The Points of the Creative Artists’ Code: Eighteen - Trust, Perception and Reality

by NDK Creative Artist

The metaphysical nature of the arts is about as nebulous as discussion of the spirit itself, but here NDK will attempt to explain his viewpoint on such things as trust, perception and reality, our plaything.

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Okay, now we delve into what some may find to be the shakey ground of the metaphysical and nebulous, but for me these aspects of being human are exactly that, part of being human, and to deny or question or doubt their existence, is to deny our experience of ourselves and thus a pointless exercise.

You can’t be me, I can’t be you, I can only ever approximate and create an illusion of being you (or you me), therefore obtaining an objective proof of such levels of awareness beyond the simple fact of observing the works created and knowing how they came about because you were intimately involved in their creation, is pointless and just puts us all into rocky ground and thorn bushes.

For me perception is more than a simple summation and integration of senses and sensory input. Perception is also a sense all by itself and from that perspective I am communicating about this particular idea of knowing stuff.

Trust your perception and your knowingness, these are your greatest assets and a function of your aesthetic mind. Preserve them. But don’t assert to yourself their reality, chances are, if you are doing this, you don’t really know at all. Real knowingness is certainty. You know. That’s it. Others, less perceptive perhaps, will not understand. They will one day. Don’t allow their comments to shake your perception and your knowingness. There’s no reason to question why or how you know. You know, that’s it.

Trust your perception and your knowingness, these are your greatest assets and a function of your aesthetic mind. We observe. We observe tremendous amounts of information and process it all in mere fragments of moments.

Our minds “are computers” of phenomenal comlexity and depth and we don’t really know how they work, though there are theories everywhere, and very few certainties.

From reading and personal experience I believe we also perceive beyond the ability of science to measure, prove, or disprove at this point in time. But trust, in a Creative Artist is an important ability to cultivate in yourself when it comes to the work of crafting works of art & entertainment.

One has to learn to trust that other mind, what I know as the aesthetic mind, that somehow transcends the usual human plod that passes for intellectual rigor at certain levels of human understanding. It’s a mind that operates at a level of integrated intellectual-emotional-sensory-intelligence that is for practitioners a rarified and intoxicating state of existence.

I know that state of being is an extremely focused hyper-intellectual condition where all of experience, all knowledge, all craft and skill are at the disposal of the Creative Artist in the throes of pulling a work of the intellect together. At the same time, it is an extremely lucid, highly aware condition. When you’re in that state, you don’t stop until the moment (however long it may be) has passed. This is what I have identified as Aesthetic Mind operation. Some may call this channeling, that’s a good way to describe it, but for me it implies that I have nothing to do with it, and that I don’t for a moment agree with.

Preserve them. But don’t assert to yourself their reality, chances are, if you are doing this, you don’t really know at all. This just means preserve those perceptions. However, the assertion of their reality is another problem.

Assertion tends to represent and stem from an insecurity of some sort. It means you don’t really know, but you want to pretend that you do. This is completely dishonest and of no use whatsoever to you, a project, or anybody else.

Assertion is a state of being, founded on shakey ground. That’s my defintion of it. I don’t need to assert something I know. I just know it, and my knowing it, is enough for me to communicate the fact that I know it.

Now what do I mean when I say I know something? I mean: I have observed; I have considered; I have evaluated; I have rigorously tested; I have experience; I have developed certainty about a given subject or topic.

It does not mean I know all about it (though I would be approaching the upper limits of 100% of knowledge, even though I would never say I will ever 100% know anything about anything). It just means I know what I know and that while I know it, I am not necessarily unwilling to add to my knowledge about it, or challenge my own knowledge. In fact, I enjoy the process of challenging my knowledge and I believe it is important to do so, and be open to such challenge.

Real knowingness is certainty. You know. That’s it. Others, less perceptive perhaps, will not understand. They will one day. Don’t allow their comments to shake your perception and your knowingness. There’s no reason to question why or how you know. You know, that’s it. Certainty is often confused with arrogance,

I wrote a poem about this once to illustrate the difference, it’s called Certainty. In academic and scientific circles and also those of the psuedo-intellectual/intelligentsia, there is this idea that one cannot know anything.

Well, my view of that is that if that’s the case then nothing can possibly work. And things do work, so therefore we can know. Once has to develop conviction and certainty if one is to also develop the fortitude to conquer the naysaying, the discouragement and the sheer obstinacy and ignorance of people in the world that will get in the road of realizing one’s creative goals and career ambitions.

The truth of the matter is that one will not really know until one actually finishes the work if it will work, though when one has done the job well and striven hard to make it work then the chances of it working are extremely high indeeed.

The only thing left to chance at that point is whether or not the world is ready for it. Sometimes, the world is not, and this will not be fully appreciated until much later, when the work finally finds its niche.

One has to be prepared for the fact that one may well be ahead of one’s time.

This occurs more often than one may think, and the world doesn’t catch up to the fact for a long time, sometimes for hundreds of years. Crazy, isn’t it. But you have to go on and do the thing anyway. Let the world be the world and just get on with it. Easy enough to say, I know, but there really is no other option, though perhaps having this written here, now, will be of some assistance to those brave spirits who find themselves in this sort of a predicament, working for a thankless world, who will know nothing of their genius for 50 — 100 years or more. It is appalling, but rather special and amazing too.

This is not to say that one should not doubt. The crucible of doubt is, for me, where I test my ideas, convictions and beliefs. I beleive there are a few types of doubt including self-doubt and the doubt of others who often consider themselves to be “Devil’s Advocates” and position themselves as such when they preface their criticisms in what appears to be kindly helpful terms, but frequently are simply intended to disarm and get you to lower any defenses you may have that protect your ideas and your sense of self.

Doubts can be destructive, or construtive, and one needs to learn the difference between the two.

One you embrace and utilize to bolster and develop rigor for your ideas and projects and the other you observe carefully and dispense with. So, there is a need to question, to doubt, but this is a private affair, not a public affair, it is something that takes place between you and your work, generally in the privacy of your own mind, or in your journals.

Others will know what you know when they finally see your work. Then they’ll be asking “Do you think he knew what he was doing?” Nobody will know the answer to that better than you. Crazy, isn’t it.

Trust yourself first.

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