I went to see a museum yesterday with other students. Looking at art is a practical way my school uses to attend oneself, to be present. There are different views on this. One is that art educates us by intentionally looking at images that contain certain higher hydrogens. Ancient art, to a certain extent, seems to have had the purpose of sending an objective message. This objectivity has somehow been lost with modern and contemporary art. But objective art invites us to a state of presence. A certain degree of knowledge is useful for context, of course. But the intellectual aspect doesn’t need to take up too much space, so that we don’t get trapped in the many ‘I’s. 

Attempting conscious looking at art, we perceive references to objective symbolism. In objective works of art, parts of us are actually represented. We can see the lower self, the heart that can help to awaken us, the steward, and higher centers. Conscious looking at a painting or a sculpture mirrors our inner work. The impressions can remind us of what we are and what we are not.

In the museum I visited yesterday, there were many religious references, in particular the Annunciation by the angel to Mary. In symbols, Mary is the nine of hearts, the ally for awakening within us. She is the part that will generate Jesus, the steward. Angels are the higher centers that reveal themselves to the only part of us able to understand them.

All this becomes practical when we recognize it within ourselves. In fact, there would be no need for these thousands of painted annunciations if we could recognize them through our own experience. Rodney Collin wrote that if an angel appeared today, we’d probably think there’s something wrong with the television.

Yesterday, while climbing the stairs of the museum, a child jumped the stairs two by two, tripped, and fell. In that moment we recognized an annunciation: a shock. For a few moments the many ‘I’s became silent, and another level of being became available.

Higher centers are always active. But it is the identification with the activity of the lower centers that hides this reality from us. Thus to remember ourselves we need little shocks like this. And we are rich in shocks, every day. They comes as a sudden screams, a look unexpected, a gust of wind, thunder, the sound of birds. The more sensitive we are, the more everything whispers to us to “Be,” to use the words of my teacher. Shocks create a short circuit in the inertia of the lower centers. A small space of silence—where only what observes remains.

Giacomo Bardazzi is an administrator for the popular Italian Fourth Way group, Il Ricordo di sé, on Facebook. He has been a student of the Fourth Way for over a decade. For more of his writings on FourthWayToday.org, see: https://fourthwaytoday.org/author/giacomo-bardazzi/