#automaticwriting

The Proven Methods For Cultivating Inner Observer Self-AwarenessMany people mistake their ego, personality, or habits for who they are. The observer exists beyond these mechanisms. It is a part of our consciousness that tracks our experiences. Let's move to the driver's seat and take control of the wheel. With practice, we can learn to fine-tune awareness. We can learn to observe without interfering. Or, we can use degrees of force to direct awareness. We can gently guide using formulas such as mantras and sutras. Or, we can force it through concentration. Each method has its own application. This article discusses methods for cultivating inner-observer self-awareness and why it matters. These practices are a gateways to inner work and psychological methods that may increase discomfort before resolution. Emotional stability should be established first. However, the shift in attention builds awareness; it is not a process for resolving emotional issues or psychological patterns.

What is the Real You?

Examples of automatic writing, written in ‘Martian’ by Hélène Smith, 1894.

Hélène Smith was a Swiss medium from the 1800s. The surrealists described her as ‘the muse of automatic writing’.

When Smith was just a child she reported experiencing visions that described life and landscapes on the planet Mars, as well as other scenes from the spirit world. It was also made known that she hallucinated peculiar and unknown letters that took the place of familiar letters in the alphabet. Professor Théodore Flournoy suggested that these fictitious events in her early years formed the basis for what would later become the Martian language she was famed for.

Her mediumistic communications typically carried messages from the deceased, always being aided by ‘Leopold’ her spirit guide. Flournoy attended a séance by Smith in 1894, after which he began evaluating Smith’s mental states during séances and automatisms. He described Smith’s mediumistic manifestations as ‘subliminal romances’, a beautifully labelled term that describes the complex narratives relating to her previous lives or lives on other planets. 

The most interesting of her romances was that of her life on Mars. Smith would endure somnambulatory trances and whilst in these states she would experience vivid recollections of what she considered to be the inhabitants and various flora that can be found on Mars. The visions would later be represented through drawings. Whilst in a trance Smith would transcribe Martian communication which would later popularise automatic writing.

Martian landscape, as described by Hélène Smith, 1899.

The Martian language would present itself to Smith in the forms of auditory hallucinations. She wrote the letter forms and later translated these into French, however Flournoy was able to prove that the Martian language was a creative falsification. The phrase he coined to explain this particular fabrication of language was ‘cypotomnesia’ - when a forgotten memory returns without it being recognised. 

I do not mind that the Martian language was fabricated, I enjoy the story of the origins of Smith’s conlang. I have been discussing ideas of how to portray a narrative using asemic writing and this is a good example of such. The automatic writing that Smith produced embraces the story of her hallucinogenic experiences of foreign worlds. The writing may be constructed but the narrative is honest. Perhaps a narrative can be portrayed with an entire body of text that highlights an event or idea rather than trying to tell a story word by word and reading the writing from left to right as we would a traditional narrative.

Every time I finish writing a section of text I will copy and paste it into a text file. 

['and', 'paste', 'it', 'into', 'a', 'text', 'file'] I shall, as these words will be used as the dataset for a Markov Chain Generator (MCG) which I will then run to generate words to start the next sentence. 

["'text'", "'file'", 'i', 'shall', 'as', 'these', 'words', 'will', 'be', 'used', 'as', 'the', 'dataset', 'for', 'a', 'markov', 'chain', 'generator', 'which', 'i'] will explain now; MCGs analyse a dataset - in this case an increasingly long list of words - and work out the probability of the next state of a system, purely based on the current state.

['copy', 'and', 'paste', 'it', 'into', 'a', 'text', 'file', "'and'", "'paste'", "'it'", "'into'", "'a'", "'text'", "'file'", 'i', 'shall', 'as', 'these', 'words'] in the square brackets are the ones being generated each time. The last paragraph is somewhat technical but basically, each time I run the code, pairs of words are given probability values based on how likely one is to follow the other, then, with a small amount of randomness, a sentence is generated by writing a word then determining which word is most likely to follow it.

['are', 'given', 'probability', 'values', 'based', 'on', 'the', 'current', 'state', "'copy'", "'and'", "'paste'", "'it'", "'into'", "'a'", "'text'", "'file'", 'i', 'shall', 'as'] the list of words being fed in grows, the sentences become more stable and coherent, however this recursive way of generating a dataset that is likely to result in lots of very similar phrases being created, I assume.

['chain', 'generator', '(mcg)', 'which', 'i', 'will', 'then', 'run', 'to', 'generate', 'words', 'to', 'start', 'the', 'next', 'state', 'of', 'a', 'system', 'purely'] as an OuLiPo type of exercise, in which I’m not fully in control of the writing I’m producing. There’s something nice about an automatic writing exercise that uses it’s own output as a method for generation. (As, I suppose, many of those exercises do...)

['this', 'case', 'an', 'increasingly', 'long', 'list', 'of', 'words', 'being', 'fed', 'in', 'grows', 'the', 'sentences', 'become', 'more', 'stable', 'and', 'coherent', 'however'] there’s still no sophisticated internal logic that can guarantee that the series of words produced will form something intelligible other than the quality of my own writing throughout the exercise. The algorithm and I are working together.

["'however'", 'there’s', 'still', 'no', 'sophisticated', 'internal', 'logic', 'that', 'can', 'guarantee', 'that', 'the', 'series', 'of', 'words', 'and', 'work', 'out', 'the', 'probability'] that the output isn’t essentially just a like-for-like regurgitation of a section of the input text, such as this paragraph’s example.

['i', 'run', 'the', 'code', 'pairs', 'of', 'words', 'being', 'fed', 'in', 'grows', 'the', 'sentences', 'become', 'more', 'stable', 'and', 'coherent', 'however', 'this'] particular output feels like a good summary of the exercise, so I’ll end things here. I’ll leave this post with the following sentence generated from everything that’s come before it:

['form', 'something', 'intelligible', 'other', 'than', 'the', 'quality', 'of', 'my', 'own', 'writing', 'throughout', 'the', 'exercise', 'so', 'i’ll', 'end', 'things', 'here', 'i’ll'] 

The Red Realm

Finished 9-panel work. Acrylic on canvas. Enjoy the wierdness, doves.