Nature and a vision-board
Or the confinements of western perception.
A vision board is a technic adapted to contemporary western culture, usually used in self-development methods to enhance the chances of materializing something (in the Global North hierarchy of importance), being love, or a new car.
Our unique perceptual imagination sustains a vision board's construction, and we use our individual symbolic language to animate it.
Being an actual board or just plain paper, we let our creativity run wild within the confines of that space and that inventive time. Scissors, glue, old magazines, and some colored pencils are usually simple vehicles through which we find expressive freedom, even for just a few minutes, constrained by a title or longing expectation.
After the vision board is done, we place it somewhere in our intimate space to gaze into it, eagerly expecting its results. Its energy gradually extinguishes itself.
Confinements of modern perception
The article's point is not the vision-board, but the confinements of our modern perception. Because nature used to be our “vision-board.” — just saying this is so overly simplistic and naive. I mean that our perception was stolen and collapsed by modernity, with the simplistic and superficial gaze of reductionism, its inherent blindness of the complexities, and meanders of the deep relations of things.
We used the expanded and connected type of perceptual “eye” all the time. The symbolic “eye” that finds meaning not in the head but within the heart. That sees through objects, discovering their intrinsic purpose. Meaning and purpose are not used here in the precepts of modernity, as forms of control, but as Life’s dialogue.
This wide cognition enabled us to entangle our gaze with nature's dynamic movement. Our perceptual field was interweaved with nature itself, so all of her wisdom, patterns, flows, and symbols were perceived naturally. When we are connected in this way, meaning is all around us. We become immersed in ancient living wisdom, blending with it. This ancient gaze was a communal one.
The symbolic eye was an active guardian of contemplation, used to protect life in its multiple forms. It did not get separated or severed from its actual context, geographical, cultural, or otherwise.
Let us practice our ancient “eye,” allowing our minds to drift in the waves of imagination. Let us connect with living things, with their cycles, textures, movements, and sentient consciousness. Let the heart find its way through symbols and emotions, dialoguing in reverberation. Let us recover the old strength of our true perception. Are you ready?
