Practical Wisdom from the Entrepreneurs Creative Edge by William Reed

The psychology of awareness is a fascinating field. The cutting edges of physics and perception reveal that we actually know a great deal less than we think we know, and may in fact be missing what is right before our very eyes.

This process is explored in a multiple award winning documentary film released in 2004 called, What the Bleep Do We Know? http://www.whatthebleep.com. For balance, it is worth also reading an unbiased review of the documentary at: http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/bleep.html. A New York Times review called it “the intersection between science and spirituality.”

One of the most controversial claims made in the film is that the Native Americans first exposed to the appearance of the ships of Columbus offshore were unable to see them, as anything more than a disturbance of the ripples in the waves. According to legend, the first to be able to see them as objects was a shaman, who had to educate his fellow tribesmen before they also could make out the shapes. While we may not be able to prove the veracity of this story, there is compelling contemporary evidence that makes it quite plausible.

To the incredulous it would be worth seeing the experimental results of two award winning then Harvard professors, Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, whose research inspired the book The Invisible Gorilla. The authors demonstrated that about 50% of the time, people who watch a video of a group of college students passing a basketball back and forth as they mingle, completely miss seeing a person dressed in a gorilla suit calmly walk into their midst, beat his chest, and then walk out the other side. I have confirmed this myself showing the video to people who were all company presidents or division managers, and not one of them noticed the gorilla the first time. You can see the video on the website at http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com.

This video will make you think twice about answering your cell phone while driving, realizing that the gorilla might be dressed as a person on a motorcycle weaving through traffic.

While it is interesting to speculate on what it is that we might not be seeing, it is also fun to explore the new things that we can see when we change our focal point.

Your eye is like a butterfly

Capable of alighting on many points

Open if you will the Artist’s eye

And give your vision counterpoint

You can enhance your awareness through Art, both in appreciation and creation. An artist’s work is a window on a new way of seeing the world. Each medium has its own special way of transporting your perception. In photography, the lens is the cameraman's eye, and the photograph the canvas. Sculpture speaks to you kinesthetically, as if the artist were physically present.

For the calligrapher, the brush is the eye and the calligraphy the window to that vision. For some time now I have been exploring this theme by daily creating original calligraphy poems, done by hand created on an iPad; posting them to my Facebook Wall at http://www.facebook.com/will.reed, to which you can Like and Subscribe, as well as see archived images in the Wall photos.

Choose your medium and technology, but make it a point to engage with and create artistic images once a day. It will expand the range of what you can see, and enhance your receptivity to new ideas. Art also engages the emotions and makes you feel energized. It is the perfect antidote to stress from information overload and paralysis by analysis, which today are more common than the common cold.

Let Art match point with counterpoint, and restore harmony in the way you see the world.

William Reed

WEBSITE: http://www.williamreed.jp

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