I’ll never forget waking up in my wilderness cabin one morning long ago in my late twenties, climbing down the hand carved driftwood ladder from the loft, bowing to the sun rising over the forests of Texada Island and Georgia Strait to the south, sitting down at my desk, picking up a pen, and beginning to write. At the time, I was taking a writing class with Canadian novelist, poet, and screenwriter, Anne Cameron and her assignment was…”just write”…don’t stop. “If you feel blocked and unsure what to say, just write ‘unsure’ or ‘blocked’ and keep writing that over and over” until your vast and flexible intelligence jars loose your inner Shakespeare. Watch the blocks disappear like bubbles in the wake of a morning kayak paddle across a placid cove. Round the point and head out into the open sea of infinity, limitless possibility.
Writing is like cooking is like living. To master these arts, one needs to lose oneself in the act, to let go of rigid adherence to ego go-go-go straight line goal oriented mental bondage. Many thanks and a deep bow are offered to Sylvia Taylor, who posted a great gem on her Twitter page highlighting the top 5 business blogging mistakes of which I have certainly committed all five. Certainly, as a business owner and entrepeneur, the financial balance sheets should never be more than a few clicks away from the desktop of my mind, but who wants Quickbooks icons cluttering up the desktop? Wouldn’t we all rather float in the screen shot of a tropical lagoon, or attune our mind with an image of the Dalai Lama, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, or whatever great spiritual leader we admire? To these great beings, there is only one overarching concern – helping others. As the Dalai Lama often says, “be wisely selfish, care for others.” What does he mean by “wisely selfish”? If we take care of others, we will be happy. The cramped egocentric me-me-me mind will evaporate like a dark cloud into the brilliant blue sky of an autumn day. Furthermore, we’ll create skies of good karma which will bring us good fortune in the future. Something to tuck away in your pocket of magic for the coming gray days in the Northwest.
I think I lost myself a couple of times there. Feels really good after several blog posts that were maybe just a wee bit overly rectilinear. And sorry, can’t help myself here, it’s all coming from a place of wanting to share the feeling of being in the mind-space of inner freedom – there’s an energetic parallel here to what happens in the community acupuncture room. Anybody who’s tilted a recliner back and rode the inner Chi waves to the Sea of Aculand knows exactly what I’m talking about. Getting lost in the rise and fall of one’s own breath and vibrating waves of energy is to dive beneath the chaotic surface of the push-pull-money-schedule-success-failure dualities. Sinking below our struggles on the surface for a while, we see light rays fanning out into the depths. We see diamond sparkles shimmering above. We float along effortlessly, at one within the sea of life. And when we return to the surface in order to focus single-pointedly on our chosen tasks of service, that focus is held within a vast container of open hearted compassion and awareness of interdependence and unity.
All of this is to say, don’t give up on your search for meaning and fulfillment in this sometimes strange and irrational world we live in. If you feel like you’ve been rushing forward too fast for too long – slow down and do nothing for a while. Summer’s riotous energy blooms are now fading. Soon the parks will be empty of all but raindrops, cold puddles and decaying leaves. Listen to the heartbeat of mother nature as we move into autumn. Maybe even skip your morning espresso one morning a week as a reminder. What matters in the long run is not how many hits we get on our blog, the size of your paycheck, or whether your life is going as planned. What matters is how much space you create in your heart – for yourself and all others.
