When We Write, We Come Alive

It is often said that when a writer writes, he/she writes from a place far deeper than the limits of the conscious mind.

Somewhere between the realms of the heart and the dwelling of the soul, a magical land nestles on the horizon; Between valleys and mountains, rivers and fields. It exists in our imaginations, but its promise is sweet like the apple of temptation held to our wet lips, crisp and juicy… dangerous. Real.

When we write, we sit and let our hearts reach the page the way rivers reach the ocean.

They rush and run, a steady flow, determined, always knowing where it’s headed but not the route it must take. Nothing can stop its course. In the same way, nothing can stop the words from spilling from inside of us and out into the world.

We draw our words like swords from a place of dreams, desires, nightmares and fears. Truths so raw they threaten to break us open as they burst through the barriers of our physical form. Our souls may bleed a thousand deaths as we dictate its longings onto the page as it settles and sets into a little piece of its own history.

Our mind will leave us and in its place an empty space, void of rationality and sense.. An urgency, a passion that reaches the very depths of our heart and begs to be etched onto the souls of those who read it.

Words are manifestations of ourselves. They are symbolic representations of the many truths and desires  which lurk inside each and every one of us.

They force their way out through hurried pens and scrambled fingers on keys. They pour like liquid gold out from under the places where we’ve kept them buried like hidden treasure. The unanswered questions of our own existence kept like hostages of our souls.

They bleed from our wounds, our hearts, our ink-filled veins.

Stirred from the bottom of our engorged hearts we scrape letters, smudged with tears and sweat and heartache. Signed with blood we write with poisoned ink, our pained revenges and our bittersweet goodbyes to old lovers and friends.

We lie naked and exposed, wrapped in the silken robes of stories told and secrets yet to be revealed. We let our hands gently reach out in the dark for others who understand that our words are our most precious gift. They are to be hidden in hand-carved ivory boxes, wrapped with satin and ribbons and delivered in the dead of the night, to be opened by those who’s hearts beat with the same gentle rhythm as our own.

We savour words as if each succulent morsel was crafted from the finest sugar-spun delicacy, melting on our lips and our minds. Their sweetness lingering and dripping from our souls like drizzled honey.

We caress old books, their spines weak and frayed. We touch them like old lovers, who’s every curve we know like our own. Yet each time we trace our fingers along their worn edges, it feels like the first time, tense with excitement and eager to unfold the promises within.

We swim amongst sentences like drowning men, off long lost ships, swirling and sinking within the rough seas of our minds. We cast nets for feelings and scramble for their meaning , ripping open maps containing long lost lands. And when we can no longer find our way, we rely on the quiet wisdom within and let it guide us, shaking pen in hand, to steer us home.

We find heaven on earth as we sit and breathe life onto blank pages; Our art is our words, our instruments our pens and the medium our hearts.

Write Your Own Path to Happy

You are the sum of your experiences.

So they say.

We are told that we are a part-nurtured, part-natured walking product of everything we’ve been through and everything we believe to be true within and without of ourselves. We are a collection of memories, subconscious influences and belief systems which gradually mold us into the folks we are today.

We are warned that we carry the burden of all the unkind words and unfair judgments that we have ever received, that we harbor all our previous moments of personal anguish, and that we embody all the false hopes and misguided truths which we have learned and which we must un-learn in order to find true happiness.

However…

… are we not, therefore, the product of all of our positive experiences too? Are we not carrying around the satisfaction of every heartfelt compliment and word of encouragement?

Are we not resonating with every kind smile, every yet-to-be-realized dream and every moment of pure joy which linger inside of us, waiting to be recalled and re-lived to remind us of how amazing we really are?

I believe that for every breakdown, there is a breakthrough. For every put-down, there is a great big hoist-up, and for every thunderstorm, there is a rainbow that follows.

In essence, we are strong, we are determined and we are hopeful. At our core, we believe that there is always something to aim for, be that true love, contentment… success… or heaven. We are unified in our common pursuit for more, for better, for what we feel we deserve.

For every insult you endured, I can bet you have received a compliment. For every rejection you survived, you have achieved some form of success, and for every time you forgot how to believe in yourself, you were shocked by the realization that you had more faith than you ever gave yourself credit for. For every time you have been lost… you have also been found.

You always picked yourself up and carried on. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be here now.

We dwell on the times we fell, we lost and we were hurt. We hold on to our wounds like battered reminders of our failings — anti-trophies of our battles and defeats. But what of all the many times we smiled, we won and we saved ourselves, over and over again?

Where are our proud medals of personal success and gold-starred acknowledgements of our sweet victories and triumphs?

We are resilient and strong, and it’s about time we remembered this. We should be laying wreaths at the altars of the beautiful days we have lived.

I choose to let myself be the person I am, and the person I am proud of becoming. I choose to remember the sheer number of times my breath has been stolen by sunsets and sunrises, the oceans and mountains.

I choose to be influenced by the kindness of strangers who have continuously shined out to me like a beacon of hope in the chaos of humanity.

I choose not to be broken by the words which went against me, but instead choose to be strengthened by thepower of those which lifted me up and filled my heart with hope and my soul with joy.

I have decided to be carried by the river of love which runs through me, not by the fickle breeze of judgment and contempt which, at some stage, blows amongst us all.

Our whole lives are based on choice, it is what set us apart from other animals. We all have souls that need to survive but the difference is, we have a choice; we don’t have to just survive, we can live, we can thrive and we can be inspired.

We can choose what to leave behind and what no longer serves us. We have a privilege and, therefore, a right to be able to carry with us only that which benefits us — be it memories, friends, lovers or experiences.

“How we feel about ourselves, the joy we get from living, ultimately depends directly on how the mind filters and interprets everyday experiences. Whether we are happy depends on inner harmony, not on the controls we are able to exert over the great forces of the universe.”

~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Why should we carry the responsibility of the burden of our pasts when we can choose to leave it behind?

Let’s try to take only with us the softness, the warmth and the kindness that each of us has and will continue to experience, and be  more selective with the past we choose to carry; therefore, the life we choose to live.

If I am the sum of my experiences, then I choose to be built out of the multitudes of dreams that reside inside my heart and the many sunny days that I have woken up to.

I choose to be a product of all the magical times that my soul has connected with another’s, and the plethora of smiles I have received from strangers. I choose to be a grand medley of the times I have loved others and been loved myself.

I choose to embody the sum of the parts of me constructed from perseverance, determination and hope, rather than an amalgamation of my memories of fear and shame.

My self-confidence is more reliant on how I choose to see myself, than how others choose to see me.

My self-belief is dependent on the importance I place on my own dreams, not the willingness of others to support them.

The love I have for myself is home-grown and self-appointed and is based  on the gradual collection of experiences in which I have taken growth and strength as an outcome, not self-pity.

{Photo via pinterest.com}

We have two options in this short and sweet life of ours: We can blame others for who or where we are today, or we can take responsibility for our own happiness. We are the lead character in the story of our lives… Select the plot you want, drop what you don’t. The rest is fantasy.

It’s true that we are the sum of our experiences… but only those we choose to cherish. Remember the good and forget the rest.

Life’s too short not to.

Non- attachment; How to set ourselves free

I think we can all say that at some point in our lives we have become attached to someone or something.

What starts out as a casual desire or appreciation can slowly turn into the shackles of attachment. The fear that one day it might not be yours creeps into the recesses of your mind, and gradually you become a slave to the need to possess, to hold tight and tonever let go.

Attachment seems to link closely with an idea of ownership — a protective, ego bound possession. We are afraid that we will lose whatever it is we keep. Fear takes over as we try desperately to grapple at that which we think we have a right to own; be it a belief or a person.

Buddhism promotes the idea of detachment as a path to happiness. We let go of that which we want to cling on to and, in doing so, something wonderful happens; we realize that we never owned it in the first place and nothing is ever really under our control.

We give permission to stay or go. And with this new arrangement comes trust and an acceptance that ‘whatever may be, may be’. We surrender to the mystery of life; we set ourselves free.

Nothing is permanent, nothing is given or fixed. We can’t ever know that anything will stay in our lives, not even if we make them promise, or if we promise ourselves; promises can be broken, trust can be damaged. People change, life goes on.

Of course, to live in a state of apathetic detachment seems soul-less and empty, and it can be argued that the things we love and give us joy are the sweet icing on the cake of life; so is it possible to cherish that which we love, yet remain open to its finiteness in our lives?

The real key to happiness, and appreciating that which we have in our lives without getting attached to them, is to develop a strong sense of personal freedom and love for ourselves which allows us to enjoy connections with others and for what we have, without fear of the future or potential loss.

We are therefore whole, we are loving and we are present. And above all, we are confident in our individual strength without needing anyone or anything to validate us.

I’ve been in relationships where one or both of us has feared the other leaving, to the point where either begins to control, to grab, to cling. This inevitably leads to jealousy, fear, resentment, and all the ugly elements of a relationship which is doomed.

The unfortunate irony of attachment in relationships is that the more you cling to someone, for fear of losing them, the more likely you are to push them away and encourage their departure.

There is an analogy about holding a handful of sand. If we close our fist around the sand, it forces out between our fingers, it slips between the crevices and it spills out. If we sit patiently with our hand open, the sand stays put. This explains the very nature of attachment and clinging: when we desperately want to hold on to something, we end up losing it.

“Most of our troubles are due to our passionate desire for and attachment to things that we misapprehend as enduring entities.” ~ Dalai Lama

Attachment and possession are like capturing a wild animal ; the beautiful creature lives its life free to move as it pleases, to come and go and run and play. It is admired and desired because of its beauty and freedom and also because it is different and mysterious.

People want to take the animal out of its habitat and covet it. So the wild animal is captured and trapped, never allowed back to the wild, for fear that given a choice, it will not return.

What happens to this animal in captivity? It begins to wither and its souls begins to fade; it remembers how it loved to roam free, how it could explore and experience life the way it wanted to and  the spirit it once had in its heart begins to fade.

The very nature of the wild animal disappears, and its place is taken up by nothing but sadness. And who wants to keep prisoner a sad and lonely soul?

In the same way, when we love something or someone, we do so because we love the state they are in naturally and spontaneously. We love their wildness. If we try to preserve thiswildness by keeping them close, taming them and protecting them from their natural habitat, controlling them and enslaving them, we will watch the very element we loved in them disappear.

The key is to realize that what we have today, we might not have tomorrow, and we will be okay with that. We need to feel secure enough in our own lives so that we needn’t look for validation elsewhere. We need to know that we will survive the loss of love and friendships and possessions and still continue to exist.

“You must love  in such a way that the person you love feels free.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

In this way, detachment is a beautiful expression of gratitude and appreciation, because we are acknowledging the impermanence and wildness of that which we love, which begins with the love we have for ourselves and transcends to the freedom of others.

It means leaving an open door to those who come into our lives and hearts — free to come and go as they please and being thankful for their presence along the way.

It means loving the spaces, the gaps and the distances between each other; it is within these reserves that a mutual appreciation awakens. When you take a step back, you can admire something in its entirety. And the space allows for a little mystery to grow.

It means honoring the freedom and wildness of everyone who comes into our lives; they may stay a season or they may stay a lifetime, but they certainly crossed your path for a reason.

People are lessons, sometimes we have to let the most important ones go… for that was part of the nature of their very teaching.

It is acknowledging everyone’s individuality and choice. What might work for one might not work for the other, and what worked once may cease to at a later stage. It is accepting that life moves in mysterious ways; sometimes in our favour, sometimes against.

The beauty of life is in the acceptance of its fragility, like a delicate crystal — a reminder of the impermanence of our existence.

To embrace this is to embrace the unpredictability of life, to give thanks for the connections with others who are present in our lives, knowing that one day they may not be, and to focus on building relationships which set ourselves and others free.