Series 1 – The Shape of Ego
This series deals with 10 fundamental precepts of human self-awareness and the struggle with (and as) ego. The pieces in this series are purposely opposed to each other, on multiple levels, generating maximal mutual disparity – reflecting the complex nature of a mind fragmented by varying stages of self-referential concern and persistent identification with a body, over and against the world in which it lives. It is expected that each individual that encounters this first series will resonate with no more than one or two pieces, due to the intense polarity of the content.
Artist: John Ledford Gregory (USA)
Photography: Andrea Janda (Sweden)
Locations: Austin, Dallas, Copenhagen
Period of Creation: 2019-2021
Price per Work: $15k
Observe your reactions as you experience each piece. Read and contemplate the accompanying text that fully describes the nature of the piece and what it is purposed to reveal in the depths of your subconscious and unconscious mind. If you are able to simply look and feel without attempting to analyze and seek meaning or interpret, in any way, the structures of the work, then you may be “taken into it” and discover its mindless essence. Then, and only then, will the secret of its process become known to you.
DISCLAIMER: Given the profound, transpersonal and transhuman nature of this work, each creation, by necessity, is 100% human-generated. Absolutely no Artificial Intelligence or AI-enhanced generative models were used in the realization of these creations. It is our firm conviction that AI will never transplant the depth and spirit of human consciousness, no matter how complex and novel it may become in the years ahead. In order that there might be a true intra-personal communication, it is mandatory for human consciousness to be completely resonant with each work, at all levels.
1 – Illusion of Memory
This very moment in time, you are possessed with by memories of past experience. This ritual is re-enacted endlessly from multiple conscious positions, defining and coloring perception. This is the repetition of mind in the milieu of moment to moment waking life. Patterns, colors, textures, sensations. Nothing “new” is encountered, only a re-arrangement of the content of memory. The only proper response to such understanding is to enter into an unlimited, non-mental apprehension of what is perceived, gradually, by becoming more aware of how the mind contains and classifies all sensory input. Thereby, the illusion of memory is broken.
2 – Self-Reflection
Who are you and how do you describe yourself? Notice how that identity is reflected in objects (places, things, and people). Many objects evoke a strong sense of self or familiarity. Even when they are not familiar, ghosts of things known follow you into the unknown. Wherever you are, there is this reflection on the object of attention. Only when apprehended with “pure perception”, free of self-awareness, are you even remotely close to the experience of things as they truly are, free of subject-object interference. The deeper one goes into this perception, the less one’s identity is reflected in anything at all.
3 – Predictability of Experience
In the continuum of the natural, non-human world, patterns of human self-awareness persist. Nature without human influence is free, chaotic, and random – yet the human cognitive process categorizes, organizes, compartmentalizes and urges that awareness toward the familiar. Truly, human thought and ego-sense persistently and unrelentingly superimpose themselves on nature and, thereby, limit its full expression, creating expectation and predictability.
4 – Dancing to Disappear
In the depth of stillness, there is inherently persistent, ever-changing movement. No thing is static, and you, as the mind, are looking to capture a tangible, if not intense, flux in otherwise unmoving scenes. In every such scene are sharp angles, broad strokes, shifts in color, content, and texture and, most importantly, a sense of the “dance”. Even while invoking the motif of movement, there must necessarily be the ultimate purpose of erasing its parts and allowing its distinct fragments to melt into a single continuum.
5 – Shadows of Anhedonia
Sadness and depression stem from homeostasis, from balance. Serenity is nothing more than a cover-up for lack of content and meaning, and rarely leads to the rich, complex, and infinite experience of the “now”. Life experience, while seemingly concrete, is – in truth – composed of only shadows of the One Reality. Such dark reflections of broken light strongly (and perhaps painfully) echo the delusion of emptiness. Understand emptiness and its various flavors by embracing that which reflects shallowness, suffering, pain, and limitation.
These are the patterns of the human mind and its analysis of the natural world. You must find the shadows, the faces, of anhedonia buried in the tapestry of human creations and things. This is the “crowned jewel” and “integrating factor” that prepares the foundation for encountering Reality. It is the completing work that brings substance and direction to everything that has come before it. Take all images, scenes, and experiences in your life up to this moment and use them as stepping stones for a stark and unforgiving apprehension of darkness and angst and, thereby, be paradoxically guided to the way beyond them.
6 – Going with the Flow
The ego prefers to do what it likes and ascribes value to experience based on whether or not it is sensed to be “useful”. As such, egoic predilection stands in the way of radical understanding and replaces such understanding with comfort, assurances, false psycho-emotional solidarity, and laziness. As such, even in the process of doing things, one is constantly challenged by the possibility for letting life and others push one around. No progress, no confrontation — no problem. Just floating down the river, disrupting the lives of others without knowing it (or caring), constantly asserting the position of “doing no harm” and wanting to help.
7 – Mind Worship
For the majority of people, there is no thing sovereign outside the parameters of one’s own mind. It has the last say in absolutely everything and dictates how life should be lived and how experience should proceed. It is a closed system, completely cut off from its source, nonetheless, perceiving itself to be its own fountainhead. As such, it is capable of making decisions and guiding life, in general, by virtue of what it apprehends, partially (if not to a great degree) informed by body-brain stimuli. This mind comes to the ocean with a cup and returns home with a cup of water.
And it will praise this cup of water (or connivingly deprecate it) in order to keep it as the focus of attention. What is seen to be objective in every moment is put on an altar for one to willingly and eagerly bow down to and worship. There is no possibility for realization of any depth or significance in this dynamic. The mind is the victor in a war that had no opposition.
8 – The Emptiness of Matter
Matter is space, not in space. It is the collapse of light into finite quanta without inherent substance. Content, or substance, is the illusion of boundaries that define what is / is not the object of consideration. Salience is ascribed to such arbitrary boundaries as they emanate from the mind, itself, though in reality, there are no objects. There is only space, energy, light, unbound and unbroken. So it is that we look to objects to find ourselves or find the meaning of existence. Existence, itself, is made of such objects and we pick and choose them according to our inner reflections.
Matter, material, objects taken as they are, as they are perceived, are devoid of ultimate meaning. There is no use for meaning when there are no boundaries, no distinction. Looking at the objective to find its essence (in its appearance or form) leads to the realization that it, just like you, are empty and without substance. The object and subject are echos of each other.
9 – Indesire
Without desire, there is no movement in the sphere of emotions. Emotions require the dynamic of emptiness paired with that which would fill it. Nonetheless, there are those that would embrace indesire in order to avoid becoming a slave to that which beckons attention and pursuit. In this position, there is no attachment, no movement, no going or coming. There is only the stark, empty, and functionally dead but mindful awareness of what is. In this place, the mind comes to suffocate. It can no longer dance or celebrate because it cannot feel. It is afraid of feeling, of being ensnared in the spectrum of that which is desirable. It is easy to simply desire nothing. To feel nothing. There is where one goes to hide.
10 – The Way Beyond Opposites
Everything has its counterpoint or antithesis. Similarity of objects in the same family or category gives the impression of homogeny, but this is simply a local illusion. All things are sustained by the existence of their opposite. What is beyond this relationship or dynamic is a continuous whole, an unbroken continuum without contrast. It is contrast, itself, that produces phenomena. Reality, Itself, transcends phenomena and, thereby, is the origin of all things known and unknown. The way beyond this paradox of consciousness is through the surrender to what is, without the need for reaction or even relation.