Poiesis
Colour Play: Cantaloupe & Kohl, detail. Watercolour and pencil, by Rami Schandall ©2021.
Sometimes when I sit down to write, there is a sensation of having too much to say, so much that I am powerless to begin. Do you know this sensation? I have had it all day. Many starting points, many notes, nothing insisting, “This is the thing that is ready to be written.”
Inertia is a companion of this multi-pointed attention, waiting to coalesce. The notorious horror of writer’s block is complicated. I have at this stage in my creative life learned many techniques (which feel like tricks) to sidestep inertia, to give the car with the faulty starter the right amount of push (and park it on a hill in the first place). There are process tricks, playful mental tricks that bring some relief and momentum, and then there is the sweet, whole, remembering of being alive in a body. Not a trick.
The practices I have been gathering and that I share when teaching, are things I experience as methods of “homecoming” — coming to rest in being, whole. “Creative” or not, I believe we all, by the fact of living, are in the process of bringing forth what has not before been expressed, what has not before been realized. This is poeisis.
Not to be confused with notions of “potential,” in the sense of end-results, or productivity: I am thinking of the deeply free, mutable, essence of self being expressed in each unique life. There is a lot of energy in essence, and I believe it innately wants to be witnessed. Yet there are so many ways we get in our own way, with veils and sheaths like inertia, anxiety, distraction, delusion, and so on. (There are lists and lists of these veils, sheaths, obstructions and impediments in yoga and buddhist philosophy!)
I practice to keep learning the nature of the obstacles that show up in my life, to remember and hone strategies to work with them. The obstacles change, over time, like everything. Life produces so much compost to transform into growing things! The amazing sense-instrument, body-mind, is taking readings all the time. What to absorb, what to expel? Wise-mind, owl-mind, might show up with insight. Embellied presence, earthy body, might bring more sensation and signs to learn from. And I can keep on remembering impermanence—including readiness, including unreadiness—in this ceaseless flow of energy that essence is made of.
Join me for simple somatic practice and meditation on Tuesday evenings.
All are welcome!
Tuesday, October 12, 7:30 pm ET
Autumn Sangha
