Wild Mind

Ten years ago I was dumbstruck reading the snippet below - and I've never forgotten it - from Natalie Goldberg's classic for writers and writer wannabees (highly recommended).

Ten years ago, I was curled up in the dot's lap (patience...read further) cranking out C++ computer programs.

I am dumbstruck again recalling ten years ago. I would have thought it utterly impossible - crazed even - to live the way I do now. Note to self: Scrap five-year plans - I'd only limit myself.

I am on a backpacking trip in Frijoles Canyon, part of Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico....

Reader, though you are not here with me, I want you to look up at the sky. Do you see it? It is a big sky. If you've never been this far west, then imagine standing beneath the sky in Ohio...

So, either in New Mexico or Ohio, we are under a big sky. That big sky is wild mind. I'm going to climb up to that sky straight over our heads and put one dot on it with a Magic Marker. See that dot? That dot is what Zen calls monkey mind or what western psychology calls part of conscious mind. We give our attention to that one dot. So when it says we can't write, that we're no good, are failures, fools for even picking up a pen, we listen to it.

This is how it works: You've always wanted to be a writer, but instead you decide you should become a health care worker. You go to school for four years. You get a degree in social work. You are at your first day of your new job, listening to an orientation, and you realize you really did want to be a writer. You quit your job, go to the library with a notebook, and begin page one of the great American novel. You are halfway through page one when you decide it is too hard to be a writer. You want to open a cafe so writers can come in and sip the best caffelatte and write all afternoon. You open the cafe. You are serving caffelatte to all the writers in your town. It is a Tuesday. You look out at your customers and see they are writing and you are not. You want to write.

This goes on endlessly. This is monkey mind. This is how we drift. We listen and get tossed away. We put all that attention on that one dot. Meanwhile, wild mind surrounds us...

So our jobs as writers is not to diddle around our whole lives in the dot but to take one big step out of it and sink into the big sky and write from there...

I think what good psychotherapy does is help to bring you into wild mind, for you to learn to be comfortable there, rather than constantly grabbing a tidbit from wild mind and shoving it into the conscious mind, thereby trying to get control of it. This is what Zen, too, asks you to do: to sit down in the middle of your wild mind. This is all about a loss of control. This is what falling in love is, too: a loss of control.

Can you do this? Lose control and let wild mind take over? It is the best way to write. To live, too. - Natalie Goldberg, Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life

I like (and loathe) this Dwelve creative process because it gently invites me to inhabit wild mind for a bit. And like an overused elastic band, the dot never stretches back to its same taut tension.

Looking through my "advance" journals from 2002 through 2004 I see it's often taken me one, two or more years to finally gather up the courage when "back in the real world" to execute the boldest dreams and ideas. And I don't beat myself up for that. The truth is most all of them would have been out of the realm of possibility - dismissed, filtered and entirely censored out of consciousness - ten years ago.

BTW, if your dot is as clever as mine, it will tell you this piece is about writing and writers. And so if writing doesn't call to you - whew - you're off the hook.

Comments

[Lisa Haneberg]

Evelyn: Thanks for sharing this book, I am going to find it! I have been doing the dot dance for 22 years. When I was a young girl, I loved books (although a poor reader with dyslexia and ADD - I still suck ar reading) and used to buy books at garage sales with my allowance money. Remembering this helps me jump outside the dot, even if for only a moment.

I think that the need to write is either in your fiber or not. The ability to write, well that's another story. My writing craft is in its infancy.

[John Dumbrille]

HI Evelyn, I love the park, and the neck of the woods youre in. I was there in November. THose caves are awesome. Weird to find it so close to Los Alamos...

Both of Natalie Goldberg's books on zen and writing are great; I was also inspired by her talk about her zen teacher Harada Roshi.

BTW not far from Bandolier, in Jemez Springs, there is a very good rinzai zen centre - called Bodhi Mandha. If you have time, maybe worth a visit?

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Lisa - Thanks! You might want to take a look at it first and compare it to "Writing Down the Bones" also by same author and choose (or buy both). I am aching to go now that John reminds me to the Taos Writers Conference this summer...would you like to join me?

John - Actually I was quoting straight from Goldberg's book - it was she that was backpacking in Bandelier. Believe it or not - I've never been to New Mexico even though I lived ten years in Utah (I did a lot
of backpacking, hiking, and river trips in southern Utah). I'm in the heart of Silicon Valley these days
when I'm not traveling.

I totally concur on all of Goldberg's books. I also read Writing Down the Bones & The Lone Highway a long time ago even though then Zen was like Greek to me and I wasn't courageous enough to dare to write. But I think they planted seeds of encouragement nonetheless.

[Lisa Haneberg]

Evelyn:

First - I know this is not the main point of the post, but I LOVE this part of New Mexico and I have been writing about it on my southwestern blog, Chile Pepper. The Jemez mountain area is magical and close to Santa Fe and Taos. Funny, I once snuck into the back garden area of the zen center John mentioned to enjoy their hot spings. :-)

Did you read the Celestine Prophecy? I ask because it explores how coincidences really aren't.

Coincidence #1 - I went to the Elliott Bay Bookstore this evening and found a Natalie Goldberg book that combines BOTH Wild Mind and Writing Down the Bones (used section, $6 - score!). So I have both!

#2 - I also picked up the current issue of Poets & Writers magazine and was thumbing through it after I got home. I came across the display ad for the Taos Writer's conference and told myself that I should go.

And then I found your reply to my comment.

do-do-do-do
do-do-do-do (the alien sound...)

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Lisa - That is too wild. Um, I have my own way too controversial theory of coincidences. But regardless I read "The Celestine Prophecy" twice.

I think the universe will conspire to pull us to our destiny if we are willing to heed its whisper. A lot of the illumination stage (phase 3 of Dwelve creative process) is about this and recognizing significant symbols and patterns. We know the answers all along, we just need it S-L-O-W-L-Y spelled out sometimes.

[Lisa Haneberg]

Coincidence #3 - I just looked at the Taos program and see that Tony Hillerman is the keynote. Last week, I sent his publicist an email asking how I might get to meet and interview him for my New Mexico book.

[Rich...!]

Guys stop, you're scaring me!

Loved the excerpt btw, and I agree with Bren, your last paragraph rocks.

Respect...!

[nina]

Ah, thanks for reminding me of one of my favorties. I have been so stuck in monkey mind lately.

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Rich - Nothing scary really. Coincidences happen all the time. But sometimes one coincidence particularly resonates because we're looking for external symbols, signs to validate and tell us what we already know as our internal truth. Talking with Lisa and Jonathan reminded me that yep, I want to get my butt over to Taos, Sante Fe and the pueblos - long on my "vacation" list - AND do more writing.

Nina - I was actually looking for another passage when I stumbled onto the above. And it brought back vivid memories when I first read "Wild Mind" and "Writing Down the Bones"...it seemed like eons ago and just yesterday. I felt that passage really hit home again.

[Fred]

Hello Evelyn,

Thank a lot for this great post. Such books are always a pleasure to read. They all say the same things, but in other words, images and contexts. The authors tell you how they started to write, their family situation (most of the time literacy families), and tricks that helped them to get published, but more important then this: what the benefits of writing in their lives. All the same? Mostly... but… how inspirational! I can’t wait to read this one; he is already en route to my door.

I lately read another great work on journals and diaries keeping by Alexandra Johnston. I would like to share this reading with you. I posted about it some days ago:

http://radio.weblogs.com/0140770/2005/03/27.html#a114

I hope you’ll enjoy the reading.

Salutations,

Fred

[Alan Gutierrez]

Evelyn

That dot likes to tell me I've been scooped. That my ideas are unoriginal. That someone else is already doing it. It is one of my major failure points.

Too little, too late.

On a good day, I see the dot for what it is. I tell the dot that it's not about me. It's about the idea. That it doesn't have to be original, I don't need to be first, I need to get it finished, get it adopted, find users. I'll be attentive to the users.

That stupid little dot doesn't understand that I'll never be a first mover without the right relationships, with inventive, creative people.

That stupid little money brain doesn't realize that the proof is, as always, in the pudding, originality is a chimera.

When it's done, when it is adopted and finds it's market, then the originality of the software, it's novelty and inventiveness, will demonstrate itself.

It's about writing and writers, all right. Writers of software. Writing software.

(It is so cool that you are writing all this, talking about your grand failures, since I've been musing on my failure points, and I've decided to broadcast them, so people will be able to work with me better, and talking about dwevling, since I've pretty much dwelved on my on project, and the passion for the dwelve came from a clue picked up from you and Hugh and this circle, so it's great to see it revisited now that I'm coming up for air.)