Let’s do an experiment.       

Let’s hold an idea – a simple idea, nothing extravagant or lofty – and then just let it come. Not creating anything. Simply opening the crown of the head, feeling the words tumble in, like stars from the cosmos above and around. Tapping into the collective mindstuff – it’s all floating out there, waiting to be collected, siphoned into one individuated consciousness as yourself. You are a child with a butterfly net. You are a wild creature with your ears open for any sound that vibrates by, any sign of life, any sign of danger, any sign of food, any sign of the pack. Listen.

This morning, what tumbles in is pancakes, hot and steaming. It’s not the pancakes that are important, or even how I drenched them with syrup and butter as a kid, or how I always had to cut them into tiny pieces before the drenching began. This morning, those pancakes are leading me to my mother. How she woke up earlier than all of us to make the steaming flapjacks, sometimes bringing it into our rooms for breakfast in bed, and not for any special or specific occasion. Just because she loved showing us how much she loved us.  Because her heart is bigger than the state of Alaska, if hearts were measured in size.

Trying.

Breathe.

Stop.

And go. You can feel when you start to push the flow, it’s like pushing a river to move faster. Every time you feel yourself pushing what’s coming, it will stall. Trying. Breathe. Stop. It’s a constant awareness, a continual taking-stock of the situation. Listening to what drops in, scribing it. And watching carefully for the moments when it’s no longer dropping in, but instead is coming from a tightened scrunched up place near your forehead. When the words drop in, it feels like keeping up with someone talking, trying to type as fast as they tell you the next word. When you force the river, it’s like reaching for a pencil on the top shelf, juussst baaarely too tall for your hands, and then AH! got it. And stretch again for the next one. It’s tiring. You can feel your body tense up when it happens. Whereas letting the words come in, that is a receptivity. Receptivity is always a sigh of relief.

Being a channel for words brings up an interesting question. Where do these words come from? Once you step away from the habit of “creating” the words, and instead receive them, who the writer is becomes less defined. And the question that follows is, why is it so important to know? Perhaps you will discover who your writer is. One day it may be an accumulation of thoughts floating around your head at that given moment. Another day it may be your grandfather narrating the story about the time he hid his father’s bocci set for a week just to see if his dad would get angry ever. And maybe some days it’s something very pure – higher self, or some energetic being, or however you may conceive of it – a voice that gives you simple insights. Be gentle with yourself. Trust the process. There are no wrong turns, no mistakes. It is a practice. Be with it.

Like any practice, you will sit with it, hate it, be confused by it, question it, and eventually get to know it. At that point, it becomes a friend you get to meet every day for tea. You sit down, take a sip of your tea, look at the page, say “hello,” and listen.

Some days your friend may speak in gibberish. That’s great. Write it down for later. Or maybe she’ll just launch into a long story, one you weren’t prepared to write. Well, get used to it. You’re the scribe to this muse, you must be ready for long-winded speeches and unplanned hours of note-taking.

Some days your friend might not want to talk. Then, as with any friend, you reassure her, “that’s okay, you don’t have to say a word.” Just sit a while together, look at the birds outside the window. Wonder what you’ll have for lunch. Then suddenly, without warning, it will just come out of her, like a breath held ten seconds too long.

The form doesn’t matter. What’s important is the Practice. You are practicing tuning your inner ear to the voice of the muse. You’re not used to listening like this, so be patient with yourself. It will take time. That’s what practicing is all about. You don’t throw perfect aim your first try. You work at it day after day till your muscles understand how to make your arm throw the ball where you want it to go.  Being gentle with yourself as you learn this new skill is essential.

I remember one evening near Christmas when I was about twenty-four, after a heated argument of some kind – I sat down, fire-full and angry, and the words just poured out of me so fast — it was all I could do to keep up as I wrote it down. It was a poem, and it was exhilarating. Looking back at it, the poem is okay – no masterpiece, for sure. But that isn’t important. What’s important is how that moment of simply opening up wide for the words to enter was a huge step in my learning what it felt like.

The form doesn’t matter. Pretty or ugly or decent or downright awful – it’s about the process of receiving. Every “bad” piece of writing that is received in a state of listening is worth ten pieces written well but constructed out of your brain and scrunched-up forehead.

In listening, you are giving up your control, and simply surrendering to what may come. This can be a little scary or intense. That’s good. Being in the state of receptivity means we are open to things far beyond our scope of knowledge or understanding, things much wiser than us. When you practice listening, you are like a young student sitting before the sage. You ask, “what would you like to tell me?” And she begins. And you write.

(This post is itself the experiment — written one morning, a streaming of consciousness, letting the words enter and be writ.)