Thursday, October 9, 2025

Thursday, October 9, 2025

When I began my spiritual journey, I knew intellectually what I wanted but emotionally I had no clue. I did not know if I would arrive and where. Yet, I was willing to surrender and walk on the path to the great unknown. Midst running a happy household with two daughters and husband I was struggling, first as an artist and then as a writer. My quest was for something beyond being a mother, wife, artist. The thought, “Is this all there is?” loomed large at the back of my mind. 

Somehow I ended up learning to meditate. While learning the practice, I learned that the reason you sit still in silence and solitude is because the novice practitioner is like a jar of river water, all shaken up. The requirement of sitting for 20 minutes allows the sediments to settle and the water to become clear. In the beginning when I could sit only for five to ten minutes, this advice felt unreal if not ridiculous. I had been taught to work hard, not to simply sit there and do nothing.

By the end of the first year of my practice, I managed to sit for 20 minutes watching the floating mental sediments. They were my thoughts, unwanted emotions, naggings of my busy schedule and amorphous inner workings that I was unable to control. But somehow focusing on the breath and slowing down my breathing slowly tamed my anxious and agitated egoic self. 

After decades of the combined practices of meditation, journaling, deep reading and walking, the water cleared. Mental clarity showed me whatever I needed to see. I attended to the tasks that required my attention. Out of the silence sprouted my fiction and nonfiction books. I began writing full time. I started guiding Mindful Writers Groups. I wrote with them and alone at home for hours. In twelve years I wrote ten books, the last of which is, Unblock Your Creative Flow, the guidebook we read for this class.

What I had felt to be unproductive time in silence and solitude turned out to be incredibly productive. The inner dynamics that up until then were hidden behind the common noise and busyness made the future potentialities possible. Silence brought my doubts, fears, and unfulfilled longings to the surface of my mind. Once I knew what they were I could do something about them. And then emerged the original works that I could not have fathomed in the busyness of my “previous” life.

Now I feel I am “there” which is “right here now.”