I wanted to deal with light directly rather than with paint.
James TurrellRead
We're part of creating this world in which we live, but we're unaware of how we do that or even that we do that.
Interpretation
We unknowingly influence the world around us through our thoughts and actions.
James Turrell's quote highlights the concept that our perceptions and actions play a significant role in shaping reality, often without our conscious awareness. It suggests that we are co-creators of our environment and experiences, though many of us remain oblivious to the impact we have on the world and the intricate connections we share with it.
In practice
In a discussion about mindfulness, this quote can be used to illustrate the unseen impacts of our daily choices.
I wanted to deal with light directly rather than with paint.
It is only when light is reduced that the pupil opens and feeling goes out of the eyes like touch.
I feel that I want to use light as this wonderful and magic elixir that we drink as Vitamin D through the skin - and I mean, we are literally light-eaters - to then affect the way that we see.
In many cases, if we knew what it would take, we might have thought twice about it, so it's often wonderful that we don't have hindsight.
There are different stages when you fly. The first stage is the dollhouse effect, seeing everything on Earth like it's a model. Suddenly, all of your concerns seem very small.
Space has a way of looking. It seems like it has a presence of vision. When you come into it, it is there, itβs been waiting for you.
Some persons seem to like you, and others seem to hate you, and you must wonder why. They are simply liking machines and hating machines.
Always eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed- no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull.
In my state of spiritual abstraction, I no longer belong to myself and to my eyesight. I am nothing more than a single narrow gasping lung, floating over the mists and summits.
The perfect man uses his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing. It regrets nothing. It receives but does not keep.
If the great American people will only keep their temper, on both sides of the line, the troubles will come to an end, and the question which now distracts the country will be settled just as surely as all other difficulties of like character which have originated in this government have been adjusted.
And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers - shriveled now, and brown and flat and brittle - to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of men.
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