Following the Curve

For the most part, people who do things well will make something up if you ask them to tell you how they do things. A few people will tell you that they don't know, and that would be a more honest answer. This is because most of what we do is so automated, made up of innumerable learning experiences layered on top of each other, compressed and streamlined, that most of it happens too quickly and beneath the surface of consciousness. But that doesn't mean it's not possible to back into it.

Think of just one thing that you do. Keep it as simple as possible. I will illustrate will a fictional example, but something could very well be a curve, a cluster of curves, or as Jonathan Altfeld describes as a system of rules or beliefs.

Jill sits down at her desk and flips on her PC and then her word processing software. She stares at the black screen and begins to daydream about what she might want to write today. She turns her attention toward her mid-section and the feelings she has in that area, and those spreading outward toward her arms, her fingertips, and begins hearing what they may be as voices, murmuring wordless, at first. She barely notices the sensation, partially visual, partial somatic, of part of her self flooding outward toward her sides and back, a kind of hallucination that she is filling the room, and that here identity is getting mixed with the surround objects. She can almost feel the phone, which is several feet away, and monitor seems to grow larger before her. As she begins tapping on the keyboard the sensations in her chest stream out into her fingertips and the murmuring becomes one word, or a phrase of words, as she types.

While this description may sound as though it boarders on madness, or just science fiction, it is similar to what some people do when they write. This description is actually a composite of parts of how a few people have described their process. When we do different types of work, we use our senses differently. It is very similar to someone going into a trance. It actually is a trance, but a self-induced trance state that one learns to induce through trial and error. Call it meditation, if you will.

Later we will learn how to interpret the process and how to utilize it in other areas of our lives.