Wild Mind Writing - Bản Đầy Đủ

Introduction

The free-associative writing, and the related techniques outlined here, form a dynamic method to take command of your learning process and vastly extend its reach into your inner life and outer expression.

You can enter into this process to refine your personal research, penetrate more thoroughly into the elements of Human Design, organize your knowledge and develop methods to report on your progress as well as to establish meaningful dialog. Please use these wild mind techniques to your advantage. I look forward to what we can share with such a foundation.

Creative Writing and Human Design

Wild Mind writing shares something in common with Zen Meditation. Like Zen, it is a simple and direct practice that is always available that takes you beyond the control of the mind. It is designed to help you express yourself without editing or self- criticism. Ultimately it can assist you to claim your own Authority - with all of its raw power and uncontrived truth.

Many people have deep fears around self-expression. Wild Mind Writing was developed specifically to facilitate the break-through experience with creative process. Through pressure, we can be anxious to skip to a finished product, or force an understanding before it is developed. These internal conflicts can be healed - by you. We can use the Wild Mind to reach our own understandings and initiate a revolution in our own educational experience.

My goal in teaching is to support each person to claim Human Design for themselves as part of a fluid, intelligent and useful project of self-exploration. The wild-mind- writing process is designed for you to reclaim your perception and learning in radical ways. Just how radical is what you will discover through the process itself and the techniques outlined here.

Even though the technique is designed to open up a free and open exploration, it has specific elements and practices that enhance your inner work. I ask that you explore the classic form of this work with its simple techniques (and disciplines), to derive the full benefit of what it draws out of you. These techniques lead to their own modification based on your own exploration. Wild Mind Writing is probably related to a number of ways that you already explore your inner world: creative movement, meditation, walks in nature, people-watching or a thousand other ways that we find ourselves, awaken or simply preserve our sanity. These techniques are not intended to replace any of these cherished practices but rather to enhance all of them.

The Origins of Wild Mind and the Lyric Essay

Wild Mind writing practice was first developed by people training to be writers in the fine arts. While supporting this original goal, I have molded this skill-development technique into a method to claim knowledge as your own. Our crucial task is to link our own experience with Human Design keynotes that assist us to self-recognize. Said in a slightly different way, additionally, the techniques outlined here are for your practice in linking esoteric information to real-life experience.

I have also extended these core practices to include building upon your wild mind explorations, by developing editing methods to evolve your writing and build what we call the Lyric Essay as part of your educational program.

The process of drawing upon Wild Mind Techniques to build additional resources is a very delicate process. We don’t want to close the door on the freedoms that we have just accessed, rather we want to carry our organizational skills with us, across the threshold, and apply them in new ways. Part of what makes Wild Mind Writing successful is its life-giving freedom and the private process that we can have within it. To use wild mind work to report on your progress, share with others and start a dialog is contradictory to some of its original essence. I will encourage your vigilance in this regard. Sharing and discussing your creative process can be an extension of the same creative freedom that you have just explored with yourself. It is a balance. It is important for you to regulate how this balance flows for you. Striking that flow with it -- is deeply related to your own Authority and making decisions as yourself.

Overview of the Wild Mind Process

Permission...

Wild mind writing works, primarily because it gives you permission not to perform or be crippled by withering expectations from anyone, especially yourself. It is a method focused on a special kind of trust in yourself and your process. You first need to free yourself from all expectation.

Resourcefulness...

Because of our “school-conditioning”, freeing ourselves for this kind of process could give us plenty of work for a long time. However, the human spirit is extraordinarily resilient and resourceful. Given the right techniques and encouragement, the creative process bounces back with surprising vitality. In the long run, every artist or scientist learns to take full responsibility for their entire process, first finding their own creative voice, learning how to evolve it, and then applying their creativity to their work at large.

In the beginning...

These writing exercises begin with writing only for your own consciousness. Its evolution is based on “no expectation” and the freedom that such an attitude affords. This kind of openness, combined with exercises, effort and results, begins a creative learning process that most people have not experienced since they were an infant.

The Wild Mind Notebook...

It’s up to you, but you might need a place where you can write without being concerned whether other people are going to read what you write. A simple request for privacy will be honored by most people.

You can have your own pure wild-mind notebook. It can be filled with your process and your secrets, but most importantly filled with whatever you want. Writing freely without expectation opens up a process that includes the good, the bad and the ugly.

The Person-Centered Process...

It is essential to be able to own things about your process that you wish were not true. We need to realize where we are, so we can continue to evolve. Judging yourself, or believing the judgments of others, can arrest progress, until you learn to navigate through this trap. The ability to observe yourself, recognize certain feelings as part of your process, while allowing yourself to grow, is essential to all real development. This process is called split attention: being able to see yourself and watch your process, at the same time as allowing it to take place through your own compassion and understanding. Your own person-centered Authority is the key element to this entire point of view. You are the only person who knows where you are in your process; you are the only person who can take responsibility for how you are moving through it and provide what you need to be yourself. Respect for your personal authority, both from within and without, is essential to land in this process as an empowered being.

The importance of irreverence...

Be irreverent. You get to rant and rave. Say what you need to say because you need to say it, and learn every step of the way. The truth is, you will be moving through a rich forest of your own repression and liberation. Mixed in with all the raving and complaining will be “jewels of breathtaking quality and brilliance” but you cannot be concerned about that right away. First, you need to get the knack of setting yourself free and learn to watch rather than criticize or manipulate. It helps if you give yourself space to never have to share the fruits of your process with anyone unless you want to. Ironically, you’ll probably want to read it out loud to everyone you know.

More about Wild...

The word ‘wild’ in “Wild Mind Writing” refers to an uncontrolled state of creative expression that might be likened to ecstatic dancing. Yes, I encourage you to dance upon the page with auspicious sword in hand, your consciousness engaged in a fiery interplay of voice and inner vision. Education, especially self-education is about finding your authentic voice and using it. It is also a journey of imagination that few adults allow themselves to take. ‘Wild’ also refers to the natural state as in the wildness of primal landscape, pure states of inspiration, the original nature of your inner child, the shudders of pure joy that you might feel discovering your own motivation. ‘Wild’ stands for all things that have not been tamed or robbed of their original nature. As such, it represents a spontaneous creative activity that is original, fresh and uncontrived.

Fierceness...

‘Wild’ also refers to the fierceness of an internal battle between your creative person-hood and the regressive forces of the conditioned mind. The mind manufactures all its reasons that you should not do this, why you should continue to behave, “stay in the middle” and not try to be “so fancy” or say those “stupid things.” There is no end to the list. It is important to realize that our conditioning is ‘internalized oppression’. We have been hurt and repressed, told to behave, and to keep to a narrow and unimaginative path “to be safe and not attract attention.” This is a subtle and frightened form of living death. Other people rarely do this kind of thing to us anymore -- they don’t have to, since we are so good at doing it to ourselves. The world may have done this to us as little children; in fact, it did, but we took over the process. We can also undo it. ‘Wild’ refers to the impulse to do something else. The Wild Mind naturally declares righteous war upon mediocrity and sets out on a new path. Of course, this will cause a revolution in your psyche and it is going to cause a lot of trouble. Good. You can write about it.

More realities along the path...

As you set yourself free, the inner critic, the inner judge, the inner school teacher, the inner minister, and many other voices will show up to try to stop you. This is your chance to completely ignore them, have fun with them, write about them, and take command of your voice. Follow your own Authority. The rules of the “wild mind road” are all designed to get your creative process flowing and allow your imagination and creative process to reclaim your life. You can worry about the resistance afterwards (whenever that is). The most basic and essential element of all learning and creative process is your commitment to it. You will need to remind yourself of this commitment every day. Seriously. You can take it out and dust it off with a daily writing session. You can pursue your creative process on the bus, at the dentist’s waiting room, the line at the deli or while paying a parking ticket. What is necessary is to bleed a little -- for any accessible process that you can make your own.

Wild Mind Writing Instructions: The essential elements --

1. A timer...

The most basic and crucial element of Wild Mind Writing is the “Timed Writing Exercise.” It is simple, but specific. It literally means to write for a specified time with a timer. Many people think that they don’t need to time themselves because they will just “write for a long time.” This is missing the point of how the exercise works. The timed writing exercise channels forces in a certain way. It is the foundation of the whole process. Things take as long as you give them. If you want it to take the rest of your life, go ahead. But what about the next thing? The timed exercise is a gift that precipitates a life-giving, rain, that waters the next round of self-compassion and irrepressible inspiration.

Here’s what else you need...

2. An inexpensive spiral-bound or composition notebook, with smooth-surfaced paper.

By inexpensive, I mean dirt-cheap. This notebook should be the opposite of beautiful or precious. It is meant to be paper that you can use up in “wild writing practice.”

It is, however, important that the paper has a smooth writeable surface. The surface makes a tremendous difference. Compare different writing experiences. It should not be physical work to glide through the pages, nor should your hand start hurting. Well, maybe at first, but the slightest drag on a writing surface creates a lot of work and will slow you down.

3. A quick-acting, smooth-writing pen that glides...

The faster the pen - the better, yet it should also give some feeling of control and a sensitivity to the surface of the paper. There should be virtually no resistance to the movement of your hand. Please make an effort to get a modern super-fast ballpoint, gel pen or cartridge fountain pen. Not all pens are created equal but there are many inexpensive, very good pens available. Hunt.

There are some pens that “get you to write.” I don’t know any explanation of this, and it is different for different people. Just keep trying them out until you find the one that does. Some people use pencils. When you find the kind that works for you, get more than one. Expensive pens, as well as expensive notebooks tend to inhibit writing practice by seeming “significant.” Your writing will be significant when it comes from beyond the mind. This happens with lots of permission and creative freedom.

Note: Some people want to do this kind of writing on a keyboard -- “Whatever floats your boat.” Really. There is something alive about hand-writing that engages the whole body and the psyche in movement. It is alive, but then again, the whole point is: “whatever works for you.” Please give yourself permission to find out. It's an experiment all the way, from the beginning...

What is really creative and comes alive for you?

I suggest that you don’t limit the process. Try everything. Some kinds of writing and different phases of self-expression work for their own reasons. We don’t need to figure it out. The whole point is to get “the creative” to do its work. Do what you feel is best for your creative process and follow the energy of yourself to the authentic.

4. Starter Phrases...

The Wild Mind Writing session starts with a "starter phrase." If you enter the "creative stream" with a creative trigger, the experience tends to be highly productive. This spark is contained in the starter phrase. Any question can serve as a starter phrase, but it needs to appeal to your imagination... make you angry, send you into a rant, whatever... A photograph, an old letter, or a memory may also ignite your process. As soon as our imagination is activated, we enter a creative process.

For example, a sentence that starts,

"I remember when                        " and the blank is filled in by an emotionally charged image.

"I am looking right at                           . It seems so real, like it was just yesterday." You get the idea. You will learn how your consciousness works, as you work with this formula.

If you are researching your relationship with certain knowledge, like gate 57 as an example. You need to begin with something that you know about the subject that appeals to you like: "Is the future really something to be afraid of ?"

How about gate 44 and 33? "It never seems rational to me to be afraid of something in the past, but I remember..."

The object of this exercise is self-inquiry, to find out exactly how your consciousness functions. It isn't what you think that is so interesting, it is how you got there and who is involved with your feelings about the future and the past...and then “the cutting through.” To what? Let’s find out. Where do your fears come from and what happens when you face them? How does your view of the future affect what you do now? What feelings for the future connect to the inside of you? The past? You can explore your immediate intuitions about the passage of time, and all the experiences that you have had about precognition, fear, health and illness, death and resurrection as you explore Centers, Authorities, Gates and so on. You get the idea?

Here's what you do...

You decide how much time you are going to write, maybe 10 minutes. Get your starter phrase together. The first one you think of at the “top of the mind” is usually best. It makes no sense to spend the day contriving a starter phrase so you can write freely later on. The axiom is “go for it.”

Next, start writing with furious speed and intensity. It's not the speed that matters, but the truth. Our consciousness moves much faster than we can write it down. You are establishing a relationship with your consciousness, energy and aura, where information will become available for you as you write it. There is no rational explanation for what is going on here other than that you discover in increments that telling the truth to yourself is the easiest and fastest thing to do. It’s also the most interesting. You can show up for the process. At first it seems that you are going very, very fast. You get used to this or it changes somehow. It's your willingness to show up that gets the process going.

Don’t stop for as long as the timer is moving. Don’t rationalize, biting the end of your pen and looking up in the air. The time for thinking may arrive some other time. Maybe not. It is always best to go directly to the raw energy.

Most often it is best to write in the present tense as though what you are writing about is happening at the time that you are writing it. Avoid the passive tense like you are a saber-toothed tiger flirting with a tar pit. Go right by. The active tense is where the action is. “I am remembering my father, as a little boy. He is living in a little white house...” Remember, you don't have to explain any of this. All you need to do is write it down. Write down everything that crosses your consciousness. Follow the flashes of association and write. The associations and how things come into your consciousness is the name of the game.

Synchronicity. Feelings. Associations by subject.

Things are related in your consciousness in ways that are truly mysterious and this is where the magic is.

The simple rules of the Wild Mind road ...

Do not think about spelling, punctuation, or anything, except recording where your consciousness takes you. There is one rule: never let your pen stop. It is not a rule really; it just helps a lot to keep it going. Do not edit or change anything. Let go of your rational mind. Let it know that you will listen later. Everything is in motion; move with it. Write like ‘greased lightning’. Say things as efficiently as possible. Make lists of things as they appear. That's all. Be honest, candid, and tell it like it is. Raw, irreverent, or whatever, and go to where the energy of your process is fiercest. Always go “toward the energy.” You can think about the significance of what you say later.

For now, just say it.

You will be amazed at what comes out of you...

The originality can only be stopped by your trying to edit, change or "improve" what you are doing. We have been trained to think through things before we write or speak them. Not in this case. It is like writing down a dream. In this case, the dream is just what your mind does during the lightning-fast stream of consciousness that pours through you. It is all related to your starter phrase. You may not be able to see this at the time. Do not edit or worry about spelling things correctly. Later. This involves going against huge sections of our conditioning to try to be right, to know why we are doing what we are doing, to try to be in control, to sound a certain way, to not make mistakes, to not expose our vulnerability, to not be joyful, to dismiss what we are doing as stupid or irrelevant. What is genuinely amazing is that you can just not pay any attention to any of that. Go right by it. Record what’s happening.

Not happening? Hint: it is closer than smelling your own nose or feeling your own skin. It does not matter what it is, whether it is a thought or an image, or some rant that seems completely irrelevant - just go off. You've always wanted to just be able to go off. Now's your chance. Feeling guilty for judging? Might as well get good at it and see what’s on the other side.

There is no need to listen to the inner critic. It always says the same thing and thinks it knows best. You can simply tell yourself, “You said that already.” You can keep going until you hear the bell, and maybe go again after that.

Keep going, no matter what, until you hear the bell...

Whew! That was a trip! Wasn't it? This kind of experience is where that expression came from. You will be amazed at how much comes out of you in a short time. It's not just how much; it's the astounding variety and the richness of the association. As you read what you have written, you begin to see how your consciousness is wired together on an inner plane. It is in this realm that Human Design operates and brings an undreamed of order. It does not matter whether there are unfinished sentences or even unfinished words. You know what you were saying. That is the most amazing thing. You know exactly what you were saying and why. You can fill in some missing words and sentences, but leave it largely untouched. It is a museum piece in the Archeology of you. If you have parts that you love and want to save, copy them out into another notebook. We'll get to that notebook later. If you have questions that were left unanswered, make them, their images, events, smells, sights, sounds into new starter phrases. Select your time, and go again.

“This reminds me of a play that I once saw produced and acted by high school students. They were 16 and 17 years old. In one scene a young couple had just finished making love. They were talking in animated voices, pacing, dancing around the room. Suddenly, she falls back upon the bed and says, “Oh, Billy! Let’s go again!” Let the page be your inner lover, healer, shaman priest, the drumbeat of your soul. Make love to the page irrationally. The wild mind moment rushes over and over, again. It is eloquent like orgasm. Try putting that in words.

Instructions...

There are no outside instructions on how to do this, although there are workshops specifically designed to get the process going. There are all kinds of inner instructions that emerge on the page from the process itself. Please look at what you create and notice how you are instructing yourself. When you see what the process is and where it is going, "the next steps” that are built in, get revealed. Building this sensitivity to your own process is what these exercises are really about. And, this leads you to your Human Design. You have your own way of existing -- of processing energy and information. You are the only person who can know about this. What happens inside you is entirely outside anyone and everyone's imagination. It is the source of your personal genius and authority. What we are speaking about here is your Human Design Strategy. As such it is unique to you.

All of this process is integral to perceiving your Human Design Strategy and learning to follow it. The keyword here is “perceiving”. You can learn to perceive and develop yourself so far beyond anything that your previous education was aware of - it is a bit ridiculous to mention them together, yet we need to, because a majority of our conditioning came from that education. Starting your own education and taking full and complete responsibility for it from the beginning - is your fastest, deepest, and most complete path to deconditioning.

“When you first discover your Human Design Strategy, it is a breathtaking experience. We speak of it as though it is the same for everyone, but of course, it is not. All projectors may benefit from "waiting for the invitation” but what does this really mean? We each have our own ways of initiating or waiting. What are they? If we do not discover what genuine waiting is in our own energy, then we are doing “conditioned waiting” which leads nowhere. We are waiting in all those doctors' offices, subways, boring classrooms which caused senseless wasting of our time; I don’t think this is what is meant by waiting. Waiting is discovering your own process.

If we come across the trail of an animal in the wilderness, we can tell which way it is traveling because its toes are pointed in that direction. If a coyote comes across the same trail, it can smell which way the animal went, because the scent is stronger and fresher in that direction. In learning to follow our strategy, we come across the trail of our real self. Which way did we go? In the direction that is fresh, for sure. When we are "wild-minding", we are feeling our way down that path that our true-selves took. Go in the direction where the trail becomes more authentic. The rest takes care of itself.

When you are writing, you can feel when the energy starts getting intense and charged. You can feel where there is life-energy for you. There will be unresolved emotions. Go for where the energy is most charged and alive. The energy leads you to what is most alive in you. That aliveness is your strategy.

Children...

You can get inspired by watching very young children. They often get into those “awkward moments” that make us feel like telling them what to do (I wonder why), but if you wait for those times that always happen when the play gets creative, you will begin to see the extraordinary flexibility of high-functioning beings. We can forget to watch this, like we forget to lie on our backs, from time to time, and watch the stars come out. Look! This is the life force itself ! We each used to be like this: that open, that imaginative, that flexible. We were working through reality for ourselves as complete undamaged units of joy. Now, we can recover that process.

Ongoing questions...

If you have questions, consider "taking them back" to the creative process for answers. The supra-consciousness speaks to you in your own metaphors. I suggest that you resist the mind’s attempt to intellectualize what is happening. It is just trying to stop you. It sounds so helpful, just because it is familiar. We have been trained to trust the intellectual process. “What does all this mean?” We now find ourselves on the threshold of the “creative process.” There is no real choice but to go on. It’s OK to trust yourself a little. In the beginning, this is the biggest challenge. You can go ahead and find out what it is, while giving up analyzing life to death. If you want to be alive, (and who doesn’t?) it is worth pursuing your process in the wild-mind. You can keep going back to your living imagination to keep the process living. We know the difference, deep down. This is “the journey” of the shaman priestess in the quest for truth. You can even do it in your spare time. All genuine culture, all the arts, all leadership and all genius, arise from this very process. Yours can be “your secret” for as long as you want.