“Our ability to block our experience is an evolutionary dead end. Rather than experiencing and transforming pain, conflict, and fear, we often divert or dampen them with a kind of unwitting hypnosis. Over a lifetime, more and more stress accumulates. There is no release, and our consciousness narrows. The floodlight shrinks into the slender beam of a flashlight. We lose the vividness of colors, sensitivity to sounds, peripheral vision, sensitivity to others, emotional intensity. The spectrum of awareness becomes ever narrower.”

— Marilyn Ferguson

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Three, Brains Changing, Minds Changing

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Marilyn Ferguson 128

American writer 1938–2008

David G. Haskell (1950) writer, Biologist

"November 5th — Light," page 206
The Forest Unseen: A Year's Watch in Nature http://theforestunseen.com/ (2012)

“We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.”

Alan Watts book The Wisdom of Insecurity

Source: The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“It is, for example, axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive in our dealings with others, we cannot be aware of it at the time: conscious insensitivity is a self-contradiction.”

W. H. Auden book Forewords and Afterwords

"Markings", p. 438
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

“Because we have not understood the brain's ability to transform pain and disequilibrium, we have dampened it with tranquilizers or distracted it with whatever was at hand.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Six, Liberating Knowledge: News from the Frontiers of Science

“The measure of our rationality determines the degree of vividness with which we appreciate the needs of other life, the extent to which we become conscious of the real character of our own motives and impulses, the ability to harmonize conflicting impulses in our own life and in society, and the capacity to choose adequate means for approved ends.”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian

Source: (1932), pp. 27-28

“The reciprocal relation of color to color produces a phenomenon of a more mysterious order. This new phenomenon is psychological. A high sensitivity is necessary in order to expand color into the sphere of the surreal without losing creative ground. Color stimulates certain moods in us. It awakens joy or fear in accordance with its figuration. In fact, the whole world, as we experience it visually, comes to us through the mystic realm of color. Our entire being is nourished by it. This mystic quality of color should likewise find expression in a work of art.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

'Search for the Real in the Visual Arts', p. 45
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

“Kindness eases change.
Love quiets fear.
And a sweet and powerful
Positive obsession
Blunts pain,
Diverts rage,
And engages each of us
In the greatest,
The most intense
Of our chosen struggles.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Talents

Source: Parable of the Talents

“Art is no longer a purely visual experience.... it is a work of our intellect triggered by nature.... the imagination again become the queen of our strengths and we liberate our sensitivity.”

Maurice Denis (1870–1943) French painter

Nouvelles théories sur l'art moderne..., 1922

“We need more co-ordinated efforts to drive this out of our society. More prosecutions. No more turning a blind eye on the false basis of cultural sensitivities.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

2010s, 2015, Speech on (20 July 2015)

“Conflict, pain, tension, fear, paradox... these are transformations trying to happen. Once we confront them, the transformative process begins.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Three, Brains Changing, Minds Changing

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