Seeing Clearly
A Project begun in 2021
Welcome to Seeing Clearly. My name is Kim Manley Ort.
This project started in 2021, where I offered weekly reflections and practices for seeing more clearly in everyday life. Drawn from my interest in the topic of perception, we noticed how our mind affects what we see, and practiced relating to the world around us with mind, body, and heart. In 2022, we applied the lessons learned to how we encounter the places where we live, with the goal to be more present in our daily lives and to become better inhabitants and citizens right where we are. Since 2023, I’ve been writing longer form essays, in an effort to consolidate overall themes on seeing clearly based on my writings over the past dozen years. You can read more about the background of my work below. With your email subscription, you’ll receive notification of posts as they’re published. You can unsubscribe at any time if it’s not for you.
How can you support this work? This project is currently free and available for all. However, you can support the work by signing up and sharing on social media or telling your friends! Please let me know if you have any questions or problems with the site.
Background
Since 2010, I’ve been cultivating the art of seeing using my camera as a tool for practice. In 2016, I self-published a book called Adventures in Seeing, which includes 45 exercises for learning how to pause, focus and connect before clicking the shutter. Contemplative practices have become a daily part of my life. The contemplative monk, Thomas Merton, described this way succinctly.
“There are degrees of attention: the glance, the cursory look, the look, the long look (self-forgetting, therefore contemplative)” ~ Thomas Merton, Master of Attention by Robert Waldron
This self-forgetting happens when thoughts become secondary and I’m focused on sensation and other embodied responses in the moment. This is the heart of the perceptual experience of seeing.
Premise for the Seeing Clearly Project
While staying home for much of 2020, and watching the pandemic unfold, I spent much of my time writing and going deeper into perceptual practices. I reflected on what might be needed moving forward. The year brought to light many flaws in our societal systems. I also saw how the proliferation of information and misinformation only leads to confusion and division. None of us ever see the whole picture so it’s important to be able to listen to others, be able to discern fact from fiction, and to know our own biases. It’s more important than ever to see as clearly as possible what’s really happening and to respond in the best way we can.
Seeing clearly is a skill that can be practiced. I want to be more able to see clearly what’s working and what’s not, what’s constructive and what’s destructive, and where there’s inequality. I want to see beauty as well as brokenness. I want to experience joy and offer compassion. With this project, I explore all kinds of perceptual landscapes - sensual, emotional, mental, built, and natural.
Benefits of this Project
Greater awareness of your sensual and emotional landscape, what you’re feeling in your body.
Greater awareness of how your mind can distort reality; how it spins stories based on assumptions and previous experiences. By slowing down, paying attention, and noticing where your mind goes, you can open to subtleties and nuances instead; seeing new possibilities.
By pausing a little longer in that space between perception and conception, and seeing what’s there and how my mind reacts, the heart gets activated. This is seeing in terms of relationships and interactions, instead of things. It’s like dancing with life from a more grounded and loving place. There is a surrender to the moment, a letting go – of guardedness, preconceived ideas, assumptions, and even desires. It’s pure experience.
This is not idle play; rather, it can be transformative. We need people who can see clearly in order to address the crises we face.