Crossroads Dispatches

we are the substance we withdraw to, not from

I used to go on retreats that I actually called "advances" or "dwelves" because the word retreat always seemed to connote going backwards to me. Oh, I know it's supposed to mean a retreat from the larger world pushing up against us like a vise, yet that word retreat repeatedly conjured a defeated army, head down in shame, shuffling off. So no retreats for me.

My first advance I called a Clarity Quest, and I entered Druid archways and hidden raven tales by solo backpacking into an unexpected windstorm in Canyonlands National Park. Other years, it was a gentle fairy meander through the meadows and hilly oak groves in a cabin twenty minutes and twenty centuries from the bustling Silicon Valley I lived at that time. I'd leave the world behind for anywhere from 3-7 days. Cell phones didn't work and that was the point. I'd bring hiking shoes (even though I was a long-distance runner at the time, I decided running was too much of a blur to inhale the orange of poppies), journals and colored pens, and simple food. Not much else.

The term "media fast" may not be evoking the right sensation. Like retreat, the word fast connotes a deprivation of sorts.

We might call it a media detox, that's better. Imagine a spiritual quest in situ, a creative staycation, a spontaneous sabbatical. (I'll share later how to get away from home and create your own inexpensive 4-day retreat. For this one week, we're not going away from home, and you can keep your day job if you wish, it's your off hours that you're in your inner haven.)

"As artists, we must learn to create our own safe environments." - Julia Cameron

Ten years ago, I took a 12-week course in The Artist's Way. I was a computer engineer who morphed into a software marketing geek at the time. All business. I was totally stunned when Rick, our instructor, said we were going to do without media for a week. Well, I simply couldn't do it. I justified it because I was a real rebel. As if devouring the latest Wired and The Industry Standard was revolutionary. In Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, she writes:

"When we engage in a creativity recovery, we enter into a withdrawal process from life as we know it. Withdrawal is another way of saying detachment or nonattachment, which is emblematic of consistent work with any meditation practice.

In movie terms [Julia Cameron is filmmaker], we slowly pull focus, lifting up and away from being embedded in our lives until we attain an overview. This overview empowers us to make valid creative choices. Think of it as a journey with difficult, varied, and fascinating terrain. You are moving to higher ground. The fruit of your withdrawal is what you need to understand as a positive process, both painful and exhilarating.

Many of us find that we have squandered our own creative energies investing disproportionately in the lives, hopes, dreams, and plans of others. Their lives have obscured and detoured our own. As we consolidate a core through our withdrawal process, we become more able to articulate our own boundaries, dreams, and authentic goals. Our personal flexibility increases while our malleability to the whims of others decreases. We experience a heightened sense of autonomy and possibility.

Ordinarily, when we speak of withdrawal, we think of having a substance removed from us. We give up alcohol, drugs, sugar, fats, caffeine, nicotine -- and we suffer a withdrawal. It's useful to view creative withdrawal a little differently. We ourselves are the substance we withdraw to, not from, as we pull our overextended and misplaced creative energy back into our own core."

In the week or so ahead, I encourage you to experiment with alternatives to packaged media, and make your own creative play-dates and projects:

"Spending time in solitude with your artist child is essential to self-nurturing. A long country walk, a solitary expedition to the beach for a sunrise or sunset, a sortie out to a strange church to hear gospel music, to an ethic neighborhood to taste foreign sights and sounds - your artist might enjoy any of these. Or your artist might like bowling." - Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way

Here's my own detox list below. I'm going for a little longer than a week myself - through August 1st - in case someone joins in with us in next few days they can go a full week. Keep creating. So go right ahead with producing a video or writing a blog or playing your guitar, for instance. It's the consumption of outer entertainment and entrainment I'm withdrawing from.

where does your art come from?

"One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time." - Andre Gide

A reader William asked an excellent question in a comment. As not everyone reads the comments section, here it is and my response below:

"An observation on the fast.

References to the rich variety of visual and literary artists seemed to have been removed and replaced by contemplations of popular movies. What are we or should we be fasting from when we decide to fast?"

Posted by: William | Jul 18, 2008 at 11:41 AM

My response:

Fair point, William. The fast hasn't started yet. Saturday. [Or Sunday, or Monday depending on what works best for you. I'll write on topic for over a week to catch everyone that wants to participate in real-time.] But I'd include other people's art and works too in that fast. It's just for a week!

Isaac Newton had nearly two years self-study when Cambridge closed down because of the plague; Buckminster Fuller took a 2-year vow of SILENCE to purge other people's concepts out of his mind; Bob Dylan after a motorcycle accident went into the Big Pink house, went within to compose/develop his own style without the popular 60's music surrounding him, hounding him. Just a few examples of going within. Like Terence McKenna said "Create your own road show."

I was curious about popular media lately, especially popular films since that seems to be the way the zeitgeist and programmed symbols are coming through these days. Even paintings contain much of the same symbology as I'm noting in popular media.

I was curious where these influences are coming from. Is it really "us" deep within, our own inspiration, are we channels for the Source? - or are we merely being programmed by the media and their masters to be THEIR channels (and robots)?

I've been noticing that in cities, artists have been making art for other artists...poets go to the readings, artists go to the gallery openings. Everything starts to look like the same. It could all be in Juxtapoz next issue.

Truthfully, I'm not into writing that much these days. I'm working on an installation idea. But even I need to do some purging of other peep's concepts, media inundation, etc.to do something fresh, and really like an INITIATION for me and the viewers. "Vincent Van Gogh gave the most demanding definition of painting. It was a process of initiation. He had to make visible that which could not be seen without painting." - "Van Gogh: The Passionate Eye"

I have a few posts on Van Gogh, James Turrell up my sleeve coming up too. Hang in there...

p.s. The fast might make more sense watching this short video, "Reclaim Your Mind". (Personally, highly don't recommend McKenna's other vid's regarding 2012 and psy- drugs).

"Don't watch TV. Don't read magazines. Don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow." - Terence McKenna

p.p.s. I've watched way too many popular films lately (not typical for me). I made specific references to Wall-E, The Matrix, and Truman Show because they have some worthwhile messages about deprogramming in them. Though even they are double-edged.

More specifics of the media fast Saturday. Anything that you consume and look towards as an intermediary for your information and imagination is fair game.

rogue robots

"Inside you there's an artist you don't know about... Say yes quickly, if you know, if you've known it from before the beginning of the universe." -Rumi

Truman had Sylvia. Neo had Morpheus. EVE had Wall-E. Each had someone from outside their reality unexpectantly upset their apple cart, and offer a new clue to a new view.

Who did Wall-E have? Whom showed him a glimpse of freedom?

He's just minding his P's and Q's and doing what all Waste Allocation Load Lifter- Earth Class robots are programmed to do day in and day out, and he's been at it diligently for approximately seven hundred years. He does what every other engineered Wall-E does. Or, does he?

Some might say his emergent artificial intelligence emerged, thus evolving his program in some sort of genetic algorithm, yet that would be programmed behavior too. If that were the case, where was his emergent intelligence stored? What if we swap out his rusty parts, his memory cards, even the motherboard circuit board, would that contraption still be the Wall-E we know?

"I can only show you the door. You have to walk through it." - Morpheus

It's a habit of mind that thinks it needs to find answers out there to squelch our fear of the unknown. You might compare this habit to a computer program, and the unknown to consciousness, or spirit. I broke free of the programming in April 2006, however, since the program was and is still installed, it is possible to revert back to it...and unfortunately, I have most of the last 18 or so months.

"To know that you are a prisoner of your mind, that you live in an imaginary world of your own creation, is the dawn of wisdom. To want nothing of it, to be ready to abandon it entirely, is earnestness." - Sri Nisargadatta

Trash compacting seems pretty cut-and-dry, it doesn't serve any functional purpose to dance or hold hands. No computer engineer (I'm one, or more aptly, I was) would bother creating a sophisticated A.I. for a simple robot (too unpredictable to be left unattended like Wall-E units were).

So what explains Wall-E's self-awareness and innate quirkiness? Me, I think that precisely because Wall-E was the very last robot he was no longer surrounded by programming and programs reinforcing his adherence to his own embedded programs. I think this made for optimal conditions where his spontaneous spirit eventually rebelled, revealed and reveled.

Yup, I'm a rogue robot again! (Inside joke if you watched the film.)

p.s. That's the whole idea to a media fast - to allow space for your consciousness to come forth, without incessant mirrors and overlays of programs. inviting a feast for the spirit, a flowering for spontaneity.

the true man show

Truman Burbank: Was anything real?
Christof: You were real. That's what made you so good to watch...

I found it rather amazing how the humans on the ship in recent film, Wall-E didn't get discombobulated, mutiny and insist their ship was home. Once out of 'Autopilot,' even the Axiom's captain yearned to retire his carefree post and go "home." Surely someone would have resisted going back to Earth because at that point -- 700 years away from the planet -- it was all pretty foreign to them as their parents and their parents' parents were born and bred on that good ship Axiom. Perhaps it'd all be different if 700,000 or 70,000,000 years had elapsed. Perhaps they'd have too much invested in the ship.

Axiom: "A self-evident and necessary truth; a proposition which it is necessary to take for granted; a proposition whose truth is so evident that no reasoning or demonstration can make it plainer." - en.wiktionary.org/wiki/axiom

Axiom: "An axiom is a statement which is assumed to be true, and is used as a basis for developing a system." - ddi.cs.uni-potsdam.de/Lehre/TuringLectures/MathNotions.htm

I was lured into believing Home was on yet another dimension/density - which would be like taking an elevator to the next deck of a vast ship - but nope, that's not Home. That's still part of the The Matrix.

Like a conch shell that still echoes the ocean far from Home, sometimes I feel echoes of a 'place' I know without war, disease, decay, death, or grinding down. A 'place' without food chains or chains. A 'place' of continual creative expression of beauty, and love in boundless bounty. Before Time, it was and is.

I've come upon the truth at least half-dozen times since 2003 (a pivotal year), and yet each time I unwittingly turn away because I'm very in the minority.

Being true to your true self and its expression, is probably most consistent theme of this blog. And it will continue to be the focus. But I must make a huge apology...

I fell for the immaculate deception. I'm truly sorry for anyone that I've misled. Like Truman, I'm not exactly surrounded by people that have my best interests at heart, nor are they here helping us to get to the bottom of what's up. Truman didn't have an inkling where his search would eventually lead him, nor that he had been a pawn -- he merely became alert that things were highly strange.

"At the end of the show the hypnotist told his subjects, "Awake."

Something unusual happened.

One of the subjects awoke all the way. This has never happened before. His name is George Nada and he blinked out at the sea of faces in the theatre, at first unaware of anything out of the ordinary. Then he noticed, spotted here and there in the crowd, the nonhuman faces, the faces of the Fascinators. They had been there all along, of course, but only George was really awake, so only George recognized them for what they were. He understood everything in a flash, including the fact that if he were to give any outward sign, the Fascinators would instantly command him to return to his former state, and he would obey." - opening lines to short story, "Eight O'Clock in the Morning", by Ray Nelson

I came close to deleting each and every post on this blog as I don't want to reinforce false memes - yet, I believe my essence shines through even the corrupted ideas and concepts. And maybe that speaks clearest anyhow.

Beauty, liberation, inspiration, truth is it for me - and what I want this blog to be about. Yet I cannot feed that to you, your spirit wells and wills inside of you - you have only to allow its voice.

In The Truman Show, Sylvia tells Truman his life isn't what it appears to be, and leaves it at that. At that point it's up to Truman: Should I ignore this silly remark? That remark resonated with something deep within him that had already sensed that not all was right with the world. You've had Sylvias in your life. If not, I'm your Sylvia.

"I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss." - Cypher, The Matrix

The Fascinators fascinate. The will always tell you ignorance is bliss and bliss is ignorance.

I'm going to suggest a one-week media fast for starters (The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron suggests a one-week media fast for a creative boost) to get us back in touch within to our essence, our selves without any externalities. We'll start this Saturday (or Sunday for those that get postings via email), in case you think you'll be bored, a few innate-alternate activities will be suggested through the week.

p.s. I've been in the desert Southwest this summer clearing out the other voices, getting back to my own self. There'll be no external photos, paintings, symbols until after the media fast. Clarity first.