A sentimental response is usually attempting to regain or resurrect something you once had possession of in the past. It might be comforting, reassuring and imbued with a feeling for a particular place, person or period. Something you encounter in the present briefly catches your eye and reflects the past through it. Though you may find yourself feeling drawn towards it, and to love it, its an indirect two dimensional love, in the present but from the past.
Love in the purer sense is more of an all encompassing present moment emotion. There is a sense of being spoken to directly to ones heart without anything acting as an intermediary between. You instantly unquestionably love it, and this is different to sentimental love in that it tends to be more wholehearted and satisfying because it arises instantaneously from your soul. Though the whole idea of having a soul becomes problematic, if one couches it as being something eternal. I believe this term can have a role in describing something fundamental to, or exemplary of, you in your present existence. Ultimately its impermanent, but its an essential facet of how you are manifesting in the circumstances of this life, in this moment in time.
Now, I'll admit there can be a lot of confusing overlap here between the past and the present you. I try to view this as similar to hearing a much loved record from ones teenage years and loving a new record by an artist you've never encountered before. One of these has a lot more baggage travelling with it, not all of it is a concern in your present experience of yourself.
What prompted this particular reflection was a realisation about my own responses to spiritual practice and my upbringing. I was born in Yorkshire in the town of Halifax. Originally a fairly affluent medieval market town, based on wool and weaving. Which, because of its proximity to fast flowing streams and an easy access to coal in the 18th century, became one of the premier manufacturing Pennine towns. The honey coloured nature of its millstone grit building material, the heavy wheels of industry turned into something altogether more bleak and soot blackened. Unsurprisingly the Northern industrial towns also became a test bed for the burgeoning Non Conformist faiths - the Congregational, Quakers, Baptists, Methodists, all set up their evangelising missions there.
The protestant proselytising lingered on into the 20th century, finding renewed purpose as the Northern industrial powerhouse itself fell into a steady decline. My parents were both brought up in Methodist families, as were we. Non conformist chapels are spartan, pared back buildings, nothing is extravagently decorative. Excessive self indulgence is looked down upon, as is severe aesceticism. Everything is to be done in moderation. Methodism is understated about most things, nothing like as hardline, nor as dogmatically puritanical as some protestant faiths. Their beliefs are as kind, simple and essentialist as their chapel interiors are.
That religious culture tutored my own expectations and self discipline, which I later took into my approach to a non-christian spiritual life. My early enthusiasm for Taoism and later in Zen Buddhism was fed by a desire to keep things simple, unfussy and fundamental. As was my fleating interest in monasticism and distrustful unease with imagery. Its not even that this is not helpful, it maybe so. Its just that it is inherited meaning rather than one you have found and resonated with for yourself.
But, when I look back at what I've actually found most inspired me aesthetically and devotionally, its been quite wildly unrestrained extravagance, over the top, highly decorative and beautifully elaborate things. Full blooded, expressive, archetypal and poetic individuals. The exhilarating enjoyment of playing with colour that Bridget Riley paintings exude. The love of Catholic imagery, Alchemical imagery, passionate, luridly coloured and physically expressive rituals. The fondness for the latin temperament. The exuberant abandon of the Indian sense of devotion and colour. A feeling of excitement whenever I go to the Our Lady of Walsingham shrine. Even the bright colourfulness and enjoyment of patterning in my own artwork, reveals a totally different less monochrome soul when its left to express itself openly and freely. And lets not get me started on my tastes in music. They all speak of who I feel I am on a deeper and more direct level, when not filtered through the drier more austere views of protestant restraint.
I have spent a good deal of my life, believing that to be serious and hence be more effective in spiritual practice, it has to be the simplest, purest and aesthetically minimal. That somehow just letting go and completely surrendering oneself emotionally to a lucious aesthetic, is just too primeaval, a self deceiving indulgent intoxication. Its almost a form of spiritual delusion, or at the very least devious cheating. But here at the point of becoming pensionable, is where I realise that such devotional exuberance is what I often want the most. So whilst there was once a yearning sentimental nostalgia for a simpler life, today I seek out exuberance as if this was a light spilling out from under a doorway, hinting at something even more wonderful beyond it.
I have spent a lot of my life backing off from my own exuberance and constraining myself, finding my passion for such things uncool or problematic. Maybe this is the time to cease doing that.
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