The Art of Knowing and Truly Befriending Ourselves

I look outside the window right now and see maple trees with orange and reddish yellow leaves reaching into a tender blue sky. And lower down, green leaves, with burnt red Virginia creeper clinging to maples all cabled together with grape vines. And lower still, deutzia and lilac and honeysuckle.

 

But just five hours ago, none of this. The moon was out, and the night was day. After waking up unexpectedly at 5 am, I looked out a window and didn’t know what year or millennia it was. There before me was something ancient. The trees and bushes were all constituted of shadows, timeless shadows. And the rest was silvered by a unique light, a softened glow.

 

During the day, we see the ten thousand things of the world distinguished by specific details and the spaces between them. But in the moonlight, the edges grew fainter. There was light and shadow, but nothing else sharply divided or defined. Everything was softened and somehow linked. Nothing stood on its own; the whole scene was so engrossing. And the moonlight made mind light, made all my thoughts and feelings, so noticeable.

 

And then this morning I picked up a book I had been reading a week or so ago, Hunger Mountain: A field Guide to Mind and Landscape by David Hinton. It describes walks he had taken on Hunger Mountain in Vermont and includes discussions both of Chinese poetry he had translated and of Taoist cosmology inspiring those walks.

 

In the first chapter of the book was a poem I had read before; it was by the Chinese poet, Tu Fu, titled “Moonrise”. I read again about the new moon, and the ancient, changeless “Star River” and “White/dew dusts the courtyard.” And I realized that last night it was Tu Fu looking out my window.

 

We normally think of things at a distance. Words can do that. They are abstractions, usually. And we are the distance the words create, or what distances. We think of ourselves in a manner that separates us from whom we speak to or about. We all have thoughts, plans, dreams, sensations, emotions filling our mind and heart. The ego self is what glues us to some of these stimuli and excludes us from the rest.

 

Many people would argue that it wasn’t Tu Fu looking out the window. He’s dead. It was just that my buried memory of the poem influenced how I interpreted the moonlight I perceived and how I saw the earth, trees, and bushes. I was clearly in a dream intoxicated state. But last night, a different vision occurred. The moon met and befriended the poet. For a second or two, the thing seen met the act of seeing and became the seer…

 

*To read the whole piece, please go to The Good Man Project. 

Getting Out of Your Story to Tell Your Story and Live Your Life

It’s Not What You Write or Say That’s Perfect. It’s the Whole Moment That Can Be Perfect

 

How often do you write something, think it is perfect, and then two minutes or two days later, you find all these points you missed or words with meanings you never noticed before? Or you do something and later regret it or realize you could have done it better? And you imagine other people noticing the same deficiencies you noticed, and because of what they notice they think of you as lacking in insight or vision or whatever. It is so difficult to see ourselves or our actions clearly. It is impossible to know all that we might wish we knew.

 

Writing is never done. There is an illusion or maybe a delusion that you can do something, create something, and if you feel it is perfect now then it will be perfect forever. How you perceive or think about it now will be how you will perceive it later. You think of the piece you just completed as having a character totally divorced from your character, as the reader.

 

I was recently listening to the NPR Ted Radio Hour and Daniel Gilbert, author and a professor of psychology at Harvard, talked about the “illusion of stasis.” You can reach a point in your life where you think you have arrived at the “end of history.” Most of the changes you will go through will have already happened. What you think now will largely be what you will think later.

 

But nothing is static or complete by itself, or perfect, except “in the eyes of the beholder.” You might feel that something you create is wonderful, especially if you did the best you could, at that particular moment in that particular place and maybe with those particular people. And it might be wonderful. But what is wonderful or perfect is the whole situation, not any one part of it.

 

When you write, if you focus just on the writing and forget the entire universe that contributed to that piece, you might get lost in what you are thinking about. You might get lost in the story you are telling. And later, when you realize what you had missed or how your view had changed, you might berate yourself for your shortsightedness. Let go of this judgmental thought and be kinder to yourself.

 

But if, for that moment, you have done your best. If, for that moment, you have lived, thought, loved, and been sincere ⎼If you have been real to yourself and not left thoughts unrecognized or important words unsaid, you will arrive, as fully as possible, in a new moment. You will recognize that because you did what you did in the past, you can now see even more, imagine even more, feel even more….

 

To read the whole piece, go to The Good Men Project.

Writing As A Process of Discovering Your Truths And Power

Sometimes teachers ask themselves, “How do I get students to use the full writing process, to start with brainstorming and proceed to outlining, first draft, etc.,?” I think that question assumes that the writing process, as usually taught, is the most appropriate way for each student to approach writing. I prefer to start with: “How do I help each student to think clearly and express that clarity?” Or: “How do I help this student to write well?” Or: “How do I motivate this student to write?” And: “How do you write what is your own truth?” Discovering what works best for you, and why, can help you relate to your student’s struggles. And when writing is viewed as revelation or discovery, a means not only for expressing but thinking critically about yourself and your life, then writing becomes intrinsically motivating. It is not just something imposed by a teacher. And then the most important part of writing instruction is already taught.

 

I noticed that whenever I first try to discuss the process of writing with a group of secondary school students, they rarely like or fully understand how to outline or brainstorm. Or maybe they don’t like it because they don’t understand it. They think the “full writing process” is a waste of time. Outlining feels artificial, inauthentic. Brainstorming, they think, only gets in their way. They want to “just write” or just get something down on a page.

 

It’s helpful to ask students how they approach writing and what is most difficult for them, but you have to listen and watch closely for answers. They might not be able or willing to say it all in words. And you need ways to individualize instruction in response to what they say.

 

Sometimes, the problem is that they don’t know how to organize their ideas or they are easily overwhelmed by material. In that case, I offer a form guiding them step by step through structuring their essay. Or, in the past, I showed students an old process used by scriptwriters. It involves writing, on 3 x 5 cards, each scene you envision for the movie. Then you place the cards on a table and move them around to find the most appropriate plotline. You could do the same thing with a research or persuasive essay by recording facts, theories, and lines of reasoning on the cards and move them around to build the strongest argument for your position. Or you could use a concept map or computer graphics to serve a similar purpose.

 

Other times, students feel an outline or brainstorm takes away the creativity. Or, underneath that, they don’t trust their intellect or feel that if the process were too organized it would chase away their ideas. In that case, I explain that brainstorming allows them to work with their own brain and not against it. The brain processes that foster insight and creativity are different from those that edit, or check spelling and grammar. So doing a brainstorm frees the mind from anything that is irrelevant to writing a first draft.

 

But even more, I talk about uncovering your own truth. “What is it that you really feel, think and want to say?” Brainstorming is a way to free your mind from assumptions and get at what isn’t initially clear. It is a way to integrate material and synthesize information.

 

Actually, it’s helpful to talk about writing as part of thinking from the very beginning of an assignment or project. Start by giving students meaningful choices to write about. Then use prompts to help brainstorm how to approach the subject: “What intrigues you about this subject? What do you love or hate about it? What are your assumptions?” To help students understand the question or assignment, ask: “How are you hearing the question? What is it asking you to do? What are the different parts of the question?”

 

When you brainstorm, what do you do? Just put your pen to the paper and write whatever comes to you in response to the prompt. “What do you hear in your head? What thoughts and ideas come to you? If you get lost or confused, write down your confusion.  Write what you hear, hear what you write. Don’t edit. Just let your self go free. Edit later. Write until what you hear feels real, honest, exciting, and large enough to do justice to the topic. Write until the topic feels new or fresh to you.” Sometimes, when you don’t know where to begin an essay or can’t figure out how to answer a question, make the essay the unraveling of your confusion. Start your brainstorm or the essay itself by voicing what troubles or confuses you. By going directly into it, it unravels. Much of this instruction I learned from a wonderful form of meditative writing called proprioceptive writing. This practice can be adapted to a classroom setting. It asks students to use a pen or pencil instead of a computer or phone because when you write with the hand, you actually shape the words and thus have a greater ability to see and hear what you write.

 

Emphasize that any writing, not just short stories or poetry or film scripts, is creative, and can follow the creative process. You begin with preparation and immersion in the material. You go through a time of frustration, even confusion, questioning. Then, before insight, you allow an incubation period. You step back. You meditate. You do exercises. You play games. Especially for younger students, but its great with anyone, have some fun. Loosen up. For example, if the assignment is to write a persuasive essay, ask the students, ”If the different sides or aspects of this question were animals, which ones would they be?” Or, you can imagine each side of an argument has a different tone of voice. Or you can have students draw the central questions they are dealing with.

 

When writing is explained in this way, it’s creative, not just work, not only logic. When the student’s actual thoughts, obstacles and ways of thinking are made part of the process, the assignment becomes less an imposition and more of a revelation. The student feels like you’re helping them discover their truth and power, not taking it away. And that’s exactly what you want and what writing is about.

 

 

 

*Over the next few months, I will be devoting more time to completing my book on teaching, less to these blogs, so don’t be surprised if I miss a week now and then. Wish me well.