Friday May 26, 2023
Good morning Beloved Reader,
Once again thank you for reading and supporting the writing here in this Substack. I cannot tell you how much this means to me. I do practice remaining open but not attached to outcomes, but that does not stop me from feeling immense gratitude when someone appreciates my work. Please do not underestimate the effect of a heart on a post, or writing a comment underneath the post.
Writing is an art form where I cannot control how my words land in a reader. I’ve sat through enough writing workshops and writing circle gatherings where I’ve noticed how my words can land differently in each person — it seems to so often depend on what experience each reader brings to the writing.
Maybe every now and then I hit a “home run.” Where the writing is so deeply resonant, it cuts through every reader’s experience to a universal truth. But for me, this doesn’t happen all the time. I wish it did. Maybe one day.
It seems that if I approach my writing when I am in a space that is more connected with my creative right-brain, more than my analytical left-brain — or maybe it’s a connecting with my inner divinity — whatever it is, it often feels like some kind of Source that I tap into and the writing flows through me. And I know I’m not alone in this experience of creative writing, which is part of what points me towards the knowing that creativity is inextricably connected with spirituality.
I experience a kind of an inner peace, or a harmonious flow when this happens with my writing. It’s as though I’m in a trance, and when I come out and read what I’ve written, it transports me to the time and place and feelings of the past experience. I know I did this with the first three paragraphs in the first chapter in Part TWO of The Rising of the Divine Feminine and the Buddhist Monks Across the Road: A Memoir. I remember writing it and feeling like I was back in Pittwater as a kid, reveling in all the sensory details of the experience.
This is one of the many aspects of how I find the art and craft of writing personal essays and memoir, compliments the practice of observing one’s humanity from one’s divinity.
To write about stories from your life, you must first be able to NOT IDENTIFY with the experience. To realize, “I am not my stories.” You need to be able to create some kind of space around the experience so that it’s as though you’re writing a scene where you’ve just created this character on the page who is having this experience.
It’s kind of like you climb out of a proverbial box where you have your life experiences — in the terms of the Bhagavad Gita, this is the Field or one’s humanity — and you look back into that box and observe (from the Knower / your divinity) this spiritual being having a human experience and then you write all of the sensory details that are experienced in physical form: what is seen, heard, smelled, felt/touched, tasted, and you can also add what is sensed on an intuitive level.
There is so much conditioning in our culture to only identify with our rational minds. To not connect with the unseen, the wonder and mystery of life. But I love how more and more human beings — women especially — are writing about how to connect with our ‘team of light’ on the other side. About how to tap into that innate creativity inherent in a spiritual being having this human experience. (this phenomenon is also known as the Rising of the Divine Feminine 😉)
I know that personally, I often need to ground myself more in this material realm, as I feel more at ease in realms of consciousness, cultivating equanimity through meditation, understanding how clinging and wanting are at the root of suffering, and how to create a space between feeling an emotion and reacting — all of which we have learned about from our neighboring Theravadin Buddhist monks across the road.
Thank you for reading, and for readers in the United States, may you enjoy a fabulous long-weekend for Memorial Day✨🌟💖🙏🕊️
Camilla I love how you illuminated the sacred nature of embodiment in our sensual, messy human bodies. Such a great way to get in the memoir mood!! So grateful for you here at this time. Love to you and your family! 💥💫💗🐍