Could we do with introducing spaces and places, that deliberately call in liminality?
A place where one goes specifically to tap into different resonances, frequencies; to nudge in gently the muse, the siren of any thought-form or sound-form or image-form, to beckon it into a sanctuary, where it can be free to swirl about, to coalesce into coherence or shard into a perfect mess without category. A space where there is no specific question, but solely the desire to connect with the immaterial world - our inner landscape. That quiet psychic hum of civilisation, or din, depending on where you are located, or how disposed or not you are to your fellow human beings and their accompanying soundtrack of twenty-first living, is relegated to *out there*.
That brings me to the hierosphere, which I'm coining as of well, now,
hierosphere: a space, place, or designed form, that encourage access to the numinous
Below is one possible container I populated using DALL.E. These hierospheres can be in any environment, and made from materials that can as readily be repurposed, or return to the earth effortlessly. This one calls upon the transparency of glass, permitting a sheer view into the surrounding grandeur. The surface shimmers in the heat, or belies the inner vibrations that are being generated inside. The steps matter, one must rise to the challenge of knowing ourselves ever more clearly, more honestly. The step down is knowing that any learnings are to be integrated down in the terrestrial plane.
In a hierosphere, the common rules of place-making, i.e. a clear designation of what one must do in given space, are suspended.
A hierosphere is solely the container, given off to the individual, who in turn imbues, and en-forms, it, with their own meaning.
The individual chooses the texture and form of the experience, the sensory inputs or lack thereof: would you like operatic acoustics, that make the hierosphere undulate with a literal pulse? Or fitted out solely with good quality quiet? Could chromesthesia feature, scent, movement? Is the line of communication you seek with pure inner awareness, paved with any endogenous or exogenous methods? Guess what - you get to decide. Is it a place that you gather with others - YES - should you choose them to come into this sanctum sanctorum.
Yes, one can sit at home in quiet, or in a church, or in a car to tap at the door of the GIP (Great Inner Peace), or in the moment between breaths one can get a tingle of the GU (Great Unknown) which miraculously has the next heartbeat ready for you. But these snippets, grabbed, snatched, squashed, stolen - you get the gist - from the other matters of seeming great importance in our lives, have the effect of denigrating this process to an afterthought. Or worse, a no-thought at all.
A built landscape speaks volumes about what a society, and civilisation, values - what it has chosen to venerate, and what to forget.
When you next venture into the world, view your surrounds as though through the lens of a documentarian, or anthropologist; as a visitor from a place far, far away, where your role is to document the objects, the forms, the buildings that define the built environment, and then, for some fun and extra credit, note the expressions of the people. Assess these elements through pure observation, as objective as possible - as a visitor from a land far away, you don't know yet what is a shopping mall, a McDonalds, even a bin; describe what the people are doing in response to their built environment.
And then come and tell me if there is room for a hierosphere in your neighbourhood.
'Pareto thought that all the world could be divided into two main types of people. These types he called, in the French, which he wrote, the, speculator and the rentier.'
James Webb Young, A Technique for Getting Ideas | Full Read Here
Critical thinking | Communication | Collaboration | Creativity
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