusion in a digital storytelling presentation on Friday. Your ears will be burning! :-)
— virtualDavis (@virtualDavis) October 24, 2012

The phrase “your ears will be burning” obviously made me realize that he was going to refer to my tweet in his blog post or workshops, but I have since realized that the expression takes on a new meaning when we apply it to cyberspace! In this sphere there is a great possibility that even when you are asleep someone else in some part of the world is looking at one of your posts, one of your pics, one of your tweets, one of your facebook updates, etc. These are often passed on as links to others - you are being mentioned and tracked in cyberspace probably more times than you can imagine!

If I was a cartoonist I would depict a cyberflaneur with huge burning ears, not only because s/he was being mentioned, but because s/he had developed the ability to listen intently from a place of silence!

This was the theme of George’s post: Storytelling: From Ira Glass to Gregorian Monks, but by writing it George had also demonstrated that he too had listened with the same quality he was promoting.

There is so much information coming at us in cyberspace that unless we nurture the intention of listening with “moment by moment, non-judgmental awareness” - the definition of mindfulness given by Jon Kabat-Zinn - we stand the risk of being overwhelmed and suffering from information overload. We will fail to capture the fleeting moment. It is only with an attitude of deep listening that we will be able to filter what really needs our attention.

"Ever-changing" from the gallery "Corridors of Cyberspace"

As we move through the fluidity of cyberspace, the moments of stopping and listening are maybe only a millisecond long, but they are the gaps in which we can mindfully step back and observe. I have written more about this in a previous post entitled “Mindfulness and the Flaneur”.

Practicing being in the here and the now also prevents a total immersion in the dreamscape which is wide open in the "corridors of cyberspace". What I mean by this terminology can be found here.

"The Meeting" from the gallery "Corridors of Cyberspace"

The crowd we encounter in cyberspace contains people from all over the world and with deep listening we will be better able to empathise with the other we encounter. The individual and the collective will benefit from these encounters.

"Deep Listening" from the gallery "Corridors of Cyberspace"

The above is my art piece which has come out of writing this post. Yellow is associated with clarity and awareness and also symbolizes wisdom.

I end with the following story. The morning after my sleepless night, I checked my twitter stream, only to find this tweet from another dear twitter friend, Terri Taylor, @t2van:

Develop a passion for listening....imagine what might happen.
— Terri Taylor (@t2van) October 30, 2012

I have made a few adjustments to the original article and am reposting it here on my website: 

Homes reflect and influence our inner lives.  Taken further, our homes also reflect and influence our behavior, our culture and the society we live in. 

Becoming mindful of the fact that one’s choice of home – its location, architecture and decor, is a reflection of one’s inner landscape, can be most useful when doing shadow work.

Clare Cooper Marcus points out that many of the preferences and dislikes in our homes are projections from the unconscious.  “As with dreams, we can live our lives ignoring them”, Cooper Marcus reflects. “But if we care about personal and spiritual growth, becoming who we truly are, the messages implicit in the dwelling – its form, location, decoration and state of order – and our feelings about those messages can be rich sources of insight.”

Cooper Marcus suggests jotting down images, words and feelings about your home (home in the 3rd person) and then speaking to your home and letting it speak back to you (home in the 2nd person). Ask it questions and listen to its answers. Tell it things and listen for its response. 

I would propose taking this one step further by lastly speaking as the home (home in the 1st person). Take what you heard the home saying and say it as if you are the home.  This way you will hear yourself saying things about yourself and this will complete the process I have called 3-2-1 HOMEwork. 

Doing this HOMEwork provides useful insight not only into one’s current state of being but also into those aspects of the shadow that need to be embraced. 

It is not uncommon for people doing this exercise to only focus on the aspects of their home they find bothersome. Remember too, to look for those things that you like about your home.  We often need to remind ourselves that the shadow is made up not only of those things about ourselves that we don’t necessarily like and haven’t accepted yet, but also many wonderful aspects of ourselves that we have yet to acknowledge.

3-2-1 HOMEwork  also makes us aware of how a change in surroundings can help us bring about the changes necessary for growth.

Architects over the centuries have been aware of the fact that our spiritual paths can be encouraged by the surroundings we find ourselves in.  The need to reconcile humans with nature, reflected in the architecture of Hundertwasser (who incidentally was fascinated by spirals) is but one example of this.

The home and its location can and does help to foster growth and change.  One need only think of those inner city areas where a general cleaning up, the planting of trees and the creating of gardens has taken place.  Statistics have shown that such areas have a significant drop in crime rate over a period of time.

The magnificent steel and glass construction of the Berlin Hauptbahnhof train station is an examplar of the need for transparency.  And yet even in such a mammoth construction, the fact that the glass roofs had to be shortened by approximately 100 metres because the construction process was taking too long, shows how time constraints can detract from the original plan.  How often is this not an excuse, and maybe a valid one, in our own homes and lives? But more than that, how often are we mindful of this fact?

Doing 3-2-1 HOMEwork has many benefits.  I believe that this process can also prove to be a useful tool for businesses wanting to redesign the working environment of their employees. 

So are you ready to move around your furniture? Or maybe its time for new furniture or even a new location!

Bibliography

Cooper Marcus, Clare. (1995). House as a Mirror of Self. Conari Press.

Fairall Morrell, Monica. “Home: A Mirror of Inner Being”. Natural Medicine Issue 44, December 2008/January 2009.   www.naturalmedicine.co.za 

Gympel, Jan. (1996). The Story of Architecture. From Antiquity to the Present. KönemannVerlagsgesellschaft mbH. 

“Before their adoption, circulation flowed from one room to the next, forcing interactions and confrontations between the occupants of rooms, and those just passing through. Largely determined by socio-economic factors, political upheaval, and changing approaches to morality, corridors were invented to serve a very specific purpose. They were developed as a tool to separate different groups of people - the servants from the served, the jailed from the jailors ........” (Tad Jusczyk in Consider the corridor: lessons from architectural history)

Although people could now move more efficiently through buildings, rooms became a series of dead ends. The inventions of architects have social implications and the corridor has greatly influenced how we live, work and communicate.  

The study of the architecture of cyberspace is both relatively new and exciting. 

The minute we make use of a system which enables us to communicate despite our physical location, we enter the realm of cyberspace. In this plane, information is stored, processed and passed on. Inhabited by both machines and humans, time in this realm is otherworldly. Cyberspace cannot be seen with the human eye as it cannot be physically located.

Cyberspace is experiential, and its energies are mostly intuited. 

Words which make sense in the land we have come from, are often used to describe the architecture we find when we begin to explore cyberspace. However, because this new “territory” is experiential rather than actual, we often need new words to allude to that which cannot be seen or existing words take on new meanings.  

The term “corridor” has been used to describe the pathways filled with electricity that connect communication systems, but when it comes to the individual moving around in cyberspace the concept of a corridor becomes interesting.

The experience of cyberspace is very much more one of connectivity than separation. After spending some time there the individual gains the feeling of being a node on a hologram.  One feels part of a whole, but at the same time gets the feeling that the whole enters oneself. Individuals come right into one’s mind-space via word and image, and we enter theirs.  People, places and happenings arrive before one’s eyes in realtime and sharing is key.  

And whereas each web page is a separate room and can be just that if the one entering it  so wishes, it is simultaneously a corridor with many other rooms opening off it via the links it offers. The choice lies with the user who becomes the chief architect of that space and moment. 

The clicking of a link can be equated to stepping into a corridor, but the end destination of the corridor is not necessarily fixed or known upon entering it. Its length is not fixed either.   Reading something can be abandoned midway to answer an incoming mail or check on a social media site filled with an exponential number of connections and available links. Time seems to fly in this plane and one can get lost in the same sense one used to do when reading a good book.  

Corridors in everyday architecture have become associated with mystery and sometimes danger. Online “corridors’’ have their lurkers too and obviously vigilance is required when navigating cyberspace. 

“Corridor” has a root meaning of running, but cyberspace is associated with incredible speed. If its corridors exist they flash by. 

Online “corridors” are like the arcades and passageways of malls which offer merchandise, entertainment, and places to meet and spend time together. As cultures meet in these spaces, they stop to chat and share worldviews, and the world suddenly becomes much smaller. Expansion and contraction happen simultaneously. 

I am by nature rather curious and love investigating new areas (see Linda in Wonderland). Words fascinate me (see Langu age). Until a new term for it is coined, and even if it is not, I am happy to be a digital nomad, an online surfer, a cybernaut or whatever else I might be named, in the realm referred to in this blog as the “Corridors of Cyberspace”.  

Related article: Digital Archways

The month of July was filled with traveling but empty of blog posts on my website. This perturbed me at first, but I have had to remind myself that as in all areas of life, even in the world of blogging, balance is important.

Too many posts can overwhelm the reader and too few can make them lose interest. The blogger has to find the right balance, and even then there are times when circumstances are such that no posts are in order too.

Two weeks of July were spent in South Africa and two in Canada. It was during my last weekend in Canada and whilst visiting Vancouver that the message of balance was clearly delivered to me yet again.

Walking through Stanley Park along the sea wall, we were suddenly confronted by a wonderful scene as we turned a corner. Stone sculptures set against a backdrop of water, formed a magnificent picture of beauty, stillness and balance.

The balanced stones appeared to defy gravity and filled me with awe. They seemed to whisper a tale of centredness and groundedness in the present moment, but at the same time the aura of stillness around them seemed to connect to other times and other places.

They were set in the nunc fluens, the Latin for “the flowing now”, the ongoing moments of time, but spoke of the nunc stans, the abiding now, a dimension beyond linear time where distinctions between past, present and future fall away.

Nearby a man was moving stones around and on the seawall was a guest book and prints of photos of the sculptures. Fascinated by the scene, that evening I googled “temporary balanced stones”, words I had seen written on something as we passed by.

The man is Kent Avery and he has been coming to this spot for 12 years to practice the art of stone balancing. Particulary amazing is that he comes back every week, as tides and wind ensure that the sculptures are not permanent. Kent Avery says of his art that it “really seems to bring something out in people. Many echo the yearning to be more balanced in their own lives.”

The sculptures take anything from five minutes to half an hour to complete and the whole process is done by feel.

Many of us are caught up in habits and rigid ways of doing things. The sculptures are a reminder that balance is found by being in tune with each moment as it arises. Balance requires openness to what is before us. What worked yesterday will not necessarily work today or in the future. What works for one child will not necessarily work for another. The way a task is completed at work is not a guarantee that the same principles can be applied to the next project at hand.

Balance holds the hand of mindfulness.

“Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.” Jon Kabat-Zinn.

Balance helps to establish a path of moderation, and therefore a path of wisdom.

Please take the time to watch this video of Kent Avery’s art:

Balance is not only a personal but also a collective struggle in a world crying out for love and compassion. If you wish you can also listen to “Balance” by The Moody Blues. The track is from their album “A Question of Balance”.

Related posts:

Mindfulness and Balance, posted exactly a year ago today. (Interesting!)

The Gathering.

Time was once viewed as being merely linear, with past, present and future. Jordan offers the visitor a perfect opportunity to find out more about past ages by visiting its many historical sites.  

Jerash, one of the sites visited on our first day, is considered to be one of the most well preserved sites of Roman architecture outside of Italy and has its origin more than 2000 years ago. 

After passing through the gate of the city the opportunity exists to witness a chariot race and gladiator fight in a Roman setting.  A walk along the cobbled streets with its columns, baths, theaters and temples allows one to picture times gone by. 

I was not able to lose myself in imagining life in those times for too long, however, as the blazing heat of that afternoon was a strong reminder to me that I am a citizen of another century.  My longing for air-conditioning as I was overcome by the heat, brought me back to the present with a jolt. 

After Jerash, we made our way to Wadi Musa, a little town just outside of Petra, a world heritage site and one of the seven wonders of the world. The whole city of Petra was carved out of the rock face by the Nabataens in the 6th century BC, but settlements began there many centuries before that. 

Our first visit to Petra was at night, along a candle lit path as far as the Treasury. The unknown route through the siq, a deep split in the sandstone rocks, required careful attention to each step, and each step along the way was a reminder that time is not only linear, but can also be experienced sequentially, from moment to moment, on and on and on.

Setting off really early the next morning, before the majority of the tourists, we were alone as we made our way to visit the whole city of Petra. We were able to see what had been above us the night before. The focus of our attention now, was space not time, as the sides of the siq towered above us. Appearing rather tiny in these surroundings, we were clearly separate from the space being inhabited. 

Space, however, can be more than just physical.  It can also be experiential.

A visit to Wadi Rum, a vast valley in the desert with uniquely shaped mountains rising out of the desert sand, provides such an experience. One easily forgets to think of the self when faced with such beauty and such vastness. Space, like time, can also take on a fluidity, stretching on and on.

While being served Bedouin tea by our guide, we suddenly saw an eagle rise above the mountain before us.  We were told that this was very unusual for this time of day, as they usually are spotted at sunrise and sunset. Earlier, when we were being shown a well, we had also seen a Bedouin lady with her camel, goats and dogs appear out of what seemed nowhere.  Time and space was definitely more fluid in this desert. 

On our last day in Jordan we visited Mount Nebo as well as the Dead Sea, the lowest place on the earth. As we wound our way by car from over 700 metres above sea level to 423 metres below sea level I remembered reading and being deeply touched by Karen Armstrong’s description of this drive in her book, “The Spiral Staircase”. I quote it here:

“With my ears popping as we passed sea level and continued our descent to the Dead Sea, the deepest spot in the world, I gazed at the extraordinary beauty of the desert and felt moved as I had never been before by any landscape.  I could not drag my eyes away from it and felt a great silence opening within me. There were no words and no thoughts; it was enough simply to be there. Perhaps other people found this quietness in prayer, but there was no God here and nothing like the ecstasies experienced by the saints. Instead there was simply a suspension of self”.  

Two experiences stand out for me in Jordan.  On our first night in Wadi Musa, we had dinner on the rooftop of our hotel.  Usually sensitive to the energy of a place, on this night I immediately became aware of feeling something I could not put my finger on.  I mentioned it as being strange, not in a weird way, but because I was not able to describe what I was feeling. After a while, I just let it be and continued to enjoy the evening.  On the second night in Wadi Musa, the minute we sat down on the rooftop again, the feeling returned.  

I have thought about it much since our return.  Surrounded on all sides by hilly mountains and ancient sites as the sun went down, I suspect that I caught a glimpse of what I can only now attempt to describe as timeless space - a dimension beyond the other dimensions of time and space I have attempted to describe above, and a dimension which words cannot adequately explain. Perhaps it was a glimpse of the silence and the suspension of self, Karen Armstrong had written of. Perhaps it was a glimpse of the fourth dimension referred to in quantum physics.  I only have a sense of knowing that it was a realm which seemed to contain all. 

The second experience was in the ancient church of St George, a Greek Orthodox Church in the city of Madaba, our last stop before heading for the airport.  At the back of the church, famous for its mosaic map constructed in AD 560, there was a small but beautiful stained glass window that drew my attention. I walked closer to it, only to discover that on the wall next to the window was a version of my favorite icon by Rublev, The Holy Trinity.  I have written about my love of this icon before, and also about my evolving relationship with it.  As I looked upon this version with an inscription in Arabic which I have not yet managed to find the meaning of, it was as if I was spiralling back above the icon yet again.

The icon has references to time, space and knowledge, and it has an invitation to sit down at the table. Seeing a version of my favorite icon when and where I had least expected to encounter it, was very special. 

Perhaps I should not have been surprised at all.