Resurrecting my Inner Scribe with the Help of a Mentor

Hillary Rettig shared something with me about HealingVoyage.com during our last mentoring session that jolted me back to awareness. My blog (of which she read only a few posts on the opening page) was kind of dry and too impersonal. She also said to stop the poems – nobody wants to read poetry, she said. I admit that most of my poems probably suck, but still, I like them! I couldn’t agree outright, but neither did I disagree. I just listened with mind open and mouth closed.

Then I looked back at the history of HealingVoyage.com and noticed that my old posts, back in ’05, ’06, ’07 were more personal, more revealing of my self and my world. They had more spirit, more life.

Somewhere along the way I lost connection with that in my blog. Even to me the posts became boring, distant, didactic. I was choking myself in life, from the years 2007 to 2009; not enjoying but rather resenting my circumstances, my relationship (at that time), my self!

I was not being me in certain crucial areas and my writing, what little I produced, reflected the dying as it always has been an extension of what I am feeling and experiencing. And it was a dying without death – the worst kind of dying! Interminable, tortuous, without resolution, without courage……and thus, it could not be followed by a new beginning. This, to me, is living without spirit!

So then, Hillary Rettig, whom I met at a 2-day workshop she masterfully taught in Providence, RI, is now my mentor and after only a couple of sessions I am regaining clarity, and breathing (sometimes coughing) the sweetness of my once-languishing, inner scribe.

Living, and Writing, with Spirit

It’s 6:27am at this very moment and I have not added a word to my major writing project. I’ve been up since 5am browsing pages of web crap – who ‘won’ the GOP debate last night (I’m not a Republican btw, neither am I a Democrat); what’s wrong with Mariano Rivera, the Yankee closer; George Lopez joking that he’s going to buy crack now that his show’s been canceled (which I never watched – not once). Basically, I spent 90 minutes, roughly, wasting my nearsighted vision on things I really don’t care about because it’s much easier being distracted than staying on track.

Then, to redeem myself from internet purgatory, I opened up some blog sites of writers I want to emulate for different reasons, reasons that have to do with my desire to pursue writing full time, to finally take writing seriously and myself seriously as a writer. I bookmarked these writers’ sites (Thomas Moore, John Locke, Don Miguel Ruiz, Paulo Coelho, Zenhabits.net) because my mentor, Hillary Rettig (http://hillaryrettig.com/), recommends that I have some models to help me shape my vision and work. Makes sense.

I look to these sites for insight, for things to relate to, for inspiration. And it works. That’s why I’m blogging at this moment, because from what and how they share I distill this message – if they can do it, so can I.

There’s nothing more inspiring than that, at least to me. When we share our foibles, our hopes, our stumbles, and our triumphs we take people along a journey whose spirit can be integrated into their own marrow and resulting narrative. That’s why people volunteer, isn’t it? (Except when you’re facing a year in jail for shoplifting and you’re suddenly struck by the blinding white vision of ending global hunger….it’s called plea bargaining). Volunteering is more than about folding wool blankets for homeless people or teaching prison inmates how to read or singing Christmas songs in nursing homes – more than the activity itself, it is the spirit that enlivens, that comforts, that heals.

The activity enables but it is the spirit that enlivens. Going through the motions, or activity without spirit, is like the difference between having sex and making love. Flesh, sweat, and motion vs. heart, flow, and emotion. Where the former creates moments, the latter creates memories; where the former involves the body and mind, the latter engages the heart and soul.

I think that’s why I want to write…..because, more than the writing itself, it’s about the spirit to spirit connection, the heart to heart bond that gives any meaning whatsoever to the activity. Like Adam in the Creation myth, it would not have been enough to mold some clay – life, spirit, had to be breathed into that clay if the activity was to have any meaning at all.

process

I do not find the words….
to speak
to write;
I grope
I grapple
I tire
I stumble;
I fall
into stillness,
I fall
into silence
….then the words find me.

the meeting

read these words,
let your eyes caress them,
photograph their meaning,
drink their truth and believe their lies,
undress the pages with delicate fingers
afire with the deepened breath of a lover in wait;
feel the pages dance across your fingertips,
you, the imbiber of these dreams, these visions
from another realm
(not unlike your own)
that you sit to receive, eager to hear
as though listening for the moving waters of earth’s dawn,
that receiver of all secrets
that flow in her currents;
to sit face to face with this bearer of light
who shows you a way
away from the show
we call life;
to see into the face of a friend
you’ve never known
whose words you’ve never heard
’til once read,
which is what brought you here
to this familiar home,
imagination,
by the which you meet with
the author of the words you love.

Observing the Substance

I AM is the Substance.

when engaged in photography i observe Source in Creation with mindfulness and silence. everything ceases….and everything comes alive. in my observing i focus in on that which resonates with my being, my seeing, my expressing. for resonance to take place i must be my expressing as a doorway to that moment and possibility of resonant seeing.

when writing i am expressing Source as observer of the images, scenes, feelings, words and actions through windows of imagining. all creative expression originates at Source and facilitated by the Substance of consciousness, thought and imagination. this being so, observing becomes a creative act.

i at times mistake the act of observing as a passive posture. it is not. the force of will is engaged, decisions made. initiative is itself an act. if not followed by action then it is merely an impulse.

no matter. observing is action. observing enacts.

observing happens by instinct, spontaneously, first without thought, then with. observing happens by the ever-present force of will. it is projecting as much as it is receiving. observing assigns being to the observed, first without thought, then with. observing is a law unto itself.

not observing does not deny the existence of the invisible. the ‘invisible’ is visible in other domains of seeing. observing is always observing itself.

observing is the infinite enfolding of Source as Substance.

we are of the Substance.