The Posture of Poiesis

I sit, pen in hand, my gaze fixed upon a journal’s fresh page.

The world beyond my edges ever so gently brushes my senses. I feel its soft ambience, ever caressing me in its perpetual transience.

I face the paper’s blankness. It allures me. It wants something from me—but I don’t know what. I don’t know if it will come. I don’t even know if I have anything to give. Still, I begin. I let the pen move, and see what wants to find its way through.

The open canvas invites me in.

My mind becomes one with the pen in my hand, a synchrony of thoughts and squiggles. Each new word appears as a voice in my mind. The pen’s tip presses softly against the paper’s fiber. Each letter is inscribed with more grace than the last, in what feels like a gentle dance. There is nothing to consider, just a rhythm to lock into, on a tempo that holds me. The next word enters my mind, ready to be imprinted. And so it is written. My reality has become a continuity of thought, a stream of words, and a steady groove of hand-drawn ink.

Waves of doubt sneak into my mind. Does what I’ve written have any substance, or let alone, depth or beauty? The thought lingers, ever faintly. I feel like I’m just writing meaningless slop. It doesn’t feel like I’m saying anything. But I just gotta keep writing a bit more. Words do appear to keep coming. And it doesn’t really matter what I’ve written. There’s no need to look back, or worry about the content. Everything but the current word at hand eventually fades from my mind into nothing. Each word written is a renewed conviction. I don’t care if my words are profound, or my ideas coherent. I just keep going.

There’s a particular recess in my mind where the whisperings surface. Words stream out, one after the other, each arriving with quiet clarity. My focus narrows—a concentrated beam illuminating the tiniest sliver of mindspace. Everything beyond the immediate. Every possible thought outside the scope of my immediate writing is cast into darkness. At this point, I’m locked in. Some stray thoughts press against the edges, but most of my conscious experience lies well outside this narrow spotlight.

This is the simplicity of free-flowing expression. I need not think about it. I need not worry. Curiosity may tug on my thoughts, but the intrigue is but a tease. I would love to read my words so far, and invite them to stew in my mind. But the words don’t belong to me. This writer—whose neck, wrists, and fingers strain as the pen’s tip tickles the papers white—cannot know the words he writes. I hold my mind to be open and receptive. My attention points inward, focused like a laser, with a delicate pose. When I do it right, the words come effortlessly, and my mind becomes an overflowing spring.

But the words themselves are not what matters. They are artifacts that belong to my future self, to do with—or neglect—as he pleases. The true potency of the practice lies not in what’s created or revealed, but in the way it deepens the synchrony to the subconscious, embodied, and profoundly intelligent nature within. I sit here, writing—not for the words that may come forth, but for the act of bringing forth.

This is the posture of poiesis¹. I hold myself in such a way as to sustain the ascending transmission of creative expression—ever raw, ever unfettered. I hold no concern for whichever artifacts inscribe the page.

The work wants to unfold. There’s a grace to its steady heartbeat.
It is by no means a passive act. Like in a lucid dream, everything must be held just right. Too much force, and it will disintegrate; but too loosely held, and it floats away. Even still, I feel the unshakeable desire—for the words to make sense, to cohere, to mean something, to touch the reader with beauty. But this I cannot control, at least from top down.

The words rise from deep in my depths. Beneath the conscious mind slumbers a stirring sea of scattered essence. The waters slosh and churn. Energy moves without shape or aim—alive, unclaimed, unresolved.

From the chaos, quantum fragments bead and bundle. Fluid forces become entangled. They yearn for expression, to become vibration. Through the layers of mind, nascent whispers rise and concretize, gathering weight and substance in what becomes a willful ascension.

Oh, what stars must align for a whisper to form. And how easily it can unravel—to wither away, forever lost, like dust in the wind.

But in this moment, I hold open this narrow aperture, and so flows the whisper’s light—a beam projecting crisp clarity onto the screen of my upper mind. Silent thoughts audibly voiced. Whatever reaches my pen runs like an endless spring. Such is the power of the subconscious—the omnipotent dreamer.

I am able to exert a touch of conscious sway. Be it a gentle nudge, or a polite refusal, I can play with the stream without degrading the posture. Sometimes the present word feels particularly off—enough to not be written. And so I pause, if only for a moment—not to think, but to let a truer word rise to the surface. Sometimes I feel a faint desire to steer the thread towards a particular direction. But like a small sail on a vast vessel, I am beholden to the winds and currents [of the deeper minds]. My influence comes not from thoughtful contemplation, nor forceful redirection. It’s somewhere underneath—gently beneath my focus, and well above my depths. Whatever it is remains ineffable, especially to this mind that affords little space for wild thoughts.

My mental gaze gently sways, grazing the corners of reality. On the page, it feasts on the ink’s black shine. In the mind, it listens—savoring each word’s sound, ever crisp, ever silent. Everywhere else—it notes all there is to notice. So I let it float, and play with its placement. Still, the words keep coming.

At times, the conscious mind slips out of phase—not with the words themselves, which continue without pause, but with the rhythm of their arrival. Sometimes, it feels like the mind has lost the thread entirely—as if the words collapse into gibberish—incomprehensible, ungraspable. Even without the need for sense or meaning, the shift is disorienting—like I am lost in freefall.

When this happens, I soften. I feel the unfolding tempo. My being steadies. I return to rhythm. The words keep coming.

I have nothing to say, and yet I can’t stop writing. This is the paradox of the narrow lightcone posture. A posture of active effortlessness—a holding open. A portal that exists only in motion. The steady tempo drives this embodied mind forward, word after word. The flow sustains the surfacing—each word fresh, unburdened. A narrow beam of becoming, held open by rhythm alone. The moment I stop, it closes.

The practice by nature pulls me into the present. Past and future are thoroughly filtered out of my conscious mind beyond a few words here and there, in the eagerness of future anticipation, or the ring of past reverberation. It is a narrow field of view for the seeing mind.

The canvas has drawn everything from me. My inner world has spoken. As my stream of consciousness nears its end, I feel the quiet stillness of completion. The once-blank page now brims with ink. I’m curious what I’ve written, but for now, I will move on. Nothing more needs to be said.

Time passes.

The artifacts of past creation lie dormant—untouched by mind or gaze.
I return now as the one for whom these words were written—the future self once imagined within the trance of their creation.
I pass through them, consuming the words as if for the first time.
Something stirs.
A charge rises—drawn forth by the text’s unpolished, unresolved rawness.
How might I shape it into what it longs to become—to find a vessel capable of holding its full potential? Its underlying essence.

I have feasted on these writings, again and again.
My conscious mind stretches to hold the whole.

I am full.

My gaze wanders irregularly—sometimes slow, sometimes erratic.
Silences of varying length soak the space between thoughts.

I feel every word of the artifact—slowly, delicately.
Each revision, even slower.
The conscious mind sits. It stews. Sometimes, it fixates.
Phrase by phrase, contour by contour, the structure reveals where it must be refined.
I touch everything with my mind. Nothing is off-limits.

My insatiable hunger feasts on the text.
Each detail brushes the upper mind—igniting an explosion, bursting with branches of possibility. I sit with it all, thinking, contemplating.
I feel taken over by this raw power—this clawing drive toward meticulous precision.
My mind roams the considered possible. It simmers, it senses, it stirs.
It searches for a form clear enough to hold the essence—not too tight, not too loose.

The upper mind weaves between postures.
It rethreads fragments, and feels out alternatives.
It balances cadence, shifts emphasis, maps the structure.

It is maddening to feel the essence—vivid, urgent—yet remain unable to articulate it.

This is the place where fingernails get bitten, heads bang against walls, and long stares meet blank places.

Time passes in fixation. The hunger sharpens.

Something in me will not rest until the ineffable is rendered impeccably—captured, shaped, bestowed into form.

All of it in pursuit of a sharper precision—not perfection, though I hunger for it. But a clarity that lands, and a form that clicks.

The raw artifact—tuned and tempered, shaped by precision and musicality—reveals a truer form.

So what, then, is an artist?

An artist may create, produce, and express.

An artist holds their whole being —inwardly, attentively—in relation to whatever wants to take form.

The artist is an embodied mind—a layered integration of the whole bring—oriented by postures through which coherence is sustained. Not a single posture, but a dynamic range—a shifting composition of inner states and attuned actions through which expression takes shape.

The artist weaves between postures—some effortless, some hard-won.

The artist drops into an embodiment capable of surfacing and sustaining their finesse and mastery. It continuously requires dynamic attunement to hold the meta-stability.

Sometimes, attention narrows. Upper mind tightens. The being feels that of holding open. Whispers rise—one word at a time—freshly imbued with surprise. The rhythm is emergent. Embodied. Subconscious. A new beginning. And deeply subtle.

Other times, awareness widens. Structure coalescence. Rhythm steadies. What once arrived wild and raw now opens to greater nuance and refinement. Each contour is touched by precision, as delicate form weaves around ephemeral vision. All is imbued with greater subtlety and musicality.

There is such a thing as poor posture. Misalignment can still yield exquisite work—but often at a cost. Sometimes the artist chooses the path of depletion, trading long-term vitality for what must be expressed. This, too, is a kind of mastery—but one that demands reckoning.

Sustainability is not required for brilliance, but it does make the work more joyful— and allows the dance to continue.

The artist can choose a long life of bringing forth vital expression—always open to surprise. But this requires the capacity to feel the ergonomics of poiesis at the level of being—perhaps with the loving support of a mentor, a partner, a friend, or an honest self-gaze.

To live as an artist is not merely to make.

It is to bring forth.

To inhabit the posture of poiesis—where all of life becomes medium, and coherence unfolds if the holding can remain true.

The real practice is not in what is made, but in how the artist moves— holding postures that let coherence arise, dissipate, and return— again and again, in every form it takes.