In Pursuit of Passion: the Search for an Artistic Life

Passion preoccupies me. I grow easily irritated and melancholy when I don't feel connected to a stream of life, and I recognize a quiver in my cells when I live close to the mystery, the unknown, the vital energy that is passion for me. Pursuing the mysterious, the passionate, provides meaning and context for my life. Fm excited by any passion: connecting with spirits, another person, or myself; the ecstasy of grasping the numinous, crying over music, stretching a sore muscle, my mind. In my experience, the passionate belief in and pursuit of the mysterious are common to Process Work and art. Both art and Process Work use specific skills and tools to track the unknown, encourage its development and nurture its full expression.

My creative path begins with an attraction to something unknown. When I begin to write or paint or work on myself, I sense a formless mass which can't even be called a concept. It may be a nameless feeling, an image that flickers and recedes, a slight ache in my stomach or the color red in my mind. If I begin from this point and pay close attention, a whole story may develop. Red, movement, the woman in the red dress dragging the child along the sidewalk, shards of the wine glass the woman broke last night, and so on. When attended to, emotions unfold in a similar way; vague physical or psychic sensation becomes detailed description in poetry, prose or a picture. Paying careful attention to flickers of image and sensation is a key aspect of Process Work and art. Second attention and the artist's brain

In order to follow the unknown as it appears, Process Work and art both pay a specific kind of attention to the extraordinary. Carlos Castaneda,

in his stories about his apprenticeship to the Yaqui shaman don Juan Matus, introduces the concepts of the first and second attention. Don Juan taught Carlos to pay attention not only to the everyday world, the first attention, the tonal, but to the world of the unknown, the second attention, the nagual (Castaneda 1974). Mindell has expanded these concepts and applied them to working with oneself and the world. Mindell says that "the second attention is the key to the world of dreaming, the unconscious and dreamlike movements, the accidents and slips of the tongue that happen all day long" (1993: 25). This dreaming world is the birthing ground of art, passion, creativity. It is the home of the mysterious, which occasionally reveals glimpses of its nature to be discovered. In contrast to the second attention, which notices the unknown, the first attention pays attention to daily life, notices ordinary reality (Mindell 1993: 23).

Most of us have been encouraged to develop the first attention more than the second. We are taught to focus on the tangible world, encouraged to pay attention to the concepts of multiplication in math class and discouraged from daydreaming about the hairs curling out of the math teacher's nostrils, forbidden to see the teacher as the bear we dreamed about last night. Bill Watterson's widely syndicated comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes, frequently plays on the incongruences between the worlds of the first and second attention, making us laugh at the juxtaposition of two realms which we all recognize. Calvin, a child, spends his time in the world of the second attention, flying through outer space, playing games with his stuffed tiger Hobbes who is alive with

Calvin but "only a toy" to everyone else. Calvin's parents, dwelling happily in the world of the first attention, lack patience when Calvin runs screaming from the table because he sees a fierce monster rise out of his spinach. Calvin, with his free kid's mind, is endlessly creative. In order to be fully creative, to explicate the unknown, I believe we too need to develop (or remember) the second attention which values and focuses on the odd visions, feeling sensations, sounds and movements which are not part of consensus reality. This attention to the extraordinary provides a way of perceiving which helps make it possible to notice and follow creative impulses.

In The Shaman's Body, Mindell talks about how to develop the second attention.

The shamanic hunter [or process worker] masters awareness by using his [sic] second attention to notice inner feelings and fantasies and unusual outer signals from the environment. He feels things and senses the unknown parts of himself, even before they force themselves upon him. He follows and supports the irrational and uncanny, that which belongs to the nagual, i.e., the unconscious. He knows that his power lies in catching and tracing his double signals, his own incongruities, dreams, fantasies, and symptoms. (1993: 65)

This example applies equally to the artist, who also needs to follow and support the irrational, to help it emerge in a unique format. Julia Cameron, who has made a life work of teaching all kinds of people how to discover and recover their own creativity, calls these two types of perception "logic brain" and "artist brain" (1992: 13). The qualities of logic brain coincide with the qualities of the first attention, noticing the world as consensus reality perceives it, staying in neat categories and safe constructs. Artist brain is the creative brain, awareness of the mysterious, the perception that associates feelings, ideas, things, with no regard to the rituals of consensus reality. Artist brain sees the ghost on the garage roof, plays with its food, spots a bag of cookies and thinks with artist logic "fig newton isaac newton, issac sack of potatoes I think I'll have, a cookie."

Art, Process Work and cultural revolution Warning: following the mystery leads to cultural revolution

In my mind, art stretches the envelope of reality, travels outside the borders of the known world to bring back images from lands of mystery and passion. Art has the potential to change culture simply by introducing the unknown. Process Work is an art form which ventures beyond the world of cultural assumptions and brings back new possibilities (see Menken 1989).

Perceiving the world with an artist's mind, a shaman's vision, is a skill and life-style which can be cultivated through practice. One of the challenges of living and expressing the mysterious is that the world of the unknown often challenges consensus reality and cultural norms. The first level of challenge lies within the shaman/artist/ process worker's inner culture. Long before a finished creative piece impacts the outer world, it must be born and raised in the artist's inner milieu, which is often a veritable den of censorship, discouragement, disbelief and fear.

I am most intimately familiar with the intrapsychic dynamics around bringing in the unknown through my experiences with improvisation in dance and music (see Arye 1991 for more on music and sound). Bearing witness to the mysterious and attempting to express it through movement and sound has consistently stretched my personality beyond its previous limits. My version of inner revolution goes something like this. Take out the violin to play around and enjoy myself. Lift the bow, make a sound, and instant inner dialogue jumps in. "Oh, that's an interesting sound. Hmmm, let's do that more. Oops, that doesn't sound very pleasant, better back off and make familiar noises." Half a minute of pleasant tonal music, then oops, the bow is sliding close to the bridge again, creating that squeaky high sound which should be avoided at all cost. Now my first violin teacher appears in my mind, glaring at me. I'd completely forgotten the powdery texture of her face, but here she is, crepe paper skin and all, pursing her lips and saying "Haven't you practiced?" At this point comes an outrageous inner choice. I can attempt to conform, avoid making that sound, or I can follow what's interesting to me and purposely explore sound which has been carefully trained out of me. If I'm in a brave, foolish, or artistic mode, I go for the sound and suddenly become, in one small way, a new person, expanded and changed through inner revolution. Gone is my identity as the good pupil, the classically trained violinist. On a much larger level, which is also impacted by my momentary expression of the unknown, gone is the good girl, the good woman, the one who only makes cultur-

Leslie Heizer

ally pleasing sounds and statements. This creates a specific form of cultural revolution, not overthrow but impact through the individual becoming different in the world.

Making a screechy noise instead of a smooth polished sound may seem minimal. However, making a screechy noise when the world values smooth sounds introduces a new way of being, provides a possibility of expressing whatever is inside me without censorship, without adjusting my expression to what will be welcomed or accepted. Living an artistic life requires courage and conviction. A truly artistic life-style does not begin and end with creating pieces of art, music, or poetry. An artistic life is a way of being in the world, a calling to believe in mysterious flickers of perception, a commitment to worship the weird, and an unwavering desire to tell one's personal truth, regardless of feedback from the mainstream. Since mainstream culture for the most part does not support the weird, those seekers who follow their fascinations are destined to eventually offend somebody or a whole lot of somebodies.

Paying second attention, having an artist's brain, means following and expressing the unspeakable in all aspects of life. Any creative thinker who brings a new idea into the mainstream lives on the edge of culture, expressing the barely articulate, the forbidden, that which we fear. Living this way can literally be hazardous to one's physical body. Historically, those who dared challenge norms and conventions risked their reputations and lives. In the 16th century, Galileo introduced his discovery that the earth revolved around the sun rather than the sun around the earth. This view proved so heretical to Catholic doctrine that Galileo was tried by the inquisition, forced to recant and spent his last eight years under house arrest. The mainstream culture of his time made it clear that those who ventured too far from orthodoxy would be silenced. More recently in the United States, artist Robert Mapplethorpe consistently stayed true to his homosexual and erotic self in his art. He lost government funding and was barred from exhibition in certain museums and galleries. He died without recanting. Living artistically is a risk.

Process Work, like art, pays attention to the unknown. Following the unknown in life can be hazardous; the unknown has the potential to transform, perhaps at times destroy, the world view of the ordinary personality, the logical mind, the first attention. Truly following the unknown leaves the personality in a state of flux, with infinite possibilities for transformation. In process-oriented inner work or therapy, unexpected parts of oneself emerge. Through following an unknown movement, sound or vision, a person who has identified as caring and warm may discover parts of her/himself which are angry, direct, excitable, and don't go along with the previous identity.

This is both evolutionary and revolutionary growth. Passionate pursuit of the unknown leads to new possibilities, which may create a new inner climate. Actually living these new personality parts may lead us to different ways of being in the world, to transformation of relationships. Some friends may be excited, others may be upset and refuse to tolerate the new growth. Here passion, following the unknown, leads to outer revolution, outer change. Truly living the unknown goes beyond the traditional definition of art as product. Art becomes a commitment to follow and live the unknown that appears. Process-oriented therapy is revolutionary both on the personal level, where it allows and encourages the unknown aspects of the person to emerge, and socially, as new ways of being are encouraged in the world.

Artists, who follow their passion and creative

demons, the magical, are timespirits for culture.¹ They introduce new concepts to culture, come bearing the terrifying, the different, the possible. Catching the numinous and expressing it on paper, on stage, in clay, is a service art provides its audience, the culture it lives in. Art presents possible new experiences.

I believe the next development in our culture is up to not only identified "artists" but to all of us who feel challenged to live the unknown in everyday life, to bring the mysterious into all aspects of being. Living the life demanded by a spirit is not an easy task. Being called to follow the mysterious may mean dealing with collective censure, disdain, fear and violence. Rilke writes to the young poet, who seeks outer approval for his poems, ...you ask whether your verses are good....you are disturbed when certain editors reject your efforts. I beg you to give up all that....There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to

yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all—ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? (1934: 18)

Rilke asks his young admirer to discover the spirit, relate to a demon, find the source of his desire to write and then follow it only if his passion is a call from beyond the known world, a spirit seeking expression. Anyone who expresses the extraordinary will be challenged by culture. Artists, freethinkers and change agents pay special attention to a source, a mystery, a demon which will not rest until it expresses itself. This appears terrifying from the viewpoint of the logical mind. Lived, it is ecstasy.

Living the numinous which has been discovered in art and therapy has the potential to stir up outrage from the environment. On the other hand, not living one's full artistic and outrageous nature can lead to sacrificing one's spirit in order to navigate more smoothly through culture. Artists, writers, thinkers, therapists, anyone with a temperament and tendency which follows and expresses the unknown, have the potential to create revolution in culture simply by introducing the forbidden for consideration. All of us willing to consider the unknown can create models for cultural change. Writing as revolution

When I look around, I notice people who not only express the forbidden in art, but who live what I consider an artistic life. These people incorporate following the unknown, the culturally taboo, the mysterious, into their daily lives. One of my heroines is Dorothy Allison, an artistic cultural change agent and self-identified "feminist queer" who is deeply committed to speaking out on issues of class, power and privilege. She fits my criteria for an artistic life in her living and expressing of cultural taboos. I discovered Allison through her novel, Bastard out of Carolina (1990). This is fiction. It is also pure emotional truth, the realest, rawest story I have ever read. Allison illuminates the reality of growing up dirt poor and female, being regularly beaten and raped. She also captures the mystery of a child's world, the beauty of nature, the agony of being ostracized simply for not fitting in, for being born into the white underclass in the United States.

Allison says, "I wear my skin only as thick as I have to, armor myself only as much as seems absolutely necessary. I try to live naked in the world,

unashamed even under attack, unafraid even though I know how much there is to fear" (1994: 250).

Thickening one's skin is tempting, growing a surface dense enough to divert the blips in perception which disturb us. If we truly follow what fascinates us, we risk banishment from the comfortable logical world of the first attention, risk losing any chance we may have had to fit into a homogeneous framework where difference is bad. In my mind, by refusing to thicken her skin, Allison commits to a revolutionary life. She brings her perception into the world, triumphantly, despite it not fitting mainstream conventions about class, appropriate behavior, and positive sexuality—if that's even a concept in our culture! Allison's courage to write honestly about her life, to make her passion available to the public, has inspired me both to believe that the powerful, the extraordinary, can appear anywhere in life, and to speak out about personal experience, no matter how gruesome or seemingly mundane.

Her writing clearly demonstrates how much a marginalized person knows and has to say about the mechanics of marginalization. Allison writes about class and power, bringing the experience of being disempowered by a collective emotionally alive. She makes this accessible perhaps even to those born into more privileged positions in the strata of culture. Writing from a non-mainstream perspective creates the potential for change by introducing points of view different from those sanctioned by and commonly available in the mainstream. Patrocinio Schweickart addresses this in Reading Ourselves: Toward a Feminist Theory of Reading. She says that

the point [of feminist criticism] is not merely to interpret literature in various ways; the point is to change the world. We cannot afford to ignore the activity of reading, for it is here that literature is realized as praxis. Literature acts on the world by acting on its readers. (1986: 39)

In other words, writers interact with and impact readers. Literature can introduce new possibilities and new world views, especially literature from outside the cultural consensus. Additionally, readers and critics who comment from their points of view, especially those (like feminist critics) who introduce a non-mainstream perspective, have an impact on culture, a chance to create and change our worlds.

Leslie Heizer

When Allison says that "writing is still revolutionary, writing is still about changing the world" (1994: 91), she is talking about the writing of the second attention, the writing of the mysterious, of passion. Writing itself is neutral. Simply picking up a pen is not a revolutionary act. I can use my pen to make a grocery list, write notes, letters, reports. This is risk free writing, writing which supports everyday reality, the first attention, the logical mind, culture. My grocery list is not going to change the world. It is not going to encourage people to stare at me in the street. And, I do not experience creative block when writing my grocery list, in large part because there is no cultural taboo against it.

Another kind of writing, the revolutionary sort of which Allison speaks, involves personal and political risk. This kind of writing wanders off the map, leaves familiar parameters. When I pick up a pen and allow myself to let go, I lose control over the words, emotions and ideas that emerge. At some point, revolutionary writing gives up to the spirit, allows it to emerge, and believes in it sufficiently to give it life. Second attention leads naturally to all that is outside my known world.

Over and over I'm amazed at the ideas I find when I look at old journals. I dared think that? Say that? Often my thoughts are years ahead of my actions in the world, but I discover the seeds of growth in my free form writing. The kind of writing nobody ever reads provides an opportunity to meet aspects of myself that rarely peek out around the edges of my daily identity. Simply being open to these new experiences is the beginning of a personal revolution, the overthrow of my narrow-minded view of who I should be. This revolution grows in strength and becomes political as I live my expanding nature in the world.

As a woman, a bisexual in a lesbian relationship, and an abuse survivor, my reality and my life experiences do not mesh nicely with an idyllic vision of mainstream America. For the most part, the world does not want to hear about the oppression of half its population, about women who love each other, about rape. If I really pay attention to my perceptions and then open my mouth, pick up a pen, tap away on the keyboard, I commit a revolutionary act. If I talk about my life, consensus reality rocks a little. Telling the truth about my experience as a member of a marginalized group has the power to expand the known world by introducing new worlds. This is revolution, the creation of new norms.

Any person who speaks about experiences from outside the mainstream has the potential to shape and change culture. Any press publishing such work is involved in cultural revolution, making available experiences, stories and lives which are outside of norms and thus stretching and pushing the borders of culture. Like Dorothy Allison, people who introduce points of view from outside the "norm" form a vanguard, changing culture by bringing in new voices and previously hidden experiences for consideration. Censorship and the shifting rivercourse

The political debate around censorship, which addresses deeply held beliefs, is ongoing and emotional. The cultural mainstream and those pursuing the extraordinary are involved in back and forth discussion over what will be permitted and what forbidden, marginalized. Creative thinkers introduce new possibilities, the mainstream reacts with stronger norms, and cultural tolerance levels rise and fall. This ongoing debate influences the growing edges of culture, and thus defines the qualities of edge figures, our cultural censors. As women speak out, challenging the "quiet feminine" stereotype, assertiveness for women becomes more widely accepted into mainstream culture. Fewer female children are told not to speak up, and the cultural edge about outspoken women shifts slightly, the norm widens to include more styles, louder and less harmonious voices.

All artists, creative thinkers and seekers of the unknown are called to engage in a debate around human and cultural possibility. The myth of the "crazy" artist is part reality, in the sense that following the mysterious makes one fluid, unpredictable, outrageous. On the other hand "crazy" is meaningful only relative to a cultural norm. The construct of the crazy artist is created by a culture which does not consciously want to encompass the parts of itself lived out by those who don't conform (see Mindell 1988).

The cultural mainstream is a broad river. Changing the course of such a river requires a lot: a big dam, a massive flood, a long drought, or the slow gradual deposition of silt on the river bed. Living an artist's life has an impact on the river; artists follow the creative demon, the mysterious, and through doing so, the nature of the river, the mainstream, changes. Some changes happen in floods, like the flow of feminist writing and criticism in the United States in the 1970s or the outpouring of African-American authors and artists following the birth of the civil rights movement. Although these have been large movements, feminist and black perspectives remain far from mainstream.

Other changes come gradually, many drops before the flood. Freud created a first blip when he wrote about childhood sexual abuse as the chief cause of hysteria in adults a hundred years ago (Freud 1988; Masson 1984). From that time until the present, many have spoken up only to be silenced. However, the gradual increase of women and men speaking out, combined with larger cultural waves such as the women's movement, have raised mainstream awareness about sexual abuse in the United States. Any person who follows and expresses the unknown, who lives the mysterious, has the potential to change the immediate environment and thus the larger culture. Awareness shifts and metacommunication: translating the unknown

Trying to bring the unknown into my ordinary world is a special challenge and source of excitement. For example, in writing a poem, one of the things I consistently find remarkable is the shift from an emotion or image, which are two of my beginning points in writing, to expressing not only the emotion or image but also something about it, a broader perspective on the original impulse. I shift from a subjective point of view to a still subjective but more detached point of view, the beginning of metacommunication, of not only experiencing but communicating about an experience. Often, this shift involves movement from sensing the emotion to an additional perspective. If I begin with a feeling and add vision to the emotion, I often discover more about the story and gain some distance or detachment. This progression happens in therapy and inner work as well as in creativity. All involve moving from an original disturbance or inspiration which occurs in a certain way to other perspectives of the original experience.

I find these shifts in awareness and times of metacommunicating deeply satisfying. Once I dive into or stand outside an experience, name it, see what it is, I have more choices than simply being tugged by an original vague feeling or problem. Being able to follow the oddities, fill them out, bring them back to the world, helps me expand the possibilities of everyday life.

A toast to mystery

So little is truly known, so much mysterious. Like many, I have suffered from the seduction of logic, from my indoctrination into having to analyze and understand in order to value. I find myself now at the beginning of a journey into the artistic life, into living passionately, following the unknown and having the courage to bring it into the world. This is a scary and wonderful moment, knowing that passion for the unknown leads to revolutionary overthrow of my identity. I both dread and anticipate such growth.

Both Process Work and creativity, particularly writing, have brought me the gifts of discovering the mystery waiting outside my known world. Fm grateful to Process Work for helping me believe in the mysterious and for providing tools to bring the unknown into my awareness and thus into daily life. And I am grateful to the nagual pioneers, all those people who have the courage to go exploring and to tell the truth about their lives, no matter what. One of my greatest dreams for the world, for all of us, is that we be able to live all the mystery and passion inside and around us, fully, madly, deeply. Happy mysterious travels to us all. Notes

1. Mindell coined the term "timespirit" for the shifting roles that emerge in any field. These roles are time-spirits in the sense that they emerge in a certain time and place, and can change and develop. See Mindell 1992: 23-27 for more on timespirits.

References

Allison, Dorothy. Skin: Talking about Sex, Class and Literature. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand, 1994.

Allison, Dorothy. Bastard out of Carolina. New York: Penguin, 1992.

Arye, Lane. "Unintentional Music: Process Work and the Fluid Border between Psychotherapy and Art." Diss. Union Institute, 1991.

Freud, Sigmund. "The Aetiology of Hysteria." 1896 Lecture. In The Collected Papers of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 1. London: Hogarth Press, 1956: 183-219.

Cameron, Julia. The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 1992.

Castaneda, Carlos. Tales of Power. New York: Washington Square Press, 1974.

Masson, Jeffrey. The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984.

Masson, Jeffrey. Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of a Psychoanalyst New York: HarperCollins, 1991.

Leslie Heizer

Menken, Dawn. "Emerging World Views: Cultural Transformation in Process-Oriented Psychology." Diss. Union Institute, 1989.

Mindell, Arnold. City Shadows: Psychological Interventions in Psychiatry. London: Routledge, 1988.

Mindell, Arnold. The Leader as Martial Artist San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1992.

Mindell, Arnold. The Shaman's Body. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993.

Rilke, Rainer. Letters to a Young Poet New York: Norton, 1934.

Schweickart, Patrocinio. "Reading Ourselves: Toward a Feminist Theory of Reading." In Gender and Reading, E. Flynn and P. Schweickart, eds. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1986.

Leslie Heizer, Ph.D., lives in Portland, Oregon, where she works as a therapist and editor of the Journal of Process Oriented Psychology. She has a background in music, classical languages and philosophy and is coming out of the closet as a poet