Currents - Article 1

Children innately have unlimited, unbounded imaginations. In exploring my mom’s journey, I reflect on the freedom of childhood perception. As a child, my best imaginary friend was named Bow-horse: a unicorn with a bow tied round her horn. I had many vivid imaginary friends that I would introduce to my sister during play time, bringing bleak parking lots to life. My mom, Hilary Shames, recalls befriending a transparent boy named Heino. Together they played chess on the checkerboard floor in her basement. Her brother Matt played with him too, which made my mom jealous; Heino existed beyond her imagination. I am blessed that she maintains this open-minded, magical perception against all odds, sharing glimpses from behind the curtain through her artwork.

The framework for one of my mom’s 50+ impactful art exhibitions was inspired by a wildflower tour that she went on as a child at Moraine State Park. Queen Anne’s Lace made its first appearance as a recurring theme in her life on this tour. My mom learned about how glaciers moved everything around and how the flowers got planted from the glaciers.
Only a small fraction of a glacier can be seen above water. Likewise, most people put limits on their childlike imaginations as they navigate the world, limiting their perception to a small fraction of reality. My mom is unlimited; she can see things that no one else can see. As a girl she noticed polarized light. “I remember seeing, I don't know if that's a bridge, but maybe it's just I'm so near[-sighted], but if I wouldn't wear my glasses, I could focus on these spots or carpets in space.”

Polarized light refers to light waves that oscillate in a particular direction or plane. Normally, light waves vibrate in all directions perpendicular to the direction of propagation, in many different planes. However, when light becomes polarized, the waves are restricted to vibrate in a single plane. My mom can tune her focus to these single planes.

Circles - A Constant Radius

To increase the ability to tune into particular planes, one must prioritize play. Play brings you beyond the limits of space and time in a circular process. In an article written for the Beaver County Times & Allegheny Times on 9/15/2005 Patti Conley covered my mom’s exhibit at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. In this article, my mom emphasizes, “So much of this is about play. When I am working, one thing leads to another.” This philosophy is embodied in my mom’s work and life. It is a bit counterintuitive because most think, “I have so much to do, and play isn't productive!” However, it is actually through play that you tune yourself to the frequency of joy, attracting more to feel joyful about. My mom frames play as being “the source of innovation.”
Play brings her beyond the limits of space and time in her work: “I love working big. I really did. I always wanted to make stuff people could interact with and walk around, and I have just always been fascinated with nature and fossils and time, and it's just incredible that we can find things that are millions of years old. It just feels like when you're present with things like that, you have this feeling that's beyond the limitations of time, this connection with life millions of years ago in this same place, and it's just super amazing.”
This presence allows my mom to tap into history in profound ways. Through this connection to her intuition that transcends analytical reasoning, my mom is able to unknowingly tune into other moments in time through her artwork. She created sculptures in Germany, later finding them to be exact sculptures that bog people made ~3000 years ago . “It was so incredible because I wasn't aware of the bog people at the time I was making these sculptures. It was only after I'd come back to the United States and I went to a museum and I saw these oak sculptures that have been created by the bog people, and it just gave me shivers. I'm like, ‘Those! That's exactly what I was working on!!’ It's amazing how [in] a place you could pick up on the energy of the life that's been there and all the paths that have crossed that area and just on an intuitive level and make things [when] you didn't know why you're making them, but it calls to you and then years later you're like, wow, that's the same place they discovered these sculptures. And it's like the ancient ones are talking to me.” It is so amazing. It is beyond analytical reasoning. And yet, it’s real. “Yeah, we're all connected. We're all connected. And I really believe that you can feel, when you're really in touch, you can feel all the connections that all the people that have walked by you walked.”
Play as a circular process takes you through all layers of time. Ultimately, play strengthens your connection to your intuition; and oftentimes approaching situations intuitively rather than systematically can dissolve the layers of time. By dancing amidst the dysfunction with a playful heart, you build the foundation for a better function.

One dysfunctional statistic is how more than 9.1 billion tons of plastic have been created since large-scale production of synthetic materials began in the early 1950s. Looking to the future, my mom once created an art installation at a landfill–a prime example of bringing a playful attitude to a heavy situation.She expresses, “I had so much fun with the landfill with the people that we did. Actually, I don't have everything written in [Adventures in Art and Nature], but man, that friend of mine, Christie Wrap. We did two installations there, but I also made all these sculptures out of recycled stuff from the junk yard, and then I installed all those at the waste management facility. Yeah, I had so much fun. And it brings awareness to the environment and recycling and nature and our relationship with materials and man, and what our presence means on this earth and what kind of fossils we leave behind.”

I love how my mom created dysfunctional machines by taking apart functional machines and creatively putting them back together. These ‘dysfunctional machines’ mirror the way our society often misaligns function and intention. To me they evoke this idea that we are all parts of one big machine. If we are put together dysfunctionally and lose sight of our connectedness to the whole, we regress to the self-destructing state of a cancer cell. We could all tune in to that universal conductor through that flow state of presence where you feel like you are transcending the limitations of the corporal body. If we were all able to train our brain through meditation, yoga, or whatever we may find to stay in that state of flow and not buy into fear, then we would be a much more functional machine, working together to integrate harmoniously with this one earth we have been given.

Ideas downloaded in a flow state give rise to creations that the collective consciousness genuinely needs. The concept of taking a machine apart and putting it back together is seen more dynamically in the Thneed. The curved object on the spring reminds me of desire, like when you are aiming the bow in the arrow. If you pull it back and let it go, that's the need. That's the desire that sets something into motion. My mom agrees: “Yeah, absolutely. It was very much about that. It's about putting all these parts together and making it look like it has this function that everybody needs. Like a thneed is something that everybody needs. It has multiple functions, you know. It also has that kind of movement of anticipation or participation to it.” The manure spreader my mom recycled into a treadmill also has elements of participation and circular movements. She shares, “You could run on the bottom of it, it had ball bearings and the thing would spin on top. Yeah, it had wheels on the bottom. There's some you could run on it like a treadmill and it would go in a circle.”

Circles - Increasing Radius

At some point, your intuition will expand the radius of your circle. Asking the right questions is the secret to increasing the order of complexity of your consciousness, the radius of your circle, and the brightness of your light in a sustainable way. Ask the right questions to overcome the parts of you that want to keep you stuck playing small. When I felt dissatisfied with my work post-college, my mom would share the Rilke quote, “The point is to live everything, live the questions now, and perhaps then someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

I have always used journaling to write my way into the answer. In an old journal I kept, I still have an invitation to my mom’s art opening in 2006, showcasing Iris Bridge paintings. I see these paintings as portals, bridges if you will, to higher dimensions. These portals feel like coming home; and are all walking each other home at the end of the day. Does my mom have any portals to higher dimensions? “I love The Velveteen Rabbit, The Little Prince, and Charlotte's Web,” my mom says. “Charlotte's Web could be another bridge. Braiding in spider silk.” These bridges give us a higher perspective.

As a child, I read these books. Back then, I was only beginning to take in the 3D world. I didn't have the capacity to comprehend what my mom was pointing towards in her artwork. Now I resonate strongly with this excerpt of my mom’s from 'Adventures in Art and Nature': “This project series explores Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, which is an archetypical theme that has been expressed in many myths and stories throughout time. A particular rendition of this theme is a story by the Russian author Sologube. A child mysteriously finds a small booklet of shadow puppet figures. He becomes engrossed in creating these figures with his hands upon the wall. He becomes so obsessed that his studies suffer, and he begins to shirk his household chores. His mother discovers the book is the source of his distraction and she confiscates it. Still the obsession continues. Curious, the mother opens the book and begins to look inside. Needless to say, she becomes obsessed too. Both mother and son become enveloped in their obsessions with the shadow figures. Soon all other things fall away, there they are, mother and son communicating in the language of the shadow figures, transported from this world into the realm of light and shadow.” My mom sees the world incredibly deeply, and the older I get the more I appreciate her artistic achievements. They cover metaphysical topics that I am obsessed with now. It all comes around full circle.
By embracing metaphysical truths, we open ourselves up to Self-Actualization. Through the process of Self-Actualization we become more authentic. When we are authentically creating, we are fully engaged with the present moment. This gives us more space – space to be, space to feel our emotions and release them. Transmuting pain through art expands the radius of your consciousness.

My mom used art to transmute the sadness of seeing a precious tree get cut down by a neighbor; the tree that shaded my childhood swingset. The cut down branches were given new life. In an article written for the Beaver County Times & Allegheny Times on September 15th of 2005, Patti Conley wrote about my mom’s exhibit at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, saying “The third room, Branchings, is her favorite, perhaps because it is her most recent. Its roots are in a maple tree in the home she’s shared for eight years with her daughters, Lisa Langhorst, 10, and Heidi Langhorst, 8.” That was 20 years ago. I'm 28 now. Pretty awesome. Full circle. A circle with an expanding radius, if you will.

As this radius expands, we face deeper layers of fear. My mom says “It’s just overwhelming to see fear, and then it's like you try to put it into works of art or try to kind of communicate it in some way through making something. And it's like a prayer, a devotion. It's very humbling too.” In ‘Adventures in Art and Nature’ she mentions how monks make a prayer of creating these very intricate mandalas and then they just return them to the earth after they're done, and how it's about the journey. She emphasizes that “it’s all about the journey, really. It's about enjoying the journey because it's all smoke and mirrors.”
We are Truly all part of one collective consciousness, circling through space on this orb we call Earth. On a molecular level, we are made of spinning particles. Our joints rotate non-linearly, as well. The creative process embraces our orbital nature. “It all seems very circular to me,” says my mom, “it's just that the circumference of the orbit tends to fluctuate. I see this a lot in my working process. I start out at a certain point, take a very long journey into the abyss of possibilities, and I end up at the beginning again.”
Coming to peace with the fluctuations of life makes for a more harmonious process. Through acceptance, we allow space into our present moments. That space changes the inputs to the filters over our perception of reality: beliefs, thoughts, and physical constitution. Instead of being a function of past experiences, they became a function of our degree of presence and the space in between thoughts. In that space you can feel a physical felt response, the electricity in your body. Through yoga and meditation, really any flow-state activity that gets you in your body, you can increase your ability to feel that actual response. When you give yourself that space between thoughts, then you can tune into the wisdom in the rest of your body.
When I was a girl, my mom shared that a light force initiated the creation of this constantly orbiting world. She said that the sharing of the light force was infinite and limitless, a constant giving and receiving, and then it shattered into an infinite number of smaller vessels. She created this photographic series inspired by the Sixteenth century Kabbalist, Isaac Lurria and his explanation of the creation of the Universe.

How can we unite these vessels? My mom says, “Well, that's what we're here for. We're hear for ‘Tikkun Olam’, which is the healing of the world in being created in God's image. We received the desire to give, and that's what fractured the death, all because we were all receiving, but in receiving from God, we receive the quality of God to be all giving. And that's what we ask for, to be able to be given. So that's why we're here, to be giving the world.”
It is easy to be freely giving when you are in a state where you recognize your connectedness to all that is. In this state, anxiety melts away and you can allow yourself to be fully present. The more deeply you observe the present moments you experience in this monkey body, the more of the 'iceberg' (the more information) you can see. Beyond circling the iceburg and seeing more of the surface level information through presence, you can intentionally choose what angle of the iceberg you want to look at. You can spiral up and see the true size of the iceburg through the water below. You can spiral down and see the iceburg’s massive body below the water. There are endless angles from which we can visually experience this world of infinite information that we physically inhabit. It all depends on what information we have the capacity to receive and perceive with our senses.

Spirals – Catalysts for Growth

Spirals mirror both the physical structures in nature and the emotional arcs of our lives. As the circumference of a circle increases, at some point it hits a limit. Our collective consciousness similarly has a limit at this point in our evolution, just as we experience the limit of gravity on earth. When we introduce more space into our present moments, we defy gravity. To get to that space, we must use our limits as catalysts for growth. The limit of gravity allows us to grow our proprioception through movement, increased bloodflow, and muscle growth. To fly to great heights, we must first be grounded. In her paper 'Adventures in Art and Nature', my mom shares how birds used the limit of a fused clavicle, one less point of motion, to fly. Even anatomical structures reveal deeper truths. She says “Achieving flight is fluid, not angular. There are no milestones.” You must, as Rilke says, live your way into the answer. Your mind can be a prison or a portal.

You can defend your limitations for as long as you want, but at some point you must decide if your limits are actually serving you. You can choose to flip the script on limiting beliefs, find the gift in every moment, and let the circumference of your circle continue to grow into a portal. When you reach this portal, you access the frequency of synergy. Synergy describes the combined operation of two or more entities that produces a greater outcome than the sum of their individual efforts. My mom describes her artwork in 'Adventures in Art and Nature', as an attempt to share experiences she found that are greater than the sum of its parts.

When my mom accesses the frequency of synergy, she sees visual confirmation. She says, “I think I see in my work, I see these things, I call 'em soul birds and I see 'em everywhere and it is like they're in the details. They're in the smallest details and in the biggest things. And it's like this energy there is to life. I feel like whenever I'm making something or in the creative process that feels like flying because it feels like I'm connected with something really profound or I lose the corporal body that weighs me down and you get in the zone and it feels like flying. And then other times too, the sculpture came out of, I would go to the Natural History Museum every morning and draw there, and that actually Archterix fossil discovered that and they explained that the flight originated when the clavicle fused, so that way you could get leverage or the wings became much stronger because our clavicle isn't fused. But say in a bird, that's the wishbone where it fuses and that enables the bird fly.”

Limits, like the golden ratio, are scaffolding for expansion. My mom is tuned to the golden ratio, also known as the Divine Section. “Oh man, I see it everywhere. It's like 1.6, one eight is the rounded up, and yeah, it's a mathematical proportion system, the branches of trees, but you, it's a harmonic progression. So in this case, you just keep adding the first two numbers, so it would go 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and you just keep adding 'em. And it's like a branching system that you could see all through nature. Yeah. I have to draw you diagrams. It's hard to explain with words.” It amazes me how you can see this connections in many of her artworks, including this maple leaf seed.

“Incorporated in the harmonious patterns of fruits and flowers, [patterns] exemplify an epigram attributed to Pythagoras, that limit gives form to the limitless. This is the power of limits.” ~Gyorgy Doczi

My mom says, “Yeah, well, it’s like this amazing thing. It’s like you look at nature and you look at the simplest things really close up or even further away, and you can see the same harmonic progression throughout all of nature. It’s even there. And branching systems like say rivers and watersheds and the way trees branch, there’s this amazing structure to nature that just, you see it and you get it, and it just gives you shivers and it makes you want to cry and dance at the same time.” It does; it is all connected in a divine design.
This harmony in nature reflects how growth can be gentle, not jarring. One of my yoga teachers said when you take psychedelics it is akin to detonating open the chakras in an almost harmful way. There is a way that we can increase the brightness of our pilot light, through yoga and concepts I write about in my book, that is more of a blossoming of flowers than a detonating open of the chakras. There is a way to grow gracefully and sustainably without feeling anxious. My mom says, “Yeah, it's like a harmonic progression. Growth is the reason for it, because of the golden section.”

“It has often been demonstrated that the golden section’s proportions are frequent in patterns of organic growth, particularly between neighboring old and new increments. … Patterns generated by spirals moving in opposite directions are frequent in nature, as we shall see. Here they concern us as special instances of a more general pattern-forming process: the union of complementary opposites. … Since there is no adequate single word for this universal pattern-creating process, a new word, dinergy, is proposed. Dinergy is made up of two Greek words: dia—“across, through, opposite;” and “energy.” In the daisy this dinergic energy is the creative energy of organic growth.” ~Gyorgy Doczi

The golden section is a pattern of growth. “The numbers signifying neighboring old and new stages of growth prove to be members of a so-called summation series, in which each number is the sum of the two previous ones: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 33, 55, 88, 144, 233, 377, etc. This is the famous Fibonacci series, after the nickname of Leonardo of Pisa who introduced it into Europe about eight hundred years ago, together with Hindu-Arabic numerals and the decimal system. Any number in this series divided by the following one approximates 0.618…and any number divided by the previous one approximates 1.618…, these being the characteristic proportional rates between minor and major parts of the golden section. In literature this rate is frequently referred to with the Greek letter phi (φ).

The three dots after the numbers indicate that these numbers are “irrational,” so called because they can only be approximated, never expressed fully in a fraction.

…

Irrational numbers are not unreasonable; they are only beyond reason, in the sense that they are beyond the grasp of whole numbers. They are infinite and intangible. In patterns of organic growth the irrational φ ratio of the golden section reveals that there is indeed an infinite and intangible side to our world.” ~Gyorgy Doczi

In 'Adventures in Art and Nature', my mom writes about how within open systems exchanging energy, there's a point where they could become unstable such that a slight perturbation will exponentially increase the system to the next level. “As systems become increasingly complex, they require more and more energy to maintain their structure. Complex systems are highly unstable, and this gives rise to internal fluctuations within the system. A slight perturbation can drive the system into a sudden nonlinear change within new stability is even more coherent. This higher order is even more sensitive to perturbations. Internal fluctuations can force the system to even greater complexity at each level. Complexity is a greater potential for new organization and change.” Sometimes when we are at these higher orders of consciousness and then some perturbation happens and it shoots us into an even higher order, it can be almost scary. By recognizing your limits, you can use them to your advantage to maintain stability at higher orders as you consciously increase your capacity to tap into that dimension of love.
My mom reiterates, “It's like the golden section. I am going to back up a little bit because we were talking about spiritual growth and the growth of creative projects, but it's the golden section. It's like a harmonic kind of growth. So all the structures of the foundation support the structures that grow out of that foundation and a harmonic kind of structure.” It is important to have a strong foundation in order to reach a deeper level of understanding. My mom says, “It's not just a structural or theoretical foundation. It's like a spiritual foundation where all the things that are coming in, they help to support the next level of spiritual growth.”

“Don't ask for any advice in them and don't expect any understanding, but believe in the love that is being stirred up for you like an inheritance and have faith that in this love, there's a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke

Limits are powerful. By training our brain wave ratios to stay within certain limits, we can travel as far as we wish without having to step outside of that protective golden ratio of a bubble. Meditation is a mind tool that can allow you to maintain order at higher states of energy, which is just alchemical gold.
To maintain order at higher states, plants and buildings in progress use scaffolding. Have you ever seen a vine growing on a trellis? Or a skyscraper being built from the ground up? They both require scaffolding to reach great heights. We too require the scaffolding of limits to reach great heights. I call this scaffolding 'limiting beliefs'. Limiting beliefs are a built in mechanism to reason with yourself.
Now there are 2 types of limiting beliefs: protective and constructive. Some beliefs are protective by nature. Protective limiting beliefs are there for a reason, like a fence surrounding a radioactive waste land. Probably best not to break through that fence. For example, it’s a limiting belief that I can’t become snow white in the flesh and domesticate any animal on sight. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to be an animal whisperer. I used to have snow white on my vision board for this reason. But some creatures can’t be domesticated. Once while camping I went for a long run. Right when I meant to start walking back, swarms of vicious horse flies started to chase me. The fear response that was initiated in that moment powered me to run when I felt I had no energy left. That fear response was valid. The limiting belief that I can’t befriend a swarm of vicious horse flies is there for a reason. Not all 'fences' are meant to be traversed.
Simultaneously, not all fences are meant to contain us. A few weeks ago I climbed a 168 foot dam in Ojai, California that was fenced off - but I found a hole and crawled through. From the top? The view was stunning. The thrill? Unforgettable. If I’d let that fence stop me, I would’ve never experienced that beauty.

Limiting beliefs are a launching pad to higher dimensions, just as place values in mathematics use 10 as a launching point (there's ten one hundredths in one 10th, there's 10 tenths in one one, there's 10 ones in one tenths place, there's 10 tens in the hundreds place, there's 10 hundreds in the thousandths place). My mom’s work includes a beautiful 10 veil installation. She describes the 10 layers of heaven eloquently: “there are 10 layers of heaven and these old rabbinical stories. So it's like all the things that block you from God or all these illusions where the more you see, the more you realize you don't see. And the veils are actually an illusion.

You're actually connected to all the heavens, but we all only see things from one point of view. In that one sculpture, from one point of view, the window, the blinds are closed and you don't see the tree. And then from the other side you see all tree, and then you kind of open and close depending on your viewpoint.” This expansive feeling was evoked in me as a child when I discovered a Russian Doll, and again when I saw my mom’s Roots Cubits sculpture. My mom taught me this exercise: think of yourself as a point in the Cartesian system, then zoom out from there. There are 10 veils. With 0 as a place holder and with 10 as a launching point, the possibility of expansion is infinite. “The horizon gets bigger as you approach the limit,” says my mom.

A point is one dimensional. As you increase the radius of your orbit, you move into 2 dimensions. As you use limits as launching pads, you catapult yourself into 3 dimensions and beyond. As a point, the emanation of light is reduced, gradually dimming its brilliance to a level almost devoid of light. My mom describes this in 'Adventures in Art and Nature' as a pilot light. A pilot light is the baseline requirement for navigating reality. In a book I’ve been working on for 4 years I explore how we can consciously increase our capacity to hold a higher amplitude of light and a higher quality of light.
Here we are at the baseline, and we can use the power of the 10 dimensions. By using 10 as a launching point, we consciously increase our capacity for light. We approach this from an orbital perspective, in which we give ourselves grace through the seasons, while still experiencing this gentle expansion of consciousness.
My mom appreciates seasons of growth. “I can't wait to get out and get into the garden and go play with my rocks and my watershed and weave my willow trees and my willow sculptures and be a steward to what's going on here. I find that I'm getting more mellow. It's just more of a quiet feeling than a quiet acceptance.”
Through acceptance, we allow ourselves to fully appreciate every moment on this transient journey through life. We learn what environments and conditions make us feel free and which environments stifle our expressions. In 'Adventures in Art and Nature', my mom juxtaposes pictures of a prayer flag installation freely waving in the wind outside with pictures of the prayer flags installed in a terminal building. My mom notes in the article that they have a somber feeling inside, whereas outside in the air; it is more transparent, light can travel through them, and the wind blowing through them can carry messages. I was curious if she felt the different effects of indoor and outdoor environments as a child. “Yeah,” my mom says, “Different places have different presences, especially in Pittsburgh with all the old factories and stuff from the end of the whole steel mill industry and all that. There's just lots of ghosts around. But I think it also speaks to being able to fly and there's kind of this juxtaposition of things that are beautiful and transient, but they also have lots of life to 'em to say, trying to preserve something in the museum and keep it forever, there's a whole different feeling from inside to outside.” I agreed. Time is ephemeral. The passage of time is constant. “Yeah. It makes you yearn and it's sad. So it's like you want to preserve it, but it's just not the same in a museum, in its natural environment. So it's again, how you were saying it's about the journey. It's about the journey and just always coming back to, okay, it's about enjoying the present moment because it's, when we try to clinging too tightly, it's just not the same. We lose that element of whimsy and light. It has to do with something like being free as opposed to being the commodity.”
In 2017 I started this journey towards freedom. I started affirming “I am one with the universe. The universe is awesome, and so am I”, because I read it in some book and it told me to affirm that. From there, it has literally blossomed into an obsession with the shadow figures, like the mother and son were in the story by the Russian author Sologube. It is humbling and amazing that my mom, Hilary Shames, was writing about all the same metaphysical concepts 20 years ago that I am obsessed with now. I love how themes and visions become circular no matter what the medium. It's all smoke and mirrors, and the key is to love the journey.
There is an abundance of love being saved up for us. That abundance of love is the foundation. Teaching math to young kids, I’ve learned that counting to any number from any number is not intuitive. Young kids are mystified to learn you do not have to start counting at zero. You can start counting from a higher number, like 10 or 100. It’s important to honor the wisdom of the links preceding ours. As my mom says, “Each link is the circumference of each individual's life arc experience.” In the future, my mom could potentially teach a course called, 'Finding the Profound in the Mundane'. Until then, I’m excited to continue exploring her artistic achievements through this article series, 'Currents'.

Sources:

Hilary Shames
Adventures in Art and Nature
Doczi, Gyorgy. The Power of Limits. Shambhala Publications, 1981.
Rilke, Rainer Maria. Letters to a Young Poet. Translated by Stephen Mitchell, Random House, 1984.