幽玄, Melancholy, Waiting, Art and Noticing
photo by Mitchell Hartley
For me, following Strategy & Authority is not the Main Stream, it is not the highway everyone uses to get most efficiently from point A to point B. It's that little path off to the side that disappears around the bend, leading who knows where - perhaps to 'the' place, perhaps not at all.
It's an experience that holds a lot of melancholy for me as an individual, and it's in this sad emotional mood that I find a transcendent kind of beauty that I wouldn't trade for the world.
I have always been drawn to oriental philosophies and arts because these traditions have a certain way of dwelling in nature. A way of stopping all the doing doing doing and instead, residing with awareness in the present as the trees wiggle, as the clouds drift along, as the waves ripple across the surface of the waters, and as the sun and stars wheel on by.
Out of this awareness and mode of perception, many beautiful concepts have emerged that touch on qualities of experience the productive busy world has no attention for - especially in the 'West'. Japanese aesthetics have always captivated me since I was a child.
There are many particular Japanese aesthetic qualities that I'd like to write about within the context of the mechanics, but we'll focus on just one of them today which is called:
Yūgen - 幽玄
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aesthetics)
Yūgen (幽玄) is an important concept in traditional Japanese aesthetics. The exact translation of the word depends on the context. In the Chinese philosophical texts the term was taken from, yūgen meant “dim”, “deep” or “mysterious”. In the criticism of Japanese waka poetry, it was used to describe the subtle profundity of things that are only vaguely suggested by the poems.
Yūgen is said to mean “a profound, mysterious sense of the beauty of the universe… and the sad beauty of human suffering”.
Yūgen suggests that beyond what can be said but is not an allusion to another world. It is about this world, this experience.
(Ortolani, 325). Ortolani, Benito. The Japanese Theatre. Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1995
My favorite description of this concept so far belongs to Alan Watts in his lecture on Japanese aesthetics called 'Unbleached Silk'.
Here you have a short audio clip in which he describes Yūgen specifically:
Alan Watts - Unbleached Silk_cut_part 3_cut.mp3
"Little sounds emphasizing silence, little motions emphasizing stillness"
"Suggestiveness"
There are many things Alan speaks to in this lecture that would merit pointing out and discussing - perhaps we'll get there sometime.
At the end of his explanation of yūgen he begins to describe how it flows over into another concept called 'sabi', which as a quality reflects the essential solitude of being in our own nature.
In the next few paragraphs, I will connect the concept of yūgen with the melancholy and solitude of Individuality as we know it in Human Design terms, using the medium of art.
Yūgen in Art
I love having conversations with artists and those deeply immersed in the arts who have an acute eye and feeling for the creative self-expression of individuality.
Had I been a Generator, or carried any of the Channels of Creativity connected to a Motor Center, I'd probably spend my days drawing, painting and sculpting away. My talent for art is sporadic and in hibernation most of the time. So I'm very glad to have connections with very vivid artists who bring their world into my life.
In a recent exchange with one of my friends, the artist Andrew Wyeth was mentioned, along with some of his incredible pieces:
Artist: Andrew Wyeth
As I observed these paintings, the quality of yūgen seemed at once all-pervasive to me. I wrote to my friend:
"The atmosphere and awareness suggested by each of these paintings is defined by what isn't there. We don't know if it isn't there yet, or if it isn't there anymore. Whatever the 'it' might be.
This is the quality of yūgen that accentuates at once every small thing and subtle nuance that is there. The blades of grass, the texture of the fields, the gradients of colours, light and shading. The placement and posture of bodies and objects interacting with the wind. It evokes the melancholic emotional mood of anticipation and loss, as we wait for 'it'.
And in this waiting there is only the noticing of the beauty of all that is there. All that isn't 'it'. All that isn't 'it' yet. All that will never be 'it'.
If we can accept the waiting and be with that, we won't miss a thing."
Yūgen, Melancholy, Waiting, Noticing
It is difficult to wait at first, when we are in our early experiment with our Strategy and Authority. In the end, every Type must wait - even the Manifestor. Each of us waits for the right time to be moved by life in one way or another. Though most of us have been raised with the conditioning that we should make it happen, that we should do it in order to be it, or achieve it, or experience it, or have it,...
It is a challenge for the mind to let go, and we can find ourselves addicted to action, and to the generating of the sacral. When we look at the busy-ness of modern society, and have conversations with people who are in that productive flow day-in day-out, then the compulsion to do, and the negative association with non-doing, are very much on the surface.
I did some research at university regarding people's perspectives on 'not doing' or 'non-doing'. And often people who struggled with not keeping themselves preoccupied reported similar fears:
Gate 55 The Fear of Emptiness
Gate 22 The Fear of Silence
Gate 28 The Fear of Death
Gate 57 The Fear of Tomorrow
Gate 24 The Fear of Ignorance
Gate 43 The Fear of Rejection
You can read more about each of these fears in the Definitive Book of Human Design, or by participating in one of the courses such as Living Your Design, Rave ABCs or Rave Cartography.
Each of these fears is part of our circuit of Individual Knowing, the central pathways that run throughout the Bodygraph. Because they are Individual, they are formatted by the frequency of the Pulse in the 3/60 Channel of Mutation, which is a timed release mechanism for the profound mutation that Individuality can bring.
The Pulse fluctuates and initiates suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere. But until it does, it isn't there. Nothing is happening. Nothing is happening. Nothing is happening. Until there is the sudden spark of mutation that can create a new order out of chaos.
This is the process that also underlies the chemistry of melancholy: an emotional mood of sadness that is present in these empty spaces between pulses. And when you look at many artists, you'll see that their creativity and art contains this sadness. It is what can be most attractive about them to their audience. This touch of melancholy gives their work poetic depth and augments the beauty that they have managed to channel into form.
The artistic skill that could appear to elevate them far beyond the crowds of people who would never dare dream of being so creatively inspired or capable, is somehow balanced by the mood of melancholy that pervades their art. It reminds everyone that the artist is human too, that they too have suffered existence in form, in one way or another. And it can be a point of connection, when they can recognize their own individual sadness mirrored in the sadness of the artist. The spectator can feel known, can recognize in themselves what they are otherwise too busy (or afraid) to see: the solitude of their individuality - and its uniqueness. This is what gives art its empowering potential.
You can notice the power of melancholy in Andrew Wyeth's work. Even though it isn't the only quality noticeable in the figures, landscapes and objects, you can see how each of them are held in this emotional sadness. This waiting in between the pulses of change. Also notice the quality of loneliness or aloneness (depending on how you want to look at it). This sense of 'there's just me now...' is part of the melancholy of individuality.
The Gates I listed above are awareness gates that belong to the Solar Plexus Center, the Splenic Center, and the Ajna Center. These are the fears that we confront in the solitude of our individuality and they each reflect the absence of something.
Gate 55 The Fear of Emptiness, reflects the absence of passion.
Gate 22 The Fear of Silence, reflects the absence of attention.
Gate 28 The Fear of Death, reflects the absence of purpose.
Gate 57 The Fear of the Future, reflects the absence of truth.
Gate 24 The Fear of Ignorance, reflects the absence of certain knowing.
Gate 43 The Fear of Rejection, reflects the absence of acceptance.
And it's in this absence that we struggle to dwell in the waiting, because the Pulse does not let us know when change will come. We don't even know if it will come at all. We're just suspended in the here-and-now.
To me, it is this absence that marks the quality of yūgen, the emptiness, the silence, the not-knowing, the purposelessness. In the Westernized busy world, we have no cultural frame or appreciation for this, and so it freaks most people out. When I interviewed people about this, it seemed that these fears tend to be too much to handle. I wondered if that's because you can only venture through them alone, and most people do not dare, so they cling to a mental preoccupation instead of their own unstimulating company.
And yet here you have artists like Andrew Wyeth who remind people there is something mysterious and profound about the absence of something. He reminds his audience to reside in the waiting, to move through the sadness of being in between that which has been and that which is not yet.
Through his art, it is the quality of yūgen that reveals something extraordinary: that if you can just be with the waiting, all of a sudden - everything that is there, all the subtle nuances and details that would go unnoticed in busy doing, finally there is the space for all of that to permeate awareness and stimulate consciousness in a supreme yet peaceful way. This is the power of suggestiveness that absence holds.
Suddenly, in the sadness of being, beauty is everywhere in the most dull and boring of places. One can see the whole universe contained within the absence of anticipation, disclosed by the wiggling of a decaying leaf - like 'little sounds emphasizing silence'. And this deep silence being more profound and meaningful than anything that could ever be said.
Suddenly there is something to pay attention to, something to be passionate about, there is purpose, there is life, truth, knowing and creativity. And it's all right here and now. It emerges as naturally as anything else, without us needing to 'do' anything to bring it about. Then we are called by our creative muse to channel the sadness of our own unique individuality into art.
It just required waiting, waiting, waiting and then noticing.
The acceptance of the absence.
The path that disappears in the fog, not needing to know where it may lead.
Yūgen.
Enjoy your movie,
Hagen
