On Not Knowing: a Personal Reflection on Not Knowing in Creativity and Meditation

 

When not knowing and disoriented, I perceive the world as threatening and scary and I can feel quite ill and resistant if clinging to security. If not clinging to security when not knowing, I perceive the world as a fluid playground in which to dance. I am able to be more creative. My choice. Discovering more that facing the unknown is deep at the heart of creative work has been a real insight. William Kentridge was an inspiration. This has freed me up as I realised I could use the unknown and groundlessness as starting points and process, a practice, rather than freaking out about not knowing where I am going with creative practice.

​

Not knowing can be:

1. Ignorance: not knowing as just not being aware of something, and not even knowing that one does not know

2. Perceptual sensory consciousness without mindful awareness
   eg: seeing this cup = eye/brain receiving visual/neurological data but there is little awareness of what is happening due to distraction, lack of attention or focus. This has been demonstrated in the invisible gorilla video http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/gorilla_experiment.html

3. Not knowing conceptually while attached to wanting to know conceptually. This has its uses but can be an obstacle to artistic creativity and practising meditation because concepts are limited

4. Bare attention with awareness, maybe slight conceptualising: I know I see this cup = the eye/brain receiving visual/neurological data AND I am aware this is happening AS IT HAPPENS

5. Unchanging, timeless awareness, beyond conceptual knowing. The conceptual mind may find this hard to accept because it wants to be able to label, name, and get hold of knowing-ness beyond concepts.

 

The different faces of not knowing seem to depend on whether I am clinging to controlling my experience including fear of being out of control, or I am simply curious about the potential of adventure, an invitation to explore within not knowing, welcoming it as a teacher, friend, guide and companion in creative Dharma.

 

I thought I was familiar and comfortable with not knowing from over 30 years learning meditation and practising as an experimental mixed media fine artist. As an energetic young artist with a massive ego not recognising the subtleties of not-knowing, I was able to throw myself – and paint – around fearlessly. Immersed in the wacky anything-goes creative culture in Brighton UK where no one judges anyone, I just let it all hang out in a free and open way. This freedom was double-edged in that Brighton life was hedonistic with little self-awareness, but as ego-driven creativity was accepted, then even if I was uptight, I just let it hang out.

​

Living initially as a single parent, then on my own as an empty nester and Buddhist nun in East Anglia, which is much narrower and less creative than over-the-top wacky Brighton, I spent much of my time nurturing other people’s creativity through teaching and creativity coaching, dealing with householding or just meditating. In the grumpy menopausal 50 something stage of life, this left me with little energy for doing any really focused art projects, so I just sploshed around or took photos. The motivation for practising art had also partially collapsed as I was no longer part of a creative community and had no buying audience.

​

Arriving at 65 years having processed my menopausal, empty-nesting transitions, I wondered how to focus what remained of my life in a way that felt personally meaningful and might benefit others. Over 20 years’ training in the Tibetan Buddhist Kagyu tradition had helped me begin to chip away at learning to recognise ego, mind weather and awareness. There were times when things seemed to fall apart, when I felt I had nothing to hold onto. I had no idea of who I was or what anything else was for that matter. Because I was still self-grasping, desperately hanging onto wanting something tangible and secure to hold onto in my life, I was terrified by this collapse. I did not know how to relate to this sense of groundlessness, nothing there, not knowing conceptually. I could understand why so many people have televisions, computers and mobile phones on all the time: to distract the mind from the empty void within.

​

Of course, something was there – unchanging awareness, knowing-ness which is the container of changing sensations, thoughts, emotions and memories, like unchanging space is the container for the flux of evanescent weather and phenomena. If awareness had not been there, I would not have been aware that (a) I was experiencing groundlessness or (b) grasping onto wanting something to hold onto and (c) panicking because I could find nothing. With my background of mistrust and needing to feel in control, it took me years to begin relaxing when encountering not knowing.

​

In creativity coaching I discovered not knowing and awareness meditation to be very beneficial tools for deeply listening to clients. However, it had not occurred to me to transfer this understanding and experience over to my own creative activity. I am mildly surprised that I did not apply what I had learned in meditation to the process of  creative practice. Too much ego grasping and solidified thought patterns around doing art?

​

Thinking somewhat unclearly, I had automatically assumed that I was making art from ground zero (Trungpa) or not knowing. On reflection, this was not the case. Conceptually over-informed and over influenced by doing and MFA which espoused engaging with the mainstream ‘art world’, I began doing digital art using photography and video. In hindsight, this took me away from earthy, embodied engagement with materials, leading to losing connection with my own authenticity which goes far deeper than the conceptual and verbal thought patterns. I was up in my head, which for me was neither a healthy nor a creatively constructive place to be.

​

As a result, I began conceptually referencing and critiquing my ideas before I even started making anything. I became frozen, paralysed creatively, full of all the resistances and blocks I was helping others to free in Mindful Creativity Coaching sessions. It was ironic what the universe was mirroring back to me: anxiously picking up the phone and talking with a client who wanted coaching about creative anxiety.

​

My own anxiety was around not knowing what on earth I was doing in art practice and time was running out. I was only aware of feeling woolly-headed, confused and panicky. This was compounded by the stress of doing a house renovation on my own. Not surprisingly, I went into burnout, and was diagnosed with an underactive thyroid and chronic fatigue syndrome or M.E.

​

Something else had also been happening. When 47, my ex-husband’s work had been relocated from Brighton to Norfolk. This entailed a complete loss of my creative community and disconnection from my mother and sister. Everything I had believed to be stable, true and permanent started collapsing and disintegrating, reinforcing childhood lessons on impermanence. Things falling apart was not good news for a control freak from a dysfunctional family background. However, it was excellent news for a Dharma practitioner looking for a bit of in-the-trenches fieldwork learning to accept impermanence and interdependence.

​

With all my angst, there was a glimmer that ego really knew, deep down, that much of the social and personal conditioning causing me pain was just a painful dream. But to trust myself enough to relax into the truth, the groundless awareness, as a way of being and living, was just too scary, too big a change as my precious ‘I’ might be annihilated. Consequently, I exhausted myself working very hard to stay on top of my habitual status quo comfort zone, while continually feeling that the illusory groundless nature of existence was much closer to how things really were. Resistance is futile and truth will out but ego-grasping is powerful, and doesn’t let go readily.

A way to make friends with not-knowing is to let go, accept, surrender and welcome it as a collaborator in being and doing, not only with art and meditation but in all of life. Not-knowing, when trusted, is a partner in the dance of life.

​

Here are some more summaries of reflections:

​

• Deciding whether or not I intended the work to be shared or shown, and dealing with people’s preconceptions and expectations around the book genre, wanting to prove myself..... I felt uncertain and disoriented, when panic, feeling overwhelmed and paralysis arose. I could not work at all, not even experiment in an open ended way, felt frozen, depressed and frustrated! I would just stare at the mess in the studio and feel confused and depressed.

• Reflecting on this during this month, listening to talks, I see all this comes back to solidifying everything through ego grasping and the 8 worldly dharmas. I knew this was happening before, but having the support of this course helped me to really get hold of what was going on in my process.

• This insight has enabled me to begin relaxing ego grasping, accept not knowing and the unfamiliar as part of the play-ground of uncertainty and chaos, relax and start playing with art materials again. When ego grasping tightness arises, I am beginning to welcome it as part of my mind-weather, aware of it arising and passing and am able to continue working. In other words, welcoming and making a positive practice out of not knowing and uncertainty and allowing art work to arise from that.

• Blankness, sleepiness, tiredness. I often encountered non-conceptual mind and was unable to articulate what is happening. Was I really encountering not knowing beyond conceptual thinking, or was the mind blanking out, numbing out fueled by resistance, avoidance, a refusal to connect and feel? Or is it plain tiredness?

• Sometimes there was clarity in the blankness, like a square zero, sometimes it was just spacing out in a dissociated way as a defence or rabbit-in-the-headlights fear. Again, awareness of this mindset is no longer blankness as clarity is there. Learning to accept it and let be made it possible to connect and engage with materials and art process from this acceptance and clarity. I became aware that relaxing into the unknown and unfamiliar in creative practice can be as much an awareness practice as sitting meditation.

• Similarly I saw that the edges of stuckness, such as resistance, the urge to eat to fill the gap, boredom, fear of the unknown, irritation at feeling limited in this way, can all be awareness practices to embrace in creative practice.

• Feeling groundless when sense of self and any motivation just collapses, and I am just left there feeling very ordinary, with no ideas in particular. Not-knowing and aware it is not knowing. Fear and grasping at needing to prove myself and have something to hold onto are still there. This edge can lead to depression, paralysis, frustration and anxiety and not feeling motivated to do any creative art. Once I see it as ego grasping, the scary groundlessness becomes a play-ground that is quite light-hearted and fluid, fun and workable because there is less tension around trying to make anything happen. Like Agnes Martin’s practice of just waiting, it is OK to do that rather than getting uptight because nothing appears to be happening.

• Attachment to my work (and consequently my ego) having to conceptually mean something, with subsequent attempts to label and categorise the content of my work, which then often paralyse the working process. Refusing to be playful, almost sulking, because I am clinging to the familiar mindsets and notion of ‘me’, but am also feeling lost and desperate underneath all that. With awareness and acceptance of these resistances and blocks, my mind relaxes and playfulness spontaneously arises. I can see more clearly from experience how meditation can free up the clinging and tightness around my creativity, and awareness of how this creativity can spontaneously arise from a more relaxed, spacious awareness clarifies how creativity is the natural expression of a more spacious, less grasping mind

• Storylines, negative self talk, conditioned by art school, society, family – what is the real refuge? I take refuge in the 3 Jewels, but what is really happening as I continue to act out old familiar habits to hold onto a nice fluffy comfort zone? This impacts on the way I restrict myself in art processes

• Feeling ill – mainly from panic arising from not having anything to hold onto to feel safe and secure! Unless it is embraced, paralysis and no art results

 

On a positive note there was also curiosity, interest, observing and embracing experience with alert curiosity.

 

After a lot of reflection I decided to embrace not knowing, lost, confused, which is where I was anyway, and do creative practice from that. It was liberating. It reminded me of a question I once asked an art tutor, “How do I paint pure consciousness?” His reply, “Become pure consciousness and paint from that.” Not that I have realised this, but it is the notion of relaxing the tension, embracing everything and really making it a practice. So I have been playing with pen and ink drawing and mixed media, both as art journal experiments, and also with some digital photography and website design.

 

Painting

No idea where this painting is going, it's is just layer after layer, don't want to impose any intention on it, or even any concept. I like some of it, think some of it is revolting. All labels. This really goes against the grain of my training, great. 

 

Photography

Reflections. Transparency. Ambiguity. Thinking it is one thing, when it isn't. Just being open, spacious, taking a Trungpa square zero approach. Welcoming uncertainty, disorientation, confusion, anxiety, depression, leaning into this as something interesting and adventurous, a ripe area for exploration and discovery rather than something to reject. Seeing these ‘challenges’ as fun topics to go into rather than reject and attempt to change. How inspiring and interesting! It was how I used to work when younger, then something in me seized up when overwhelmed by money worries as a single parent. It is great to rediscover this, liberating creatively! Practising awareness of inner and outer, resonance of the seen, pressing the shutter mindfully. My intention is no intention, just be and do, practice open awareness. This is also very congruent with Tibetan practices.

 

​

The loneliness of a car park in the car of life, no idea where I am going. That's an afterthought. Actually I was just playing with the camera, with no particular idea in mind.

​

Drawing

Just picked up the pen and let the mark making happen, without caring about outcomes. Flow. Just let go into feeling the scariness of not knowing, not controlling, not feeling safe. Interesting watching this process happening within and through this embodied mind.

​

Wabi-sabi

I think I always have been, instinctively drawn to wabi-sabi. It’s trendy at the moment. I am not interested in it as a design accessory but in the essence of what it is, as it comes from Dharma. Things falling apart, impermanence, chaos, entropy, authenticity. Sadness about the impermanence of all things. It embraces not knowing, uncertainty, disorientation, fluidity, collapse of the familiar. In opening up more, I seem to be drawn to integrating art, everyday life and Dharma. I would like to explore working more consciously with this in art work, the home, the garden, so that my embodied being in the world, art and everyday life start flowing together more. No idea how to do this, see what happens!