Despite having read many books on the art of writing, Natalie Goldberg's book have remained my all time favorites. When I grabbed Wild Mind off the shelf to show my friend, I saw it had sticky notes and bits of paper sticking out of the pages. Since it had been a while since I've read the book I was intrigued to see what my notes were - a kind of excavation of a younger self.
Once I committed myself to being 'a writer' I occasionally found myself negating this reality by saying that all I did was write in a journal. You see, I say that to myself because truthfully, my journal contains pages and pages of 'junk'. To me it's important 'junk' because it comes out of my center; my essential self, but in terms of expecting great writing what I have in these journals is pages and pages of 'junk' writing. Looking through my latest journal I find that there might be only two really good sentences in several pages of scribbling. But I've also discovered that those two sentences of insight: wisdom about life that was decently written, were like nuggets of gold. When I thought of these sentences as gold nuggets I remember that back in the 1800's during the great gold rush, people would give over their entire lives to this search for gold. From a week of panning silt and water, should the miner find two good nuggets, ithey would be celebrated as a success. So too I've decided with my writing: two good sentences from pages of scribbling are a success as long as I remain committed.
I found the above italicized piece of writing scribbled in the back cover of Wild Mind where apparently I felt so inspired to write the words down that I had not wanted to get up and find my journal. Actually, virtually all the important books in my life have such scribbling in the margins and blank pages in the front and back of the books. This habit of scribbling in books is one of the reasons I am unable to effectively use the library!
Clearly when I wrote those words I was encouraging myself as the passage indicates that I was giving myself courage, confidence and hope for continuing what I had discovered was vital to my essential self: the weaving of life using words. Encourage: to give courage, confidence and hope to: to inspire. Finding and feeding oneself courage is possibly the single most important 'skill' required when committing oneself to a path that is long, meandering through hidden places and winding toward the horizon with switchbacks and deep chasms. When walking such a path there are moment - days and weeks sometimes - where the scenery one walks through seems to mock with a sense of folly and failure. Unless one is able to discover a means of feeding the fires of courage, the journey is frequently doomed to failure.
The word encourage is most frequently is used with the meaning 'to inspire'. But when you take the word apart, the prefix en means 'to put into' and the word courage is derived from the French couer, meaning 'heart'. To encourage actually means 'to put into the heart.'
The symbol of the heart indicates 'love' and in this way, our heart contains our essential, that is, our truest self for it is this self that is most capable of receiving and giving love. Essential indicates that which is necessary and vital. What is in our heart is necessary and vital to being who and what we have been place on earth for: the meaning of our life is contained in the heart. When we find the means to encourage ourselves, we are in fact, feeding our our heart in order to live out of the love that lives there.
When I wrote the italicized piece in the back of Wild Mind I was being an advocate: one who supports for the essential self living in my heart. It is impossible to have the courage required for the journey of living from the essential self without both being an advocate for what we commit ourselves to and finding other advocates of our true self. Journeying through all the activities of living and being true to our essential self is not easy. Moving forward down the road with only a dream in your heart while tired and discouraged is tough. There is really no other way to say this reality because each of us knows it's truth: if you are in mid-life I'm willing to bet there are journeys you have given up on and journeys you have accomplished or returned to only because there was an 'advocate' who encouraged your faltering steps. The alternative to discovering how to be an advocate for your dream, for learning the skills needed to feed courage, is to simply 'settle' in life: settle for what is and give up hoping, dreaming and believing.
Life is a dynamic process of birthing, dying, birthing, dying and then doing the whole cycle over and over again. The essence of life is so abundant that we often find ourselves overwhelmed with awe at its beauty and bewildered by its chaos. I am finding that the order for this bewildering chaos has to come from inside myself. If I try to create order in life from the only 'the outside' one of two things seems to happen: either I exhaust myself trying to capture all the baby ducks who refuse to line up {as in getting one's ducks in a row} or I end up building an eight food wall around myself so the ducks can't wander too far. That is until they learn to fly and then the ducks are gone and I'm stuck behind a wall!
Again, the above piece was scribbled in the back pages this time in Natalie Goldberg's book Writing Down the Bones. Clearly at the time I was grappling with the struggle to remain true to my essence and since my guess is that this was written a good twenty years ago, that would have been while my boys were quite and and life was chaotic. Just getting up a little extra early each morning so I could sit and watch the dawn, orient myself with prayer and gratitude and possibly write in my journal was a struggle with exhaustion. But I did not give up.
I did not give up even when I ran into what was a brick wall on that journey and the brick wall was when I realized that perhaps I was doing all this writing and maybe I would never get published. Running into that brick wall was very painful as one of the ways I had encouraged myself to swing my legs from beneath warm covers and head out into the early morning cold on the patio was with the intention of getting published. When it hit me {for whatever reason} that I may never be published as the greater percentage of writers are not, I almost gave up.
I suspect that I was rereading Writing Down the Bones while trying to decide whether or not to continue my morning time and journal writing. One reason I was rereading this particular book was that both of Goldberg's books are not only terrifically encouraging, heartening and reassuring books for writers, they are also two of the most reassuring books I've found for supporting the journey of being true to the essence of oneself. And that was how I came to a decision to recommit myself to morning time and to journal writing: whether or not I would ever be published, being true to myself demanded that I write: to weave the inside and outside of my life into a tapestry of wholeness using words. What I had learned while writing in my journal was that when I did it on a regular basis: wove my thoughts, feelings and experiences with ink on paper, I vibrated with a sense of the goodness of life. Writing was the action that caused life to vibrate within me.
Scribbling words on paper seemed to inspire the life living within my heart and soul to awaken: writing inspired me to live with vitality. Inspire: to stimulate creative activity. If you break that definition down and define stimulate; to awaken; to rouse and then define creative: inventive imagination and then combine the ideas there with the word activity: to expend energy, what you have is the idea that to inspire means to expend energy in order to awaken the inventive imagination.
In order to vibrate with life it is essential for each of us to discover the activity that awakens the inventive imagination of the essential self and then do it!
What I figured out at the time I was wavering over whether or not to continue with an activity and the demands of the activity, was the realization that in order to vibrate with life I needed to engage the activity that encouraged, stimulated and hearted the self that vibrated. I needed to continue to set the alarm and get up and have my quiet time and writing time. The alternative {not doing that activity} meant I would stop vibrating: purring and humming, with my own unique music. It is my personal opinion that often when people have generalized anxiety of unknown origin, it is the natural vibrating of life that has gone stagnant and is now full of static rather than humming.
The point here is that specific activity is vital - necessary - for vitality. As human beings, it will never be enough for us to merely 'think' about or read about vitality's of life. The design of our humanness requires that we put ourselves into whatever has inspired us. 'Putting oneself into' means that activity - a physical doing of some sort - is necessary in order for it to become a part of ourselves.
Sometimes the only action we can take is to specifically take a portion of time from our daily activities and routine - maybe initially just 10 or 15 minutes - and commit ourselves to that action. In a lot of ways, what happens within the piece of committed time is initially less important than the fact that the choice was made to do it. The choice to undertake an activity - the 10 or 15 minutes of time - devoted to encouraging the essential self and awakening the life within the heart is what is essential. The use of our will to make choice is also vital to being human.
There is one more thing, and I'll admit these are words of a MILD warning it may take a bit of time passing in order to begin to hear and purring and humming in your heart. Don't give up, try to find some aspect of the experience that encourages - puts you into your heart - to you inspire yourself to continue. Sometimes also, the initial purring and humming may actually feel 'discordant' and sort of like anxiety. It takes practice to learn to play an instrument - even the playing of one's own heart. One way to overcome this issue is to find a piece of music that is soothing and play it. I have a CD that I have used during my quiet time for about three years now and whenever I put it on I automatically begin to feel an inner calmness. Another possible suggestion is to find a really good book of daily affirmations or prayers that speaks to you and to begin your time with reading it as in my experience this particular activity kind of jump starts a bit of 'rhythmic playing' of my heart.
I honestly believe that each of us has been designed to carry a particular bit of music that is vital to the grand symphony of life ... I hope you enjoy the adventure of your particular song.
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