Educational articles

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Carol Miranda (Brazil)
Ontomen practitioner 

We live in a mechanistic world where people are like screws in a production process. We have "lost" the sense of beauty, which is an important aspect when talking about Onto-Art and the impact of beauty on our lives. We need to reclaim it in our everyday life.

We live in a practical society where everything has to be functional. When we think of a coffee cup, we don't think of its beauty at all. It may seem silly to think about it, but it is not. When I drink coffee from a cup with a style I like, my state of mind changes completely - I feel like a queen. That cup fills me with good memories. It is handmade, not mass-produced, I feel its semantic field and it expands my intellect.

Unfortunately, in today's world, aesthetics has been replaced by practicality, mass production, the desire to do everything with the least effort: who needs to make a cup by hand? Practicality has displaced beauty and, at the same time, it has displaced feminine values, refinement. That is the problem today. If you do not understand why you need flowers on the table, why you need that beautiful handmade cup, then you are no longer seeing the details, so you are losing feminine values and, at the same time, humanistic values. That is important. Feminine values imply the need for beauty and are a harmonising factor that grows our consciousness. We are constantly striving to become better and smarter people, we want to become great leaders, but how can we raise our level of consciousness? The answer is one - through beauty.

We spend too much time on machines (technology) and when depression hits, we don't understand why. It is because we lack contact with human things, with human intelligence - not only with people themselves, but also with things made by their own hands, like the coffee cup I mentioned. I call it an encounter with beauty.

Another important aspect of Onto-Art as a way of life is interior design, architecture. The inhabitants of ancient Rome were very attentive to every detail or image with which they decorated their environment. "Hic manebimus optime" (Hic manebimus optime) is how they used to refer to their homes (domus in Latin). The main part of a Roman home was the courtyard - the atrium - where you could admire fountains and plants, enjoy fruit and listen to birds chirping. Today, we don't have an atrium in our homes, but we can furnish the living space as the Romans did.

How can we apply the principles of the Onto-Art in our daily lives, what habits should we develop? Pay attention to how you start your day, what your wake-up rituals are. These are simple things: an open window or a scented candle (even in the morning!). You can exercise, meditate or read your favourite book - the important thing is to take at least half an hour for yourself. What do we do normally? Before we wake up, we automatically tap our phones, turn on Facebook, Instagram and follow other people's lives. Or we turn on the TV, radio and listen to the news. No, no. This is your personal time, which should become a daily wake-up ritual, a preparation for a new day.

The choice of clothing is also important, especially for women. They have a great opportunity to apply their creativity by styling their hair differently every day or by choosing accessories, thus expressing their individuality through style. It is not about what is fashionable, but about whether it suits and pleases me. It is very important to pay attention to details and colours and to choose them according to your mood.

Living a pleasant, beautiful life means breaking habits - the way we eat, dress, etc. We keep repeating the same things over and over again, but life is different every day: today it's sunny, tomorrow it's raining... Let's allow ourselves to experience different things. The training of the senses, of taste, of subtlety, grows our perception through the fusion of the intellect with our environment.

Every cell in the body must feel pleasure, because cells are little quanta of intelligence. That is why it is so important to cultivate a personal environment - a sleeping space, a workplace - that is aesthetically pleasing and that you like, because the pleasure that beauty gives us sows our intelligence.

This is the Onto-Art way of life.

Excerpt from the video lecture "Onto-Art: how to recognise the cultivating effect on a person?" (2022)