Aesthetic Space

What the *$#!@ Does This Mean

Indeed, powerful cultural forces still operate to deny us that re-visioning of the world would refuse us the use of the appellation 'research' for forms of inquiry that promote the disruptions required for that revisioning.

p. 73 in Jacobs (2008) The Authentic Dissertation: Alernative Ways of Knowing, Research and Representation. New York: Routledge.

The sentence above is from a book on alternative ph.d. dissertations. I've read it 3 times to make sure I typed it correctly. Have no idea what it means.

Note: In the introduction the author writes: "Academic habits that fragment and isolate have caused us to lose touch with what is really important (and authentic)... [we must] move away from an over-emphasis on academic writing if it tends to stifle creativity or one's true voice." Funny.

(I would say that we must move away from an over-emphasis on academic writing if no one can understand what we're saying. This is why academics get called out for living in ivory towers.)

Contacting Your Spirit Guides new book

A friend of mine just published a beautiful book on how to contact, identify, and work with spirit guides. My field is adult learning and in many ways I stay true to my academic roots. But to be honest, I've learned as much in my life from the unseen world than I have by following the rational methods of thinking and analysis that I became fascile with in graduate school. I met my own spirit guide in a private session with Asandra and it’s made a huge difference. For one thing, whenever I’m trying to make a decision I have someone to ask—-someone who wants the best for me, and who I can trust 100 percent. People often marvel at my intuitive abilities, but the truth is... I'm secretly asking my spirit guide what to do. I highly recommend this book.

Here’s a little blurb about Asandra and her book:

Asandra, a professional Channel with an international clientele for over 27 years, provides easy-to-understand instructions for the fundamentals of channeling so that you, too, can contact your spirit guides. The book includes inspiring channeled wisdom about the soul-path and special key points, along with lessons on how to use the unique set of 24 Spirit Guidance Cards that will assist you in developing your own channeling skills. Whether you are a beginner or advanced student, Contact Your Spirit Guides and the Spirit Guidance Cards will help you develop a direct relationship with your Spirit Guides. Published by Schiffer Publishing and available in bookstores now.

For more info, check out: http://contactyourspiritguides.com/
To purchase the book on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Contact-Your-Spirit-Guides-Asandra/dp/076433719X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1308768040&sr=8-1

Alternative Ways of Getting a Ph.D.

I just read a book (Trent Jacob's The Authentic Dissertation) about alternative dissertations—-using art, fiction, dialogues, indigenous ways of knowing and so on for doctoral dissertations. I have to admit, my dissertation process was one of jumping through hoops to try to please my committee. My first draft was all “me” and I was soundly criticized for it (I was painfully raked over the coals.). So after I recovered from the verbal scolding I completely changed gears, listened to what my committee wanted me to do, and proceeded to follow their directions to a T. After all, I wanted the degree and I didn’t really feel like engaging in a battle. I was at a traditional university (University of Chicago) where these venerable professors had been guiding students through the dissertation process for decades. In other words, I wasn’t gonna win this war. The positive result was that I completed a dissertation that they were happy with and I received my degree within the next year. The negative was that I finished my Ph.D. without feeling like I had done anything meaningful. My dissertation chair wanted me to publish my findings, he said that he felt the world needed this information. I looked at my dissertation and couldn’t understand what he was talking about. For me, there wasn’t anything there. It had been a vacuous hoop-jumping experience.

Students often ask me to give them guidance on online Ph.D. programs. Up until recently, I had always suggested that they go to a well-known graduate school and get a solid foundation of traditional academic research underneath them, then start their real learning after they leave school. (This is what I did.). But after reading about all this arts-based research, I now see that there is another way to do higher education. The other way is to have the educational experience itself be a developmental journey where you are truly following your own inner voice. Although I’m happy with my degree, I admire the people who have used their graduate education to find their own voice.

(I’m not sure that there are many schools in the United States that really offer such an exploratory model--most of the example dissertations in Jacobs' book were from Canadian and European universities--but I would like to think that the two graduate schools where I teach Meridian University and Pacifica Graduate Institute do offer an experiential, personal model of inner exploration during the Ph.D. dissertation process.)

The thing that gets difficult is that since it's a Ph.D. degree, the scholarship for the dissertation needs to be rigorous, and if your dissertation is a novel--in my opinion--you have a more difficult task trying to demonstrate that you've done substantive research. (This point gets mentioned repeatedly in Jacobs' book.) But in any case, it's nice to see the experimentation.

I'll leave you with a quote from the book on the importance of the imagination:

“How do new paradigms of thought come into being? It is not simply a matter of pouring isotopes into different test tubes and applying vacuum distillation to measure their rates of precipitation. The only vacuum distillation that exists for the human mind is the imagination.”

To Know a Thing is to Awaken to its Depth

Thomas Aquinas once wrote that "To know a thing is to awaken to its depth, complexity and presence." According to Aquinas, each thing (and each of us as well) secretly and profoundly "desires to be known." My passion has always been teaching and learning, and in Aquinas' remarks we see how central beauty is when we teach and learn. Beauty is the depth at which we see something, meaning that we aren't seeing the person/student/client through an old, cloudy "image" of who we think they are. As the philosopher Simone Weil said, paying attention to another is an act of love.

Sort of like watching a flower blossom.

Breaking the Rules

I never thought I was creative because my mom always said she wasn’t.
No one else in my family was either.
My friend Angela thought she wasn’t creative because her father was an artist and she thought there could only be one in the family.
We were both wrong.
Everyone is creative.
(You are creative.)

You just need to find your particular path, your particular voice.

What grabs you?
What juices you?
What do you love?

These questions are harder than they appear.
Why?

Because creativity always leads us in surprising ways.

It’s scary to trust that voice.
It’s much easier to trust other people’s voices.
Those voices that instruct you, telling you what to do and how to do it.

When you go with your creativity you often go against the norm . . .

I need space to let my creativity flourish.
Lots and lots and lots of space.

Beautiful space.

I moved to Montana to find more space.

Space can include a lot of different things.
It’s kind of like “breathing room.”

Sometimes it’s breathing room from people.

My friend Angela wants me to be her friend always and forever.
That makes me feel like I’m in prison.
To be creative, I need freedom in my relationships too.

Sometimes space is breathing room from too many ideas weighing me down.
I especially suffered from this in graduate school
INFORMATION OVERLOAD

Now, when I read too much I feel ill.
I know when I’m “too full” and need to quit.

I need room to breathe, space to think, and freedom from the ideas of others.

I need to discover my own ideas.

Everyone says critical thinking is important.
The other day a Ph.D. Astrophysicist from Princeton was on National Public Radio. (*WOW@!)
He spent an hour talking about how he was trying to get people to think critically.

For example, he wanted people to know that they were at the same risk of dying from an asteroid hitting the earth as dying from an airplane crash. And that days actually grow shorter in the summer, not longer. (The longest day of the year is the first day of summer.)

But this is simply inserting a different (perhaps more correct) set of information into our heads.
To me, critical thinking is more like creativity--
Going underneath the information he provided and pondering it,
Putting new thoughts together . . .
I wonder . . .
What would it feel like if an asteroid hit the earth?
Would it make a loud bang?
Would I lose my hearing immediately?

Creativity can happen in any subject.

There are creative mothers, creative gardeners, creative builders.
There are creative engineers, and maybe even creative politicians.

Can you think of any?

Some subjects are heavier than others
but all subjects can be made heavy.
How?

By giving us too much information to swallow.
Information is heavy.
Creativity is light.
Critical thinking requires space just like creativity does.

I need lightness and space to think creatively.

What else do I need?
Fun
Humor
Beauty

But mostly, not being afraid to be a fool.

Have you noticed that many creative things are childlike?

Think of Picasso’s art, Robin Williams, the Beatles (“Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da” “We all live in a yellow submarine” $@#!)

Creativity needs play.

What is play to you?

I like rolling down hills, wrestling with my friends, exploring new city neighborhoods.
When I lived in Chicago I would stand in front of Grant Fountain and fantasize about climbing in.

Creativity requires paying attention and noticing.
It requires trusting myself.

Pushing myself to “work hard” stops my creative flow.
Lots of breaks are good.

And if something comes up,
I need to follow it.
Even if I’m driving, or standing in line at the grocery, or trying to sleep.

Creativity is a gift,
And it’s my job to put it out there into the world.

Even if it makes people laugh,
Even if it makes my face turn red.

May 2000.