Recently in Meditation & Mindfulness Category

Research is important to writing. Not just checking Wikipedia, of course, because the information on Wikipedia is wrong (any moron can edit it). Often a Google Search is a good place to start. But right now I'm talking about true research: Going places, meeting people, reading books libraries forgot existed. Yesterday, while researching my novel, I found several books in the stacks, which provided me with writing about the city of San Francisco. Believe me, I don't want to read all these books. But of course I will, with a smile on my face, and I'll be glad I did.

I want to say, Let's call this research, but since the Wikipedia Era is upon us, let's call it Deep Research instead. This is the same reason I say Rewriting or Redrafting instead of Revising: Too many people think revising means checking for misplaced commas. So we'll use the term deep research to mean "getting your hands dirty," or, for the brevity-inclined, for experience (also known, in the writings of Rollo May, as encounter).

Here's another example: Right now I'm working on an article for Signature. I bravely took the job because it offers me a chance to stuff my face with good food. I need to revisit my favorite eateries for a start, in person, and "be someone on whom nothing is lost," as Henry James said.

Everyone knows people, culture, language, and food are closely connected. This article requires more research, again, than just talking to my friends and saying, "Hey, friend, what cool local restaurant do you recommend I promote shamelessly?"

For personal experiences, try to be mindful while you're experiencing something. Writing can come later. You don't want to be jotting things down in a notebook while you're researching in person. You'll miss something. You probably want to write immediately afterward, instead, so you don't forget anything important. Or, if you're just reading a book, then it's all right to take notes.

In my own writing, I'm in the process of finding out, tracking down, and personally tasting. So remember, writing is hard work. Don't slack on the research.

"You have to say 'this is what I intend; this is what I will do if the universe is willing for me to do it.' So an intention is not a wish, and it is not a hope, it is the conscious use of your will." ~Gary Zukav

The words above are taken from what Gary Zukav told me when I asked him how people achieve fame. First, he taught me an important lesson. Being famous, he said, is not important. Not in the slightest. Being a positive influence in the world is important. Then if the universe wants you to be famous it will make you famous.

At the time I didn't know if I believed him. I was 17 years old. Mind you this was years before Oprah popularized The Secret, although she was friends with Mr. Zukav. For years motivational speakers have espoused the benefits of positive thinking. Mind over matter. Intention. But is any of it true? Although I deplore that some would capitalize on it as self-help authors and self-appointed gurus, I have come to believe it is true.

Years later, when I revisited the interview, I began to understand what Gary Zukav meant. This is what people speak of when they talk about the Law of Attraction, or about things seeming 'meant to be.'

Almost everyone I know can think of a time when things started to fall into place. When the pins and tumblers clicked and the locks opened. When things were going right. I would wager everyone who reads this can think of some time like that, and, probably, the feeling of rightness will be coupled with extraordinary coincidences.

It isn't magic. It is what it is. And, as Alexander Pope said, "What is, is right."

Many people don't believe in the law of attraction, even though they succeed by it. There is no need to. The universe doesn't care whether or not you believe. It cares about what you do. The key is posture, and -- you guessed it -- intention. Not to mention, I think, humility. Being humble may be the most important component of all.

And one more thing...

To make dreams a reality, something more is needed by the dreamer. Some internal harmony. Intentions within and without must coincide. And there must exist a drive. I will call this force Torque (known as intrinsic motivation to psychologists). Without torque, intention is nothing. If intention is a conscious use of your will, then torque is the energy that translates into willpower.

For my intention,

I will write as well as I can, as much as I can. People will read my stories for mindfulness; I will communicate with them. In the Fall of 2009 I will, if the universe is willing, attend a writer's workshop at the University of California - Irvine, or at the University of Iowa. I will be a positive influence in the world. I will be mindful. Above all, I will try my hardest every day to reach these goals, especially watching, as my father reminds me, for signs that I'm traveling the right path.

This is what I will do, if the universe is willing for me to do it.

A few days ago, Steve Rucker invited me to lunch at a small Italian café downtown, near the square, and I was in such a good mood I said absolutely without consulting my dwindling cash supply. For once didn't think about spending money. Dollars are tight, but not so tight I would turn down a steaming plate of spaghetti. Nona's is a narrow building painted white and trimmed in robin's egg blue, with some of the best food in Greene County for under ten dollars inside.

I had just finished up a meeting with my thesis committee chair, Brian Shawver. He read my proposal and gave me ideas for my thesis. Mostly we just sat around and talked. He talked about concerts in Kansas City, old professors of his from the University of Iowa, and Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union. We drank some coffee and talked about genre fiction and literary fiction, and the coming Fall semester. He gave me his thoughts on how to build convincing characters, and we talked about several points from his books Aftermath and The Cuban Prospect, and we debated the pros and cons of using tricks to burn a character into the reader's mind.

I left feeling wound up, ready to write, excited to tackle this new novel I'm planning, which is titled Atlantis in the Sands. It would have to wait for Nona's, of course.

When I met up with Steve, we fell to talking. I could listen to people like Brian and Steve talk all day long and never get bored. It came up that I had been reading the new The Atlantic article, "Is Google Making Us Stoopid?"

This article isn't what you think--it's not memory-based, really. But the opening bars struck a chord with me. You see, for a while now I've been feeling less sharp than I was. Not that I'm a genius, you know, just that I wasn't always so flaky. The author, Nicholas Carr, suggests that hyper-links and Internet, while making research easier, is actually altering our brain chemistry, and gives several instances of shortened attention spans, etc. You can read the whole article here and I hope you do.

The answer I had been seeking to my questions ("Why can't I finish what I start?" and "Why is it so hard to focus on writing sometimes?") was right in front of my nose. I knew it had something to do with the article, but I didn't know what. As he often does, Steve pointed this out to me. He's got that built-in, shock-proof shit detector Ernest Hemingway loved so much.

Writing is paying attention to a fictional setting moment by moment, with non-judgmental awareness. In mindfulness, when a mind wanders, you bring it back patiently, time after time. In writing, you have to keep closing the Firefox window with Wikipedia in it. Or Google Earth. Or Merriam-Webster Online. Or all those books you checked out from the library.

Mindfulness is hard enough. Writing, too. So why make it more difficult?

Steve said he always had to write late at night. No music, nothing. He said, "It was like I had to be in a bubble." I said, "I should try that." I thought of Stephen King's locked door, which he says is all-important. A locked door to keep distractions out and to keep the writer in.

Apparently, I sometimes need to lock the door in my head.

When I write now, I refuse to open other windows on the computer, even for research, unless the question is very small and easily answered. An example of that would be "When was T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom published?" Answer: "1935." But for something more complicated, like, "How does a steam engine work on an old train?" I do that research before I start writing. Otherwise, it's too easy to get distracted.

When I got home, I tried locking the door in my head for the first time. I wrote 10 pages, 2,000 words, and I plan to write more next week.

If you think you know what mindfulness is, or what meditation is, then be careful: Our early 21st century American culture thinks it knows, too. And our culture has the facts wrong. Meditation is so mixed up in wrongness (in the minds of most people) that I hesitate to even use the word. Words are like towels, and after too long one can get soiled. Most times its better to throw out the dirty towel and start with a new one, since some connotations can be extraordinarily powerful.

Better than a new word, though, I will try to wash out this old towel and bleach it. Maybe it can yet be salvaged.

Meditation is not passive for starters, not just sitting around and being silent. Cultivating mindfulness is an active, energetic problem; even if some of the solution does require inner silence.

Likewise meditation is not about detaching from the world, drawing away from the physical, or "becoming a nobody," as Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn reminds us in Wherever You Go, There You Are. When he talks about rejecting the "self," he is careful to point out this doesn't mean destroying who you are: Just the opposite! Even Albert Einstein wrote in The World as I See It that one must reject the artificial constructs "I," "me," and "mine." The world is holistic and so is nature, drawn together in a complex web, each bit changing another at a different time and place. Putting up a barrier between yourself and the rest of the world is no way to live in it. Jon Kabat-Zinn says,

When we speak of meditation, it is important for you to know that this is not some weird, cryptic activity, as our popular culture might have it. It does not involve becoming some kind of zombie, vegetable, self-absorbed narcissist, navel gazer, "space cadet," cultist, devotee, mystic, or Eastern philosopher. Meditation is simply about being yourself and knowing something about who that is. It is about coming to realize that you are on a path whether you like it or not, namely, the path that is your life. Meditation may help us see that this path we call our life has direction; that it is always unfolding, moment by moment; and that what happens now, in this moment, influences what happens next.

Too often, Kabat-Zinn says, we live our lives in a dream, confident that the labels we give ourselves (names, ages, genders, race, sexual orientations, etc.) are really who we are instead of just labels. Labels are a part of who we are, but they are not everything. But, seeing these labels and confident they are sturdy, we say, "I know who I am and where I am going," and so don't bother to pay attention, moment by moment, to our lives.

We must recognize that what we do each moment comes to define who we are. If you lie each day, for example, about trivial matters  (Did you clean your room today?) then little by little you become a liar. We need to turn off the autopilot. Sometimes, something may happen to us that turns the autopilot back on.

Lately, I have had this problem. With the turmoil of selling my house, the prospect of planning my wedding (making everyone, including me and Sarah, happy), and of course the ever-problematic How will I make enough money?, I have come to fly on autopilot again. I know that Sarah has, too. So much stress just overloads my system. Not to worry, never fear. The most important thing now is not to be judgmental. Being angry at the autopilot for switching on does no good. Probably it saved me from crashing and having a breakdown, protected me until I could think clearly again. I think that's how the dream works; it protects us. The danger comes when we don't learn to take back control and live our lives again.

Moment by moment, I have been coming awake. Now I feel as if I can write clearly.

The practice of mindfulness, and of meditation, is different for everyone. I am confident that meditation cannot be taught, only talked about in terms of theory, and that everyone, while meditating, comes to understand in a unique way who they truly are. You may not even need a teacher. You just need to be present. Some teacher may tell us practices or concepts, such as Breathing in, I recognize my emotion; Breathing out, I calm my emotion. But each man and woman in the world has a different breath. Breaths are like snowflakes. In everyday life, we do different things to meditate.

To meditate, I write. Sarah may do something different: Walking, I think, or reading. You may ride bikes, or run marathons, or paint, or compose music.However you choose to come awake, be comfortable with who you are, and take the time to engage with life, not passively but actively. I don't mean this last as an order, but as a plea, for your sake and for ours: Wake up and pay attention!