ON WRITING
Jann Burner
April 26, 2007
This is a very pleasant sensation, at this instant--being a writer; being able to entertain and introduce the three prime portions of human consciousness: the physical animal, the thinking brain and the transcendent mind. When these three parts come together they form a bubble which exists quite outside of time/space. The movement of this bubble seems to be a form of active prayer. This bubbling is the creation of the Mind, not the brain and certainly not the robot narcissistic greed freak doing the stenographic work (me!).
In order to 'qualify' as a serious writer, a significant part of the person's mind and personality must be able to transpose, transmute and transcend. One must be able to transpose events as quickly as a professional musician transposes musical keys; transmute the gross into the ethereal as facially as an alchemist and in the end, transcend and become as centered as a Zen initiate. This is quite aside from being able to write at all.
The brain is the interface, like the second stage of a rocket before the essential package reaches free space and is cut loose to orbit. This impulse comes from a disembodied state. There is no material consideration there. It is far reaching. It is holographic in intention. It is not often referred to in popular literature. It has been called the un-nameable. Before that, they lived it. For the last ten thousand years the only thing we can say for sure about it is..."we can't talk about it!"
If my journal seems fragmented it's because over the years I've found that my Mind operates in a larger room in time. Bits of idea jotted down in my journal will complete themselves months or even years later. A second fragment will fit the other so perfectly that it's as if they are but pieces of the same vase broken years ago with the shards scattered across time. Whole sentences began weeks, months or even years before will have a beginning, middle and end separated by vast spaces of time. It would seem my Mind illustrates an intelligence and a sense of persistent continuity that my brain can only dream of. It's as if my Mind is an artist spending large amounts of time painting extremely detailed oils, whereas my brain searches for the 'quick fix'; the immediate sign of life, the Polaroid print. "No time for art", my brain says..." the paint takes too long to dry."
I am a symbologist. In my writing I attempt to take a great confusing mass of information and select a few succinct images to imbue with feeling and significance. Hopefully these images (or at least a few) will stick in the mind of the reader and become symbols for a future. Hopefully these little ribbons tied to the trees along the road of life will encourage man's two great desires: to grow and to travel towards the perceived Light.
Writers are very cerebral. They live in their mind. Their body is often like a loyal pet that follows them around and demands to be fed and taken out and exercised. It is like a good dog. Thus I am often surprised and taken back when I run across someone who actually LIVES in their body and is totally unaware of the thought life of the mind; the thought glue that serves as the epoxy which binds the entire thing together. The universe is a connective matrix of pure thought forms but you don't have to be aware of this for it to work. Some people (most) live their life as animal. Some are (most) quite domesticated types sheep. Some are cows. Some (few) are closer in nature to dolphin/eagle or bear. Some (very few thankfully) are truly wild and are like hyenas, snakes, weir wolves and vampires. These feed on the herd and bare watching.
The problem with writing is not the years of poverty, obscurity and struggle with the world and with one's personal demons, nor even the months, sometimes years of struggle to bring a story through the mind frame, kicking and screaming into the earthly light of the clean white page. The real problem with writing is dealing with the liberal arts graduate readers with the hearts and souls of lawyers. These strange yuppie hybrid creatures stand like centurion guards between the writer, and the people who might want to, might need to, read his stuff.
There is in the realm of man, the frequency of Personality, the frequency of the Brain and the frequency of the Mind. Man is, above all things, of the frequency of Mind but he has fallen. Personality is soap opera and "People Magazine". The Brain is the labyrinth of the intellect where the smarter ones become lost. It is also the starter engine that can grant access to the Mind where there is no time, no place, no past and no future as well as no life and no death. It is an inalienable right for each man, woman and child on earth to have healthy and unfettered access to the Mind. It should be in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. At some time in the future we will look back upon the present strictures placed upon access to the MIND much the same as we look back upon the exploitation of children for cheap labor in the 19th Century.
The personal human identity is a submarine descending into the oceanic unconscious on exploratory missions and coming up again and again with bits of treasure; phrase and insight and then sliding again back beneath the surface searching for the sunken craft; the black box, the interface between illusion and reality, in hopes of finding the right magical incantation: the words of the pilot and cockpit crew as the original plane went down....
As writers we often tend to forget that we are explorers. This is NEW realization experience. We are pushing back the edges of the dream (the human dream). Thus we need to keep track; take notes, keep journals, create art, tell stories. We need to talk, discuss, share. Too often we tend to take life as a given with a fixed program. Especially once we have reached physical maturity. We often assume that the life experience is a game with fixed, rigid rules and all that's left is to compete and somehow win! We must guard against becoming fixed like a photograph in a dish of developer or worse, a bug in amber. The image coming through is never fixed, never ending. Life is not only heliotropic it is also holographic. Sometimes, when within our rhythm, one can feel like an astral form exploring the geological stratification’s within the earth. Often I feel as if I can reach down and within, deeper and deeper and trace the wisdom and imagery found at each level. But the deeper I look, the stronger and more intense the pressure. It is so much easier to merely describe the surface world and certainly less risk of getting the bends from the extreme pressures found at the lower depths. But it is addicting. The more you know, the more your vision can discern; the more valid and real you feel. The urge to shape, create and imagine is prime: to reach deep within and without at the same time wonderfully fine.
Recently I feel as if my mind is beginning to mature after all these long, long years. I feel as if I can actually hold the entirety of an idea or concept within my mind's frame and revolve it around as if it were a holographic model. When I was younger it seemed as if I could only hold a small fragment of the model, although I could get flash images of the whole. In a sense the intensity was much stronger when I was younger but I suspect that this was because the initial flash seemed to braise burn and brand the newly formed neural sponge that was my young brain. The rather abrupt return to relative darkness always left me with a sense of loss, and hence it tended to deepen the rush of the insight fix much the way a drug will deepen the intensity of everyday life while at the same time trivializing it. I can make a mental note concerning a specific idea, set it aside and return to it months or even years later and it is still...warm. It seems as if now I am dealing with astral bodies and planets and suns and stars. No longer just a youthful presentation of rocket flash but more a coming together of interstellar space dust. Consciousness entering a vacuum, forming a "thought body", giving off its own little heat and light.
We seem to tolerate Art as either a hobby, an excuse for the terminally lazy or as the domain of the extremely rare, eccentric talented few. We forget (or never take the time to notice in the first place) that art is initially taken up by the sensitive person as a survival tool the same way as another person might take up a club or a prayer book. Art is the highest form of human expression, even higher than religion and prayer because it requires no intervention by anyone on anyone else's behalf. Art is the naked act centered in the immediacy and purity of the moment. Rather than plaintively inquire, request or plead, it serves instead to actually illustrate the Holy Presence of the living Spirit.
When The Spirit shines through the human frame it is the artful moment that is captured and not the over-educated negotiator on bended knee hoping to strike a deal or offer penance for imagined past misdeed.
In order to 'qualify' as a serious writer, a significant part of the person's mind and personality must be able to transpose, transmute and transcend. One must be able to transpose events as quickly as a professional musician transposes musical keys; transmute the gross into the ethereal as facially as an alchemist and in the end, transcend and become as centered as a Zen initiate. This is quite aside from being able to write at all.
The brain is the interface, like the second stage of a rocket before the essential package reaches free space and is cut loose to orbit. This impulse comes from a disembodied state. There is no material consideration there. It is far reaching. It is holographic in intention. It is not often referred to in popular literature. It has been called the un-nameable. Before that, they lived it. For the last ten thousand years the only thing we can say for sure about it is..."we can't talk about it!"
If my journal seems fragmented it's because over the years I've found that my Mind operates in a larger room in time. Bits of idea jotted down in my journal will complete themselves months or even years later. A second fragment will fit the other so perfectly that it's as if they are but pieces of the same vase broken years ago with the shards scattered across time. Whole sentences began weeks, months or even years before will have a beginning, middle and end separated by vast spaces of time. It would seem my Mind illustrates an intelligence and a sense of persistent continuity that my brain can only dream of. It's as if my Mind is an artist spending large amounts of time painting extremely detailed oils, whereas my brain searches for the 'quick fix'; the immediate sign of life, the Polaroid print. "No time for art", my brain says..." the paint takes too long to dry."
I am a symbologist. In my writing I attempt to take a great confusing mass of information and select a few succinct images to imbue with feeling and significance. Hopefully these images (or at least a few) will stick in the mind of the reader and become symbols for a future. Hopefully these little ribbons tied to the trees along the road of life will encourage man's two great desires: to grow and to travel towards the perceived Light.
Writers are very cerebral. They live in their mind. Their body is often like a loyal pet that follows them around and demands to be fed and taken out and exercised. It is like a good dog. Thus I am often surprised and taken back when I run across someone who actually LIVES in their body and is totally unaware of the thought life of the mind; the thought glue that serves as the epoxy which binds the entire thing together. The universe is a connective matrix of pure thought forms but you don't have to be aware of this for it to work. Some people (most) live their life as animal. Some are (most) quite domesticated types sheep. Some are cows. Some (few) are closer in nature to dolphin/eagle or bear. Some (very few thankfully) are truly wild and are like hyenas, snakes, weir wolves and vampires. These feed on the herd and bare watching.
The problem with writing is not the years of poverty, obscurity and struggle with the world and with one's personal demons, nor even the months, sometimes years of struggle to bring a story through the mind frame, kicking and screaming into the earthly light of the clean white page. The real problem with writing is dealing with the liberal arts graduate readers with the hearts and souls of lawyers. These strange yuppie hybrid creatures stand like centurion guards between the writer, and the people who might want to, might need to, read his stuff.
There is in the realm of man, the frequency of Personality, the frequency of the Brain and the frequency of the Mind. Man is, above all things, of the frequency of Mind but he has fallen. Personality is soap opera and "People Magazine". The Brain is the labyrinth of the intellect where the smarter ones become lost. It is also the starter engine that can grant access to the Mind where there is no time, no place, no past and no future as well as no life and no death. It is an inalienable right for each man, woman and child on earth to have healthy and unfettered access to the Mind. It should be in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. At some time in the future we will look back upon the present strictures placed upon access to the MIND much the same as we look back upon the exploitation of children for cheap labor in the 19th Century.
The personal human identity is a submarine descending into the oceanic unconscious on exploratory missions and coming up again and again with bits of treasure; phrase and insight and then sliding again back beneath the surface searching for the sunken craft; the black box, the interface between illusion and reality, in hopes of finding the right magical incantation: the words of the pilot and cockpit crew as the original plane went down....
As writers we often tend to forget that we are explorers. This is NEW realization experience. We are pushing back the edges of the dream (the human dream). Thus we need to keep track; take notes, keep journals, create art, tell stories. We need to talk, discuss, share. Too often we tend to take life as a given with a fixed program. Especially once we have reached physical maturity. We often assume that the life experience is a game with fixed, rigid rules and all that's left is to compete and somehow win! We must guard against becoming fixed like a photograph in a dish of developer or worse, a bug in amber. The image coming through is never fixed, never ending. Life is not only heliotropic it is also holographic. Sometimes, when within our rhythm, one can feel like an astral form exploring the geological stratification’s within the earth. Often I feel as if I can reach down and within, deeper and deeper and trace the wisdom and imagery found at each level. But the deeper I look, the stronger and more intense the pressure. It is so much easier to merely describe the surface world and certainly less risk of getting the bends from the extreme pressures found at the lower depths. But it is addicting. The more you know, the more your vision can discern; the more valid and real you feel. The urge to shape, create and imagine is prime: to reach deep within and without at the same time wonderfully fine.
Recently I feel as if my mind is beginning to mature after all these long, long years. I feel as if I can actually hold the entirety of an idea or concept within my mind's frame and revolve it around as if it were a holographic model. When I was younger it seemed as if I could only hold a small fragment of the model, although I could get flash images of the whole. In a sense the intensity was much stronger when I was younger but I suspect that this was because the initial flash seemed to braise burn and brand the newly formed neural sponge that was my young brain. The rather abrupt return to relative darkness always left me with a sense of loss, and hence it tended to deepen the rush of the insight fix much the way a drug will deepen the intensity of everyday life while at the same time trivializing it. I can make a mental note concerning a specific idea, set it aside and return to it months or even years later and it is still...warm. It seems as if now I am dealing with astral bodies and planets and suns and stars. No longer just a youthful presentation of rocket flash but more a coming together of interstellar space dust. Consciousness entering a vacuum, forming a "thought body", giving off its own little heat and light.
We seem to tolerate Art as either a hobby, an excuse for the terminally lazy or as the domain of the extremely rare, eccentric talented few. We forget (or never take the time to notice in the first place) that art is initially taken up by the sensitive person as a survival tool the same way as another person might take up a club or a prayer book. Art is the highest form of human expression, even higher than religion and prayer because it requires no intervention by anyone on anyone else's behalf. Art is the naked act centered in the immediacy and purity of the moment. Rather than plaintively inquire, request or plead, it serves instead to actually illustrate the Holy Presence of the living Spirit.
When The Spirit shines through the human frame it is the artful moment that is captured and not the over-educated negotiator on bended knee hoping to strike a deal or offer penance for imagined past misdeed.
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