After my initial reading of the chapter, Deeply Seeing, I have to admit to finding it somewhat inaccessible. I am not an artist and I had a hard time understanding the author’s view of the artistic process. Not that I don’t appreciate that artists, of all types, experience life in a way that informs their particular practice, but I found myself grappling with Grey’s descriptions and explanations. However, I reread the chapter and some sections a third time and believe I have a better understanding of what Grey is offering. That said, his journey to answering the question he poses, “But what is the difference between merely looking at a thing and actually seeing it?” (71) feels convoluted and overwrought. But, as he notes in the section about the chakras, “It is a matter of my personal preference to use this chart with seven levels.” (94) So, I tried to take in the reading as one man’s personal exploration of creative endeavors and how his spirituality impacts his own artistic product and his views of the creative process overall.
Clearly, the entire piece is very personal to Grey and his spiritual self is as important to him as his artistic self. In fact, I think what Grey is saying underneath a lot of words is that the outcome of deeply seeing something is a spiritual experience and that in turn is a key ingredient to an artistic endeavor. To be an artist, one must be able to truly see the world (as opposed to simply looking) because as Grey defines it, “Seeing occurs when our attention is arrested by a person, object, or scene. Our mind stops chattering and pays attention.” (72) When this happens, Grey goes further to say, “when deeply seeing, the object of our contemplation enters our heart and mind directly. In the act of deeply seeing, we transcend the egoic boundaries between self and the otherness of the world, momentarily merging with the thing seen.” (72) These two comments set the context for Grey’s practices as an artist and his belief that spirituality, in other words deeply seeing, is a significant force for creativity.
Later in the chapter, Grey talks about the creative process and the six steps he believes accurately captures it. Step four, inspiration, is where Grey makes his case that artists follow a spiritual path towards creation of their work. He says, “To in-spire is to be in spirit. Inspiration means access to spirit.” (82) Interestingly, the next section immediately following Grey’s explanation of inspiration is called “Seeing Art” and this is where Grey blurs the focus from the artist and his or her creative process to include that of the viewer of art. He uses language such as, “ Many of us can recall profoundly moving experiences of art” but in reading and rereading this section, he is largely focused on his own experience of truly seeing art and his resulting epiphanies.
In trying to understand Grey and his strongly held beliefs about seeing, the artistic process, and the spirituality that informs it, I thought about a project I was exposed to when I interned at the HopeLab Foundation in northern California this past summer. HopeLab is an organization whose mission is to use the power of technology to foster wellbeing and personal resilience. As part of doing this work, HopeLab engages in a process called “user centered design thinking” whereby the target audience for a particular technology (for example an app that discourages teenage bullying) is engaged to help think through and design the best product. To make this happen, the staff at HopeLab has designed a deep listening protocol that actually speaks to the difference between hearing and listening. Specifically, when we hear someone speak, we take note of the words and their superficial meaning so we can respond. In other words, hearing is waiting to respond or take action based upon what we think we heard and it is largely a passive process. On the other hand, listening goes a level deeper and is actually an active process. When you listen, you actively concentrate on what you hear and you take in the information to transform it into knowledge. Listening allows you to look into the feeling and meaning of what is being said word by word. I see many similarities between this process and Grey’s explanation of what it is to truly see something and in particular a work of art.
Grey says, “Seeing determines every aesthetic decision.” (72) I imagine one could replace a few key words and apply the same statement to listening in certain design contexts. While I don’t pretend to deeply understand Grey’s discourse on art and spirituality, applying what I learned about hearing versus listening helped me sort through his views about the key differences between looking and seeing.
Grey, A. (2001). Art as Spiritual Practice. The Mission of Art (1st ed., pp. 205-233). Boston & London: Shambhala.
I really appreciated your honestly at the beginning when say that it was hard to understand, because a lot of times it can be impossible to understand an artist’s creative process. As a musician it is hard to understand my own creative process sometimes. This is where the spirituality aspect becomes a factor in my opinion. Every artist or person has a different experience for how they come to see things. The quote you used when Grey said “when deeply seeing, the object of our contemplation enters our heart and mind directly. In the act of deeply seeing, we transcend the egoic boundaries between self and the otherness of the world, momentarily merging with the thing seen” (72) spoke volumes to me because it described exactly how the feeling is of inspiration. The world just opens up to you for a mere second and it is up to the artist to grasp it and make something of it. I think this is why art or music can be so beautiful because it is a snapshot of a deeper world that few see without an artist’s interpretation.