The seeming solidity of matter beneath our feet, in our hands or as familiar objects, causes our faculties to attach itself to form. Our human body, and our attachment to other forms, compounds solidity and the apparent separateness of man and man, man and creature, man and object. However, should the Law of gravity cease to operate, we humans and our many objects would find ourselves cast out like meteorites into the abyss, beyond sky, lumps of solid matter evicted from our planetary home.

If we are exclusively matter, then we should also have deep roots from our feet keeping us grounded firmly in one place. But we are a species set apart from the plant kingdom, and while animals migrate and move freely upon the surface of the earth, they act according to instinct only. In this man differs from the animal kingdom.

Man has freewill to think and act separately to his fellow man. Used wisely, this faculty can reason and logic what is benefit and what is loss. Benefit is the conclusion of nature’s cycle through the seasons. Man’s natural talents used for benefit of all is his life’s work and harvest. As nature’s harvest comes through unlimited varieties, so too is man’s potential inexhaustible.

We are not placed in one fixed spot with roots and tentacles, nor are we replicates of one another bound to limited and repetitive imitation in our daily habits. We are original sparks of conscious energy in the vehicular mode of human carriage, which is provided to aid our innate gifts and talents for the benefit of all. The balance of reason and feeling is a steady guide in the realisation and application of genuine talent.

Reason exercises the mental faculty to provide the image and form the talent shall take, such as an artist who prepares his canvas for the image he wishes to paint upon it. Feeling is the power that propels the image or thought form into action. It is the passion and enthusiasm of the artist for his subject that calls him to paint. The fusion of reason and feeling ignite action towards the attainment of the goal. When this end is concluded, we have the product of the person’s nature and talent.

If we become too attached to reason and the form it takes in our minds, then we tip the scales of balance to the deficit of feeling. Likewise, if we succumb to emotion, there is a deficiency of reason. The balance between these two faculties is essential for the emergence of talent in a clear, original format. The result of overthinking or emotional irrationality is a state of mind that produces confusion and outputs this evidence onto the world.

Feelings allow us to gauge our inner response to a thing. It is an impulse to inform reason, to produce reaction. When feeling overcomes reason we term it ‘impulsive’. When reason overcomes feeling we call it ‘compulsive’. One is feeling without thinking, the latter is thinking without feeling.

Feelings are the space where ideas germinate. They are the womb of consciousness. Reason germinates the seed to produce the fruit of creation, the originality of the bloom is held in the seed. On the outer realm, space frames nature, in the form of air and sky. We are the beneficiaries of nature’s and air’s harmonious relationship. Trees give out oxygen and take in carbon dioxide which is essential for the air that we breathe. If we are too obsessed with matter, we overlook air’s necessity in our life. Someone who has gasped for air after choking on food, or after too long submerged in water, quickly realises his dependence upon air. If there were no space between things, no sky to frame landscapes, we could not see the relationship between things, just as the artist would paint all the objects and backgrounds of his composition the same tone of grey.

The relationship between the apparent world and the space out of which it appears, reflects our inner state of Being, the relationship between reason and feeling. Reason is the relief on the background of feeling, just as the tree is nature’s impression against the sky. The form the tree shall take varies from species to species. The form the sky takes will depend upon weather patterns.

It is our greatest gift to have freewill to use reason and feeling, it is also our greatest challenge. The fruition of talent in the individual and the collective is dependent upon our employment of reason and feeling, our respect of each, in order for our unique talents to flourish for the benefit of all.

Collette O’Mahony

29/07/2017

Image: Bojan Jevtic