With Urgency...

Awaken!

“I beg to urge you everyone:

Life and Death are a Great Matter

Awaken, awaken, awaken

Time passes quickly

Do not waste this precious life.”

(Evening chant, taken from the opening page of Natalie Goldberg’s book, The True Secret of Writing, “Basic Essentials—The Ground of Being”)

          Just yesterday my friend Isie, gave me Natalie Goldberg’s book, The True Secret of Writing, about her Zen writing method. Recorded on p.5 is a paragraph from David Schneider’s book Crowded by Beauty, about the life of Poet and Zen teacher Philip Walen. I’m going to paraphrase it here:

“’You know what’s wrong with you?’ my teacher began, turning his remarkable attention on me, enclosing us in it, as if we were not sitting in a lively, crowded booth with several other people, in a lively, crowded brewery, in a mid-sized town in France on a warm evening…’I’ve been thinking about it,’ he said…’What’s wrong with you is you’re not writing. If you feel you can’t do it with everything else that’s going on, then I,’ [his name and title] am formally giving you this as a practice to do…’”

          I had much the same experience, only mine came in a dream. I was in Jungian analysis at the time and recorded all my dreams. In my dream, “Andy Divine” asked me whether I remembered a piece I had written about “red birds on a roof.” When I said, “yes, I remember,” he leaned his face very close to mine, and asked, “Have you written anything lately?” I stammered that I had, a few things. He asked, “Can I buy them from you?” I assured him that he needn’t buy them, that I would send them to him. That dream came in February 2011. I began writing the blog then and have continued ever since--free of charge! Believe me, when the Divine instructs you to write, whether in the form of your Zen teacher, or your dream figure, you sit your behind down and write! In my mind, it’s akin to Moses burning bush encounter, without all the ensuing drama.

          Writing is my practice. I’m glad that some folks find it helpful enough to read every day, but that’s not why I write. As an introvert, even to myself, it’s how I find out what I’m thinking and feeling. Putting words on paper, or as a file in a computer, is a way of recording those thoughts and feelings in the moment, so that I can see my own progress, or lack of progress, as may be the case.

          Writing is one way of processing the world, as many of you who journal know. It also helps to remind us of what is truly important and what is not; what is arising in one's own consciousness and what is simply being fed to us through media and other sources. We can be easily blinded by all the shiny objects dangled before us—at least, I can be—so grounding ourselves in our own truth is helpful. It’s like putting down roots that stabilize us while our limbs grow tall and wide. It keeps us strong and able to withstand the winds that blow through every life.

          When you have a practice like journaling or writing in any form, sooner or later, your soul begins to speak to you. If you can get out of your own way, that is stop thinking what you “should” write, and simply let the words come to you and be translated through your fingers, you’ll soon learn what your soul is telling you. It may be a little like that Zen teacher or “Andy Divine.” That is, a message you don’t have the option of denying, but I can promise that you won’t be sorry you followed instructions. It will wake you up.

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane