Virtue 12: Abandon - Let it go - The 12 Virtues of the Primordial Artist

This is part 15 in a series exploring the 12 virtues that can free artists from cultural enslavement.

ATTEND

Abandon is that quality a singer has when they let it all go. A child playing with abandon is a joy to behold. They are lost in the activity. They are fully committed. They are holding nothing back. They are completely there. All of them. Fierce and frenzied and powerful and joyful. If they fall and hurt themselves, their abandon turns to wailing and pain and expression of disappointment and shock. If they are cared for and met, their abandon turns to solace and reconciliation and recollection and beginning again, back to one, back to the start.

We’ve come to the end. 12/12. The question is, what do we do when we reach the end, as artists?

We might postpone it. Keep editing, keep finishing, keep refining, not offer it up. We might hold onto it, Holdfast and say – this is me now. This is mine and this is what I’ll be known for. This belongs to me. We might try to analyze it to death, to rationalize what we did, to explain it, to process it, to hold it in our minds, to defend it, to hold onto it with our intellects.

Ultimately all of these approaches stop us from doing what we really need to do. Which is let go.

In all action, there needs to be an element of letting go. Of release. Otherwise there is tightness, friction, tension, locked jaw, squeezed ideas, arrested development. If we are tight, if we are not letting go, we are not trusting the process. We are not trusting the Mystery.

ENVISION

It’s ironic and funny that children hold the virtues most crucial to the summation of the adult artist’s life. Kids just have it. We’re all born with it. But because of wounding and growing up and society and the nature of the ego and all the rest of it, we must strive to rediscover it, to re-apply it, and to do the really powerful thing of abandoning control at the height of precision.

Reaching the climax of technique and discipline and simultaneously letting everything go. It’s insane, and it releases us back into the unconscious with a lucid dreaming consciousness. Yes we are abandoning, yet we are also awake and alive and alert to the moment – we are in a trance state but we have not lost everything – we have abandoned control of everything. And suddenly, impossibly, everything works in concert spontaneously, like a genius symphony of a million parts – beyond anything we could consciously contrive.

The more we learn about psychology and biology the more it becomes clear we are more than our egos. We have a million parts in us collaborating, competing, driving forward, pulling back, advocating and asking, demanding and telling, coercing and compelling us to “do x”. Abandon is about the state of being where all are allowed to exist and want and desire and act and be – and the lucid dreamer is somehow – somehow – steering the ship. Keeping the plot in mind, keeping the edge of the stage in mind

It occurred to me to have this chapter just say the title and then have five pages of blank pages. I need to let go just like you do. Letting go is release, is liberation, from our own action, from our own task, from our own perfectionism, from how we look, from what others think, from how I want this to turn out, from how I want this to be received, from everything.

Abandon implies that there is love, there is soul, there is mystery, but there is no holding on to forms, there is no holding on to the masks, there is no holding on to prides and accomplishments or hurts and resentments either.

Somehow we must learn to live free. To run free like the wind. Enacting our art and yet free from the binds of reputation, routine, self-image, status, expectations of reward.

Crucially Abandon is not just the last act, the last practice. As we conclude the cycle we must also realize that these all feed into each other. Abandon must be present in self love. We must freely love ourselves, despite all the reasons not to. To love with abandon is the best kind of love there is. Is there really any other kind?

Abandon is the Ouroboros. The end and beginning. And PS: all of these virtues are interoperable.

To have courageous abandon? Of course. Of course you must have abandon in courage. You’re a abandoning control of the outcome. Abandoning your need for perpetual personal safety.

Piety abandon means abandoning the security of the simulacra. Abandoning the normalcy of doing what everyone else is doing. Abandoning your ego as final arbiter, abandoning your boss, certainly.

And in Joy, Desire, Bliss, we must abandon our expectations for ourselves, our “right path” ideals, our role play, our duty, our guilt. We must abandon these things and the benefits they give us. The benefits of closeness, of responsibility, of being needed, of being considered a “good man” a “good woman” a “good person”.

Abandon is abandoning control. Abandoning ego. Abandoning fixed forms, simulacra, persona, approval, ratification, reinforcement from cultural norms, comfort and security, an easy life of filling out the boxes, passing the tests, and being rewarded.

Abandon is needed in all of the virtues and all of the other virtues feed into abandon. Abandon is freedom. Life, yet free. Excellent, yet free. Loving, yet free. Creating, yet free.

The Lover, yet free.
The Warrior, yet free.
The Mystic, yet free.
The Child, free.

The virtues, and the archetypes that encapsulate them, all work together, all reinforce each other, all provide paths into and out of each other, provide fail-safes and fall backs for each other. As one grows, they all grow, As one diminishes, the others can catch it and help it back to health.

Abandon is sitting at the end of the day on the porch and just letting the clouds float by. Enjoying them, sitting with them, without control, without concept, without meaning, without purpose. Just letting them be, letting yourself be watching them, letting all of the forms go. At the same time – abandon exists in the creative act – in the crafting of the poem, in the excellence – in the love of it – in the midst of action abandon exists for the primordial artist – it is a flow, a lucid flow of freedom and action in one. Doing the thing and the wind at your back. Listening and speaking, moving and being moved,

Abandon is the final transcendence of the persona. Abandon enables the artist to finally let go of the way they are viewed, the way their art is received, the way they are rewarded or not in the world. What if the persona itself were not necessary? What it the simulacrum that we hold closest to us could be set aside?

Abandon is the final part of the Child archetype and completes this holy trinity of liberation. And it also completes the full system of artist liberation. The primordial artist is released here into a state of freedom – freedom to create, freedom to love, freedom to act, freedom to play, freedom to commune with the Mystery, free to create the objects they were born to make.

The Lover’s foundation (self love, love of other, love of god/reality) creates the safety to let go in this way.

The Warriors structure (physicality, courage, alternation) creates the the strength needed.

The Mystics vision (Piety, Arete, Poetry) provides something greater to serve than personas and cultural simulacra / transaction.

For me as a director, it is also the moment when I can be released. It is simultaneously what I am directing artists toward, and is also the moment when I am no longer needed, when the artist is in communion with the Great Mysterious themselves and no longer need validation or ratification of any kind.

DIRECT

Solo

Note: All of the below exercises are advanced and benefit from a good facilitator.

Total commitment

Lay down and center yourself. When you arise you will do a task with total commitment. It will be simple, short, clear with a beginning and an end. It might be opening the door and closing it. It might be shouting “hello out there!” It might be folding a shirt. It might be calling your mother. Abandon your persona, abandon your sense of performance. Simply commit fully and do the act. You are being set free by the act, you are being set free by the commitment.
Integration: How was it to focus completely on the act and let performance go? How does commitment serve truth? How does abandon serve truth? How does abandon relate to commitment?

Trance State Preparation
Modified version of Johnstone’s mask “shoeing” ritual

Practice emptying the mind and releasing personality control
Enter state of “decisionlessness and inevitability”
Allow something larger to move through you
Integration: What was it like to let your persona leave for the exercise?

Pairs

Witnessed Non-persona

A and B. A will shed their persona as in trance state. B will witness with love.
Integration: A – how was it different than when alone? B – how was it to witness another person do this work closely? Both – how does abandon serve connection? How does love serve abandon?

Group

Word-at-a-Time Group Transcendence

Entire group tells one story, all speaking simultaneously
Somehow it works through collective abandon
Individual personality dissolves into group consciousness
Experience creativity beyond personal control
Integration: What was it like to stumble through and find a rhythm? What was it like to blend with the group? How does abandon connect tot he other virtues here?

The Child’s Ultimate Improv

Completely unstructured group improvisation
All 12 virtues must be available as choices
No planning, no safety nets, total commitment
Let the group mind create through individual abandon
Integration: Which virtues did you find as the most helpful to call on? How did abandon make for freedom to select virtues? How did abandon serve the work?

CURTAIN

Abandon is the gift this whole system offers. It’s the finale. It’s the state the artist gets to live in when they have created a foundation for themselves of love, courage, wisdom, and freedom. They get to let go of the false forms and work and live from a place of sacred communion, creating in harmony with the great mysterious.

Abandon enables all the virtues to liberate the artist, at every step. Abandon frees the artist from enslavement to human masters – including their own persona. It, and the other virtues, frees the artist from the very simulacra that define culture, that define human rationality, and define our systems of transaction, communication, and norms. It frees the artist from the interference of the simulacra, and enables contact and communion and relationship with the Mystery. Abandon is apotheosis.

From Campbell:

“Resting [their] actions and their fruits on the knees of the Living God [the artist] is released by them, as by a sacrifice, from the bondages of the sea of death. Powerful in this insight, calm and free in action, elated that through [their] hand should flow the grace of Viracocha, the [artist] is the conscious vehicle of the terrible, wonderful Law, whether [their] work be that of butcher, jockey, or king.”