Prescience & the Artistic Process

Prescience--that’s what’s toggling around in my brain this morning. Real life example . . . Yesterday I came in contact with an awareness that started like a feeling. I was feeling like I didn’t want to go to therapy with my husband today. That really didn’t make sense. I said I would go 2 weeks ago when we made the appointment. We have been going to a wonderful therapist, master therapist for several years off and on. Right now we’re ‘on’ and dealing with critical issues that will impact the rest of our lives . . . and I didn’t ‘feel’ like going?

If you knew me, you’d know that I’m not a flake--I don’t flit from impulse to impulse like a butterfly on a hot sunny day in August. I’m the kind of person who stays a course, so much so in fact, that I often OVERSTAY a course. “If I’m guilty of anything your Honor, I’m guilty of excessive tenacity gone steroidal.” That’s me. So what is this ‘feeling?’ More about the real life example . . .

From yesterday’s feeling to this morning’s reality, an interesting event transpired. It just so happened that an, “It’s impossible to get,” 3 hour appointment my husband was pursuing that WASN’T going to happen, effortlessly opened up. Suddenly, it made sense for him to go to therapy and beyond by himself. Was the feeling of not wanting to go, which preceded the reality that it was best I didn’t go, a coincidence? Perhaps. If so, I have a LOT of these coincidences.

I can site countless examples of perceiving something that doesn’t make any cognitive sense in the moment. With astonishing reliability the logic of the whole thing rolls out somewhere along the timeline after the perception. For me, the channel for the perception lies in my emotions. As a general rule our society doesn’t lend credibility to human capacities outside of the standard accepted norms. Prescience, clairvoyance, and other psychic powers are considered para-normal, suspect at best.

Like anything else, including acceptable scientific research, mathematics, and philosophy--psychic capacities thrive when governed by consciousness.

As an artist I am continually listening, paying attention to the subtleties in shifts of energy that make their way into my consciousness through the portals of the land of the emotions, the senses, intuition. I am a student of that which I find most walk by. I receive a lot of information in a small muscle movement across someone’s face, a thin wisp of cloud vanishing before my eyes, a drop of water hanging from the end of a leaf, the wind rustling in the dry leaves . . . or, a feeling that shows up seemingly out of context. Over my lifetime I have developed a trusting relationship with this information cast into a moment like the fine line a hopeful fly fisherman casts into the river seeking that which is yet to bite.

I understand how living my life this way can look from the outside--a little flighty, a little crazy, a little unreliable . . . Standing in my own truth has at times felt like holding back the tide. I’ve found that it’s an illusion that it’s somehow easier to please, to maintain some level of accepted credibility by following all the ‘rules.’ I’ve tried that, and it’s never worked for me. I found myself bereft of life energy. Truthfully, I do care what other’s think of me and always will. I see the puzzled looks on their faces when I change course for what appears to be no good reason at all . . . However, I care more what I think of myself. I care more that I live from the core of my integrity. Engaging in art has required deep trust of my process. My work is raw, nakedly me. I wouldn’t have it any other way . . .

That’s what this artist is thinking about today . . .