dry state

the writer has hit a very dry state. words have withered, shrivelled and shrunk into a trickle. its painful. insights arrive and there is no way to describe them. i close my eyes and let my body and soul feel the insights, then the writer wants to express them and she finds a parched desert. 

a voice says, 'let it go. words will return soon.' another says, 'you are a writer, write. everyday. no matter how depleted words are. it is your chosen practice.'

one of my sensei's once said to me that when something is a way of life you do it everyday and throughout the day. you train in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening. like breathing, i thought. no matter how laboured during a chest infection i still breathe. 

before he said this to me way of life had a different meaning for me. i used to think that when i practiced whatever truth was embodied within something, not just while performing certain actions but all the time, when i lived the essence of that thing every minute and in every aspect of my life - then it became a way of life. but i liked sensei's definition. it was simple to understand though hard to follow. it also led me to the deeper essence without my brain twisting itself in crazy ways trying to define way of life - insisting that i needed to define its meaning before i tried living it.

so i decide to write everyday no matter what. that relentless inner critic says, 'but what makes you think what you are writing in this dry state is good enough for others to see. this is a blog not a personal journal. you should only put out finished, polished products here.'

an artist i once knew told me that no piece of art is ever finished. it goes on evolving within the artist but at some point the artist decides to exhibit it. he said he allowed people into his workshop to wander through the works in progress. the raw, very far from perfect pieces. it takes great courage to do that i had responded. he taught me about vulnerability. something i then used in my practice as a conflict facilitator.

some posts are so rough i cringe when i read through them. yet i choose to publish them. unsure right now whether that means i don't respect my reader enough?