Reflect: Drawing out/Extract/Extricate/Free

1. Extract:
remove or take out, especially by force

2. Extricate:
free someone/something from constraints

3. Free:
unconstrained, uncontrolled, liberal, independent, individualistic, on the loose, open, outgoing, spontaneous, offering oneself willingly
Verb: An act or movement that allows one to no longer be confined or imprisoned

not subjected to engagements or obligations
releasing self from confinement
drawing out of restrictive form

The act of unconstricting is caused by movement.

Self Discovery:
Is the act of being free from personal constraints.
It is not afraid to step out of comfort zones.
The Self Discovered release themselves from their restrictive selves that refuse to let them meet the world.
The act of releasing one's self as an offering to the world, to be moulded and used (referenced from Hennas on hands)

Is the act on unconstricting the self.

Free Spirited:
A person with a highly individual or unique attitude, lifestyle, or imagination; non-conformist.


Hands (importance):
Hands, nonverbal gesture of expression
Hands, building and learn

Offering to the world:
When facing the palm upwards or away from one's self, hands are a cradle for non-verbal expression and creation.

Personal Intepretation: Self Discovery, Who are you?

Image of left: Shows the interpretation of the self, adapted from Carl Jung's diagram of Self

Explanation of left diagram:
Inner circle = Ego (missing: another inner circle within ego that has denotes Underlying Wish - see Dreams/Unconscious)
Outer circle = Self/Person/Body
4 quadrants= consciousness, subconsciousness, unconsciousness, collective consciousness
*Collective consciousness: Collective conscious or collective conscience (French: conscience collective) is the set of shared beliefs, ideas and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society. 


"Human beings & human becomings"

The self:
The self is always evolving, never stagnated. It doesn't matter if you're an introvert or extrovert, but the human ego, driven by a body's underlying wish, causes a person weave in and out of the inner and outer world (see next para for explanation) - the inner self and reality- causing a radial effect that peaks and resonates around the person. This radiance that grows from the core is the product of self discovery.


Weaving in & Out of Inner & Outer world:
The act of weaving in and out of the inner and outer world draws a perfect Hypotrochoid.

A hypotrochoid is a roulette traced by a point attached to a circle of radius r rolling around the inside of a fixed circle of radius R, where the point is a distance d from the center of the interior circle.

The parametric equations for a hypotrochoid are:^[1]

The red curve is a hypotrochoid drawn as the smaller black circle rolls around inside the larger blue circle (parameters are R = 5, r = 3, d = 5).

Where  is the angle formed by the horizontal and the center of the rolling circle (note that these are not polar equations because  is not the polar angle).

Special cases include the hypocycloid with d = r and the ellipse with R = 2r.

The ellipse (drawn in red) may be expressed as a special case of the hypotrochoid, with R = 2r; here R = 10, r = 5, d = 1.

The classic Spirograph toy traces out hypotrochoid and epitrochoid curves.

(WIKI)

Difference between the Self-Discovered & the becoming:
The Self discovered are self-actualized.
The Self discovered exhibit tendencies of the first diagram (gif) where it creates loops in and out of the self (radiance).

The Becoming, however, form a perfect circle in the person causing them to be recluse and boxed up within himself.

illustration by mandalimfyp.blogspot.com

Idea of Drawing Out:

Contrary to the beliefs regarding the Mandala where one draws in to the middle to gain enlightenment, another school of thought for one to self discover himself is to draw out of his shell instead of being overtly introspective (i.e through the study of phemomelogy - study of structures of consciousness as experienced from 1st person's point of view)

Drawing out is the act of pulling something out from its core. This act of drawing out uses movement as a tool to surface the inner self. This form of extraction takes out the essence of a being causing a fragmentation, thus abstraction of simplest forms of a being.

Research: Usering one into Self Discovery through dreams

Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious. They will tell you what you really want to fulfil with yourself in life.

How to use a dream to discover yourself (attain self actualization)
1. Remember dream
2. Interpret dream
3. Find out root "wish fulfilment" in dream
4. Act it out in real life


How to remember dreams
1. Pen & pad close by bed (form a dream journal)
2. No food/drinks before bed
3. Calm your mind/body before bed time (meditation and mandalas)

OR

Dreamcatchers (which are also modern day mandalas)


How to interpret dreams
1. Using Universal Symbols (frowned upon by psychologists)
2. Dream Clinic
3. Dreams are based on person psyche. Meditation about the dream.
4. Dream interpretation book
5. Hypnosis
6. Art therapy

Research: Unconscious/Subconscious - DREAMS & interpretation

The "Royal Road to the Unconscious" (Carl Jung)

Dreams are a person's "wish fulfilment".

It can be broken down into 2 categories:

1. Manifest content 

(what is remembered after waking up)

(often based on events of the day)

2. Latent content

(symbolic meaning of dream)

One's underlying wish -------------------------> Manifest content

dream work

Dream work:

transmission of forbidden wish into non-threatening form, reducing anxiety, allowing us to continue sleeping. This process includes 3 stages:

1. Condensation:

Joining 2 or more images into 1

2. Displacement

 Transform the person/object we care about

3. Secondary elaboration:

Stringing together wish fulfilling images in logical order of events. (This is why manifest content of dreams can be in the form of believable events.)

Sigmund Frued describes that there are 3 main types of dreams:
1. Direct prophecies: Chrematismos, Oraculum
2. Foretelling of the future: Orama, Visio
3. Symbolic dream: interpretation of Dreams

Reflection:

Since self discovery (self actualization) is self-fulfilment, Dreams are one way of tapping onto one's unconscious self to figure out his/her underlying wishes. Through a dream, if one is able to interpret and remember his wishful fulfilment, then he will be able to use it to gain self actualization in reality.

Unfortunately, remembering and eventually interpreting dreams is not easily done. as Carl Jung mentions that not all General symbols in dreams are Universal Symbols (i.e Online dream dictionaries are false and inaccurate conspiracies). Dreams are more like cryptograms that have to be deciphered.

Side note: I will not focus my project on "dream interpretation dictionaries" because, as mentioned by Carl Jung, dreams include more general symbolism (general symbols are more personal than universal symbols, i.e water means you have to pee), therefore, a person cannot interpret what the manifest content of a dream symbolizes unless he knows the person's circumstances in the dream itself.

Reflections: Topic of Focus/ Self Discovery

After much reflection and trying to link my topic back to "Home", I've realised that I'm not very interested in devoting an entire year to working on it. I used to be able to relate to the topic, being home & homesick or being close to my family, but sadly, it's something I've drifted away from. When I look at the mind map I've created (see 2 posts before), I feel more compelled to work from the angle of "Self Discovery"- which can be seen in my thought process towards the bottom key words of the mind map.

In an attempt to try to link my new mind map and thoughts together: 

Self discovery- breaking down self & discovery: Self, refers to a person's essential being that distinguishes from others: as an objective form of introspection or reflexive action. To discover is to locate, come across or to stumble upon. 

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs talks about the motivations of a person without the circumstance of any gains involved. At the top of the pyramid is Self Actualization, which is what I'm basing my research on. Hence, to properly marry the two words, "Self" and "Discovery" together, one can define it is the state of Self Actualization. 

Self Actualization can be be attained through various methods of Self Reflection. Methods of reaching Self Actualization include Meditation (through the use of Mandalas, relating to the circle and self) and reaching one's subconcious/unconscious state of mind (Carl Jung, Sigmund Frued theory) through dreaming. Taking a step further, I want to push the boundaries of dreaming to a physical place of being able to act one's dreams out. This place is called Lucid Dreaming.

The importance of reflecting:

Reflecting is the act of contemplating/thinking deeply about one's self, actions, thoughts and behaviours. Reflecting enables the mind to be brain storm about the an issue, create a mental map and sieve out the clutter, pin pointing what's truly important.

Reflective Practice might also be called, and is synonymous with or similar to:

• personal reflection
• self-review
• self-awareness
• self-criticism or self-critique
• self-appraisal
• self-assessment
• intra-personal awareness
• personal cognisance/cognizance
• reflective dialogue
• critical evaluation
• self-analysis of our thoughts, feelings, actions, performance, etc

Some acts of reflecting:

Borton defines reflecting as a "developmental process of paying attention to and learning through everyday experiences, with the goal of realizing of a vision of practice as a lived reality." It asks one about "What? So what? Now what?" These also include mirroring and paraphrasing.

Research: Purpose of Design

“There shouldn’t be any differentiation between form and function,” she maintained in a recent interview. “The idea that form must follow function, that’s out the window; it’s a tired cliché. A good object, a well-designed object, is encompassing. It is unified, the material embodiment of a strong idea…Design is not decoration…It’s less and less about function as an end point, and more and more about access to networks. Increasingly, objects are gateways to different ways of doing things, to different ways of living.”

> Abstracts taken from The Evolving Purpose of Design by Glen Martin