WRITING

Artists of all kinds — painters, sculptors, musicians — find and express spirituality in and through creativity, and many practitioners find their way to the heart of a spiritual tradition through its emotional and expression in art or music rather than through theology.

In addition to relating to the art of others, the process of creativity can itself provide a sense of the sacred, whether or not one thinks of them self as artistic. Few things are as creative as dreams — those elaborate messages from the unconscious once believed to be sent by gods. By working with dream symbols, keeping a prayer journal, or by creating artwork in a meaningful way, we are able to engage deeper levels of our being, thus expressing and synthesizing elements in ways that often surprise our surface mind.

In writing, the sense of connection comes not at the point a book is published, but in the primary process of creativeness. When one is writing hard, a sort of humming starts at the edge of one’s consciousness: earth slides away, the sky opens. These writers are in, quite literally, another world. Something comes to them, through them, something sings them, hums them. When you are able to set aside your judgmental mind which limits you to what you think you can do well, you can participate in this primary creative act, can connect with this source.

Creativity — whether through writing, painting, or creative imagination — releases us into a timeless world where all things are possible. In this magical realm we can reclaim past events, retrieve former selves, live out what almost was, what could have been. Through creating, we are able to fill out the hollows and blank spaces in our lives, to make sense of and give reality to our experience. In this private arena where conscious and unconscious meet and interact, we are granted a unique opportunity to negotiate peace settlements between inner and outer, between self and other, between sacred and profane.

Writing, like breathing, is a way of connecting the mind and the body, the conscious and the unconscious. Through writing, we can slip the moorings of our own personality to look at the world through another’s eyes, to walk in their shoes. By imagining into their situation, we develop understanding and compassion, explore new ideas, new modes of being. Through writing and/or visualizing, we can overcome our fear of death by “experiencing’ our own, thus leading us to live more lightly in the time we have left. Through keeping a dream journal, we can catch the hints and interpret the stories our unconscious sends us nightly. Through active imagination/visualization we can overcome psychological obscurations that block our spiritual path.

Writing in a journal or composing any kind of ongoing record of one’s thoughts, activities, and events, creates a storehouse of information, even if incomplete and sporadically kept. Writing about your spiritual journey will help to deepen the experience as you write, and teach you to be more aware, more conscious of your ongoing process.

Putting emotions and buried experiences into words is the first step toward getting them into consciousness. After you’ve learned that writing can take you below a certain level of mind, then you’re embarked on a profound journey that is perhaps best not talked about too much. There is something out there/in here, something conscious that holds the world together, something that is knowable, something that can be understood in silence, in loneliness, something that reveals itself gradually or swiftly, something that can be taken away sometimes for weeks or even years. What to call it? To name it might limit it, but let it work through you, trust it, trust yourself, trust the process that binds you both together. Trust and honor it. You have to be very quiet, very still to hear it, like catching a tune being played in the far distance. Learn to be still and let it work through you, heal you.

A good method for beginning a writing meditation is to set the clock for twenty minutes and not let the pen stop moving until that time has elapsed. Don’t worry about spelling, grammar, or style — just write. If you find that you are stuck, simply write the same sentence or word over again until the pen “takes off” on its own.

To visualize, or what the Jungians call “active imagination”, simply relax the body, relax the mind, and open the inner eye to whatever images present themselves. Watch for a while and participate when your inner voice tells you to do so. Even though you may not be able to visualize clearly at first, by making the effort you will create the means of a new way of perceiving.

To think and to write about spiritual life is to engage actively in the process of integrating and shaping that life.