Self-Inquiry as Prayer: Going in & In

Investigating the self is a phenomenological endeavor, a reflection upon experience and the experiencer. It is about re-cognizing, identifying, and becoming aware of the structures of meaning within. From a holistic approach, it includes describing, analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating the embodied conditions of lived experience. This includes memories, associated feelings, the place in which the body holds this stored knowledge, values, perceptions, personality, temperament, cycles of moods. It dives down below the surface of the Lifeworld that Husserl and Schutz discuss to access a world that is distance and yet so familiar. It is often our enemy and yet the path to our greatest freedom. It is the state of mind to a place of present openenss and awareness of our our deepest internal landcape. Heiddeger calls this "Dasien, the primal nature of our Being"; the space that unifies subject and object. Furthermore, our truest Being is often overthrown by the ways in which we get caught up in Being-In-the World through identifying with feelings and moods or particular attitudes. Through attuning to Being, we enter Presence, and self once again is able to finds its breath, ground into Lifeforce; its hope, and possibility.
The journey of this dissertation fieldwork between myself and another local painter has been challenging and profoundly life changing. Everyday as I seek to better understand the function of art, expression, creativity, and painting, I am faced with the grand complexities of the meaning of existence. It aesthetically affects the role that my inner awareness plays in increasing my capacity to become emotional grounded in life. Its no wonder that the awe of creation and the symbolism of my emerging "Subterranean" work has reflected natural and organic shapes, seeds, stones, weeds, and layers of soil and sediment. Its the entrance into the fertile earth, into Creation, and into Home. Its a never ending prayer that returns me to the Source within my self, My being, my Life.