Tag Archives: fractal art

Burst (detail)

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Burst (detail)Click on the image to view larger version.

Sometimes our lives contract before they expand. We may be working hard on ourselves spiritually, doing good in the world, following our dreams, and wondering why we are still facing constrictions of all kinds—financial, emotional, physical. Perhaps we even feel as if we’ve lost our spirituality and are stuck in a dark room with no windows. We may be confused and discouraged by what appears to be a lack of progress. But sometimes this is the way things work. Like a caterpillar that confines itself to a tiny cocoon before it grows wings and flies, we are experiencing the darkness before the dawn.

When things feel tight, it’s easy to panic or want to act in some way to ease the feeling of constriction. We might also spin our wheels mentally, trying to understand why things are the way they are. However, there is nothing we need to do at this time other than to be patient and persevering. We can cling to the awareness that we are processing the shift from one stage to another, and the more we surrender to the experience, the more quickly we will move through the tightness into the opening on the other side. Just like a baby making its way down the birth canal, we may feel squeezed and pushed and very uncomfortable, but if we remember that we are on our way to being born into a new reality, we will find the strength to carry on.

Even as we endure the contractions, we can find peace within ourselves if we remember to trust the universe. We can look to the natural world for inspiration as we see that all beings surrender to the process of being born. In that surrender, and in the center of our own hearts, is a willingness to trust in the unknown as we make our way through the opening.

Article from DailyOm.com
Fractal Art: Burst by Sven Geier, The Fractal Bargain Bin

On Creativity and Things That Hinder It

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Went and visited a few blogs tonight and am amazed at how creative some people can be. I hate to admit it, but it makes me feel envious. I’m supposedly creative myself, but it seems like I spend more time coming up with excuses as to why I’m not producing anything than actually thinking up fun creative projects I could work on. Excuses like FEAR. Excuses like THE INNER CRITIC—after having done The Artist’s Way almost three times (up to Week 9 each time but never got to the end) you would think I’d have managed to finally send that blasted critic packing—but he just refuses to budge. He sits there during my every waking hour, ever so vigilant, always on the lookout to catch any sign of a creative thought before it has fully formed, quickly, quickly, before it’s made it’s way to my consciousness, then promptly sends me a self-defeating thought instead, like “Oh, I’m sure someone else has thought of that before” or better yet “If I haven’t produced anything so far, it’s probably because I just don’t have it in me”. Excuses like: “The reason I became and Art Director instead of an Artist is because that seemed like the best way to appear to have talent since we all know I have none.” These excuses are mostly hurtful. Savagely hurtful even. Here’s an excuse that I’m not sure about. It might be a legitimate concern, or it might just be a pathetic excuse disguised to seem legit and therefore even more powerful than the others: I’m exhausted all the time. Most of the time. A whole lot of the time. Except when I’m manic of course, but they’ve got me on all those meds precisely so that won’t happen. Because God forbid I should feel too creative. Things might get out of control and then what? Oh right. And then depression for all eternity.

The truth is that creativity, the real, untainted kind terrifies me. All too often, I end up feeling very very small when faced with the brilliant strokes of creativity that I encounter everywhere. And because my self-esteem is practically nil, the inner critic manages to convince me that these are all expressions of genius and that I’m not meant to reach such great heights. Just the way I found out one day I wasn’t meant to be a ballerina. I was ten years old, and thought my life would end if I wasn’t admitted to the national ballet school. I wasn’t. I had a hard time keeping up with the other. My mom spent the better part of the audition cringing. My tummy stuck out too much and my bum was too round and my pliés weren’t deep enough and my arms and legs refused to stretch to their full extension. Maybe a small part of me did die that day—when I turned around and saw that girl—she had no doubt been admitted. She went to my school. She was perfect at everything. Liked by everyone. This little birdlike thing. So graceful. So completely different from me. If she succeeded where I failed then surely it meant I wasn’t worthy. A major excuse disguised as a childhood sob story. The things we hold on to… these thoughts we think truly define who we are. Sometimes I tell myself that if I had a creative coach, who could make a schedule, put the right tools at my disposition and give plenty of positive feedback… but no. Just another excuse.

And then at night my dreams… so mysterious, with their own secret language, where the laws of physics don’t apply and where the impossible happens as a matter of course. Even when I cannot remember, there’s that part of me yearning to sleep again, to dream again to witness things I’ve never seen before. That’s where true creativity lies. My creativity. Like a drug I can only take in small doses, it makes me see infinite possibilities but then leaves me too depleted to use the dreams as the creative fuel that they are. Another excuse, I know. But my favourite excuse? “I must be a late bloomer”. That one gives me hope. It encourages me to believe that eventually that wall will tumble down. That I will find my voice. And when I do, I’ll finally be able to express things I never knew were there before. Some excuses are worth hanging on to after all.

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Fractal art images by sources unknown

On Honouring the Higher Self

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A reader asked me recently how she could go about getting in touch with her Higher Self. The answer I gave her was much too brief to be of any real help, so I thought I’d go into it more in depth here. Sometimes it helps to have tools that put us in the right mind-frame and teach us how to listen to the usually very small voice that always “knows”. The Higher Self resides in the domain of the Soul, and this is the reason I’ve been consulting the I Ching for all these years now – because it helps me put myself in touch with my Higher Self aka my soul. You can call that Higher Self a lot of different things. You can call it “God” or “Allah” or “The Universe” or “The Creative” or “The Grand Master Puh-Bah” or… or even “Chocolate” if you like. You can call it whatever you like. Everyone has access to that power.

I keep returning to the I Ching because I feel very comfortable with the “Living Oracle” part of it. All The Oracle does is to reveal to us what our Higher Self is needing us, our ego selves, to get in touch with at any given moment. What we find in the I Ching are universal lessons. These could be learned and assimilated simply by taking the I Ching book and reading it cover to cover and be done with it, once and for all. But that would be akin to eating one big feast and saying “I am nourished for life”. If you chose to do that, insome ways, you would be right. Because when you think about it, how many big feasts does one person need to eat in a lifetime? But the way I see it there’s this huge banquet of delicious (soul) foods to be savoured that is offered to each and every one of us when we are born. Sometimes it’s right in front of us, ready to be enjoyed while others have to travel or struggle to find it, but once you do find your way to it, you may as well enjoy it in bits and morsels. That way it’s much easier to digest, and you have the added benefit of prolonging the pleasure over a lifetime. Another reason it might be helpful to take one’s time to ingest all this wonderful soul food is that for most of us, it takes time to develop our palette to truly and completely enjoy and savour certain flavours and ingredient combinations.

You can decide to ignore your Higher Self. You can try to shut it out, shut it up, or you can choose to listen to it, follow it’s counsel and act according to it’s “will”. You can do all that. You can also mistrust it and doubt in it’s wisdom at the same time as you embrace it. You can do all sorts of things. But no matter what, you higher self KNOWS the truth of things and it’s always quietly observing and it’s always THERE.

Most of us aren’t terribly interested in finding out what our Higher Self is observing. And most of us DON’T DARE actually enter into a dialog with our Higher Self because… gulp? What is it likely to tell us? But there’s nothing to be afraid of. Because everything the Higher Self tries to draw our attention to is to better help us complete ourself, so that we can realize ourselves to our full potential. Because all of us are made of light and energy. And the most basic form of life is necessarily benevolent energy because… well because life would not be possible otherwise. Because the other kind—negative energy—well that just creates a void, and no lifeforms possible there. Of course the universe contains both kinds of energy because that tension is necessary in order to prevent stagnation, or inertia. I’m no specialist, I’m not a doctor or a scientist. But I’ve spent the better part of my life thinking, reading, talking and having conversations with the Higher Power about these matters.

I suppose the secret to any sort of growth, or in this case, (Higher) Self-Growth, is learning to truly listen to it, letting it’s voice grow stronger, letting it take the lead, and letting it guide us in our choices in life. Slowly but surely. Some of us aren’t entirely comfortable with “listening to our gut feeling”. It might take practice. Especially if your “gut feeling” happens to run counter to the society we live in, or what our familes and friends believe, or how our religion (or lack thereof) informs our choices in life.

Consulting the I Ching can help you make the proper decisions in any circumstance because it teaches us to pay attention to our gut feelings in a much more informed way. When you decide to do a reading, you can be as specific or non-specific about it as you like. I generally don’t ask specific questions because I think we all too often tend to focus on the wrong things and this compels us to ask the wrong questions. But the I Ching gives us the answers we need at the appropriate moment. And no matter what, the advice it gives us can only be good advice because when you think about it, how can a universal message ever be WRONG?

It’s been my experience that whenever someone shows an opening to wanting to receive the teachings the I Ching contains, it means they are ready for it, and chances are they are about to start undergoing a very major evolution in their life. I suppose it’s the same way for any other spiritual system. When a person starts consulting “The I Ching or Book of Changes” regularly, I’m convinced that that person makes it possible for actual miracles large and small to start occurring in their life. I know Carl Jung was a long time I Ching student, and if one is familiar with The Book of Changes and Jung’s work, it’s easy to see how it greatly influenced his research and finding. I touched on this in a previous post which you can read about by clicking here.

What it all boils down to is that when you start listening and accepting the lessons the Higher Self is trying to teach you and when you start actually learning and assimilating and applying those lessons to your daily life, miracles start happening. They just do. Even though the path to higher understanding might seem confusing at times, and even though there may not always be markers to tell us where we are or how far we’ve gone, when we trust our Higher Self it inevitably takes us to the right place at the right time so we can learn the lessons necessary to continue our growth. The Higher Self ALWAYS KNOWS. All we have to do is… let go of our fear, and trust in the universe.

That being said, I’m off to do an I Ching reading.

Fractal art: She Dreams in Digital

On intuition

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“Intuitive intelligence is more accurate and precise than anything that exists in the realm of rational thought. Intuition is not a thought; it is the nonlocal cosmic field of information that whispers to you in the silence between your thoughts. So when you listen to the inner intelligence of your body, which is the ultimate and supreme genuis, you are eavesdropping on the universe and accessing information that most people don’t normally access.”
~ Deepak Chopra, Power Freedom and Grace: Living from the Source of Lasting Happiness

Fractal art: Holly Bishop

Weekly Recap

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For those of you who are new to this blog, or if you haven’t had the opportunity to keep up this week, I’m continually reorganizing the contents and adding categories in hopes of enabling navigation through the site (suggestions welcome!). Most of the content is timeless so don’t be shy to traipse around, goodies abound! I always LOVE knowing who’s been visiting, so feel free to leave your comments or just say hello. Without further ado, here’s the summary of just a few of the features I’ve posted this week:

Renaissance Revisited: Are you a Renaissance Man or Woman? What does that term mean to you? We’re all creative in one way or another, and anything can be considered as art if it’s done from the heart. Includes a short review of Sarah Dunant’s excellent book The Birth of Venus.

Making her papa proud: Anoushka Shankar, daughter of the legendary sitar player Ravi Shankar, was the youngest person ever nominated in her category for a Grammy. Her latest release, Breathing Under Water blends classical Indian music with smooth electronic backgrounds and I can’t stop listening to it. Guests include Norah Jones (half sister to Anoushka), Sting and of course Ravi Shankar.

Trippin’ Out’: a look at some seriously mind-blowing images and debunking a myth about LSD (no you won’t be considered crazy if you’ve ever taken it, and no you won’t be considered a square if you haven’t).

And now for something completely retarded:
Borat in a canary yellow spandex unitard singing a love song?
You gotta see it to believe it.

Train Nº69: All aboard! A fictional story about a train ride from New York City to Montreal. There are a few surprises along the way, but our protagonist ends up getting more of an adventure than she bargained for.

It’s a bird… it’s a plane… no wait! It’s… Hindustan Superman?: Featuring Superman (he sings and he dances!) and Michael Jackson doing an Indian version of “Thriller”, shiny red leather and all. It’s so bad, it’s good.

Are you KIDDING me???: When I heard about a “hot new trend” which involves stylists shopping for the under 18 year-old crowd, I got really pissed off, so I decided to write about it.
And I use the opportunity to rant about Paris Hilton. Yet again.

… And last but not least, to view my ever-expanding collection of fractal art, select “fractal art” by category. Happy browsing and don’t be shy to leave a comment!

Fractal Art: Vivian Wood (click image to enlarge)

Renaissance Revisited

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For many of us, getting in touch with our creativity can be a lifelong challenge. Others seemingly find their calling from the cradle, effortlessly bounding from one feat to the next. When we’re aware that we have the gift of creativity (and having that awareness is half the battle), then there’s the whole matter of “[becoming] open enough to follow the meanderings of the spirit”. For some of us this process happens smoothly, as a serpent sheds it’s skin, while others have to be taken there kicking and screaming.

If you are, like myself, the kind of artist who’se created a career out of something which reasonably resembles your vocation, yet can’t be defined as art because of the usual concerns of sales, profits, bosses clients etc, the lines become blurry and confused. Can something that is artistic but doesn’t come from the heart be called art? Can something be just a little bit artistic, or just a little bit creative? We may try to justify our choices, but the soul always knows. It is never fooled, and it finds it’s own mechanisms to bring you back to the convoluted path that is “being an artist.”

Those few lucky souls who are given a clear mandate can focus all their energies on their artistic endeavour and become accomplished in their craft. But what happens when life has given a person so many gifts that it’s not a question of discovering a talent, but rather finding which one needs the most attention? What then? I posed the question to Eve, a fellow blogger recently, and her excellent (and very Jungian) response was: “Let them find you as they wish. This is the renaissance sort of person, not as rare as we like to think nowadays.” I found her answer excellent. But the question begs to be asked, just what is a Renaissance man or woman?

“In the Renaissance period (roughly 14th-17th century), a woman of good breeding was expected to marry well, be loyal to her husband and produce male heirs. A Renaissance Man, on the other hand, had to be well-educated, have cultural grace, be a gentleman and have a good understanding of the arts and sciences. He was also expected to show refinement and courage and be of noble birth. Many women did not fit the mold of what was considered to be a “Renaissance Woman.” as they were considered to have too many interests that were considered to be limited to men. Ironically, these same women would nowadays perfectly fit our definition of what a modern “Renaissance Woman” is in our day and age.” *

In her excellent book “The Birth of Venus”, Sarah Dunant vividly recreates Renaissance Florence in the Medici era, as experienced by Alessandra Cecchi, the fifteen year old daughter of a prosperous cloth merchant. Alessandra, a willful and spirited girl with a talent for drawing, is captivated by an artist her father has brought to their palazzo to decorate the family chapel. Her independent spirit displeases her family, since Alessandra is expected to marry shortly after the onset of her first period. But Allessandra prefers to immerse herself in the art of the great masters of her time, such as Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci, at the same time as the monk Savonarola preaches hell and damnation and threatens to destroy all “profane” art.

Alessandra was born in an era that could not accomodate her strong character, and the solution her family finds for her to keep her independence was typical of the times. Perhaps she would have been better off in the 21st century. But what is a Modern Renaissance Woman then? According to Renaissance Women Network, “A renaissance woman is someone who sets her own agenda for personal achievement. [...] She understands that she has been created for such a time as this and embraces her destiny as a challenge and not a curse, no matter what her personal circumstances. She is a winner not a whiner, a leader not a follower, a victor, not a victim. She wants to change the paradigm of the feminist movement that has served to marginalize and ridicule women who do not follow their collective agenda.” My definition of the Renaissance Woman? It’s best summed up by the following book title: The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One.

Fractal art: Jock Cooper (2007)
The Birth of Venus, Botticelli (around 1482)
Lady with an Ermine, Leonardo da Vinci (1485)

Trippin’ out

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The first image is trippy, and it could well be a representation of what our brains look like on psychotropic drugs, such as LSD for example. You don’t need to be high to see that – if you stare at the image long enough, and you happen to be a little bit sleep deprived when you do this, you’ll know exactly what I mean. It’s another great example of fractal art, which seems like a tricky medium to master, requiring complex formulas, calculations, parameters and special software, along with an artistic eye of course. I have no doubt that it must have taken the artist many hours of tweaking to get to the final result.

The second image on the other hand, now that’s REALLY mindblowing stuff. It may not look like much if you don’t know what you’re looking at, but I can tell you that THAT image took ten BILLION years to create. This from NASA: “The galaxy on the left, I Zwicky 18, was once thought to be one of the youngest galaxies on record. Its bright stars indicated an age of “only” 500 million years. The galaxy was intriguing because it looked like galaxies forming in the very early universe, but also mysterious since it is so nearby—only 59 million light years away—and surrounded by galaxies that are significantly older. Recent images of I Zwicky 18 by the Hubble Space Telescope have helped resolve the mystery, discovering a population of old faint stars intermixed with the bright star population. Therefore I Zwicky 18 is now thought to be just as old as its neighbors, roughly 10 billion years old.”

All this talk about mindblowing trips brings me to and urban legend I just found, which claims that if someone has taken LSD more than seven times, he or she is automatically deemed legally insane (in the U.S.).

True of False?

LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide) is a powerful psychedelic drug that alters brain function, resulting in temporary changes in perception, mood, consciousness and behavior. Because it can cause such radical changes in cognition, the belief is that long-term use of this drug must inevitably result in permanent damage to the mind. The common belief is that a specified number of LSD uses causes a determination of legal insanity. The rumor itself is surprisingly common, but there is little agreement on how many drug trips make up the magic number, which varies between two and ten uses, with seven trips as the most common. Another twist on the theory is that it is not the number of times a person uses LSD, but the spacing of the trips which is the determining factor.

False. No specific number of LSD trips renders a user insane. “Legally insane” can serve as a linguistic shorthand for a defendant in a criminal matter who has been deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial but “insanity” is not a psychiatric term. Individuals can be subject to “involuntary civil commitment”, such incarcerations require their subjects to have diagnosable mental disorders and pose imminent threats to themselves or others, or to be incapable of caring for their own basic personal needs. Determinations on whether or not to commit are based on subjects’ current behavior and thinking, not merely on their past activities, such as drug use.

This is where I breathe a big sigh of relief. I’ll have one or two related stories to tell. Eventually.

“Urban legend” text adapted from snopes.com
Fractal art: Ingvar Kullberg
Photo credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Aloisi (ESA & STScI)

Motivational Quote of the Day

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“Be where you are. That’s an important part of living a centered life. When your life is in balance, your access to the optimal emotional state is easy and effortless.”

—Nick Hall: Internationally recognized psychoneuroimmunologist and author.

Fractal art: Pavel Tisnovsky

Weekly Recap

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For those of you who are new to this blog, or if you haven’t had the opportunity to keep up this week, I can tell you that there’s been lots of activity here at Smiler, with Love ; there’s a new tagline, I’ve added more categories and relabeled all the posts to allow for easier navigation (you can also use the search button and type in keywords), and last but not least I’ve been posting like a fiend over the past week and you’ll find both longer pieces to sink your teeth into as well as short features for a quick glance. Here’s a summary of some of the features you’ll find as you scroll down:

Global Warbling: Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” is a good documentary with very good intentions. But I was disturbed by the one-sided message and the fact that it’s now become required viewing in many classroms, so I went digging around to see what the detractors were saying…

Do you have a Chorus of Fish Singing in Antarctica?: If you’re familiar with Little Britain, then you already know the hilariously annoying Mr Mann. If you’re not, then click on this link to discover what you’ve been missing.

Summer of ’74: an autobiographical short story about… you got it, The summer of 1974. I was five years old and just discovering the world and we were living with a group of Iranian students who were looking forward to the Shah’s demise. Many years later, I had the good fortune to meet Farah Pahlavi, the Shah’s widow, who agreed to meet me in her home.

The Cube: it’s an imagination game, and more. You can read about it here then decide if you’re ready to play.

Riposa in Pace: a short story about a jogger who finds solace while running among the dearly departed.

On Synchronicity: find out where the word and concept of synchronicity came from, how it’s linked to the I Ching, an ancient Chinese divination system, and how Carl Jung was involved in any of this.

… you’ll also find much, more more.

Happy browsing and don’t be shy to leave a comment!

Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest
2007 Winner: Crowded street/Yvonne Mous
Click to enlarge image.

Fractal Art

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The Mandelbrot set is a set of points in the complex plane that forms a fractal. A fractal is generally “a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be subdivided in parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole”. I don’t quite understand what that means, but it makes for pretty images.