The latest assignment from the wonderful writers' group was for me to publish something from my personal journal writing. This came after I'd talked about my writing going underground these past 18 months. "It looks like I'm writing nothing," I reported to the group, "but look, I've filled three huge notebooks and typed 35,000 words of random 750-word pages! That's nearly a whole book, isn't it?" I think what I was really saying is, "I write, therefore I am. Right?"
Anyway, here's something from the 750-word, private, never-to-be-published material. I feel weirdly wicked anticipating pushing the publish button on this one.
750 words about writing and reality
What is it? Words and reality. I write therefore I am? I write to feel real? At some point, writing things down became a necessity for me. A necessity my family tried to prohibit. But I kept on doing it. It was one disobedient thing I did, knowing I was breaking their rules, but knowing it was a good, healthy, important thing for me to record my feelings and experiences. It had to be done. It was the only way I had of making sense of my life. And that was most likely because it was the only privacy I had, outside my own young head. There was nobody to talk to. At least not about what life meant. The Catholic catechism was the final word on that, and short of learning the rote answers, we were not supposed to have any involvement. Nothing was up for discussion or exploration. But my mind was busy discussing and exploring. I could see through all that stuff, and I knew from a very young age it didn’t add up. I’ve even to this day got a huge intuition for uncovering bullshit and things that just don’t stack up in the truth department. But anyway. Yesterday I read Stephen Cope’s book, Yoga and the search for the true self, probably for the 12th time (at least) and it spoke directly to me, where I am now, in my own version of the reality project. My reality is shifting, steadily and somewhat painfully from what he calls a false self to a true self experience of living. I prefer to call it from a survive self to a thrive self. Every step of the process he examines from a psychotherapy and yoga perspective is evident in my experience over the past three years. I’ve been doing it in isolation a lot of the time, in my own head, in my journal. There’s been nobody to talk to or lean on. It’s just been me and the couch a lot of the time. And that’s my history. It may change, and I would welcome that, but for now I am being my own adult, my own teacher to lean on and learn from. That is OK. But writing, in this context, has gone underground, inside. Journals, these pages, are the bulk of my writing over the past two years anyway. The writing has helped me weave a place to be, an environment, it’s a way to contain and examine the experiences I’m having while I shift from survive to thrive. Quitting drinking was a huge step in this process. Pivotal. It has freed me up to be aware and fully conscious all the time. Cutting the TV cable was pivotal. Quitting a full time job was pivotal. Everything adding up to the time and space needed to examine things properly, and open up to a different perspective of what life really is. What its limitations are. What its potential is. The limitations are its physicality and mortality – not them in themselves, but our belief that they’re limitations. Our belief in life being just those things. The potential is to see physicality and mortality for what they really are. Facts. Reality. They just are. So that’s all. I think I’m beginning to experience what is called equanimity. I think that just means a balanced and sane reaction to whatever happens. Seeing things for what they are – just things. Not layering any meaning into things that doesn’t apply. And not taking things personally. Not even our bodies or the things that have happened to us. They happened. That is all. I know this sounds rather weird and unsatisfactory on many levels, but it also feels peaceful to me. I feel like I can hold that view and live in it. Hopefully. I have been looking for peace for so long. Peace comes when we feel real. That’s probably the peace of authenticity. I have never felt that real, on my own. I have been looking for reflection, validation... mostly how useful can I be, how helpful. The more useful and helpful, the more real I feel. That’s a false self belief. A survival technique from childhood. How useful and helpful I am makes no difference to who I am at all. I am helpful and useful. That is all. When we take away the personal aspect, things just become things, and we can look and see them, and look away. It’s much more peaceful like this.
