Heart Sutra of A Writing Life

any pressure is always self directed, that if I ever have a demand for words and only find their absence, than it's my own issue of complaint, and not one of inspiration. There are infinite things to write of and an endless flow of words. There's also silence - and it's essential to the writing process. Really, it's essential to all of life, silence is the holy underlie of order, the foundation for words to flourish. Here, I'll use silence and emptiness in synonymous fashion, offering both in the same manner as an allowing space for words and form to come to notice, the Heart Sutra of a writing life...

silence is no less than words.

words are silence in disguise.

emptiness,

form.

it's all the same. 

the issue is my interpretation of silence, my failure to truly listen to what it offers in reply to my demand for words. Silence urges me to pause, to give consideration to something other than the voice of ego, and write with a greater sense of purity, to write more from inspiration than demand. To write like this means to honor silence as often as it comes to my attention, a sacred pause to honor and not move forward with words until they appear without apparent cause. 

inspired.

words appear from silence.

form,

emptiness. 

it's the Heart Sutra of a writing life. 

and it's all the same.

there's absolutely no pressure here, words find themselves to the page through me, I am not their cause and inspiration doesn't happen by demand. It just happens. With this, writing is always a joyful process, every word comes to me as a mystery, a complete story of it's own and I only have to find its order on the page, an arrangement of what's been given. My role is to listen to the pause between words, to not block silence from allowing words to appear in their own particular order, and only once given do I arrange them on the page. Through the Heart Sutra I see that words are not separate from silence, it's not their absence, but more truly so the place of their appearance, a seamless event of inspiration come to form. One thing really...

silence being no less than words.

emptiness,

form. 

it's the Heart Sutra of a writing life.

~

Peace, Eric