Mindfulness Helps Unlock the Feisty Writer Within

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Abstract

. Rather, it’s a tool that teaches us to dis-identify from the self-critical voices — to see them for what they are: unhelpful habitual thoughts keeping us from living fully in the present, from participating — from writing.</p><p id="5505">Meditation teaches us to turn our attention away from those voices and to listen instead to our authentic voice. We discover for ourselves the difference: those mean and self-critical voices are not us — only a conditioned program running unchecked, controlling us and keeping us from being courageous, from saying YES! to life, from being a feisty writer.</p><h2 id="826b">Meditation and writing are fundamentally complementary</h2><p id="7a64">I’ve discovered that meditation and writing are fundamentally complementary. Meditation works by employing a writer’s best friend: the power of paying attention.</p><p id="b413">We sit in meditation and learn to notice everything as if we were an observer — a witness: bodily sensations, sounds, smells, tastes, visual phenomenon, emotions and thoughts.</p><p id="cfc5">This is particularly true if we are suffering. Instead of being consumed with our emotions, we act as a journalist, taking detailed notes — interested in describing this phenomenon accurately, freshly, without cliché — outside the realm of our conditioning.</p><p id="7734">We investigate: where does this anger reside in the body? What are the unique physical sensations that are associated wi

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th this anger? What thoughts triggered it? Does it have a color, a taste, a texture? As a meditator, we pay attention in order to use everything in our experience to see how we are causing ourselves to suffer, so we can drop that.</p><p id="7b43">As a writer, we pay attention so that these details can become rich fodder for us that we can later employ to make our writing honest, rich and vivid.</p><p id="9b25">During meditation, we are also encouraged to notice when we have gotten carried away on a train (or trainwreck) of thought — forgotten that we were sitting in meditation, for instance — and to gently bring our attention back to the moment, back to the breath. We have an opportunity then to notice the habit of the mind to berate ourselves, in this case likely for “failing” to meditate properly. We notice that too is just a thought. We come to appreciate that listening to that kind of thought does <i>not</i> help us to meditate — in fact, if we take it seriously, it usually causes us to stop meditating. Just as those kind of thoughts do not help us to write.</p><h2 id="b78c">Practice and Commitment</h2><p id="689d">Finally, meditation also teaches two other essential ingredients in writing: practice and commitment. Bottom line, in order to enliven the feisty writer within we have to commit to practice. And in order to be free from the self-critical voices that keep us from writing, it helps to meditate.</p></article></body>

Meditation helps us dis-identify from our self-critical voices and encourages us to pay attention — both good fodder for writing

Did you say mindfulness helps to unlock the feisty writer?

That’s right. And to be clear, I mean go ahead and sit down and do nothing: meditate.

But, but . . . meditation? . . . that’s all sitting still, inner peace, no thoughts, and silence, right? What’s feisty about that?

Meditating is courageous

It takes true courage — that’s what. Meditation puts us in direct contact with the self-critical voices in our head. You know, the ones that say “I can’t write!” or “I have nothing to say” — the ones that say “You can’t write that!” and encourage us to pull back from the hard truth, from the gory (or glorious) details.

Many people think that meditation is about driving thoughts away, but that’s not it at all. Rather, it’s a tool that teaches us to dis-identify from the self-critical voices — to see them for what they are: unhelpful habitual thoughts keeping us from living fully in the present, from participating — from writing.

Meditation teaches us to turn our attention away from those voices and to listen instead to our authentic voice. We discover for ourselves the difference: those mean and self-critical voices are not us — only a conditioned program running unchecked, controlling us and keeping us from being courageous, from saying YES! to life, from being a feisty writer.

Meditation and writing are fundamentally complementary

I’ve discovered that meditation and writing are fundamentally complementary. Meditation works by employing a writer’s best friend: the power of paying attention.

We sit in meditation and learn to notice everything as if we were an observer — a witness: bodily sensations, sounds, smells, tastes, visual phenomenon, emotions and thoughts.

This is particularly true if we are suffering. Instead of being consumed with our emotions, we act as a journalist, taking detailed notes — interested in describing this phenomenon accurately, freshly, without cliché — outside the realm of our conditioning.

We investigate: where does this anger reside in the body? What are the unique physical sensations that are associated with this anger? What thoughts triggered it? Does it have a color, a taste, a texture? As a meditator, we pay attention in order to use everything in our experience to see how we are causing ourselves to suffer, so we can drop that.

As a writer, we pay attention so that these details can become rich fodder for us that we can later employ to make our writing honest, rich and vivid.

During meditation, we are also encouraged to notice when we have gotten carried away on a train (or trainwreck) of thought — forgotten that we were sitting in meditation, for instance — and to gently bring our attention back to the moment, back to the breath. We have an opportunity then to notice the habit of the mind to berate ourselves, in this case likely for “failing” to meditate properly. We notice that too is just a thought. We come to appreciate that listening to that kind of thought does not help us to meditate — in fact, if we take it seriously, it usually causes us to stop meditating. Just as those kind of thoughts do not help us to write.