Doubt

Good morning beloved reader,

Perhaps one of the most challenging aspects I find of walking the writer’s path is when those moments of doubt arise. And really it’s an ego thing: Don’t I need a published book to be a “real” writer? 

Yes, I’ve had a “mini book” published, but my Inner Critic does not hesitate to tell me: That doesn’t count. And as I’ve written plenty of times before, the Inner Critic is just an aspect of ego.

But you wouldn’t want to meet my Inner Critic in a dark alley, she’d slay you. Thankfully I’ve learned how to either, “Invite your Inner Critic to go sit on the couch,” as a beloved spiritual teacher offered, or as my own 86-year-old mother says, “Tell your Inner Critic to Fu#k off!”😁😆 which still amuses me.

But sometimes doubt still arises — that tricky little ego says to me: How do I know if I’m a “good” writer?

And I still come back to wanting to have a physical book that I wrote, sitting on a bookshelf in a bookstore. And I wonder if, or if I’m lucky when a book written by me may be found on a bookstore shelf, if at that point, I will believe that I still need something else to “legitimize” me as a writer. That I won’t feel like a “real” writer unless for example, it hits The New York Times bestseller list.

And so it goes on — those never-ending desires of the ego and how the Inner Critic can stop us from enjoying what is here right now. 

Perhaps gratitude is a key out of this negative thought-pattern. I’m deeply grateful to now have over 200 subscribers to this Substack providing an opportunity for my words to be read. Thank you so much for being here!

Perhaps another key that shows what is important: how you feel while engaging in whatever practice it may be — and for me, here and now, it’s the practice of writing.

But it could be any creative act: making music, singing, cooking, playing with clay in a potter’s studio, creating a beautiful garden — however you allow your innate creativity to flow through you. And maybe what matters most is your state of presence as you practice.

We get to Be Here Now😁 as we show up as the conduit for creativity to flow through us.

And in practicing the craft of writing, I get to show up, pay attention, tell my truth, and practice remaining detached from outcomes.

~

I’ve heard plenty of stories about how plenty of great books were once a manuscript that had been rejected by x number of agents and publishers. But I cannot imagine that on their writing path before publication, perhaps the ego of those authors did not have moments of arising doubt too. 

Beth Kempton

’s brilliant book, The Way of the Fearless Writer, offers me great solace — or maybe it offers my ego great solace😁 This is from Chapter 10: Authoring: (the bolding is mine)

For me, anyone who writes is a writer. But being an author is slightly different. It requires taking a book-sized risk. When I say “book” in this chapter, I am referring to any large writing project intended for widespread distribution, which includes nonfiction books, novels, screenplays, poetry collections, and so on, whether traditionally published or self-published. When I say “author” I mean anyone taking on such a project. 

The main reason projects like these are so scary is that we authors have a tendency to attach our self-worth to the success of our work in the marketplace. There are so many things wrong with that it’s hard to know where to begin, but let’s start with the building blocks of a writing life. 

Beth Kempton goes on to describe a stunningly beautiful building in Japan called the Ribbon Chapel, designed by Hiroshi Nakamura - and I urge you to click through to see more amazing images and read more about it. It’s truly extraordinary.

And I simply adore how she goes on to describe this image as a metaphor:

…the Ribbon Chapel is formed from two giant interwoven spiral staircases rising up through the trees like a wooden homage to the double helix. 
But, unlike in DNA, in the case of the chapel the spirals join at the top.
This building is what I think of when I think about the writing life.

We schedule our days as if life is linear, and we celebrate first books as the culmination of all our hard work, that culmination being an end point we cannot see beyond. But five books in I can tell you this: the writing life is more like a double helix than a straight line. One spiral represents our growth as a writer, and the other our growth as a human being. I imagine a thread running up through the center of the double helix, representing the theme of our life. It’s the thing we keep being drawn back to, whatever we write. For me this thread is about making the most of this precious life. Take some time to think about what your thread might be.

This metaphor is wildly meaningful to me. Perhaps in part because it seems like a Buddhist approach to writing — meaning for me that there is no judging, only observing — but also it speaks to my soul.

I’ve often heard that as writers we write about our “obsessions,” and you can read more about that here where I have said:

I’ve heard it said that as writers, we write down our mind.
I believe we also write down our heart and soul.

But in response to Beth’s writing: “For me this thread is about making the most of this precious life. Take some time to think about what your thread might be.”

In this vein, I believe in the importance of learning how to excavate our own dharma, and this link takes you to a chapter in my book I’ve serialized here on Substack, about the ancient Hindu sacred text, The Bhagavad Gita, which was a pivotal text for me in coming to understand what the idea of dharma is, and then in learning how to identify what is my own dharma.

So then in living our dharma, we are living our ‘purpose’ or to put it a different way, I believe our dharma is what our soul designed this human life for.

Consider the famous quote from the French Jesuit priest and philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955):

“We're not human beings having a spiritual experience.
We're spiritual beings having a human experience.”

When I think about this quote, I find it easy to imagine our spiritual beings designing our human experience with the purpose of healing and learning certain specific lessons. And our human experience provides us with opportunities for this learning and healing.

So perhaps it’s simply our job to excavate what our soul has already designed, in order to live our dharma (and astrology can help with this too.) And maybe your dharma can also be looked at as the “thread” that Beth describes: the theme of our life.

For me, my dharma, or this “thread,” or the theme of my life, is about the evolution of human consciousness, both for myself, and for all who may be interested in walking this path with me. And I use the art and craft of writing to both engage with all of you my beloved readers, and to create a community where you may engage with each other as well.

And thank you to

Sarah Fay | Writers at Work

for making this distinction between one-on-one relationships between writers and readers being a more vertical relationship, and then she also says, “Creating community is when you connect your subscribers to each other. It’s horizontal.”

And of course this led me to the connection between this description and how Eckhart Tolle talks about the vertical and horizontal dimensions of life:

“… the vertical dimension is realized, you enter it as you become present, and as you become present, the stream of thinking subsides, is replaced with a space of awareness. … Well, in the vertical dimension, you know that you are. … The being as itself.”

And in stark contrast to the vertical’s nature of being, the horizontal dimension is more in line with doing; it embodies the tangible, the realm of action where life unfolds in its myriad forms — and this happens in community. This horizontal dimension encapsulates the totality of human experience — our thoughts, actions, and interactions that paint the canvas of our existence.

From the Bhagavad Gita’s perspective, chapter 13 discusses this in reference to the “Field” and the “Knower.” The Field being the horizontal dimension of community and action and doing; and the Knower being the vertical dimension, that observing awareness, or consciousness, or being. And perhaps the ultimate experience of this one-on-one relationship and being is in each of our connection with the Divine Beloved / God / the Force or whatever words you may choose to use to point towards what we try to describe with the limitations of words.

~

And so my beloved reader, have you taken the time to identify your own dharma? Or as Beth Kempton calls it, “a thread running up through the center of the double helix, representing the theme of our life”? If you’d care to share in the comments, I’d love to hear from you.

I’m so delighted and feel deep gratitude in my heart that we get to walk this path together. Thank you for reading!

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p.s. a little note to say thank you for the hearts on my last post. It truly does give my heart an uplift to know that my words have connected with a reader. For me that’s what art is all about: brightening the connections between us. Thank you for reading!