The Development of Autonomy Design

Autonomy is an Ancient Greek word that means "auto-self". When you begin to understand how creation creates through unattached engagement by being an objective observer then you start to understand what is meant by "auto-self". It's a selfing that happens without being a self. A verb that happens without an idea of a noun doing the verbing. In a manner of speaking, it's getting out the way of yourself.

Similar to auto-writing, you're not interfering with what is happening through you. You have to surrender the idea that you are doing it and just allow the doing to unfold. All how's and why's have to leave your system and observe the verbing of the design as an objective observer. Participating by surrendering to the process at hand.

For most, this happens as a development process. First, you copy great design work and see if you can create the same result simply by looking at the design. It can be frustrating at first because you keep making mistakes.

However, if you do this enough then you start to get a feel for what makes design great and why. You start to discover that it's the mistakes which deliver fresh results because the novelty couldn't happen without the seemingly "mistakes". You start to realize that "mistakes" is how creation offers uniqueness but the uniqueness seems to only happen authentically, when trying to copy a design pattern. They go hand and hand.

It's these "mistakes" that are the gateway to autonomy. Eventually, you discover your own natural autonomy in such a way that even looking at any design offers its own inspiration (all of life is design). Design in all directions becomes grace. Bad designs can trigger inspiration just as equally as great designs because your "learning curve" is over. In other words, now you learn through your autonomy, so learning happens effortlessly simply because you're out of the way of yourself.