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Anyway, some people mentioned interest in writing as an insight tool. My practice is influenced by Julia Cameron's work and here's a bit from her book 'Walking in this world' about the practice of Morning Pages.
"Morning Pages are the primary tool of creative recovery. From my perspective they are the bedrock of a creative life. Three pages stream-of-consciousness writing done before the day "begins", Morning Pages serve to prioritize, clarify, and ground the day's activities. Frequently fragmented, petty, even whining, Morning Pages were once called "brain drain" because they so clearly siphoned off negativity. Anything and everything is fuel for Morning Pages. They hold worries about a lover's tone of voice, the car's peculiar knocking, the source of this month's rent money. They hold reservations about a friendship, speculationn about a job possibility, a reminder to buy kitty litter. They mention, sometimes repeatedly, overeating, undersleeping, overdrinking, and overthinking, that favourite procrastinator's poison artists are fond of.
I have been writing Morning Pages for twenty years now. They have witnessed my life in Chicago, New Mexico, New York, and Los Angeles. They have guided my through book writing, music writing, the death of my father, a divorce, the purchase of a house and a horse. They have directed me to piano lessons, to exercise, to an energetic correspondance with a significant man, to pie baking, to rereading and refurbishing old manuscripts. There is no corner of my life or consciousness that the pages have not swept. They are the daily broom that clears my consciousness and readies it for the day's inflow of fresh thought.
... Even the shape of my writing tells me the shape and clarity of my thoughts. Of course, at times Morning Pages are difficult to write. They feel stilted, boring, hackneyed, repetitive, or just plain depressing. I have learned to write through such resistant patches and to believe that Morning Pages are a part of their cure. I know people who are "too busy" to write Morning Pages. I sympathize, but I doubt their lives will ever become less busy without Morning Pages.
It is a paradox of my experience that Morning Pages both take time and give time. It is as though by setting our inner movie onto the page, we are freed up to act in our lives. Suddenly, a day is filled with small choice points, tiny windows of time available for our conscious use. It may be as simple as the fact that we wrote down "I should call Elberta" that cues us into calling Elberta when a moment looms free. As we write our Morning Pages, we tend to get things "right". our days become our own. Other people's agendas and priorities no longer run our lives. We care for others, but we now care for ourselves as well.
I like to think of Morning Pages as a withdrawal process but not in the usual sense, where we withdraw from a substance taken away from us. No, instead, we do the withdrawing in Morning Pages. We pull ourselves inward to the core of our true values, perceptions and agendas. This process takes approximately a half hour - about the same time normally set aside for meditation. I have come to think of Morning Pages as a form of meditation, a particularly potent and freeing form for most hyperactive westerners. Our worries, fantasies, anxieties, hopes, dreams, concerns, and convictions all float freely across the page. The page becomes the screen of our consciousness. Our thoughts are like clouds crossing before the mountain of our observing eye.
... A day at a time, a page at a time, my daily three pages have unknotted career, life, and love. They have shown me a path where there was no path, and I follow it now, trusting that if I do, th path will continue. "
I've been doing a block of this practice for five weeks now: can't yet describe how it's working for me but maybe I will be able to, another time. |
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