Wednesday, September 12, 2018

From the Other Side




On Monday, I did a ritual in which I imagined putting my past behind me as I walked through the threshold into the future. The actual threshold I used to represent the one into the future was at the top of two steps that leads into my office. It seemed fitting that I was walking into my future represented by the place where I create.

Our lives are about crossing into the unknown and creating as we go. Sometimes creation is more like remembering or it rises up out of the subterranean Mind as I put it in something I wrote and just sent out for publication.

That was Monday. It’s now the past and I’m leaving it behind to make sure every day I meet the abyss before me by being in the present. Too often I find myself caught in what happened and worried I did the wrong thing or I’m making up a story about something that isn’t even true.

The me that has crossed over catches what I’m doing and is kind about it. It’s important to save my energy for the real work. And that’s not writing. The real work is me. I’ve walked into another reality where I’m confident and I write and send my work out. I’ve walked into a reality of my own making. I create it in each moment. I know who I am and act from there.

There is no going back. I’m on the other side and though the past is a part of me it is not at the forefront of my life. It doesn’t get to control me anymore. What happens next is up to me in the present.

Saturday, September 1, 2018

The Words Rise Out of the Silence


 
Photo by cocoparisienne on pixabay

In Silence there is eloquence. Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves.
― Jalaluddin Mevlana Rumi

When my mind is noisy the words are just surface chatter. What wants to be born in me becomes stuck when I don’t allow the silence to rise within.

For me, the silence within is more than just a quiet mind. It’s a palatable presence. It is the Presence and it is always there. Sometimes, like right now for instance, I had a hard time during my meditation. The deep silence was hidden by surface disturbance of frenetic thought. Sometimes this happens when there are a lot of things I’m trying to deal with at once or when there are things I’d rather not deal with. The inner chatter is related to fear and doubt. 

The silence, the Silence is more real than all the noise. When I touch deep silence it feels as though it isn’t just within. It’s all around me, too. The Presence has entered my whole experience. As I relax and rest in it, sometimes the words rise up, the words that are true and carry the spark of creation. Silence carries possibility and we give birth to what rises when we take those words and ideas and bring them into form.

Some writers and artists…I think especially poets…feel as though their work comes from something outside of themselves. I think it can feel as if that were so if you’re solely identifying with your smaller self. It can feel as though it is coming from somewhere other than you. It’s coming out of that which is greater than you, but I believe that greater beingness lives as you.

If you wish to create a work of art, a poem, a novel, your life, I encourage you to spend time in the silence and with the Silence. It holds everything and offers this gift to you, always. But it takes courage to be open to listening. Anything can rise. It takes patience and trust for the Silence doesn’t live in time. It also takes courage to then take what you’ve heard and felt and turn it into something. Though it feels as though it is otherworldly in its presentation to you, at its heart it is the very essence of you as well as all of your experiences.

So trust, be patient and willing to share. The silence/Silence is waiting for you. Your greatest treasure is a world of possibility that lives within. Go to it, open your heart and mind and let the journey begin.