Gratitude and the Practice of Deep Listening
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Working on the Silence Journal.
Deep Listening is the ongoing practice of “suspending self-oriented, reactive thinking and the opening of one’s awareness to the unknown and the unexpected”. Deep Listening involves a comfortable relationship with silence and periods of solitude. This is afforded to me by the lifestyle I live as an artist in constant dialogue with a remote natural environment.
From the confines of my forest studio, over the recent years, my methods of working have allowed me to become connected at a deeper level to the happenings of life and the universe. I live in awe of the interconnectedness of all things in our Cosmos.
By immersing myself in work that requires steady and sustained repetition, I have developed a method of allowing the hands to work slowly while my mind tunes into something deep-running in our nature. This labor intensiveness is crucial to my process and hooks me into the world.
I noticed I was surrounding myself with Buddha figures. Though not a practising Buddhist, I recognized in the Buddha image the exact sensation of connection I was growing into through my work as a visual artist. There are most obviously, many paths inwards or outwards and finding a personal method of connection is probably the desire within the minds of every human being.
Recognizing our connection to all, our place in the universe affords a sense of belonging and calm. This happens in my forest studio, in the oxygen and in the space that I inhabit there as an artist at work. This daily discipline where matter and spirit co-exist fills my being with a sense of stillness and peace.
“The essential thing is to work in a state of mind that approaches prayer.” –Henri Matisse.
Practicing a sense of letting go and letting in, often in silence, the world opens up and I slip in through the veil- now at will. With thousands of hours of experiencing these moments of the slightest shift toward connection, it has become a familiar companion. Witnessing a more vivid reality also directs us as viewers to a fresh understanding of the numbing we endure in our modern lives that hinders our ability to connect meaningfully to others and our environment.
“In order to become attentive to beauty, we need to rediscover the art of reverence. Our world seems to have lost all sense of reverence. We seldom even use the word any more. The notion of reverence is full of riches that we now need desperately. Put simple, it is appropriate that a human being should dwell on this earth with reverence.” –John O’Donohue
“Don't simply brush away the inexplicable connectedness we'll occasionally taste as we experience certain people, places and works of art. These mere seconds of quiet synchronicity and understanding count. They always, always count. You just have to know and believe it.” -Victoria Erickson
I refer to this state of being as a state of Deep Listening. As a visual artist, I sense the connection as vibrational and I work intently to form a visual language that is representative of this.
In this presentation by Louie Schwarzberg we witness the beauty of the life’s work of this photographer and how he lives a rich life in a constant state of gratitude. Enjoy!