In addition to the numinous response to art, similar significant cultural events would include the experience of the sublime in nature, the metaphysical revelations of mathematical idealism, the heightened awareness of being and the religious experience. These are all examples of the inspired state of aesthetic bearing. Each in its own way reflects our limitations as it defines our world and who we are. And each provides the bonding experiences and subjective alliances of culture. Aesthetic bearing is the validating experience of active mythology.
Aesthetic bearing plays an initiating yet subjugated role in the development of personality.
The participant actualizes his own personality and is integrated into society through empathetic identification with the signifiers of culture. Through aesthetic bearing the individual experiences aspects of culture as his own and through these experiences is incorporated into the social setting. Culture implies a tillage of the soul as well as the intellect. It is a cultivation that imparts the ideals and values of society. Paradoxically, the autonomous self is dependent on immersion into the rituals and sign systems of culture.