Writing from the Inside Out (19 page)

What work remains to be done today, knowing that death will eventually occur? This action is your yoga of devotion when you perform the acts out of responsibility opened beyond expectation.

Recognizing that your life, with its comforts and pains, is impermanent, let this knowledge be at work in your practice. What is this eternal source of your soul's most trusted bliss?

Recognizing that transcendence is your heart's desire, you must give your writing practice your total focus. Leave aside ambitions and future-thinking. Let fullness of transient experience be your only goal.

Even a little of this practice will change your life in a positive way. You may arrive at a place where you realize that nothing needs to be done. Because using words comes naturally for me (whether I think of myself as eloquent or not, words extend from the totality of nature), my use of language becomes yoga.

Each time you write, it happens in a way that has never been so before in all of history — and will never happen again just the same way. This instant of experience is precious.

Recognize in the experience that you are grateful that you get to do it. Allowed to practice, understanding what you do, be open to what can reveal itself to you today. Choose amid the freedom of feelings to be flooded with devotion.

Afterward, in your daily life, carry the memory of this devotion as an energy that flows through your cells. Encouraging your cells to remember the flood of devotion, you will accomplish the impossible.

 

 

I am faced with undeniable opportunities to learn things. If I chose, I could spend the rest of my life learning one thing or another. However, I can't say how much longer I'll be alive and therefore able to learn, and there's no promise that I'll be able to learn everything. So, with limited time, what is most important? It might be the kind of learning that comes from doing.

When I see someone deep into his/her practice, I see the power and joy of a soul stripped bare. In practice, we're given the choice: Should we step outside of the familiar, over which we have some level of comfort and mastery, into true knowledge?

The Zen monk Eihei Dogen was a true master. As a teacher, he regarded his teachings as barriers to the truth.

It is good to know things. It is good, too, to work toward residing fully alive in a place of nonknowing opened by practice. Sanskrit is an excellent language for understanding abstract concepts. I recently discovered this Sanskrit word:

a

This is the first and last word. It refers to the sound of breath. It is an open, unconstricted vowel; the root of all speech.

One concern of science is to understand the constituent particles of matter; the atom is not the smallest particle, the proton is not the smallest, the quark, and so on… Looking in the opposite direction, we can find more questions about infinity, or finity. We interact with a very real world of forms, whether or not we can reduce matter to fundamental parts.

Seeing the world in this way can be useful for providing wiggle room away from the stories and meanings we construct. For example, I may notice that my hamstrings have become tight. The sensations from the gently stretched hamstrings aren't something I need to be attached to or form meaning from. This sensation is the feeling of stretching hamstrings. I watch the feeling and let it flow through me, unaltered, making adjustments to honor the truth of the posture. Freed awhile from story, cells experience the wisdom above both consciousness and unconsciousness.

True relaxation is not merely relaxation. It is the knower impartially witnessing the flow of energy within relaxation. Relaxing the ego, I make room for higher nature to move my mind and my limbs.

 

 

Look at the way a child will use her imagination and pretend that she is a wizard or a dolphin. For a child, no real separation exists between the creative act and the noncreative act. Why should there be? Imagination makes life rich and reveals more of what's really here.

Many traditions conceive that after death, the spirit leaves the body — whether to a world beyond or to another body, some passing of time occurs in the intermediate space. The same might be true as we sleep. If so, then a passing spirit or a dozing companion could witness what I do. In the same way that many people read the presence of omens and animal signs, it is valuable to be conscious of the possibility that the imagination forms a real connection. I would get to be a messenger for a while, for someone or something. I would want the omens that I give out to be good ones.

What I form from the imagination depends on my causes and conditions. The imagination wants my actions to be those of self-purification, because the world is an offering. The universe was created — and is being created — as an open-ended act. The best actions strive toward self-improvement without self-interest. These actions are based on duty — not necessarily worldly duty, but not in denial of worldly duty; they extend from your resonance as an image of being.

Once formed in writing, a path has been laid. And a path is a big help for getting somewhere.

Earth is huge. The solar system is huge. The galaxy is huge. And the galaxy is only one of many. You can take a look at the span of time and see our lifespan as the tiniest blip of a moment. Billions of years have passed since the sun was born. Billions more will pass, and the sun will supernova and, with it, Earth will certainly go.

Of all that we can do, it can't last forever. Viewed from a safe distance, the sun's supernova will look beautiful.

We are in the middle of a fascinating paradigm, because although our grandest ambitions will not last forever in precisely the forms we intend, they, with everything, will go on and on as energetic phenomena.

 

 

When circumstances causes me to feel too much self-stuff (importance, anxiety, etc.), I imagine a person very much like myself, thinking very similar thoughts, but this person is living in the year 463. Unlucky for that guy, his time is long gone. Not much that we're now aware of happened in the year 463. The year 463 and all of its inhabitants do not carry their name into the present time.

It may very well be that the current year will, in the distant future, be very similar to the year 463. Spring far enough into the future and maybe that's true. We find the most interest in the current year when we're in it. Because it's here, it will pass, and so let's experience what it means to be alive, plainly, more than striving to hold on to what can't be held but instead holds us.

I breathe and feel my heart beat. I close my eyes and listen to the sound of breath within. I feel and listen for the center point of the inner ear. I locate it first it as a ringing, and I also feel it as a vibration in the center of the head, which follows the pulse of movements that signifies I am alive.

The ability to experience at all is a precious gift. And, wow: I have been given a separate sense of self. Abiding in this state of being, what actions am I drawn to perform? With this state, I have the ability to think and sense: to write.

Sensing the limitations that come from being a self changes my expectations of my practice. Life accrues meaning and fullness, and the fear of failure departs the same way as overlarge expectations of permanent results. Committed to practicing in the present moment, always returning to this intent, I experience freedom within a unique path. The circumstances outside my control neither limit me nor increase or decrease my potential for fulfillment.

 

 

Doing the impossible (creating something new) is different for everyone because we are differently skilled and motivated. The challenge is one thing; how we react to the challenge is another. When I am beyond my realm of expertise and comfort zone, being proactive is hard.

We hold ourselves back by justifying our challenges and perceived shortcomings. No one wants to spend years struggling with an issue only to find that the solution has been right before him all along. We want a reason for why we're struggling — and often we would rather justify the reason we're struggling than search for the solution. For example, if a writing marathon feels like I am going on and on without the words coming out in the exact form I would expect in a finished manuscript, I may criticize the approach, or criticize something about my abilities. Rather than feeling uncertain, I want to find something to feel right about.

I can't emphasize that point enough: It's confusing to simply stay in uncertainty. So we rationalize things, perhaps as an attempt to make sense of things, even if it doesn't line up perfectly with our other beliefs.

One very talented, very experienced writer whom I worked with at a retreat in Italy expressed that her writing felt unguided, like she was “just going on and on.” She believed that, unless she knew ahead of time what form to write in, her writing didn't count.

I asked her if she would be willing to read her piece at critique. The group was eager to hear her read the writing she felt uncertain about. In addition to being interested in the kinds of risks she was taking in her work, they also could connect with her experience as a sort of sounding board for relating and clarifying their own efforts. As it turned out, we were all very interested in what she had read and, after a lively discussion, in which we discovered several patterns in the very work she was afraid merely went “on and on,” she learned not only that she had good and original material on her hands, but also that she could have created it no other way than by having plodded forward within the marathon. She learned to trust more in her audience's ability to respond to the energy of the created writing.

When someone is nervous on stage, we share his or her nervousness. Really, we just wish that person trusted that the audience wanted him or her to succeed. If the performers could deeply convince themselves that everyone in the audience was there to see them revel in the state of flow, to see them succeed, the audience, too, could relax. As writers, we can think of the act of writing as a kind of performance, in which we give the audience what it deeply wants, which is to see us succeed beyond our wildest concepts. Even if you pick a book off the shelf half-heartedly, expecting it won't be any good, if you open it up and read a bit of it, and it knocks your socks off, you're far happier than if you had merely felt justified. Rejoicing, we are eager to become more of the listener.

The listener is the writer through the mirror of the page, receptive, neither critical nor full of praise. This mirror shows our relationship to our writing. No one wants to feel that gutachy state of nervousness. For the sake of the pages we fill, the words we use, the time we spend — and for the reader, if not for ourselves — we should set aside the doubt that seeks only to justify shortcomings. The more we give focus to what we love, the less we can be self-conscious about our performance. When in doubt, remind yourself of the position of watching an actor. We want him to succeed and, in a kind of psychic attempt to help, we're generous. We would beam him good vibes and a pat on the back if we could, so that he could focus on where his energy leads. This reader — the imagination — is always offering inspiration.

1. What is today's expression of why you write?

2. If you give attention to doubt, what do you struggle with?

3. What does the imagination love about your writing?

4. Put yourself in the position of several months from now, well after you've completed today's piece of writing. Imagine that it has in every way exceeded your expectations. Describe the writing in no-qualms positive terms, as if you've discovered a piece by someone you respect and admire.