Synchronicity

In my last two blogs, I have written about anger and pain, and the advantages of using a daily writing habit to seek solutions and healing for what happens to all of us in the course of living our lives. It is certainly far cheaper than counseling sessions, also more personal and private. Today, I am going to speak of another important advantage in that regular writing: synchronicity.

Synchronicity is when two or more diverse things, moments, flow together, and blend to create a deeper moment of understanding, or enlightenment, for the individual who experiences them. It is also the deepest and richest reward of a regular writing regimen or journal. We all have those moments when we find ourselves saying, “Ah, hah. So that’s the way it works.” That’s what synchronicity is, and a course of ongoing daily writing is a catalyst to such experiences, actually bringing them about on a more regular basis.

We all engage in thought process. Constantly and continuously aware of the thoughts that flow through our minds like a never ending film unreeling from an inexhaustible spool. For the most part, the thoughts are there for less than a second and then move on to make room for the next, and the next, and the next one. And again, for many of us, those ongoing thoughts get lost in that constant movement. We are just too busy to make space for them to take root and develop past that first, and sometimes, only flash of unreeling. They include commentary, emotional response, and reaction to what is happening around and inside of us. And synchronicity happens when some of those thoughts collide and present a new perspective.

The problem is that there are way too many of them. They become extremely easy to dismiss, can even be an annoyance or hindrance to what we would rather be doing or have planned to do. They can and do change the color of our environment, altering our response in the moment, whether negatively or in a more positive vein. All of that, in the blink of an eye, and often without comprehension or understanding. Our minds, our hearts, and our souls, are speaking to us, but that doesn’t mean we are actually, actively listening.

That is where the writing comes into play. When we deliberately sit down and write, we are slowing down that unreeling spool. Letting it speak to us in imagery, words, ideas, and emotional content. We are finally listening to our own inner voices, and don’t be surprised, we do all have them. But because the movie keeps moving, we can’t differentiate between the nonsense and the necessary. Some of it is absolutely necessary to our own well being and continued health and growth. And yes, other parts are absolute nonsense, and might have value as humorous party chat. How much value is there in knowing the difference?

In slowing it down, even for fifteen minutes a day, we are giving ourselves a signal that we are ready to pay attention. And it is incredibly amazing how swiftly those inner voices respond to that invitation, sometimes speaking far faster than we can write. We are taking notes, making that senseless constant thread comprehensible. In doing so, we are also allowing ourselves to make note in facilitating our memory about all of it. Because we now have the notes, we are far more inclined to see some of those ideas, thoughts, images, etc. come together and blend into newer, more advanced ideas and thoughts that can be put into play in changing ourselves, our lives, and our environment.

On some level, this can all appear as some form of magic. It isn’t, but it can certainly feel that way. It is synchronicity and you allow it by simply choosing to take a few minutes to write. I find that taking those solitary moments, puts me more deeply in touch, not only with myself, but with everyone I meet and the world around me. That constant flow of thought, has become my own secret source of ongoing synchronicity. It is a flow that allows me to know that I am in the right place, doing the right thing, for me and those around me. It allows me to embrace my own existence on ever deepening levels of awareness. That’s not a bad outcome for a few minutes of solitary occupation each day.

In the sixties, synchronicity was called serendipity. I like the sound of that word, but to me, it seems to express something that is happenstance, only occasional, a sort of slippery coincidence that maybe shouldn’t have even happened, or happened only because of some secret magical force that only occurs at its own peculiar choosing. On the other hand, synchronicity, seems to put a solid foot down and say this is real, its happening for a purpose and it might be best to pay attention or miss out on the experience. I much prefer staying in contact with all of my experience and learning from it as much as possible.

For a more lengthy discussion on the subject, I would suggest a reading of Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way. It too concerns itself with a regular daily writing regimen that really works on all sorts of levels. I know that because I read it through several times and even facilitated groups in its endeavor to enhance ones own creativity. Synchronicity certainly plays a major role in that activity.

My suggestion, for today, is that you write about one synchronistic moment you have experienced, a moment when you said an inner “ah, hah”, a moment of personal enlightenment. How did it come about? What were the diverse elements that made up its content? How did you feel when it happened?

Anger As Energy Flow

        I have done my part, and whatever happens, will simply happen. But it will only happen at my choosing. That knowledge alone, is worth the few tears I shed.  ___quoted from last post

After years of words that were not understood, or worse, misunderstood, I have learned to choose my words carefully. That sentence:  But it will only happen at my choosing, was written deliberately and with thought. For many years, I held my anger deep inside because it was inappropriate, unseemly, foolish, or just plain wrong. Or so I had been taught. And in turn, I thought I was all those things because I felt them. It took me years to fully understand that feelings are feelings, a barometer to let me know what the temperature is in my environment at any given moment. A simple gage, that allows me to access the information I need to be able to choose how I want to respond inside of that situation. Obviously, as a child, I jumped to the conclusion that if anger spoken was wrong, bad, or not okay, then silence would be the only way to deal with it.

Although a childish, therefore only partial solution, it still remains one of my choices. A good one in the appropriate situation, even as an adult. Let me explain. Anger is an energy flow provided by the system to allow for action. It is not bad, good, and hardly indifferent. It is simply the energy we need to either stand and fight, or to flee and save further action for another day. As an energy flow, it can be either destructive or constructive, used to end the threat that caused it, or build, create something new in its stead. And that is where the matter of choice comes forward. I can either choose to scream as insanely as the idiot who is pissing me off, or I can walk away and conserve the energy for something more creative in the future. Why waste the energy, especially at my age, when it comes as a priceless commodity? Ahhhh, the things I have learned by keeping a journal.

Pain is a threat to the system. As such it produces anger, the energy flow to combat the threat in whatever manner we choose. In my last blog, I wrote about a deep wound that I had uncovered, and allowed myself to revisit on the page, and in private. I even stated that I was consciously aware that it was only a first step in the process I have been learning by writing regularly. I woke up yesterday morning with a depth of anger that might easily match that of Mt. Vesuvius on her best days. Acting on it, was out of the question. It meant that I might very well explode at everyone and everything that crossed my path. Although satisfying in the moment perhaps, releasing the steam, could do damage to me and to others as well.

I acknowledged the anger, but then went on with the day I had already planned that centered around several different creative outlets. I didn’t bury it, simply put it on a shelf where I could easily see and even use it for other purposes. And I did just that. I changed the look of this blog space to one of my original design. Not the one I ultimately want here, because that one will take more time and effort, but an inter-um image that tells me this is now my space. I chatted with a friend, and even took a nap. I read some things in a very good book, which has a great deal of information (synchronistically speaking) about the hard work that must take place after uncovering buried memories and the very real emotional storm they produce.

Before I went to bed, I had a telephone conversation with a friend. At the end of the conversation I told her I needed to go write a poem that was waiting for me to find it. She laughed and said two words that became the poem I wrote in the following half hour. It is one of the better pieces I have written in a long time. And it includes some of the images and feelings from that original unspeakable pain. It is actually a love poem, addressed to someone very important to me. For me, it was the best use of that anger energy I had encountered that morning. Not destructive, or explosive, but contained, controlled, and ultimately, far more satisfying than any other choice I could or would have made.

There was a time when I would have written down those angry feelings in graphic detail. That does work. However, I knew intuitively, also based in past experience, that that can backfire as well. Sometimes the writing is like poking at the anger, watching it to see what happens, releasing some of its fumes into the air I breathe. Other times it can be an incredibly soothing release and answer for pent up emotions that have no other place to live and would become destructive if left inside. That again, is a matter of choice to be engaged in by the individual in individual circumstances, learned through experience, and the growing of discernment. Sorry, it all takes time.

What do you do with your anger? Let it possess you, corrode you from the inside out? Do you confront it and how? By letting it drip from your lips, or explode like uncontrollable and flammable chemicals that are corrosive to your own and others’ environments? Do you struggle with it, like I have done, or throw up your hands in defeat and let it fly wherever, or bury it in the hopes that it might not hurt anyone, but especially you? These are just questions you might want to investigate on paper with pen. Until next time…

The Unspeakable

Today, in my journal, I found myself writing about an ‘unspeakable’ pain I have carried around inside of me for almost ten years. Where do you go with something like that? Something so hurtful, that to unleash it, to open ones mouth and put it into words, is to unleash a torrent of pain and hurt that might have no end and therefore, no healing. What choice is there in that situation? To put it into words is to define it and all the tendrils of its reality and the effects that those realities have visited upon your person.

I think most of us, like I have done, just don’t go there. We don’t speak of it, refuse to think about it, lock it in a box, decorative or not, and place it on the highest, darkest shelf of our inner being. We completely silence it and ourselves. But, is that silence really silent? We may believe, because we must, that that funny little box is hermetically sealed, but it isn’t. The human psyche simply doesn’t operate that way. We may all have those moments when we wish that it did, but it doesn’t. Living organisms (anything that breathes) can not abide a vacuum in their midst. It must be opened and filled with more of self.

So, the tendrils escape, seek paths in the darkness and, I believe, seek light and the heat that is life. Places where they can continue to breathe, live, and ultimately grow to fruition. And just what are the fruits of such labor, in those darkened corners of existence? I found at least three of them in a single page this morning: hesitancy based in fear, distrust of someone I care about deeply, and feelings of both abandonment and betrayal. I guess that’s four, but I’m fairly certain that over the course of ten years, there are probably at least a few more.

So why did I even open this can of worms today? Because it was time, and more than that to do so. Each morning, before I write, I go back and read my last morning’s page/s. I had made a strange statement at the end of yesterday’s scratchings. It seemed to come out of nowhere, and sort of just dangled there at the end, like the physical members of a middle-aged male chorus line with beer guts and too much hair where it shouldn’t be and far too little where it should. It really was too highly visible to ignore.

Being who I am (never more apparent than in those morning escapes), I couldn’t move away without comment and once I started, I filled the entire page describing the incident upon which it had been based. And yes, I was definitely crying by the time I was finished. I was alone, no one saw the tears or need ever know they were present. No one knew, or even had to know what, if anything, had occasioned them. No one, but me. I had brought myself to awareness in five or six paragraphs. That isn’t something to sniff at, remember, all of this had been buried deeply for ten years. It certainly needed an airing, maybe even more so, a throwing over a clothes line and a good beating with a wire whisk.

That may all come tomorrow, or the next day, or maybe next month, or heaven forbid, even ten more years from now. These steps in awareness take time, to settle, be digested, and work their way through the system, in order to bring about the healing they are intended to produce. All I know, is that I have taken that first big huge step, and put into words what had been unspeakable. I have done my part, and whatever happens, will simply happen. But it will only happen at my choosing. That knowledge alone, is worth the few tears I shed.

Yesterday, I wrote here, that a regular writing regimen is the cheapest therapy known to humankind. Then had to face off with my own reality this morning and prove it to myself once again. Don’t you just love it when that happens? I do, because it is the one signal that tells me I am in the right place, doing the right thing. That pleases me, no end. Do you have that? Something that tells you that you are being the best that you can be in any given moment? Something that lets you understand that what you do is essential to further growth and your own personal evolvement? Perhaps a friend that you can invite for coffee and a little venting, a counselor or confessor, a place you can go and scream at the top of your lungs, or hug yourself when no one else is around to offer that?

The only problem with any, or all of those, is that they often can’t be spur of the moment things, immediate to and in the moment. Some of them can be expensive, while others might demand some deliberate preparation and planning. A journal never does. It’s always there, doesn’t get busy talking to another friend and leave you waiting, cooling your heels while the moment and its need disappears into other things, people, or activities. It’s there whenever you need it, want it, or can’t think of another way in which to turn the unspeakable into definitive words, that in turn, allow them to be worked through to resolution. And that is really good therapy.

Introduction

When I was four years old, I already knew that pencil marks could be erased and never seen again. So, I very deliberately went looking for an ink pen for the adventure I had planned (there were always one or two in the kitchen junk drawer). Pen in hand, I secreted myself away with the photographer’s portrait of me, at age two, that sat out on a table in the living room. Carefully removing the photo from its frame, tongue winking between my pressed lips, I set out to make sure no one would ever forget the name of the little girl with creamed coffee curls and a wispy smile pictured there. With the spidery scrawl of a neophyte, I wrote my name at the bottom of the portrait in big black block letters, and unknowingly launched myself into a life- long love affair with pen, paper, and words.

Much much later, after marriage and four children, I went to college. And although I first set out to achieve a degree in History, I realized half way through, that all my elective credits were in English with a definite preference for writing classes. There I was introduced to poetry, and again found another life-long attachment, as well as a second major. Halfway through my college career, I became a single parent and afterward, found a full-time position as the General Manager of a new/used Bookstore.

At that point in time, I didn’t see writing as a career base. First of all, it was far too risky for a single mother with children to feed and to finish raising, and I saw myself as a poet and poets rarely, if ever, get to quit their day jobs. If I am to be completely honest, I also really liked working in the Bookstore surrounded by the other love of my life. However, I did start publishing some of my poems and one of them was accepted and anchored an anthology which was later nominated for a Grammy Award. The local media fuss about the award and my participation, opened another door, I might not have ever walked through otherwise.

I became a Freelance Writing Instructor, teaching my first class at the four year university from which I had graduated. Actually, it was a credit course in the Teacher’s Certification Program. Certainly not bad wages for a poet who only saw herself as a beginner. My specialty was Personal Writing: how to get on the page regularly and sustain that process over time. In other words, the Art of Keeping a Journal. I used everything I had learned by keeping a daily journal for ten years before that. It was one of the most exciting adventures I had ever committed myself to, and is the basis for this current blog.

I continued to teach for ten years, also giving workshops, and all day retreats, as well as leading classes in most of the fine arts schools and museums in the area. However, a life-long back condition disabled me about four years ago, and I had to quit and settle down to become, of all things, just another couch potato, watching television, reading books, and occasionally getting on my computer to write a random poem or email. Last year, on my 61st birthday, I tried an old exercise of writing a poem a day. It actually astounded me and I continued for four months until I moved back here to the city of my birth. The physical energy used up in transplanting myself put an end to the exercise, and I once again turned back to television and reading.

More recently, something I watched on TV prompted me to reopen my journal writing and that in turn, led me to create a Myspace page on which I used those poems from last year to fill up the blog space therein. Last week, I stumbled into a poet’s blog, here on Word Press, in which the author was writing a poem a day. I found myself going back to her page, encouraging her to continue. It isn’t often one finds another fool who will do that exercise and succeed at it. Which, of course, led me to here and this page where I intend to do what I am really quite good at: encourage others to get on the page and stay there because it just happens to be the cheapest form of therapy known to humankind, other than laughter, which can hurt if one does it too loudly and too much at a single go. So can writing, but both of them are in the category of ‘good pain.’ “I laughed until every muscle ached”, or, “I wrote until my fingers stiffened up and I couldn’t write anymore”, are good memories that I cherish. Do you?

I do welcome comments, and even disagreements, as long as they respect both participants’ rights to speak and to be heard.