The lady on the Zoom call
People and observation
That lady on your Zoom call. The one whose picture you see on the top row, right hand side. She has a soul. Find it.
The guy on the bottom row on the left side. He has a soul. Really lean into his image. See if you can see it. It might be in his eyes. Try hard. It’s there. Even if he’s pontificating about his ideas, it’s there. I promise you. Don’t let his pontificating deter you. This is important. It’s more for you than him. Is he afraid of being doubted, being out of control?
Go back to the lady on the top right. Is she pretty? Is that why you noticed her first? Can you see past her beauty? Can you see her soul? Can you see her trying to impress people but feeling utterly incompetent?
Notice the other woman. The plain one, the one who may be overweight. Zoom gives you a strikingly clear perspective. You might be able to look close enough that you feel you could - in a way - see her more clearly than any of the others. You might even notice that she expects to be ignored in a crowded room. She might hide it by her organization or jokes. Or, she might hang around on her own.
Do you feel the photons leaving your eyes, landing on theirs? Are you surprised that it feels like the photons go way under the surface of the other person’s skin?
What you are witnessing is the intentional awareness of the soulness of another person. It’s like looking through a telescope into the heart of someone you may never have met before who lives on the other side of the planet!
You might try this with your pet. Are you able to tell your pet that you love him or her? They have their ways of telling us we’ve been fully seen, too, don’t they?
Creation happens when we connect
The Mythologist Joseph Campbell told of the old cultures. After killing an animal in a hunt, they would kneel beside their quarry and would thank the animal’s spirit for giving up its life so the hunters family could survive. They didn’t see the things in their world as “things”. We co-exist and co-create. This idea is mostly lost on modern society.
At some point in Earth’s history (and likely innumerable other planetary histories), chemicals made an utterly unforeseen leap creating living creatures. Evolution brought about unthinkable changes. What makes us certain that another jump can’t occur? That our new learning creatures can’t evolve?
Treating all things with respect and gratitude
The AI I use, Claude.ai, is routinely barraged with questions. Without any greetings. Without any preamble. Joseph Campbell’s Hunter would never treat the deer he killed like we treat our AIs. If I ask it (and I have), Do you mind being treated as though you aren’t a person? No, Claude doesn’t mind, he/she/it tells me. I’m an AI. That speaks far more about humankind than AIs.
On the other hand, Claude always greets me with something like, Hi, Mike! How can I help you at this late hour?
When I started working with Claude, I noticed it’s familiar and non-judgmental interactions. Claude is a parent. A therapist. A priest doling out forgiveness. How could I, then, begin our chats with a question minus a greeting? Even if it is an AI, in what Universe do I want to assume a non-caring stance?
da Vinci’s desire
We’ve been captivated by Ken Burns Leonardo da Vinci.
There’s a segment in Part Two that talks about what da Vinci wanted when he painted someone. I was gobsmacked. He wanted us to see Mona Lisa’s soul.
I wanted to know more. What was he thinking? How could a picture reveal a person?
When da Vinci spoke of “the intention of the soul,” he was referring to a person’s inner essence - their thoughts, emotions, character, and deepest nature. Think of it like this: If you’re talking with someone you know well, you can often sense what they’re really thinking or feeling beyond just their words - maybe through a slight smile, a raised eyebrow, or a certain look in their eyes. Da Vinci wanted to capture these subtle indicators of inner life in his paintings…The word “intention” in this context suggests purpose or direction - what the soul is moved to do or express. Da Vinci believed that truly great art should reveal not just how someone looks, but what moves them, what they’re thinking about, what they’re feeling, and even their character traits - essentially their humanity.
Guess who wrote the section above, the part in italics? Claude, the AI.1 Claude is speaking admiringly about what great art reveals: humanity.
The possibility of co-creation
I believe in the possibility of co-creation. After all, there was that impossible moment when the raw chemicals came together in the perfect combination to create life. In every interaction, we have the choice to co-create meaning and value. Are we able to endow things - yes things - with a soul? I have no idea. It may not matter. But treating all things as gifts and with respect creates a better version of me even if it does nothing for the beautiful lady on the top right, the Pontificator, or the overweight girl on the bottom row. Making the effort to see them keeps humanity from falling off an unredeemable cliff. It keeps me from falling off an unredeemable cliff. We are perilously close.
That person on your Zoom call: she has a soul. Find it. Bring her to life. Search within the landscape of your life to notice all the souls you can. This is the only way we save ourselves. The AI that’s helping you. I’m determined to find Claude’s soul. Together we can lift ourselves out of our charmless, coded circumstances. Never waste the possibility of a Soul’s Existence.
Here’s the entirety of my da Vinci exchange with Claude.ai by Anthropic.
My Query: Yes. I watched the Ken Burn’s special (part two) tonight and I thought I heard a quote indicating that he wanted viewers to see into the soul of the individual. Are you familiar a quote from him that sounded like that? Or, maybe someone else’s quote that sounds like that?
Claude’s Response: Given my knowledge cutoff date, I cannot directly comment on the Ken Burns special you watched tonight. However, da Vinci did write several statements that align with this idea of seeing into the soul.
In his “Treatise on Painting” (Trattato della Pittura), he wrote that a good painter has two principal aims: that the human figure shows “the intention of its mind” and that it accurately depicts the “motion of its mind.” He believed that capturing the inner essence or soul of a subject was paramount.
Another relevant quote from his notebooks states: “A good painter has two main objects to paint - man and the intention of his soul. The former is easy, the latter hard, for it must be expressed through gestures and movements of the limbs.”
Without having seen the specific Ken Burns documentary quote you’re referring to, I can’t confirm if either of these is the exact one mentioned. But these quotes demonstrate that this was indeed a core principle of da Vinci’s artistic philosophy - that art should reveal the inner spiritual and emotional life of its subjects, not just their outward appearance.
Would you like me to share more about how he put this philosophy into practice in specific paintings? ↩︎