Metamorphosis

Very complex and original PS work Marios.Regards.

changing ourselves..

Original and creative, Marios. At first, if you look at this from a distance, the bottom part with the two rocking chairs is a little reminiscent of art nouveau in my opinion.

Very original sequel for 'the trilogy of human behavior', Marios!

 

Frankly, even more than that. The person as seen from "The Memories", appears here again, and her gesture / further montage actually do make a lot of sense.. or guesses, you know?

 

I could only admit that this is a very important person for you.

I was only kinda wondering why this picture got such a low rating currently?

 

Therefore, I suppose it was caused by the background, people considered amateurish. And, the worst of all, if people do not like editing, levels, contrast, textures... or, just whatever, they'll automatically stir down originality bar as well. Not fair.

 

P.S. I've just noticed this shady environment from Trilogy's room! Very cool.

 

A lot of your images do take some time until you finally get and revisit it.

Oh Raisins, raisins...

 

-Alibek

 

 

 

 

 

O.K. again Alibek. I like you because you focus on things around you and try to understand them, especially when they are provoking and beyond our usual interests.

 

All photos of this series, and mainly this, which is the last one, have deep human meaning and need a certain effort by the spectator in order to understand them. YOU DID IT with the "Hell" photo. Others will do it as well. So don't be surprised by the low and contradictory ratings..

 

The person in all these photos, is my wife and of course she is very important for me, but the reason which makes me use the same face, of just ONE single initial photo, is that this face (which is our face too), being the same, looks different according to the changes that take place, inside us, through our life..

 

You see Alibek, we are what our thoughts are. By changing them we can change ourselves to the better!

 

Regards

Unusual composed image, Marios!!! Best regards

Beautiful piece of art , great work Marios !

Very good creative work. Congrats !

I agree with you on the thought issue, and even go one step further to say that we are our thoughts, so a change in our thoughts is a change in us as you said, but to me thought comes from the past and so I am the past and as long as I am -through my thoughts -living in the past I am dead, so the end of thought is the birth of the true me, yet I shall not try to end thought because I can see that it is impossible since I am thought. Through seeing with out the conflicts of thought one may see what thought truly is and what "I" is and then only through this seeing thought and thus the "I" may vanish all at once, leaving the truth of humanity in us to take action, and that action is the action of love in its most true face.

lovely PS work; Congrats.

Regards. Ali.

My friend Ali

Thank you for starting this discussion. I agree with you or, I should say, with J.Krishnamurti who all his life was teaching what you have just said. By changing thoughts, I meant changing intentions, changing our minds and the way we see life.. (there is a very beautiful word in Greek for that). But I want to go a step further and say that in order to succeed in all these, we need a terrible amount of energy inside us in order to have a continuous self awareness and we can not do it by ourselves. So we must admit that we are weak human beings and we need help. I don't want to continue, in order to let other friends to state their oppinion on all these.

 

Regards

Very nice original work, Marios!

Hi Marios!

J.K has inspired many and that's great.

I doubt our need for help Marios, although I agree with you on the point that we need a great deal of energy in order to be aware of our "I"s always. Well let us see where our energies are being wasted.

There is the continuous activity of thought, even when we are asleep waring away our minds and wasting loads of energy . Let us look at the true nature of thought and how it works. But J.K says that the observer is the observed; so let us look at thought without the presumed fact that there is such a thing as my thought. Maybe, just maybe, I am thought. Maybe this is a prior question: am I thought? Well who is called me? is it my feelings? is it my body? maybe it' s my body and mind. That is in fact an answer, many would argue over. When I say I, do I refer to my body and mind or is it something else that I refer to?

There are so many bodies and minds all over the world; would I be prepared to take the fate of my friend who just had a bad car accident or do I say "Thank god is wasn't me". Which one? if I refers to my body and mind then what makes me think that my body and mind is superior?

There is a better counter example. let's say someone insults me by perhaps saying something along the lines of "you freaking bastard". I know that I am not a bastard, yet many of us are hurt by such happenings and that shows that what we identify as "I" is not our body nor is it our mind. So what is "I"? This beautiful question is maybe the answer to all our miseries and mischiefs. Just this question?

What is I?

The I that is sometimes scared, sometimes fearful, maybe he/she is courageous, maybe clever, good looking. I love asking this question, it is so helpful; just asking it. Maybe at the moment of asking the mind is free of the I;

We make images, of everything and settle them down in our memories. Sometimes we take them out of memory and change them in our minds as if we have a PS in there that manipulates the images we have of the past, of people in the past. Our memories acting like a hard disk full of images of the past and our PS software doing all the manipulations and then saving them, and then loading new images, manipulating and saving again; sometimes importing new images.

We make images of our selves; Perhaps this starts at a very young age; your playing soccer and you score two or three goals, and your team mates encourage you and you make an image of the me that is good at football. why? because it was a happy moment and the mind likes to repeat that happiness by watching and manipulating that image. That is the pleasure that our memory gives to us, and our memory gives us fear too. Yes our memory gives us fear too. Well who is this guy doing all the PS work? loading the images and manipulating them. Who is the software? That is what we all call thought. The act of entering our memory and doing all the PS work. Its our thought; but is it not me, loading images out of my memory and then manipulating them? It is. Its me. I am thought. Yet thought has made an image of me and put it inside my memory and all the time it fools me (or I fool me) telling me that the "I" is my body, my mind, my feelings.

Marios! I think what was said would arouse a lot of questions and many would doubt it and have things to say. I would love to see this continue, it would help me see better what "I" is, and how it works; Thanks for the chance.

Regards. Ali.

Ali, welcome back

 

Thank you for joining us here, as well as at the Philosophical forum, at the entry under the title "WHERE IS THE BACKSTORY". As you can see there, I sent an urgent invitation to all our friends to speak and state their comments..

 

As we are digging here a little deeper, I should like to make things somewhat simpler in our search of what "I" is, through a case study of a situation in our life, we all have gone through : LONELINESS. At the same time I will explain a little more what I have said about our necessity to admit that we are weak and helpless.

 

What is Egoism? The word is Greek and the route is "Ego" which in Greek means "me" or "I". So egoism is the result of the activities of "I" inside us. And these activities are these PS workouts, so vividly described by you. Unfortunately the images, simple or complex, made by this process, tend to prevent us from communicating with others (if not attacking them), because they build a superior image of ourselves and we have to protect it from exterior attacks. So as you can see at the first photo of my Trilogy of Human Behaviour, titled "lonely" (at the right side of the screen), this woman is sitting in the dark, staring at a blank TV set. This is the beginning of despair. Then we become aware of our condition and we try to change our behaviour, but remaining at the same dark prison we have built for ourselves and as nothing is going better for us, despair deepens. This is the case of the second photo titled "alone", where this woman faces the opposite side, thinking that she made radical changes to her behaviour, but at the same time, realizing that nothing changed to the better. And finally we end with "hell", where we are totally isolated from the others, imprisoned in the walls of the castle we have built to protect our ego, and in full contradiction with ourselves (sitting back to back). This is the case of the third photo (the "hell" photo), which describes the absolute despair of this woman.

 

Now Ali, there comes the necessity of feeling totally weak, in order to repair this situation. This is the critical moment to do something about our life. If we realize, by these circumstances, how weak we are, which means how trivial our "big" image about our self is, this awareness, if deep enough, can destroy and transcend the walls of our egoistic prison and make us open ourselves to our fellow-human beings (symbolically asking for help). This action and only this, is the great moment of the beginning of our inner revolution to a total change of our existence. This is the case of the photo titled "help" ("Abstract - Restoring inner peace"), which describes these extraordinary moments of great decisions in our life. And finally we come to this photo titled "Metamorphosis" (a Greek word meaning transformation), where images inside us, have been definitely transcended and love and compassion is flowering in our life.

 

And there comes Ali now, the serious question. Why do we have to pass through this "Odyssey" in order to achieve inner peace?

 

ISN'T IT MUCH EASIER TO UNDERSTAND JUST NOW WHAT "I" IS ?

 

Regards, Marios

Well, Marios!

Frankly I have been through this process or at least part of it and I have seen the different ways the "I" has fooled me; Maybe I am in that part of this odyssey between hell and help. Believe me, I am being hurt, but there is this beautiful verse from Molana (A Persian poet, known as Rumi among the world) that helps me:

What sadness do I have in the destruction

Under the destructed there is the treasure

Well your question is very essential for me, I too would like to see myself clearly and end this misery I am living in.

Well Marios! The I is my thought, and I see this, yet as you mentioned earlier I lack the energy to be aware of this always, at all times. For years this process of PS work and looking at everything through "I" has been happening.

Are you suggesting that the step from hell to help and then on is to truly realize our weekness?

Regards. Ali.

Well can you see i in what I just said; I am trying to take myself out of this misery, but is it not I that is the misery. Yes that is true. I is the misery, thought is the misery; it is all made by thought and I was just fooling myself again. I am my own misery; and seeing this fact has ended my misery right now;

In what ways Marios do you think we waste our energy, other than the continuous work of thought?

Marios,

 

I have been out of town and the thoughts below should have been posted earlier...

 

In the Trilogy I see someone looking at a blank screen that appears to be confused and possibly escaping into something that is not real...i.e..the fantasy of television...for some reason they are distracted from the true meaning of LIFE.They are not participating in the world, just only existing. What first came to my mind was Marios' comments posted to little Ella on my portfolio that was exhorting us to "make this world a better place for her"... The Trilogy person is just sitting back.

 

I was not sure of the intent of the timing of your next photo but "Those days" seem to fit the sequence...I wrote, "This is a very unique and creative photograph! It leaves us curious as to the mystery behind it. My lasting impression is that the ghosted images continue to be thoughts that are of the kind that one carries close in their heart....Reflective & warm....Maybe at times, a moist eye. I really like the creativity." I wondered who this woman is...your wife?...mother?...another family member?...or maybe a special friend? The feeling that this capture returned me to similar feelings as one of the moments that I cherish in life is to see the look in a woman?s eyes who is in her autumn years as she holds an infant, for she understands the true treasure of TIME and that LIFE SHOULD BE VIEWED AS NOTHING SHORT OF AS A PRIVILEGE.She truly understands the wonder of the moment and the innocence & optimism of youth...She also has the yearning of wanting to hold a child just one more time. Please know that I was moved by this part of your presentation.

 

"Restore Internal Peace" Her face in the background beckons the call to return to "reality"...she is like a Siren calling us back to what should be Life's Proper Values...In the end, her thoughts / spirit cover us like a warm blanket...her memory holds us to what is honest, pure, and true...We can make this world right if we don?t lose sight of what is truly important...Thank you for a such a thought provoking and creative presentation.

 

Daryl my friend

 

Welcome back. Thank you for your lively, sensitive and poetic wtiting. You conveyed my thoughts about this series of photos, expressed a little over, to our friend Ali, in an alternative, gentle and very human way!! Thanks again for that. Stay with us here, as well as, come and join us to the philosophical forum (topic WHERE IS THE BACKSTORY). We need your penetrating spirit, in order to explore very important aspects of human behaviour.

Hi, Ali

 

Here we are again in our exploration of "I".

 

You asked two questions :

 

1. "Are you suggesting that the step from hell to help and then on is to truly realize our weakness?" and

 

2." In what ways Marios do you think we waste our energy, other than the continuous work of thought?"

 

The only way to transcend our egoism and start truly communicating with others, is humbleness. I think this is obvious. So, by realizing the ways "I" builds images about us, how false they are, and how these images keep us inside our castle, and if we are quite strong and clever, WE END NOW with watching "I"'s activities and we go straight to humbleness, then to compassion and finally to love and heaven. All our energy is redirected from watching our thoughts, to outside activities of helping our fellow human beings, and so we are avoiding hell.

 

But usually we cannot do this (including me), and we are living our daily misery, admiring the superior image we have built about our self. So either we start fighting each other to impose our image upon theirs, or we isolate our self in order to protect our image from exterior attacks. Both ways drive us to this hell situation. And then here comes Nature or God or what else you name it, to give us a last chance to stop misery and restore inner piece. If despair is strong enough, then WE ARE OBLIGED to realize our weakness and how false the image of ourselves is and therefore cut our chains and start truly communicating with others. The beautiful Greek word we have for that is METANOIA and is composed of two words : META which means "go after" or transcend, and NOUS which is the mind, the intellect. So this word says that we have to go after or transcend our mind, our ideas and change completely to a new life..

 

A last word Ali. In this process of continuous awareness of our thoughts and images there is a danger of creating another very strong but invisible image. Remember what we are doing when imposing images one to another when working with PS. We control opacity to a certain level. But if we set opacity to zero, image disappears. We cannot see it, realize it, but IT EXISTS, it is there! So in this continuous observation of "I", we may create an image of our self doing this serious, deep work of "I" awareness and we may not realize its existence. And this is the worst of all , because we are totally captured in this process and we lose contact with reality..

 

Finally I think that we have to discuss the nature of this energy inside us. But let us do it later on..

Hi Marios. As you invited I have come to look at and maybe understand your interesting artwork. There seems, in the design, to be a clear symbolism of the metamorphosis in nature from a larva into a butterfly. Here the head appears to represent the mind/spirit breaking free from the resting figure(s) representing the earthly body. But the face is not just a symbolic idealised face but a very specific person. At first I thought it might represent an adept of transcendental meditation, but metamorphosis is generally a one-time one-way process and so I am afraid to conclude that this person has died and the picture expresses your joy in her life and hope for her spirit. I do hope there is an alternative interpretation.

 

Best wishes, Jonathan

Jonathan, if you roll up, you will find a comment of mine, titled "Restoring inner peace". There, I am analysing in details these five abstract photos. Thank you for sharing. Marios

Well I suppose my interpretation was not entirely wrong. The process you describe is symbolised in most of the "mystery" religions, including Christianity, by the dying and rising deity (also in the total immersion rite of baptism).

 

Interestingly on photo.net you will find numerous pictures of young nude women inexplicably in some derelict, often industrial, buildings - I think these, mostly subconsciously, represent the same re-birth wish - the phoenix rising from the ashes.

 

Of course it's a powerful idea because many of us have experienced the same process with varying degrees of intensity. Nature gives us so many examples, so we all know the truth of it - the problem is seeing it applied to ourselves.

 

Best wishes, Jonathan

Jonathan you are welcome. Your comments are very interesting! Stay with us here, as well as at the Philosophical forum (topic WHERE IS THE BACKSTORY). I have started a discussion with Ali Soltani Farani about the way human mind is working. I should like to have your comments on this subject, which is very serious because it has direct connection to human behaviour. Regards, Marios

Perfect composition Marios.Cordiale regards - Janusz.

My friend, this is very creative and so pleasant image to view , great composition here and very well balanced.

 

 

Wishing you all of the best my friend

Janusz, Rashed

 

Thank you for your comments. Stay with us here as well as at Philosophical forum (entry WHERE IS THE BACKSTORY) and join our conversation. Marios