Writing As A Form Of Therapy

[eth]

@Mazarita @Exoplanet @Silenus @Maggie  and others reading here.  This is a poem I really love by Rainer Maria Rilke.........

Let this darkness be a bell tower

and you the bell.  As you ring,

What batters you becomes your strength.

Move back and forth into the change.

What is it like, such intensity of pain?

If the drink is bitter, turn yourself into wine

And if the world has ceased to hear you,

say to the silent earth :  I flow

to the rushing water, speak :  I am

_____________________

One of mine :

Through all of my ramblings

from heaven to hell

to reincarnation

it never occurred to me that

right here, right now

was one of the options

________________________

And another :

Misty mystic morning rare,

Crescent  moon and morning star,

Bless the earth we've hurt so far.

________________________

And one more :

My darling muse

Keep me infused

with inspiration and desire.

You light my fire.

________________________

[Maggie]

Powerful words @eth . Thankyou. 💞💞

[Mazarita]

This is long.

A friend from my childhood, who I traveled overseas with last year, sent me a short message tonight. When I read it, I felt that it seemed terse. I felt my heart dropping, overreacting inside of myself, as I so often do.

We live in two different states. I've been thinking of ringing her so much lately, but am feeling so terrible, physically and mentally, that I can't face a phone call. Consequently we haven't spoken for some time, though we became suddenly close and had amazing experiences with each other since about the middle of last year. But this year only intermittent phone calls.

I can write to her, but I know that she is more into speaking, and possibly loses concentration even before she reads to the end of my emails and messages. Nonetheless I have sent a reply, letting her know that there must be some mistake. I know she has misconstrued things, that what she seems to be thinking just isn't true of me.

I get guilty at the drop of a hat. It causes me great unhappiness. Lately, though, I have been practising boundaries. When I start thinking of someone and feel bad about some small or large thing, I think about drawing my emotional energy back into myself, letting those people and events and my part in them leave my mind and experience.

I turn my attention away from the voices in my head and draw awareness to my body and the real room or environment I'm living and breathing in now. Drawing my strength back into me, from where it's been emotionally and mentally scattered too far from home.

My psychologist and I were recently talking about different ways to counteract these multiple troubling memories I feel myself suddenly part of, for brief or longer times. Whether long or short, they have been often coming one after the other until all I want to do is sleep. My psych was reminding me that the repetition of more helpful ways of thinking are how we rewire our brains and escape from painful mental habits. Even if it's only for moments, the repetition of it is creating new pathways in the brain.

I have been doing things like this to help myself, and even if momentarily, I do feel better.

For me, it's when mind and heart get into communication, coming together with mutual intent to shape our experiences, even if only briefly - that is where I find things start to change for me. I am then taking steps towards the end of the tunnel, even if it takes a long time to get there, step after small step. The closer to the daylight at the end, the less painful my experience.

Sometimes I remind myself too that I'm entitled to be here, an equal human, not better or worse. Because when it comes to life in the most basic sense, we are all equally entitled to be here.

I'm trying to ease this bickering inside me about what's right and wrong, taking a microscope to it in an almost obsessive way. My terrible fear and guilt, so disproportionate. Judging myself all the time. Feeling so insecure. Scrambling to make myself morally better. It drives me crazy.

So onward with the little steps towards easing my mind.

[Maggie]

@Mazarita  There is so much to reflect on in your post. Thankyou. Take care and keep taking small steps. They are noticed. 💞💞💞👣👣

[Faith-and-Hope]

💜🌺 @Mazarita .....

[Mazarita]

Lovely @Exoplanet 

Thank you for the wonderful message here on 6 June. Your cosmic wisdom seems great to me...

"The energy that is created within our minds, through the processes inside our brain, is something I don't think we have a name for; though I think we refer to it as thoughts & emotions or our soul. I think inside our skulls we have a nano-Universe, potentially infinite as it is ever-changing. We are constantly on a journey exploring the unknown within ourselves... We forget to appreciate ourselves & the magnitude of magnificence each of us are."

Thinking cosmically has been helping my emotions. Looking up at the strip of stars above the trees from my little courtyard. Trying to see them in 3D, instead of just as a kind of flat curtain over the sky. They are all at different distances to us, a long long way away in time and space. The moon, always the moon, when it's visible. I wait for it to come around when it's not.

And on the inside as well, as you say, what I experience as a dark space, like the inside of a closet, but full up with perceptions. I guess you might say I need to come out, which in my case probably means getting out of my boxy flat. Perhaps my internal world might then be sunnier.

On that matter, I'm on a waiting list for an occupational therapist.

I've also sometimes been imagining reality as a kind of fluid energy, that moves through us, all molecules of us connected. Here we are, not as solid as we appear, moved and moving all the time, with the flows, that we are part of.

Love you too.

@Silenus  said in his first post when he started this writing thread on 12 April 2016:

"writing has been a constant companion to me"

Me too. A gift. Hugs, brother.

@eth  the Rilke poem you posted is amazing. And I especially love your poem, 'my darling muse'. Short poems are great - small things can be potent. Fantastic to see you writing. It's so brilliant that you performed live and won some competitions, and are doing it. Love to you, my friend. oxox

Warm hi's to @Maggie, @Faith-and-Hope, @Teej. Hugs to all who want or need them. 

[eth]

Dearest @Mazarita  I've read your post this morning and just found your words from 23 June.  Such deep reflections.  I also like to see the night sky in 3D.  And to see shapes in the spaces between the stars as much as the images the stars themselves form.  Not so long ago I came across something that talked about how aboriginal stories about pictures/entities in the night sky are often seen in the spaces and it was amazing to me that that's what I've been seeing for a long time without knowing.  The story of the emu in the milky way is one example.

I have a large painting of this above my bed.  Worth a google for its meaning and creation stories.  

The way you write about what's happening for you externally and internally is poignant.  I especially like to imagine you in your courtyard sitting quietly with the moon and night sky and allowing your feelings and  reflections to percolate gently.  Very moving - I still feel a very close connection with you.  I really hope you can sort things out with your good friend who you mention, that any misunderstanding is cleared up and you can move forward together.  

Hello also to @Silenus @Faith-and-Hope @Maggie @Exoplanet  and anyone else passing here.  

I'm writing again since the weekend and it feels really good to be in the flow at last.  The long gaps between creative expressions can be frustrating.  I've reworked a couple of older pieces and put them into competitions in the last few days, one of them a rather major one - it always feels almost like letting your child go out into the world.  That the piece takes on a life of its own once released.  Also working on a piece for my mother's 80th birthday coming up.  And shared a love poem with my main mate from Darwin, who I've spoken about before on the forums over the years.

Last night I had the honour of reading one of mine to a writing group convened by a well-known local published author and the feedback was incredible.  I so rarely get to hear how another person responds to my work, or any form of constructive criticism.  It was an ekphrastic piece written in response to a dot painting that was one of the given prompts and also spoke to the current Black Lives Matter actions and discussions.  About a major event that happened in the late 90s.  I finished editing it on Sunday and then Monday night that event was mentioned on the nightly news.  Talk about synchronicity!  The act of reading it to the group (it's a really angry piece) left me with heart palpitations and tremoring hands that took quite a while to settle.  I think it affected me so strongly because I haven't spoken out on such issues for a very long time.  And when I did so 20 years ago I was punished for not minding my own business (I'm not aboriginal) very severely.  That event is one of the causes of the chronic and complex PTSD I still struggle with.  So it's huge that I did that last night, can't quite believe I did it.  Feels risky but also timely.

Take care everyone.  May you find the words to express your truth and speak out authentically.

[Silenus]

Hi @Maggie @eth @Mazarita @Faith-and-Hope @Exoplanet @Shaz51 @Appleblossom and the legion of awesome funsters I have missed because of my patchwork quilt memory.

I hope you are all well in this rather upside-down topsy-turvy world we find ourselves in.

It's funny (I have an odd sense of humour) how the feelings of safety and security that we all have when we are a part of a larger organism (society) can be shown to be no more than a comforting illusion. We find ourselves in times where the illusions have been stripped bare. This is a very scary and confronting process for a lot of people, and a huge trigger for ill mental health.

Now, more than ever, it is important for people to communicate with each other, to reach out, to be supportive, to listen...

In this physically distant but still socially connected world, the words that we write mean so very much; to ourselves, sure, but also to the people who happen upon our words and read them.

I have been quiet for a while. My father (who lived with us for 10 months after he nearly died from heart failure a few years ago, then bought a house 2 streets up from where we live) took a turn for the worse. He stopped taking an important diuretic medication, didn't tell his GP or me, and landed himself in hospital. We managed to nurse him back from that precipice, and now he is on home oxygen 24/7.

The good news is that he is stable, and loves sunny winter mornings sitting out on his sofa in the north-facing sun-room. The other good news is that it has brought us closer together than we have ever been at any time in my life. It has been an interesting journey, and promises further detours and surprises no doubt.

Much love to you all. Hugs and happy vibes beaming to you.

[Silenus]

This is one of the better poems that I have churned out in the past little while. I hope you enjoy it, and that it gives rise to some interesting investigations of your own in your lives and relationships...

The Crowded Room

When there are two people in a room
It is actually very crowded
For there are more than two people in a room.

Say you and I are in a room;

There is you and me, and that makes two.
But phantom beings lurk everywhere,
Between us and around us.

There is who you believe you are
And who I believe I am;
These people are different to who we really are,
And suddenly there are four people in the room.

There is also who you believe I am,
And who I believe you are;
These people are different again,
And suddenly there are six people in the room.

There is also who you feel you should be,
And who I feel I should be;
These people, also so very different,
And suddenly there are eight people in the room.

There is also who you feel I should be,
And who I feel you should be;
Different people again,
And suddenly there are ten people in the room.

There is also your memory of yourself,
And my memory of myself;
So very different to the first two people,
And suddenly there are twelve people in the room.

Then there is your memory of me,
And my memory of you;
Also so very different,
And suddenly there are fourteen people in the room.

Projections of phantoms are filling the room,
And suddenly it becomes hard to breathe,
Near impossible to not step on someone else's toes,
Everyone getting in everyone else's way.

24th June, 2020.

I've been toying with the idea of multiple people in a room for a few years, but the poems I wrote didn't quite nail it. I am happy with this one...

I think it describes the traps that our egos set for us...

We look but we do not see the truth before our eyes...

When we look upon another, we obscure that simple vision with layer after layer of our perceptions, our biases, our own points of view, our conditioning, our memories, and multiple layers from our past...

Our experiences shape us. This is the power of memory...

But memory can be a two-edged sword. Our memories of pain, of past hurts, of disappointments when reality fails to meet our ideals; all of these memories obscure the person in front of us that we are looking at...

We project ourselves onto the other person, and end up just looking at ourselves... we have reduced the other person to a mirrored surface, so that we can gaze upon ourselves...

This is the trap of our ego...

How then do we strip away all of the layers of self and truly gaze upon each other?

That's the million-dollar question right there...

Perhaps the answer is that it requires a great deal of self awareness...

It takes calmness, safety, a great deal of energy, and a focus of vision to be the seer within, the observer who learns to know themselves...

It requires a delightful gentle curiosity to go looking for the wonders within, and strength and fortitude of will to gaze unflinchingly at our own flaws...

A lazy casual intellect will never awaken from their sleepy ignorance. Enlightenment is neither gift from the gods nor lightning bolt from the sky. It is a process...

At heart, I am two people - a poet and a man of science.

After my mental breakdown in 2011 and bipolar diagnosis, I went to work tearing my "self" apart. I applied the scientific method in all its rigour.

I learned that my self hatred was connected to my hurt inner child never being healed by the only person who could - my self...

I saw many dark and twisted things inside myself, and so much pain everywhere.

Bit by bit I tore myself apart, and studied all the bits...

And then I tried to put myself back together again, because obviously all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't...

It's a work in progress... the self evolution revolution...

Thanks for reading. Much love and respect to you all...

[eth]

Simply brilliant @Silenus !  Both the poem and your reflections.  I agree with your observations wholeheartedly.  So lovely when you do drop in.  Very sorry to hear about your father's turn for the worse.  Hopefully he won't need the oxygen for the long term.

In the last week I've entered 2 competitions, done a live reading in a new writing group facilitated by a well-known poet and had amazing feedback (lots of accidental synchronicity with the timing of sharing it), and shared a deeply personal piece about my adult child with them - almost a year after writing it.  They cried and then asked me to read it again - a very powerful sharing moment between us - and then they gave me the names of half a dozen magazines I could possibly have it published in.  So amazing to have their endorsement of the piece.  It was written for the microlit competition on the theme of scars and they had gender affirming surgery last year and I stayed with and nursed them post-op.  Powerful stuff.  It's amazing the bridges that well thought out words can build.  And the right few words can say more than rheems of drivel.

Thanks for always being inspiring.   Your poem will come to mind often I'm sure, it rings so true.