To write is to love?

“For me to write is love; it is to inquire and to praise, or to confess or to appeal. Not to assure myself that I am (“I write, therefore I am”), but simply to pay my debt to life, to the world, to other men.  To speak with an open heart and say what seems to me to have meaning.” Thomas Merton, unpublished journal.


Perhaps the snarliest point for me, the knot I cannot unpick, is the "why?" of writing. Perhaps, if I were a more Zen specimen, I would understand the suffering associated with "why?", drop it, and just write. But around writing, my Zen evaporates. Writing triggers me. More than anything else. The whole concept of writing is at once inevitable and irresistable and terrifying. Reading that quote from Thomas Merton (next on my reading list) I am struck by these words: ... Not to assure myself that I am. (I write, therefore I am.)


I've had moments of wisdom around this idea before, like in this blog post, Everything Matters a few months ago now. Those moments are fleeting. I get clear and still and everything makes perfect sense. Perfect sense. And then a cloud of murk descends and I'm wrestling and punching inside heavy blanket in the dark. Wrestling with the exact same things I was so clear about yesterday.
 
Since New Year's Day I have been meditating, sitting in the Proper Position (finally, I can't keep on trying to beat the system by doing it lying down under a cosy blanket) for 15 minutes. This is first thing before I speak or greet the dog or have tea or open any electronic devices. It's a very fresh time. And still my mind is busy racing around, designing gazebos for summer lounging, reaming out the doctor for being so slow with specialist referrals, inventing catastrophes for me to endure and overcome. It's all a big cartoon show in there. I manage, in the 15 minutes, a few conscious silent breaths. The miracle is that I can actually sit for 15 minutes and not squirm. I can watch the thoughts, catch them, and let them go. I am starting to see how much of my so-called "reality" is made up stuff in my fertile amazing magical mind. And I can also see the glorious potential of putting that mind to creative and compassionate use, rather than its stale old boring fearful rerun loop. 

Writing to prove existence is a very heavy idea. Writing to speak with an open heart some truth and meaning, now that's a different story altogether. 

Everything matters

Me: I've just understood the urge to write. It's because everything matters. Absolutely everything. And writing honours that simple fact. Memories matter. Families matter. The smell of cut grass matters.

We spend so much of our lives wondering what it's all about, looking for meaning and a way to belong. And all the time, we totally matter, we totally mean something, just by our existence.

To question writing about anything is blind and ignorant.

We need to write about absolutely everything. Nothing is too small, too dull, insignificant. Nothing.

She: Yes. Yes, that's right.

Me: Thanks for helping me know this. I feel like I could now write every day, with passion and burning, just like I've wanted to all my life.

She: Yes, you can.

Me: Woot!

Spitting it out

I've been doing the 'morning pages' exercise from The Artist's Way (Julia Cameron, Pan Books). Maybe I should say "again" because I've been on this path a few times before when I've needed to get unstuck creatively and psychologically. Technically morning pages are a writing excercise with the following rules:

• Every morning, soon after you wake up, write three long-hand pages in a journal.
• Don't think about what you're writing, just write, stream-of-consciousness style, until you've filled up three pages. No cheating with a tiny little note pad!
• Don't read what you've written. 
• Don't show it to anyone else. 
• Do it every day, whether you feel like it or not.

This time round, I've got the morning pages in my laptop, in Word, with the font size set so one page of single spaced text with no paragraph breaks is 750 words. I start with the date, note the time, and write until I've filed the page, note the total word count and time, save and shut the file. If I don't agonise, edit, or think too much, it takes roughly 17 minutes, so not a massive time suck.

Some good things are happening. I'm looking forward to getting up and writing every day. I feel no anxiety, no struggle to stay focussed, no burning impulse to vacuum or clean the windows before I get started, or half way through. And I'm feeling no pressure or block. I am writing, and it feels bloody great! Yay.

And not only that; I've been motivated to do my own writing again. A couple of times this week I even woke up thinking about story ideas for my blogs. This is massive. For the past year or so I've been waking up thinking about some work problem. Usually it's a writing problem because that's what I do for a job. More often than not, when I wake up properly I realise it's an imagined, not a real problem, but it hangs around, whining and bothering me, and stopping me from actually working, or ensuring the work I do feels like agony. It's also exhausting, so I've had no energy  for creative writing either.

But as I said, a couple of times this week I woke up with story ideas in my head. It is a much better day when I wake up feeling interested, motivated, excited to get up and write. A much better scene altogether!

So what's going on? I think the morning pages are a bit like housework. It's like I go into my brain every morning, and clean it out -- throw away rubbish, wipe up dust and grime, put stuff in its right place so I can find it when I want it. Wipe the benches, run the dishwasher, pick up clothes, do the laundry, take out the garbage, sort out that junk cupboard, give some stuff away. Think of all those things that make your house nicer to be in. When you don't do them, everything's harder, more stressful, a drag.

The morning pages are my brain's housekeeper, keeping things in order so I don't have to navigate around chaos and clutter when I'm working. These days I'm more likely to sit down to work feeling fresh and clear. A bit virtuous even, just like I feel when my clothes are picked up and the kitchen sink is sparkling.

The Next Forty Days

Today marks the last day of a two week break from yoga practice. My body did feel like it needed a rest after four x 40-day practices since January. But strangely, over the two weeks of sleeping in and resting physically, some of my old aches and pains have come back. It will be interesting to see if they flee when I get back on the mat tomorrow.

Maybe more importantly, someone at work asked me last week, "Are you still doing yoga every morning?" I said no, we've got a break for two weeks. He said, "I thought so!" In the kindest possible way. I know what he means. 

This writing practice has been a bit of a non-event, but there's a piece of me that knows I want to do this, can do this... write about more than what's going on out there in the garden, in the kitchen. Write about what's going on inside. So during this sadhana practice I will write something every day. It may just be a sentence. (I don't always need to write an essay.) I just commit to it being honest and aware. The focus is folding inward.

Expectations

I've been thinking about expectations this week -- how they are really just another way we make judgements -- judgments pushed into the future, another thing that takes our attention away from what we're doing right now.

Take this blog. I expected it to be easy to write about not spending money, yoga, an attempt to live more consciously. It's not easy at all. I'm a natural at writing about what's going on our there -- in the kitchen or garden, for example, but I feel shy and vulnerable writing about what's close or inside. But because of my expectation for it to be easy, it's now feeling like a failure, and consequently I've been avoiding it. Don't we all hate hanging around with failure? But aren't we our own worst enemies by courting failure relentlessly?

If I didn't have any expectations, and simply wrote one word after the other, focussing on this word, this blog post...  there would be no chance of failing. Or succeeding in my own mind. And I reckon I would be free!

I was walking down Taranaki Street to the yoga studio on Tuesday, and I realised that the current 40-day practice was feeling a lot different than the previous two. I wasn't feeling any anxiety about it, I was just going, day after day, and doing it. I was lacking expectation. And consequently I was relaxed and happy.

Let me give you a bit of history.

The first 40-day practice, I was expecting to find it super hard to get up and go to yoga at 7.15am day after day. I did find it super hard, but I suspect only because I was constantly thinking about how hard it would be. I was focussed on and anxious about getting through it. On the mat, I was anxious about the postures, which ones I "could" do, which ones I "couldn't", what was easy, what was hard, what I was getting better at, what was still really hard work. This translated into wishing the hard ones would be over and looking forward to the easy ones. I knew the sequence off by heart, in turn dreading and welcoming, depending on which one we were up to. It was all an ordeal, because I was focussed on a whole lot of expectations: finishing the practice, learning the postures, getting through the pain, getting to the end. Failure. Success.

On the recent walk down to the studio, I realised I've pulled my attention in a lot closer in the current practice. Now I just go to the studio every day, listen to the instruction and do the postures. I'm not thinking ahead either, to the next posture, to the end. If you asked me the order of postures I don't think I could tell you. I'm not thinking about them. I haven't got any expectations, positive or negative, and I'm simply doing the practice. My mind wanders a bit, but it's not locked into a pattern of expectations, good and bad, right and wrong.

This has just happened out of the blue. I'm grateful not to be working towards an end. It feels peaceful and easy, like calm, even breathing.