Oracles of the Day

 

“One of the hardest things to make a child understand is, that down underneath your feet, if you go far enough, you come to blue sky and stars again; that there really is no “down” for the world, but only in every direction an “up.” And that this is an all-embracing truth.”

…It is also what “we grown children find it hardest to realize, too.”—Anne Gilchrist

 

Occasionally, I randomly open a book to see what it offers for the day. After the above I found this morning, I opened Natalie Goldberg’s book Writing Down the Bones, (1986) page 48 (30th Anniversary Edition), and this spoke to me.

“A writer must say yes to life, to all of life, the water glasses, the Kemp’s half and half, the ketchup on the counter. It is not a writer’s task to say, “It is dumb to live in a small town or to eat in a café’ when you can eat macrobiotics at home.”

Our task is to say a holy yes to the real things of our life as they exist—the absolute truth of who we are—several pounds overweight, the gray, cold street outside, the Christmas tinsel in the showcase, the Jewish writer in the orange booth across from her blond friend who has black children. We must become writers who accept things as they are, come to love the details, and step forward with a yes on our lips so there can be no more noes in the world, noes that invalidate life and stop those details from becoming.”—Natalie Goldberg.

At first I wasn't going to blog this week--declare Tuesday a day of mourning, but then I wrote my apologies, and now I can't help myself--well, I could, but I don't want to. In times of trouble, I turn to my computer and books for solace. I am passing on what I found this morning for the artists out there (all of you are) and those suffering for what they fear to come.

Before my last post, titled “I Apologize,” I began writing about writing and on being an artist, then decided it wasn’t addressing what I felt was important. I’ve changed my mind. Becoming an artist is important.

 Once, a prominent psychiatrist told me that writing is self-aggrandizement.

What an idiot.

I don’t care how many credentials he had, he still missed the point, traumatized me, and besmirched all literature.

If you have decided that you are imposing your great wisdom on someone, then you might be accused of aggrandizement, but if you want to become an artist—that’s a different story. (The psychiatrist disagreed with the writer of a book I was reading.)

An artist wants to express himself, which takes many forms—artistry is creative expression.

Art is where your heart is.

And HOPE is right beside it. We have to believe there is hope for the future. We have to HOPE that we aren’t all tied up in Plato’s dark cave, only seeing shadows, not the real things.

A scientist HOPES his theory is correct. A singer HOPES her audience likes her song. A songwriter, HOPES his lyrics ring true.

Every artist who sits down to his work begins the hero’s journey. Every time. Over and over. He leaves his comfortable ground to set out, not knowing what pitfalls will befall him. He or she HOPES they live to reach their destination, and they HOPE they have something to offer the tribe. 

The writer-artist doesn’t write to impart wisdom; he writes to find himself, and through that self-discovery, he HOPES to motivate others to do the same.

Who was it, Issac Asimov, who said “I write to find out what I am thinking?” Maybe it was Joan Didion who wrote a book with that title.

That is something my friend, the psychiatrist, did not understand, for if you follow Natalie Goldberg’s way of thinking that writing is a therapeutic experience, it might put him out of business.

Then there is old procrastination (Steven Pressfield calls it resistance) in finding something else to do besides THE WORK. THE WORK (your artistry) is scary, that’s the reason we put it off.

Hemingway said writing was opening a vein.

Liz Gilbert said to enjoy your creativity.

I enjoy writing. While writing, I am in the flow, and time is a no-thing. My demons aren’t as scary to me as Hemingway’s was to him. Or maybe he thought one must suffer for their craft. Published writers have an additional problem; they want to match or exceed their earliest work, which burdens them.

Steven Pressfield found that once he declared himself a writer (found his calling) and he sat down at the typewriter, typed out a few pages he later threw away—he was freed.  A few minutes later he was at the sink washing 10 days of stacked up dishes—and humming.

Suffering comes in the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

While hunting for a different picture I had recently placed in my files, I found this one. I hope that bull didn't land on his once upon a time rider.

P.S. Hey, it looks like I got my follow button back. How about a follow?

Giving Up Resistance Isn’t Easy

 

Ice Dec. 23 by the front door. Lethal driveway.

Pink, our pink flamingo in the arbor. Pink was last year's Christmas present from Daughter number 2 to me.The pink flamingo is our mascot for our Real Estate Brokerage which is called Vibrance Real Estate LLC. Oh, his little leg is drooping, but then, he's tired after holding it up for a year.

 

Resistance is the block that comes when you avoid something or bump into a wall. Steven Pressfield uses the word Resistance. I thought he was talking about Procrastination, but that’s not quite it.

 

Pressfield said that for years he had been avoiding his true calling. That was writing. However, finally, he sat down at his typewriter and wrote for an hour. “It was crap,” he said, but he got up and immediately washed the dishes that had been accumulating in the sink for a week. He had broken his resistance.

 

Let’s say you dream of starting a business. It’s a beautiful dream. You focus and plan, and it’s a fun adventure—the dreaming part. And then your business manifests. You have a business to set up, but now there is much to do. You have fees and dues and worry about how much it will cost. You have people to speak with and to hire. You need to market and get together materials. You become a doer. And you push and struggle, and it isn’t fun anymore. You say, “Well, it isn’t all fun, and it is necessary to work. And so, you push, you stay up nights, and that business occupies most of your waking hours.

 

Abraham, a teacher I listen to, says, “You have turned upstream.”

 

The dream, the planning, was downstream. You were going with the flow, and then you got into a struggle and turned upstream where the water was tumultuous, and rowing was tough.

 

But that’s the way it is, you say. It’s not all fun and games. It is necessary to do the work. Yep, that’s what schools, parents, and society teach us. 

 

And Boy, Howdy, that belief in hard work is hard to give up. There are monuments for people who have struggled, which tells us those people were important.

 

I’m not saying that overcoming a challenge isn’t satisfying. However, I agree with Abraham, who said, “Nothing you want is upstream.” (I think that College degree was. I wanted it. I did it. It was upstream.” I wonder, though, if there is a way to go with the flow while entangled in a system set up to make it hard?) 

 

That business analogy isn’t exactly my situation, but there is a ring of truth to it. I have struggled for the past month and got a simple website for our Real Estate Brokerage —that was the easy part. However, I’m still dealing with transferring domains, and with two people’s emails involved, and codes and all that. I think I got caught in a whirlpool.

 

It happens.

 

A few days ago, I picked up Aldous Huxley’s book, The Art of Seeing. Perhaps you remember I blogged about Vision Training in the blog post, Hello Beautiful, Check Your Eyeballs. Huxley commented that the eyes and the brain both like relaxation. 

 

The harder you scrunch down your brain, you try to remember something that has slipped away or find a lost object.

 

But eventually, you surrender. You let the severe concentration go—especially the anger at yourself for having lost or forgotten something. And, you sort of forget about it. You’ve turned downstream, and Viola’, it appears.

 

The eyes, like the brain, operate better when relaxed. You can feel it when you finally let go and allow the eyes to see and the brain to think.

 

There is much to learn in this life. I need to live another 1,000 years.

 

Wait, another 1,000? I haven’t lived the first 1,000 yet.

Why do we Resist Doing the Very Thing that Would Help Us?

 "In the eyes of a Buddha, everyone is a Buddha. In the eyes of a pig, everyone is a pig."—Haemin Sunim, The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down.

 

Why do we resist doing the very thing that would help us?

 

I don't know.

 

Steven Pressfield has written a book on the subject of Resistance (aka procrastination) titled The War of Art. 

 

And motivated by Pressfield's quote, "The highest treason a crab can commit is to make a leap from the rim of the bucket," I wrote a blog post titled "Take a Leap." (March 18, 2019), and then, what did I do?

 

I resisted the one thing known to make life better—Meditation. 

 

Fifteen minutes a day. Big Deal. 

 

I'm too busy.

 

Right.

 

Judging from the comments on https://travelswithjo.com, the Take a Leap blog resonates with many people. 

 

And yep, the crab quote is accurate. I looked up. "A bucketful of crabs," says that if one crab tries to climb out of a bucket filled with crabs, the others will try to pull the one on the rim back in.

 

With humans, I don't think—with few exceptions—that it's the "others" who try to pull us back into the bucket, aka our "comfort zones". Instead, it's our habits and brains.

 

And let's face it when we first begin to meditate, it isn't fun. Our minds fight us. Our to-do lists grow exponentially, and hunger and thirst kick roars in with a vengeance. It's like trying to put a toddler to bed.

 

(Thanks to those who commented yesterday on Take a Leap, for it reminded me to leap.) Here's an excerpt:

 

Have you ever decided to start a diet or spiritual practice, maybe you would like to sponsor a child in some far-off land, or perhaps you wanted to run for office. Maybe you wanted to get married, have a child, or campaign for world peace.

 

You didn't do it, and the whole idea quickly drifted away.

 

Are you a writer who doesn't write, a painter that doesn't paint, or an entrepreneur who doesn't begin a venture?

 

Then you know what Resistance is.

 

In The War of Art, Pressfield says that Resistance means not doing the work you were meant to do.

 

And here I am today, doing my oracle by opening a book to a random page, and what did I find"

 

How to meditate.

 

Hee hee.

 

The book was Ask, and it is Given, the Teachings of Abraham by Ester and Jerry Hicks. 

 

I have followed the teacher Abraham whose speaker is Ester Hicks. I've taken a few of Ms. Hick's workshops and, even by some quirk of fate, ran into Ms. Hicks in a restaurant in Del Mar, California, when we lived in Temecula, California. My daughter had only the week before begun listening to Abraham on tapes. When I pointed out that there was Abraham, she said, "Why did that happen?" My answer was, "To tell us it's working." 

 

Is it working now, dear one? Have we lost the faith? Have we become so discouraged as to leave behind the very thing that would raise us up?

 

I am speaking for myself.

Imagine a moment of calm. Imagine a few moments when your mind isn't replaying the same thoughts it thought yesterday. Imagine, rather than fighting your mind, you let the thoughts run through without grabbing one and ruminating with it.

And here is the clinker; you don't have to sit in a lotus position. You don't even have to sit. You can do a walking meditation. (Try not to run into anybody, but then, chances are they weren't meditating, and running into them might wake them up.) I was right years ago when I considered feeding the horses, cleaning the barn, and raking the yard a meditation. But you need the calm presence of a horse munching hay to add to the ambiance.

I suggest that instead of running out to clean somebody's barn, you condition your body to know what it's supposed to do. Like, stop thinking. (I have heard that prayer is Talking to God. Meditation is God talking to you.)

Sit comfortably, and place your thoughts on something simple, like breathing, counting, or listening to the faucet drip.

 I began with the word "sing."