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FOREWORDAlmost forty years ago, searching for a convincing explanation as to how emotion differs from feeling, or reasoning from intellection, I turned to the original sourceÑmy own mental activities. Disregarding all prevalent interpretations and scientific findings, taking every perceptible sensation as a pure energy event, I kept track of the observed physical and mental movements by drawing them on scraps of paper.
Eventually the tracings began to interconnect. On the day I sat down to sort out the scraps a hunch surfaced that hidden under these fragmented observation lay a system that made sense of it all. Then and there I determined to look for that self-organizing self-embracing system, drawings key to the riddle.
From the start I made notations on the drawings where a sensation originated, at what point in the body it gained momentum or faded away. From time to time I revised the scraps describing in greater detail what I had noticed, these additional notations amounting to a provisional text. After years of tinkering, after numerous revisions of drawings and endless rewrites, done in my spare time between family and work obligations, the observations came together in a system of layered energy events operating in body and mind.
The venture felt like an archeological dig. But was it possible that I, a visual artist, had stumbled upon what was there from the beginning only buried under centuries of interpretation? Could I have imagined it all? After questioning myself for years, I made the findings public* to see whether other people could relate to this body of work.
What follows is the last version of this venture. The discipline of writing in verse-like lines helped focus the mind.
Aleksandra
February 2009, New Mexico
* The findings first appeared in an article The Physics of Metaphysics: Personal Musings, published in The Journal of Mind and Behavior, Winter 1998, Volume 19, Number 1.
The full version, illustrated with early schematic drawings, is in print, the book Private Heresies published by iUniverse Author's Choice Press, in 2000. It is available on order from iUniverse.com, Barnes & Noble Bookstores, and Amazon.