The Art of Rhythm (Part 2)
Think of seasons, patterns in nature, day and night. The simple fact that we have day and night every single day. Our bodies were created in such a way to need a significant amount of sleep. Rhythms of nature were created into our world.
Thankfully these rhythms allow us the opportunity to explore certain things. Life in its very nature drives us to be curious. “Why is there night? What about the day? What are dreams? Why do some places not experience seasons?”
The world was created in such a way as to be investigated. Written into it are revelations about the One who created it, but also about us and the nature of humanity. Sleep is one of the primary examples. Many have tried to overcome her.
Many for a time will think they have escaped her need. They will plow through, arrogantly boasting of their power to overcome her. They will pay the price. Eventually their bodies and brains will shut down until they give her what she wants.
Sleep is that mistress which reminds us there is a whole un-tapped universe we simply can not yet fully enter. The world of dreams and downloading our short-term into long-term memory is a beautiful mystery. It is one beyond our rational ability.
But this is where the imagination comes in. Where reason ends something else begins. Some will scoff that anything not grounded in reason is anemic and corrupt. They may assume it is “ir-rational.” But what if there truly is a third category: “non-rational”?
In other words, what if this world of beauty and imagination is grounded, but is grounded in the non-rational (that which is beyond our reason currently). Perhaps another term for it would be pre-rational. Someday will figure it out, right now we can’t.
But there are SO many good things in this category of non- (or pre-) rational. Eventually there will be some quantifiable metrics to measure the results of such things, but their creation can not and must not be relegated to the world of reason alone.
That is the beauty and mystery of foresight. What we call vision is really the ability to suspend the need to know for the power to know. In other words, we temporary give up knowing in the cognitive sense in order to know with the intuitive sense.
Only intuition can envision, or see into the future. It is already there, though the cognitive world can not see it. It is very real. In faith it can be seen perfectly. But so few have this gift to see without seeing, to enable this intuitive foresight.
That is the artist at a glance: one who trusts the intuitive process. The artist does not “see” in the sense of rational certainty. They do not start with the end in sight. They start, though, with a distinct and powerful drive to create.
Where will it lead? The artist has learned to be comfortable not knowing. Trusting the process really means trusting the intuitive foresight, which sees something already our cognitive eyes can not. We come along for the ride, if we dare.