The Imaginal World: Sensing the Creative Imperative (by Sally Gradle)

[Gany]

The Imaginal World: Sensing the Creative Imperative
http://www.ierg.net/confs/viewpaper.php?id=346&cf=4

Sally Gradle
School of Art and Design, Southern Illinois University Carbo

Abstract
Abstract

In The Language of Vision, Jamake Highwater (1994) remarks that
imagination opens as a response to experience; often expanding,
shaping, and spurring the actions that become a larger vision within a
community. In this essay, I examine how the phenomenon of experience
is shaped by sense perceptions and an awareness of mystery that hint
at the imaginal depths of our existence. First I explore the meanings
of terms such as witnessing, attention, and deep listening. I then
show how these terms support a pedagogy that employs active
imagination, an organ of knowledge and metamorphosis that scholar
Henry Corbin (1977) describes as being as real as the senses. I
conclude with the view that sensing the imaginal is the creative
imperative of all education, a purpose that supports the continuation
of past, present, and future worlds that we imagine.


The Imaginal World: Sensing the Creative Imperative

Abstract

In The Language of Vision, Jamake Highwater (1994) remarks that
imagination opens as a response to experience; often expanding,
shaping, and spurring the actions that become a larger vision within a
community. In this essay, I examine how the phenomenon of experience
is shaped by sense perceptions and an awareness of mystery that hint
at the imaginal depths of our existence. First I explore the meanings
of terms such as witnessing, attention, and deep listening. I then
show how these terms support a pedagogy that employs active
imagination, an organ of knowledge and metamorphosis that scholar
Henry Corbin (1977) describes as being as real as the senses. I
conclude with the view that sensing the imaginal is the creative
imperative of all education, a purpose that supports the continuation
of past, present, and future worlds that we imagine.

When I was a child, I frequently climbed an old apple tree in my
neighborhood. Its branches forked to provide just the right footholds
for small feet, and the climb was easy, although somewhat scary. About
ten or twelve feet above ground, I peered out through the leafy limbs,
like a spy looking at those who played below; or like God, who I
perceived at the time was watching in a similar manner from somewhere
above. The thought that I could alter what I saw below me, with no one
being the wiser, simply by changing my position in the tree gave rise
to all sorts of speculations about how God must do the same thing,
with additional powers that included leaping and floating at will from
cloud to cloud.

I recall this experience now as being what it has since become in my
life: an introduction to the marvelous interplay of sense perceptions,
mystery, and the phenomenal nature of experiences which join the two
together. The primordial role of sense data, linked with the
impressions of place often become “the occasions of perception” that
philosopher Edward Casey notes (1996, p. 17) as the markers of our
journeys. As a hermeneutic enterprise in this paper, I will recall,
(revive, summon, or bring back), the relationship between sense
perceptions and mystery that challenge the mesmerizing hold of
accountability as the end goal of education. I will also remember
(become mindful again) that there exists an imaginal reality within
the real experience (Corbin, 1977) for each of us; and this intuited
realm holds enormous promise in the conservation and preservation of
all cultures, and our notions of what constitutes `a world..'

To situate the following discussion, let me just say that I can recall
being in the apple tree in a much more visceral way than my
description earlier suggested. My heart pounded in my chest, my head
felt dizzy, and my legs were routinely scraped and stinging while I
tried to twist and turn on the branches without falling. My entire
body remembers this collection of experiences in the tree, because it
was not a mental activity separate from me being me; the experience
was embodied. It was a challenge to move, to think, to observe, and to
plan simultaneously, while also becoming ever so slightly aware that a
marvelous relationship existed between sensations, ideas, and motion.
As such, one could say the tree climbing experiences had all the
elements of a well-paced mystery; and most certainly top the charts of
my educational experiences for much the same reasons.

What I wish to do here by both recalling and remembering is to explore
the connections among experience, mystery, the act of witnessing, and
sense perceptions as a gathering in that serves us well in the kind of
education I wish to alchemize.

Beginning with experience: An opening to mystery

When I graduated from college with a teaching degree back in the
seventies, I was equipped with Piaget's theories of child development.
Although it seemed much like a science project to systematically
analyze children's stages as though they were ripening fruit on the
way to maturity, I did it without questioning my education. Children,
or so I had been taught, go through various stages of development.
They take all their belongings (constructions of knowledge) with them
to the next room (stage of development). There, they settle in with
some degree of comfort or the lack thereof in order to construct more
knowledge that must be mastered on the road to adulthood. My personal
experiences with children often belied the obvious: that all of us,
children included, do a great deal of meandering and excavating in the
imaginal realm that opens through sense experiences. This observation
did not trouble my categorizing in the least until the day my eleven
year old daughter (well beyond the pre-operational stage, or so I
thought) asked me quite seriously, “Mom, what do mermaids eat?”

I remember taking a deep breath, confused. (This couldn't be what I
heard!) I remember diving my hands beneath the soapsuds in the kitchen
sink and trolling the unseen bottom for an answer to an honest
question. There was another world being explored here, and all the
constructivist theories I had about children, their development, my
control of the teaching process by understanding the eventual outcome
as a rational product—all of this gave way to wonder at the unseen
worlds my daughter still inhabited.

Looking back at this marvelous invitation to leave common sense, I now
find myself once again drawn into the educative dance that refuses to
parlay “understanding-as-construction” (Jardine, 2000, p. 168) and the
significance of closure as being the most essential aspects of
education. The mastery and control implied in such an orientation seem
more akin to an era that `harnessed' energy and `cracked' the genetic
code. You may be thinking that such an era still exists--that we are
living in it--and that our ideas on education are only the antecedents
of what the culture has created; and thus, there is no alternative.

Or perhaps you are wondering, as I am, is if the challenge to
provoking excellence in education has more to do with leaving this
picture behind and noticing qualities of education that are far more
ancient, sometimes elusive, and much less determinant than any growth
initiatives, benchmarks, or competency standards. If so, I extend to
you an invitation to explore the interplay of witness, mystery, and
attention; and then consider a pedagogy comprised of their substance.

Witnessing: Attesting to the True and the Subjective

`Eye witness' reporting of traffic, weather, and war catastrophes have
us supposing we know the true meaning of the word witness. We connect
it with the ability to recount objective facts, as though what was
experienced was both other and elsewhere, having happened outside of
us, to another. Even more deeply embedded in this particular meaning
of witness is the implication that what was seen or heard could have
been seen or heard by anyone in our place: the objectivity of events
is a given. Philosopher Gabriel Marcel (1964/2002) reminds us,
however, that the real nature of witnessing is more closely associated
with attestation; a `stake your life upon it' sort of claim that
implies there is no turning back on what has been experienced as true;
and that one's witness is unlikely to be another's. This attestation
is not coerced, nor is it solicited; Marcel suggests when he employs
this meaning of the term witnessing that it is given freely and is an
act of unfathomable fidelity.

The witness, therefore, is someone who is deeply committed and
involved in the experience; someone who claims truth no matter how
dear the cost. In art educator/therapist Pat Allen's (2005) use of the
term, it is only possible to be a witness of consciousness who
recognizes this truth for another when one participates in deep,
embodied listening. It requires being still, and occurs when one
leaves behind “relentless action and endless speech” (Jardine, 2000,
p. 169): that chatter of frenetic activity found in so many classrooms
today.

Stillness as the Sound of Attention

When I walk in the forest with a guide, an artist/naturalist who is
looking for particular vines to harvest, I notice how different our
perceptions are in the woods. He seems to examine the shapes of vines,
and knows where to cut them and how he might use the cut section to
great advantage. For example, there are some vines that he sees as
being good material for creating what he calls talking sticks. Others
I am guessing he will unwind from each other and create something more
sculptural. I have no particular idea in mind about what I am looking
for in the woods. In fact, I seem to be looking at and sensing the
whole forest—I cannot yet concentrate too well on just the vines by
themselves. I am most aware of the sponginess of the forest soil,
under deep layers of decomposing leaves. I am also aware of the dips
and rolls of the topography and my own uncertain footing. I
continually look around me and above me, when I don't need to look
down to keep my balance. It feels overwhelmingly new to me, and I am
in a quandary as to whether to follow my guide, or just stand still
and take it all in. Yi-Fu Tuan (1977) talks of the pause in movement
that is necessary to create a feeling of place. I am aware in this
experience that the cessation of motion, a settling in that leads to a
receptiveness of whatever I might find, as Marcel (1964/2002, p. 27)
would call it, the “feeling at home” or receptivity, is part of what I
call the sound of attention.

Claudia Eppert (2004), in her discussion of the term `attention,'
notes that the admonition to students to pay attention immediately
implies something far different than the kind of attention we are
discussing here. In her words, attention is a commodity: students `pay
attention' as though they must purchase knowledge-as-facts, with the
ultimate goal being other intangible rewards of focus: admission to
college, passing an exam, or earning points for recess. Even the word
attention, I am thinking, is so often paired with partners that demean
its qualities, as in the sometimes negative comments on elementary
students' report cards: `demands constant attention,' `lack of
attention,' or `extremely inattentive.' The issue may be less about
attention, than who owns and controls the learner's focus.

Eppert goes on to examine philosopher and social activist Simone
Weil's thoughts on attention, who believed this term could best be
understood as the suspension of any sort of attachment to the ideas,
objects, or content discussed in favor of a detached yet interested
observance. This allows for new pathways to open up, and as Eppert
(2004) contends, realizes for those in education a much different end:
“Ultimately the goal of learning is not the acquisition of subject
matter but rather a lifelong struggle with the question of how to live
in the world….” (p. 47).

Eppert (2004) also explores the ideas of Lithuanian philosopher,
Emmanuel Levinas who believed attentiveness is less about mastery than
it is about receptiveness to the other. Like Weil, he argued that
learning entailed something far more transforming than the acquisition
of knowledge. With learning came the cultivation of attention as
receptivity, openness, and stillness. Yet what is it we are to witness
in the stillness when we are attentive? This is the question we must
address in the educative setting if we are to both recall and remember
what opens imaginal worlds within the very real phenomena of
experiences.

Listening that Thinks: A Gathering In

David Levin (1989) describes the pre-conceptually experienced
phenomena, such as my earlier reference to myself in the apple tree,
as that which involves the entire body, as do other contemporary
thinkers who refer to sense perception (Abram, 1996; Casey, 1996).
Noting that we are vision dominant in our culture, Levin calls us to
balance seeing with hearing through a “recollection of the feminine
wisdom, the sophia carried by the listening body-self; a recollection
that will re-member the listening body in relation to Being , the
dimensionality of wholeness” (p. 32). This is a sort of listening that
thinks; beginning with the openness “to the sonorous dimensionality of
Being” (p. 46). This kind of listening later develops to include the
compassionate practice of deep listening to the connections among all
life.

Levin makes a remarkable assertion here. It is only when the
experiential qualities of living, sensing, and being become more
valuable than maintaining the carefully built structure of ones'
identity that one becomes conscious of the open nature of being and
hearing. Identity is no longer taken for granted and fixed; it is a
process that is constantly influenced by connective relationships.
Hearing, in Levin's view, involves giving silence; and from this
silence comes a sort of aletheia (Heidegger's unconcealment,
1993/1981) of truth. Real hearing is the kind of listening that “makes
itself into an organ of the laying-which-gathers: a listening, in
short, which itself becomes a gathering laying down” (p. 251).

So we are not talking about a hearing that exists simply because we
have the capacity to distinguish sound from what is not sound, or even
a recognition of what is audible at all. We are talking about how one
develops attentively, becomes conscious of Being, and uses sense
perceptions as that which leads to a greater involvement in a world
where the reciprocity of perception (Abram, 1996, p. 69) is a
relational mystery all life forms share.

Mystery and Feeling at Home in the World

To continue this discussion—one that I hope will not lead to closure,
but will lead instead to continued imaginings of what education may
really be--I turn again to Marcel for his pertinent thoughts on
mystery, and will conclude with Henry Corbin's ideas on the
transformative nature of the world as possible only through employing
active imagination.

A mystery, (as I alluded to earlier in my tree climbing incident), has
certain complexities that are not separable from the experience of
being `in' the mystery. In Marcel's words, a mystery is not a problem
in need of a solution. It is not a boulder in the road on the way to
somewhere else that is peevishly obstructing one's path. A mystery is
something in which one is totally involved, participating to the
extent that there is no awareness of any sort of organizational
pattern to the mystery. There is no datum that is readily analyzed;
and there is no essence that can ever be completely known. If it was
to be known in its entirety, it would cease to be a mystery and become
that which is known, set aside as perhaps an objective fact by some.

Jardine (2000, p. 167), paraphrasing Gadamer, echoes a similar
acknowledgement and I believe contentment to live within mystery in
education, instead of masquerading with the secreted presumption that
we are on the road to mastery. He remarks that we could treat
misunderstanding as an ecstatic moment of self-transcendence, wherein
we can finally understand something more than just the method we
practice.” If one could move away from the concerted effort to rush
toward mastery, and become immersed in the plenitude inherent in
mystery, silence, and apparent emptiness (Marcel, 1964; Teilhard de
Chardin, 1976), what would happen? If one acknowledged that mystery
enfolds us without it also demanding that we take it apart and
understand it all, how would this shift our perceptions of what we are
about in education?

The Imaginal Universe and the Face of the Invisible

So that I could better understand how a sense of mystery opens one to
the imaginal world, I turned to Tom Cheetham's (2005) extraordinary
explanation and extension of Henry Corbin's ideas. Corbin was both an
Occidental and a Christian, yet best known for his intensive efforts
to explain Islamic cosmology. At the age of twenty nine, Corbin had
already met some of the key thinkers of his day such as Barth, Nyberg,
Heidegger, and Massignon. Corbin's 1932 encounter on the shores of
Lake Siljin in Sweden, as recounted in Cheetham's work, reveals a
lifelong orientation to mystery:

It will soon be dusk, but for now the clouds are still clear, the
pines are not yet darkened, for the lake brightens them into
transparency. And everything is green with a green that would be
richer than if pulling all the organ stops in recital. It must be
heard seated, very close to the Earth, arms crossed, eyes closed,
pretending to sleep.

For it is not necessary to strut about like a conqueror and want to
give a name to things, to everything; it is they who will tell you who
they are, if you listen, yielding like a lover….. (Corbin, as cited by
Cheetham, 2005, p. 64).

Corbin goes on to explain later in this same meditation that as soon
as one starts “to possess, to give a name and restrain, to explain and
recover, ah! there is only a cipher, and your judgment is
pronounced” (Corbin, as cited by Cheetham, p. 65). He knows that it is
he who must become the open gateway to the imaginal; not by leaving
the world of sensory perception; nor by naming and categorizing sights
and sounds, but by complete participation in the world. His silent
attentiveness is the act of the witness, the `stake your life upon it'
sort of claim that I noted earlier in Marcel's writing. The mundus
imaginalis, the imaginal world, opens as a result of a certain
receptivity to mystery, and can be most readily perceived when the
active imagination, (an organ in Corbin's view; a muscle in my own
metaphoric association) becomes capable of perception.

Active imagination, according to author and psychologist James Hillman
(1983), is neither spiritual nor aesthetic in its orientation. It
works with the images that appear, and while trying to clarify their
forms, is not intent on creating art, but works to repair the psyche's
fall into the trap of literalism. Bringing back the metaphoric is
unquestionably one of the most necessary lessons to teach in education
today—to de-literalize the language we speak, and give back the depths
of meaning that are smothered in an abridged, practical discourse on
so many topics. While imaginal reality is always situated within the
real, to become fully aware of it, we must work with the imagination
as a means to open ourselves to an invisible metaphoric world. Art
educator/therapist Howard McConeghey (2003, p. 63) states that we must
look for “the face of the invisible essence of the objects and events
of our daily experience.” He advocates that the art teacher or art
therapist let go of analyzing experiences, and let the invisible
reality speak to one's empathetic nature and the resonance that exists
when one is open to the possibility of not knowing.

Let me tell one final story as a way of situating you once again in
remembering, becoming mindful, and looking with a degree of wonder at
the imaginal world that opens—sometimes quite unexpectedly. I was
sitting in a second grade classroom a few years ago, my back to the
window, my eyes taking in the rowdy antics of the children who were
testing the mettle of the student teacher. All of a sudden, a shout
went up, “Look! It's snowing!” and a hush fell over the room. I was
suddenly looking into twenty seven pairs of wide eyes which were in
fact, not looking at me, but beyond me. The snow was falling in big,
wet flakes and the ground was sure to be covered soon. I thought about
the `first snows' the children might have known, and could possibly
remember. I thought about the individual and collective meanings that
these memories might have for them. I also thought about how their
imaginings of the world covered in snow might shape the rest of the
gray, cold day with something akin to magic. If there was a national
snow anthem or a pledge of allegiance to live within such moments of
mystery, we could have used these to mark the solemnity of the
occasion then and there. The curious empathy I sensed with their
collective musings took me back years to elementary school winter
days. Walking on the hilltops of mounded snow by the street, cutting
through neighbor's yards on the way to school just to explore new
territory, and being late and quite wet for school and not caring at
all. I entered the classroom with a certain kind of joy about my
secret adventures and difficult journey. I had walked far out of my
way, by choice, to experience the marvel of a new world. At that very
moment, it felt as though everyone in the room was remembering with
every fiber of their being all sorts of past snows, and considering
future ones as well. This kind of imagining, wondering, awe, and
amazement created a very real Presence in the snow for all of us.

Final Thoughts: Your invitation to Mystery

David Abram (1996) discussed far better than I the significance of
realizing that the past and future are “everywhere implied” (p. 210)
in the present. He notes Heidegger's later interpretation of the past
and future, for example, as being concealed from the very present they
are bringing about. Yet, even in their absence, we remember the past
and make it present with us. We imagine the future, multiple futures,
as possible because of the past that lies embedded in our present. The
active imagination that we wish to cultivate in education has a
powerful purpose in remembering, as Jamake Highwater (1994, p. 266)
suggests: “The imagination does not recall the urgent messages of
politicians and iconoclasts, but it does remember the experiences that
stir us into action and that shape and control what we have been and
what we are and what we are becoming.”

I began this short essay by recalling (reviving, summoning, or calling
back), wishing to situate the sense perceptions in experience with
mystery. I described attention and talked about full, embodied
listening, key aspects of reciprocal participation with the world. All
of us have witnessed the truth of sense perceptions in our experiences
and have struggled to match words, or find a motion, or portray an
image of what was intuitively known as true. As Abram (1996) clearly
indicates, if what we're after through an examination of sense
perception really makes sense, this releases the body from outmoded
ideas and offers the hope of rejuvenating the world with fresh
perceptions. So I will end here by remembering, (becoming mindful
again) that there is a pause in movement through all educative
landscapes that requires our stillness, the witness of being in the
moment, and the courage to sense there is indeed a mystery here to
opening worlds. It is the challenge we undertake as educators, a
creative imperative. And we are in it.

References:

Abram, D. (1996). The spell of the sensuous. New York: Vintage.

Allen, P. (2005). Art as a spiritual path. Boston: Shambhala.

Casey, E. S. (1996). How to get from space to place in a fairly short
stretch of time:

Phenomenological prolegomena. In Steven Feld and Keith Basso (Eds.),
Senses of place. (pp. 13-52). Santa Fe, NM: School of American
Research.

Cheetham, T. (2005). Green man, earth angel. Albany: State University
of New York.

Corbin, H. (1977). Spiritual body and celestial earth: From Mazdean
Iran to Shi'ite Iran.

Princeton: Princeton Universtiy.

Eppert, C. (2004). Altering habits of attention in education: Simone
Weil and Emmanuel Levinas. In H. A. Alexander, (Ed.). Spirituality and
Ethics in Education. (pp. 42-53). Portland, OR: Sussex Academic.

Heidegger, M. (1993). Basic concepts. (G. E. Aylesworth, Trans.).
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University. (Original work published 1981).

Jardine, D. (2000). Under the tough old stars: Ecopedagogical essays.
Brandon, VT: Solomon.

Levin, D. M. (1989). The listening self: Personal growth, social
change and the closure of metaphysics. London: Routledge.

Marcel, G. (2002). Creative fidelity. (R. Rosthal, Trans.). New York:
Fordham University.

Teilhard de Chardin, Piere (1976). The heart of matter. R. Hague,
(Trans.). NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Tuan, Y.-F. (1977). Space and place: The perspective of experience.
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota.

[Gany]

Good stuff for school teachers.

Gany

On Dec 27, 12:21 am, Gany <soulg...@bigpond.com> wrote:
> The Imaginal World: Sensing the Creative Imperativehttp://www.ierg.net/confs/viewpaper.php?id=346&cf=4