Ora Asahel, Bimati ~ אורה עשהאל, בימתי

Introduction

 

The Spiral of Life or Seeing the Meaning

Letter to the Reader of the 1st edition

Ora Asahel

 

Introduction - How do you get to see the meaning?

For the last few years, during which I have been involved in writing and public activities and put academic research aside, I have also noted ideas - under three headings - which appear in detail in the preface to this book.

 

The story of my life has brought me

The story of my life has brought me to make a living from teaching science, while at the same time I was continually searching for the right way to do it.I found out that sensory perception and the sense of sight in the main, are the chief instruments which lead to visual thinking, concept formation and literacy.In the course of my research I became aware that I am a writing-woman. I went back to my sources - I got to know my parents and how the birth of the foundation of my creativity came about.This process can be observed in my essays, the most recent of which deals with the contribution visual media makes to human comprehension and insight. I use the illustration of the personal process I went through. The essays include references to the metaphor and to archetypic symbols connected to creative work.My last essays deal with two symbols, the Mandala and the Spiral, which are portrayed as the right instruments for the attainment of reciprocity between human beings and the creation of both internal or external peace.

 

I've been publishing papers for ten years . . . And so what?

Or - About image and creating literature.

In 1995 I made a sketch as part of a research project in visual literacy and visual thinking. I wanted to study if kids that were not yet able to read words would read pictures. The picture-story I have made was entitled " A Story in Four Pictures" (cited in essay no. 6) I, having studied the image language that ancient civilizations wrote on rocks, wrote a picture-story, using this method, My young grand-children and their friends, who at that time were under reading-age read the pictures and told me the story.Each child read it in his own way. Ten children aged 3 and 4 told me their interpretation to the drawn-story. This process is described in full in my essay Science Picture Language.Afterwards, I found myself writing so that the words were turned into pictures in my readers' thinking, whether in poetry, prose or academic writing.Everyone reads in his own way and I, not having at that point organized canvas, brushes or paint in order to express myself through painting, am writing word-pictures.

 

The role of visualization - for concept formation and awareness, or the road to the self.

Visual literacy brings about self-awareness.Visual observation and visual literacy lead us from misconceptions and confusionto clarity and concept-formation.The perception of concepts in learning takes place throughout the thinking process,beginning from the sensory perception via the "tangible" from there to the "percept", then to the "concept" and only afterwards to abstract thinking.Self-awareness is also derived from correct observation while distinguishing from the surrounding reality, knowledge of the internal self with its needs and adaptation of the self taking into account its needs and the needs of its environment. At the beginning, this process is experiential-sensory and mainly imagery; only later does it become abstract.The artist's work, which constitutes the path towards getting acquainted with his self, uses visual insight which is a vital component of the thinking process.