A small room in Boston

I write from a small room in Boston without a view. There are two west-facing windows which open to the mustard-colored clapboard siding of the neighboring three-story, and at this time, it is an advantageous vantage point. It keeps my attention focused on my writing and my mission.

Several weeks ago, I took to rearranging the furniture in this room to something I felt was more conducive to creativity. Pushing my desk into a corner I made a cozy place for concentration. A great chair, good lighting, and a variety of sacred items that I believe help my process. It’s a comfortable room also containing an old unused fireplace in the corner — it’s interior bricks painted white against a red wall. There are piles of books, journals, candles, and two sleepy cats. I see this arrangement as something I hope will prove beneficial in the full immersion of my craft because an enemy also lurks within these walls.

The War of Art, written by Steven Pressfield, discusses this enemy. It is known as Resistance. Pressfield refers to Resistance using a capital letter and assigns to it some powerful personality traits. It is what he considers the major deterrent of artists being able to do their work. It is a formable enemy — invisible, insidious, impersonal, and infallible. The battle with Resistance is fought on a daily basis.

It is Resistance that keeps writers from picking up their pens, artists from the canvas, potential entrepreneurs from starting a new business. Resistance uses our fears against us and slyly suggests other more mundane activities in lieu of sitting down to face our work — the work for which we are meant to do.

Resistance uses a host of weapons – negative self-talk, fear, imposter syndrome, any and all insecurities an artist may process, as well as physical maladies such as restlessness, anxiety, or lack of sleep.

It was partway through Pressfield’s book when I asked, “Just who, exactly, is in charge of Resistance?”

That was the start of a slight but profound change in how I now view my work and my world.

Eckhart Tolle writes and lectures about the Power of Now. It was from Tolle that I learned our minds are not to be always trusted. That our minds and our thoughts are not who we are and that our thoughts are only a tiny portion of what makes us us. This came as a shocking revelation to me, someone who considered her mind as the seat of her identity. The idea that I could just watch my thoughts drift by without having to act on them, or even acknowledging their worth, was astounding. The idea that I am more then what I think, more than my past mistakes, more than my business, more than my faults, was liberating.

According to Tolle, the majority of our thoughts are about either the future or the past. The past of which we can do nothing more about and the future which is not here yet. The most important thing we can do is center ourselves in the here and now. Right now. This moment. It is this moment in which we are truly alive.

I have been a practitioner of meditation for five years. I believed that I understood the meaning of mindfulness but perhaps it was all the practice that prepared me for the next step in my spiritual journey. Focusing on the Now felt lighter, more joyful, calmer, and without emotional pain.

The ruminations which so often haunted my thoughts were no longer of great importance. I found I could easily dismiss them and as I observed those thoughts I could watch them evaporate like gray mist. Forgiveness of those who harmed me in the past was effortless. My power of concentration increased tenfold because when I focus I am focused on Now. I am focused on the task at hand. Resistance hates this.

To not be able to stop thinking is a terrible affliction. As Tolle points out, identification with only our mind creates a barrier of labels, concepts, words, images, judgments, definitions, and comparisons that block us from knowing who we really are and what our purpose in life is. Obsessive thinking is a tremendous source of lost energy and indulging the egoic mind reinforces the idea that we are separate from life around us. It is the idea that we are separate that is the greatest cause of strife among nations, tribes, neighbors, and our true selves.

And so I write. I write because I love to tell stories, share ideas, impart information, and maybe, just maybe, inspire someone. I write because writing chose me, not I it. And I’ve come to learn that writing is my attempt to lend something meaningful to the world. Or even to just one person.

“The good writer seems to be writing about himself, but has his eye always on that thread of the universe which runs through himself and all things.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson