On my balcony a pink haze, as cyclamen, magnolia and miniature flowering cherry come into bloom. A bell sounds. From the playground I can hear children’s voices, soaring in release. Through the open door, this spring morning calls me into presence, and possibility. I take up my pen.
Some minutes ago I sat disheartened and empty before the blank page, the critic on my shoulder, passing judgement, preventing me from writing anything, reminding me that I had nothing new to say, promising that I would make a fool of myself.
For a moment I was almost caught – in the trap my own mind had made, in the story it had created. I was reminded of the Buddhist story of the person who painted an enormous tiger on the wall of their meditation cave and returned late that night only to be terrified by the very same tiger in the fire light, forgetting who had painted it.
To write it is necessary to befriend resistance, whether it presents itself as judgement, fear, inertia, shadow or paralysis. Similar to meditation practice, we learn to sit with whatever comes, allowing it simply to be there. The great Sufi mystic Rumi wrote how our “ being human is a guesthouse/ every morning a new arrival/a joy a depression a meanness/ some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor”. This welcoming of whatever comes, this opening of the door, is essentially a journey deeper into what it means to be human. In a wonderful poem by Czech poet Miroslav Holub the door becomes a metaphor for the writing process and indeed for the unopened possibilities of life itself. He urges the reader to go and open the door. Perhaps there will be a garden or a magic city, a dog rummaging, or a fog clearing. “Even if there’s only/ the darkness ticking,/even if there’s only/the hollow wind,/even if/ nothing/ is there,/go and open the door”.
The school bell signals the end of playtime. I imagine the children reluctantly going indoors to classrooms and formal lessons. I find myself dreaming of schools where children are involved in directing their own learning, where imagination is central, where all types of intelligence are celebrated. I see children in myriads of activities that are fun filled, creative, life-giving. I see all of us as children in those moments of our lives when we were pure possibility, when our spirits were unbroken and free. I find myself longing for the kind of self-expression that the German poet Rilke desired when he wrote: “May what I do flow from me like a river, /no forcing and no holding back,/the way it is with children”.
So many of us long to re-discover that flowing stream of creativity that we sensed as children - those moments of light and play that opened us up to realms of endless possibility and newness. In one of Seamus Heaney’s poems he recalls a childhood game of sliding on the ice, where the children imagine, re-imagine and attempt the perfect slide: “Running and readying and letting go/Into a sheerness that was its own reward:/A farewell to surefootedness, a pitch/Beyond our usual hold upon ourselves”.
This sense of moving beyond our usual hold upon ourselves can be glimpsed in those moments in writing when we suspend the critical mind and allow thoughts, images, feelings to flow easily from the heart to the hand onto the blank page. Of course there will be time to bring the critic in later when it comes to editing and refining the work, but as one of my great teachers advised me not to “ pay the critic” at the outset, or the result would be paralysis.
Writing practice is a little like meditation practice. We learn to sit in non-judging awareness and mindful presence, open to what ever comes. We learn to trust those first thoughts as the best thoughts as we empty our minds of clutter and noise and aspire towards beginner’s mind. We sit like the child in Heaney’s basalt wishing chair at the Giant’s Causeway , seeing and dreaming “beyond the range” we thought we’d “settled for”. We begin to locate ourselves within larger horizons of being and becoming. As the writer Natalie Goldberg, who had also spent many years in Buddhist meditation practice, said in an interview:
Writing practice is a technique that allows you to contact the vastness of being without
going crazy. It gives you a structure. Whatever comes up, you keep your hand moving and
you sit there until the time is up. Just like in meditation; whatever comes up while you're
meditating, you keep the structure of the posture until the bell rings. You put down your
pen for a while and go take a walk, and then you dip yourself in again.
The pastel pink blossoms of the cyclamen are offset against its cerise pink pot. A gardener creates raised beds for the school children to plant and grow. The mindfulness bell sounds on my computer. Bird song is insistent, joyful. Everything is in bud.
Anne F. O’Reilly Ph D.
Anne F.O'Reilly. PhD. has over thirty years experience of teaching and facilitating workshops in spirituality, creative writing and sacred poetry. She was a senior Lecturer in Religious Studies in St Patrick's College Drumcondra until 2008 when she took early retirement and began working as a performance poet, celebrating the healing and transforming power of poetry. She brings to this work many years training with voice, poetry by heart, sacred clowning, drama and meditation. She is the author of Sacred Play:Soul Journeys in Contemporary Irish Theatre (Carysfort Press 2004), and Singing from the Belly of the Whale (2009), a book of poetry, with original paintings by Caroline Hunter. The CD Breathsong with her own poems and music by Wayne P. Sheehy was released in March 2011. Ann is facilitating a two day writing workshop in Croi Anu Moone on Sat 2nd and Sun 3rd April. For details call 087 8381933 or check out www.croianu.ie.
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