Writing from the Inside Out (10 page)

When I am true to myself, I find that that's what the world really needs. If I'm communicating in a way that isn't in line with my will, my voice — to speak contorted against who I really am — I won't be as fulfilled, and the image won't have as much staying power or as much effectiveness in the real sense.

No truth is permanent and lasting, because all truth gets expressed by something. It is wonderful that everything expresses some truth. Language serves to direct attention, and postures direct attention as well. Slouching in a chair both limits the thoughts I can have and encourages me to have other thoughts. Standing on one's head has the same affect, but toward a different end. Both are right. More than what I think is happening is happening.

When I no longer cling to anything else, I still have myself — as I really am. When the mind and body are not insisting on separation, doing what it is my will to do becomes easier. The way I phrase things creates effects in the world within me. Words are the sense elements of the mind. Therefore it is best that practice is pointed to the place from which metaphors come. Stepping into the shoes of negative capability, I experience creativity and wonder. To achieve an outcome, I don't even need an agenda if I have the discipline of practice.

I am only me for a short time. I may think I own the house, but I don't own it forever. I get to be a steward of energy. The world is created as a sacrifice — not at pains, necessarily — but as an act of transcending the self. I must act, and the only way to be free is to act naturally.

Entering the moment, I find a new expression, different than what I came expecting. What I need is never exactly what I think I need. When I try and hold on to what comforts me, I don't grow. Are my personal goals really what I find myself dedicated to sleeping and waking? I live most fully when directing my attention toward the eternal in the present moment. It's marvelous that I get to be the experiencer at all. Potentially, everything could be blissful. The challenge is being open for it. I try to remember this when showering outdoors at my cabin, and there is no hot water; when a breeze rolls in, I remember:
It could be blissful
.

Releasing an arrow from the bow, I do what I can and trust the rest. After I release, it's someone else's job. All I can control is my body, my posture, and the angle of release. Once it's gone, I have no say over where it goes. I like to think that I do, and I keep watching it closely, maybe trying to steer it one way or the other. Trying, I squint, I lean, and I grimace.

As purpose filled as I can be with my life, something is going on that I shouldn't ignore: I am a newborn and mother nature is very large, very old. I can make the best of what I have, but I can't make it permanent. Knowing limitations is actually a great gift of freedom. Self-realization is my main task. To get there requires renunciation, the kind that gets you to enter the world again, so that you depart even from the sacred space of practice.

What appears like success or failure may, in time, turn out to be the opposite, and with more time may appear of little consequence. If I feel like a failure, I do things that justify feeling like a failure. If I feel like a success, I do things that justify that success. So, in the moment, I seek sufficiency and gratitude in the middle way between living and reading, and I produce material that is enlivening, directs presence toward openness, and creates surprising clarity. Listening for music stretches my ability to hear.

 

 

Long ago, prior to Tantra, the school of Sankya was prevalent in India. The practitioner of Sankya understood there to be five senses, plus the mind. These senses are never without an object. The mind's object is language (or images). Each sense has its respective objects, and the senses are only experienced in relation to an object — there being no way to taste tasting or see seeing, as such.

The Sankya practitioner believed that only the self was real. Every object in the universe consisted of elements, and Sankya practice helped to detach the self from sensory experience (via discrimination). The practitioner was on a quest to detach from all sense objects, which is one way to be free of the drama of life. The ego is hard at work to negotiate suitable places for us amid the drama that begins with the senses and their objects.

Imagine that I walk into a teashop, and I notice two people sitting at a table talking to each other. I have dated both of these people in the past. They're talking to each other. That sight would give me a strong charge. I could see only the component parts — two people sitting at a table. Dating is just a word. The table is wood with metal screws, and the people, in turn, consist of various elements. The goal, in this case, is not to do anything, but rather to eliminate all charge from worldly concerns.

This practice is useful but problematic if something is more real than the self. Also a problem: It is not possible to go about life without taking any actions. Tantric yoga expanded from the paradigm of Sankya and taught nonaction in action, or action without attachment to the fruit of one's labors. Through this practice, one relinquishes the ego and invites the higher self as the doer. This practice is messy particularly when it is not a solitary practice, because the potential for distortion grows when many egos are involved, when many stories converge and compete.

Tantra practice asks that I relinquish all ego concern and let the boundless nature of love manifest through my actions. Delusion or suffering is an outcome of conditioning. When I relax and free myself from my conditioning, I act more in line with my true potential. Achieving greater freedom is an intimidating process; body and mind cling to what's familiar.

The Sanskrit word for the ego is
ahamkara
(self-shape). Ego is hierarchically superior to the senses and the mind. The ego manages the mind and body to move toward thoughts and sensations that affirm it — and away from those that threaten it.

Carl Jung taught that, at a fundamental level, all human beings inherit the same images, the same charged stories. In the Hindu text the Mahabharata, and specifically in the
Bhagavad Gita
¹
, we encounter representation of the ego in the character Dhritarashtra, whose name means “to cling tightly.” Dhritarashtra is a blind king whose army in the
Bhagavad Gita
is fighting against the hero Arjuna. It is key to remember that the ego is blind — it cannot see what is best for it. When it clings tightly, the ego does not serve its best interests as a ruler.

When the ego battle is fought, the persona in the place of the ego is not Dhritarashtra, but Arjuna, whose archery skills enable him to acquire something as-yet beyond him. Even more remarkable is what happens at the end of the battle, when Arjuna recognizes that he never did the killing — a shadowy form always struck before he had been able to act. To recognize the superiority of this shadowy form is the function of the internal witness or knower (
buddhi
), which is superior to the ego.

The more I come to identify not as the ego but as the witness, the more I move toward self-liberation. The ego does not really possess the independence it asserts. Thus, the Zen master Dogen said that “Mountains and rivers of themselves become wise persons and sages.”

The internal witness grants wisdom and discerns truth. I open the ego to
buddhi
through meditation, contemplation, and concentration. Hatha yoga is a kind of battle that helps make the mind/body ready to practice meditation. Practice makes the ego into a friend. That we have the sense of self is, in fact, an unfathomable gift. When we no longer cling to keep it out of fear, we are most soaked in awe.

The awe is magnified as we come to understand that something exists beyond the witness. Superior to
buddhi
is something twofold:
prakriti
, unbounded wild nature and all material manifestation, found always in union with
purusha
, the consciousness imbued in nature.
Prakriti
/
purusha
differs from
buddhi
in that
buddhi
is still attached to a self, whereas
prakriti
/
purusha
is impartial, infinite naked awareness. Truly diving into totality, inheriting everything, we are the most haunted because the self has no shape to which to cling.

Tantra is an ongoing internal and external practice. Rather than looking to external means for achieving satisfaction in life, fighting for success and control, Tantra grants perspective to the flow of existence. Grounded in the understanding that my desires are not the final answer, I learn my boundaries and benefit from counsel. I become a whole individual, satisfied in myself. Deeper into the practice, moved by wild nature and unconditioned awareness, I am moved by love to act freely with integrity.

Through this hierarchy, I can understand in fundamental terms how my component parts are not separate from the elements of the natural world. Expanding the sense of that oneness, parts of the self relax, parts of the self grow — all the while the universe expresses itself. I don't think so much about myself or about what I write than about what is truly here — and, in that relationship, I seek and express clarity about the nature beyond me. The search for truth, the high pure of it, gets in the way.

¹
I highly recommend reading Winthrop Sargeant's version of the
Bhagavad Gita.

 

 

As writers, we sometimes make mistakes. It's true. Sometimes we overthink and overexplain the significance of an image that the reader may be apt to celebrate if only we knew when to leave well enough alone.

A trick is to know when to highlight the image and when to leave it to the reader to confront the significance. We want to avoid being heavy-handed, so we avoid overexplaining. We want to avoid being dramatic, so we tuck away significant images into the structure of a work.

Look for twenty opportunities in your written piece to honor the sufficiency of the incomplete, the mysterious. Rather than leaving the image alone, and without leading up to it, see if you can give the reader more time. Can you repeat a phrase? Can you enlarge the reader's sense of the thing by describing a nuance or element within the thing? Can you invoke the image again in a different order? Can you create a pause through syntax or punctuation? Can you make a mistake as a storyteller that tells a truth (as when leaving an issue unresolved, redirecting focus toward something else)? As long as readers know the written piece as a whole is going somewhere, and the pace is agreeable, they will delight that you are able to expand their sense of time, as they confront details that could otherwise be dismissed.

 

 

Everyone has a different experience of the same text. When a group of friends reads a book and gets together to talk about it later, each person will have a different opinion of the story's plot, its significance, and the best moments within the story. Each, truly, will have a different perception of the story. The reader experiences the written creation extended into the new moment. I may have someone in mind whom I'd like to have as a reader, though I can never fully know how someone will receive my work. Each reader is unique, each moment of reading is exceptional, and the way each reader comes to the work is distinctive.

My projection of the reader affects the way I write. I think of this immediate presence as the listener — the figure on the other side of my immediate efforts. The reader finds the work later — sometimes a great deal later — after the initial experience has passed and new experiences have arisen.

It is useful for me to have an idea of what my psyche is projecting upon my writing. At any given moment, the listener will change, and this change mirrors my own subconscious movements. The listener serves as a guide for me to take the path through language that merges with the desires of the work. This voiceless spirit is the truest guide.