SHOWING UP IS STEP ONE

So here is a comment on yesterday's post, so that you don't have to go look it up.


What is it you are seeking? Is this practice for something with a longer development cycle? Or is posting daily the only goal? Either way you are doing fine, but isn't there something more you want out of writing than this? Is it a forest for the trees kind of thing?

From what I understood this blog was practice, a way to get into the routine of daily writing. It is doing scales, training your hands and mind to be prepared for taking on more involved work. 

Writing and publishing everyday, with no plot, no story curve, how could that not be diffuse? Is it becoming an empty task? Think beyond the blog, write outside of the blog. Dig deeper into the hows and whys and wherefores of writing if nothing else, though I am sure there are other things to write about. You have it started, the seed has germinated, now grow it into something bigger and more complex.


Maybe it is too much information, or exposing a deep weakness, but writing every day, sitting down and thinking of something to say that is at least valuable to me as a moment of progress and attention, is challenging.


I don't see it as an empty task at all. Showing up is step one. 


Reading a little further in Ravindra's Wisdom of Patanjali's Sutras, I find this:


"Whenever searchers engage in impartial self-observation, they recognize that it is difficult to have the kind of steady attention which is needed for any sustained study. The cultivation of a non-fluctuating attention requires a discipline, a sadhana (practice). The sadhaka, the one who undertakes sadhana, needs to have the attitude of a disciple—a willingness to search, to listen, to change. There is a mutuality of relationship between a discipline and a disciple: there can be disciple without a discipline, and no discipline can endure without some disciples. 


Steady attention, sustained study. That's where I am starting. And, so far, that may be as far as I've gotten. I am thinking about writing everyday. And I am making a point of writing every day. 


Who knows when the next step will come?


I may have more to say on this comment tomorrow.

BOTH THE GOAL AND THE WAY TO THE GOAL

"The conditions right now are the conditions we need for work..."

Yes, it is late again. However, I am not quite as sleepy and I did a little more research and thinking today.

"...It is not a matter a waiting until conditions are better, when the situation is calmer or when we have more time, or more information. Now, in the the midst of our daily life, engaged in our professions and households, we can and should undertake the practice of yoga. If not now when?..."


Hmm, heard that before, have you?

"...The word 'yoga' is derived from the root 'yuj' meaning 'to unite.' This word is a cognate of the English word "yoke." It speaks of an integration of all aspects within a human being as well as of the connection with subtler levels of reality. Any spiritual path towards this integration may be called a yoga. Thus, yoga is both the goal and the way to the goal."
— Ravi Ravindra, The Wisdom of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras


I haven't made it very far through the book, but I am keeping on the path, the writing part of it, at least.

There are days when it is great. I'm in the writing groove, or the thinking about writing groove and almost everything feeds that. Other days, I just don't feel it. But these days, I am sitting down for a bit with whatever I have or haven't.

"Violinists practicing scales and dancers repeating the same movements over decades are not simply warming up or mechanically training their muscles. They are learning how to attend unswervingly, moment by moment, to themselves and to their art; learning to come into steady presence, free from the distractions of interest or boredom."
— Jane Hirschfield, Poetry and the Mind of Concentration, from Nine Gates


... attend unswervingly... how difficult that seems.