In this 2009 "Media Literacies" presentation at the Reboot Britain conference, Howard Rheingold told of catching his best student answering email during his lecture via a hidden camera in the back of the room. This led him to consider that some students can multitask efficiently while others cannot and banishing open laptops would be counterproductive. The computers were not the problem, but the students' lack of judgement about how they wield their own attention. Media literacy requires a modicum of self-awareness of how we think, pay attention and respond to stimuli. He decided provide an experience by which his class could begin to realize their own minds' behavior by asking them to close their eyes and observe their thoughts for 60 seconds. This is meditation, and once students began to understand the nature of their minds they were able to make better judgements regarding what works best for them in a learning environment. Mediation also provides mental elasticity, flexibility and speed. 

Not only does self awareness allow us to observe the effects of media - it also is helpful for its creation. Music Composition, for example, is an activity requiring inspiration, logical extension and sonic craftsmanship. Like other creative arts, music composition benefits from meditation and requires practice. Practicing a discipline requires a commitment to make room in the days' time and space. Naturally, the energy spent practicing any endeavor over many years will yield life-long learning and skill development. But there is a more crucial byproduct: the creation of greater space in consciousness. Consciousness is the background upon which our identities and thoughts exist. It is what some call no-self. No-self connects to life and the world and is a 'place' from where we can listen to and observe our endless train of thoughts, feelings and desires, and to experience the life in our bodies without words, ego or symbols. Equanimous alertness and clarity can result from meditation practice. But for beginners, there is usually a storm of endless story-loops and habitual thought. Sometimes, questions need answered for the creativity to flow: "What is the reason behind this creation?" "What purpose does it serve?" "Why am I creating this?" With practice and hard honesty, confidence grows more secure and the still clear mind holds great potential for creativity. At that point, the spark that fires the creative flow is the simple intention to create with a balance of purpose and complete opennness. Creating a composing place and protecting a composing time, as well as a space for meditation beforehand, are beneficial to mental and physical health and so promote creativity.

Ruth Reynard (2008) states that current students find content-driven courses boring and unchallenging and are, on the other hand, energized by learning through finding new communities of shared interest and expertise. No two people share the same connections and there is no prescription as to which should be chosen. Stephen Downes (2007) suggests that we've always learned through connecting - and that learning is the ability to construct connections of knowledge. Connectivists like Downes believe that meaning is only a property of language, thus limited by reference and representation and that we grow in knowledge only as we grow in our connectedness to our world.  It has often been purported that the role of the artist is to speak for the collective; to give voice to the unspoken things that need said and felt. The connectedness of the artist, therefore, is of great importance and those artists who choose to barricade themselves from the true nature of the world may lose relevance in the world. A balance between the inner world of the mind and the outer world requires that every artist develop a skill set in some meditative practice.

 

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