You are invited to my workshop on Writing as a Spiritual Practice on March 30, 2014, at beautiful Mercy Center in Burlingame, CA.
The Zone is a lot like meditation. In it, we feel spontaneous, out of time and space, clear and creative, completely focused in present time, energized, productive, magical, and almost mystical. Like meditation, the Zone asks us to be persistent, mindful, humble, open, grateful, and surrendered into something beyond ourselves.
And like meditation, the Zone often creates enormous resistance in us. We want the goodies—the connection with the infinite, the blissful ease, and the feeling that we are exactly in the right place, doing the right thing—but there are days when we will do anything to avoid sitting in the meditation chair or at our desks.
WHAT’S UP WITH THAT?
Maybe connection with the infinite is just too intense. Maybe we’re afraid it won’t work this time. Maybe in some dark recess of our subconscious, we don’t think we deserve it. Who knows?
Whatever the reason for our resistance, whether to meditation or to writing in the Zone, the solution is the same: We need to sit down and do it anyway, so at least we are in the path of grace when it shows up. When we can’t write from inspiration, we have to write toward inspiration.
CARNEGIE HALL
We all remember the old joke about how to get there: Practice! My first meditation teacher used to say, “Some mornings, I’m just staring at the backs of my eyelids, but I keep doing it because if I stop, it won’t help me. And I want to be there when the divine drops in.”
As we keep on keeping on with meditation or writing in the Zone, we develop tricks to help us get and stay on track. We can find a million tips and tricks online for how to do this, but our own tricks are the best because they speak to what’s in the way for us. And once we dissipate whatever that is, only the Zone remains. We’re in the land of spiritual “nothin’ but net.”