Automatic Writing (AKA Automatism, Psychography, Planchette) I first learned of automatic writing, or automatism, when studying the Surrealists in high school. Described as a direct way to tap into the subconscious, the artists used their non-dominant hand to write out messages, quickly and without thinking, to connect with ideas that the conscious mind might normally block. I’ve since read of many artists, psychologist, and occultist who use automatic writing to bypass the conscious mind and hit to something beyond our normal understanding of the material world. Generally, automatic writing is hand written. It’s similar, yet quite different, to the kind of “free writing” or “stream of conscious” journaling activities described and used by many in books such as The Artist’s Way, except that there is an effect that some force other than the person holding the pencil is doing the writing. Automatic Writing is founded in the ideomotor response, an unconscious muscular action relating to hypnosis, dowsing and ouji boards.
Many artists have used automatic writing for song lyrics and other creative manifestations. Lynda Barry brush painted the entire manuscript of her novel Cruddy on a roll of paper and the book has an eerie sense of narration from beyond the grave. Toni Morrison described the sense of having channeled the book The Color Purple. Esther Hicks, who channels a group of entities who call themselves Abraham, began at a typewriter, interpreting the messages she received from a “group consciousness from the non-physical dimension” to create the first of many Abraham Hicks manuscripts, Ask and It Is Given. The practice to auto-writing that I use is the same practice I first read about when I first heard about Surrealist automatism of the early 20th century, and imagined groups of artists and free thinkers sitting in café’s together, playing a game of Exquisite Corpse* and discussing Spiritualism, automatism and Carl Jung. I’ve used automatic writing off and on over the decade to help me connect to myself and source, as a way to get out of my own way and get to the heart of matters. In 2018, I began receiving messages through automatic writing much more regularly. I awoke from a deep slumber before sunrise to a voice say "get up.” “Wake up.” It was my first night in a hotel in Koh Phangan Thailand, it was 4:32 am. I got my blank paper and brush pen, and stepped outside into the deepest part of night into a blanket of the brightest stars shining through the darkest dark and began to write. Perhaps that voice had been calling me a long time before I heard it. Perhaps because I had recently listened to Part Four of Neale Donald Walsch Conversations with God, in which he details being woken up by a voice in the wee a.m. hours to write long hand on yellow legal pads, his conversations with divinity. Part Four of Walsch's series is Called Awaken the Species, so when I heard the voice telling me to "get up", I listened, I awoke and hauled myself out of bed and wrote. This voice continues to call me to “wake up” before the sunrise and write. I ask questions with my right hand and the left hand writes the answers. When I go back and read what my non-dominant hand has written, it’s as if I’m seeing it for the first time. Often it reads like poetry, with funny word play or rhymes, and I may extract lines from the whole to rewrite with a brush and post @inthebright on Instagram. The writing is generally abstract, full of metaphors, but always poignant to the question I have asked. These messages I receive are from another realm. A consciousness that can communicate into the physical, material world through me, if I get myself out of the way and allow it. For me, it is a natural extension of my reiki, qi gong, and yoga practices. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had a regular practice of auto-writing which they called planchete, in an interview from Questions And Answers 1957 - 1958, she spoke: "One can, if one has the knowledge, the control, the power, the ability to go into a certain state of passivity – one can very easily lend one’s hand to someone, deliberately, knowing who it is and acting on a higher plane, but that already demands a great consciousness and a great self-mastery, which is not within everybody’s reach. One must have quite a considerable inner development to be able to see whom one is dealing with on a particular plane and willingly lend oneself to the experiment with full knowledge of what one is doing and without losing one’s control. Not everybody can play with that. But to work the planchete, one only has to delude oneself enough for it to start working!"** If you’re interested in reading some of the automatic writing transmissions that I’ve transcribed, follow my blog and instagram account. If you art interested in receiving a personalized automatic writing message, you can email me directly at Regina@inthebright.com Footnotes: *Exquisite Corpse is a drawing game for creative inspiration in which a paper is folded into thirds and the first “player” begins to draw on the top third of the page without the others seeing. When finished, the player extends the lines that touch the second third of the paper into small marks, folds the paper so that the second “player” can’t see the top of the drawing. The second player then picks up from the marks made by the first artists and extends the drawing, making marks to the top of the last third of paper, then refolds sheet so that the person who finishes the drawing can’t see what has already been drawn. This game can be a lot of fun and played almost anywhere. You can use a timer if you desire, or set a theme as a group. **The Mother, Questions and Answers 1957 – 1958, Volume 9, p. 366 #inthebright #automaticwriting #subconsiousmind #awakenthespecies #herecomesthesun
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