Tag Archives: Writing

Transcendental Meditation, Blogging and Changing Priorities.

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We see our creative side all the time.

It comes up in conversation when we least expect it, and sometimes, though not often, we find ourselves within the realm of finding writing and creativity that astounds us and amplifies what we believed in ourselves.

It’s been nearly a year since I began TM and though I’ve talked more about how it’s changed my life concerning depression, there is another way it’s changed me.

I’ve been writing a blog for 10 years, and though Delusions of Ink isn’t my first blog, it’s the one that I’ve been able to help people with and because of that the confidence I have in myself and my writing has grown.

A year ago I seriously thought I would stop writing.

I mean this seriously. I was going to delete my blog, all the stories I’ve written, the novels I’ve finished and quit writing.

When I began TM, and I began figuring out what I wanted to do with my writing, I never thought I would keep blogging, nor that I would help readers with their depression issues or have my blog featured on TM.org.

Writing is something I’ve loved since I was a child. I made up stories, wrote some of them down, but when I was in high school I began writing a lot more and somewhere between 18 and 22 I got lost and didn’t write.

After I quit college after my first year and spent more time reading, I learned to write again, though it was in baby steps.

I wrote a novel, though it was bad, and finished a second a year after that. But I haven’t finished a novel in a couple of years and I feel I need to do that.

I’ve written short stories, blog posts, but no finished novels. I’ve started a dozen or more, but I’ve always been stuck in the middle.

I started a novel shortly after beginning TM and it’s been sitting on my hard drive for too long and now that I’ve found my voice in blogging and have helped people find their voices through TM, it’s time to reduce my time commitments from Delusions of Ink for a little while and get some words on the page.

My reasons for this are many, first: I have day job commitments and family commitments which I must meet and along with plans to move in the next six months, finding the time to do all the things I want to this year while keeping my sanity will prove hard. I want to do at least a post a week, and more than likely will, but that’s all I’ll be doing.

I would like to thank all of my readers and especially the administrators of TM.org for their faith in my writing, especially when I had none, and for giving me a chance to help people with my words.

 

Deniability, Transcendental Meditation and Discovering Yourself.

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It fell from the truck, rolling, flipping and resting on the edge of the water. It lay there against the shore, the water pushing it lightly against the bank until the rush of new water pushed it into the stream.

It floated down the river, its shape changed mildly by the water until it drifted below the surface.

Walking through life, we get caught in the pull of things which aren’t under our control and they push us and pull us against other forces until we see the pull of one thing as our life’s purpose.

I always believed I should write, but I never knew I’d write something which people would read the way Delusions of Ink has.

I fell from the highest I’d been. A new child, a great wife, but I wasn’t the person I believed myself to be. I was only pretending to be that person. My facade was I was great husband and father, though I’ve learned that I was much harsher than I should have been.

When we discover we’re not the person we’ve been telling ourselves we slip from the bank of life, slide into the roaring river and float until we’ve become waterlogged and slip under the rising tide.

When I slipped under I didn’t know how to get to the surface. I was afraid of becoming someone other than I believed myself to be and I felt that changing who I was wasn’t the problem, everyone else should change to accommodate me.

When I began TM, I wasn’t aware yet. I wasn’t functioning the way I am today.

I was depressed, suicidal and I wanted my wife and kids to be happy. I felt they weren’t happy with me and suicide would fix that. I believed they’d be better without me.

Nearly a year after I wanted to end my life, I’m reaching people through the blog and through what I write. I’ve had confirmation of this and to have someone say you’d helped them is the greatest gift I could receive this holiday season.

The holidays are when suicides spike. So, when you see someone who doesn’t seem like themselves, please ask them if their okay.

If you have a friend who’s recently divorced, broken up with partner or someone who has no one, invite them to your party, they’ll be grateful and you may save a life.

If you’re having trouble this holiday please call the suicide hotline – 1(800) 273-8255

Have a safe Holiday season and Happy New Year.

Brian

Transcendental Meditation amid a Torrent

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It started in Houston, a small drizzle, preceded by a ridiculously bumpy landing.
From Houston, a layover of 45 minutes and a decent sandwich from an airport vendor, we boarded for New Orleans.
It was our first vacation without the kids and we’d she’d only seen The Crescent City in a mad rush through the Quarter and didn’t see the beauty the city held, only what at 19, she was really allowed by her parents.
Arriving at our hotel too early for check-in, we left our luggage with their bellperson and headed for Jackson Square.
Stepping on the street, we saw the usual New Orleans panhandlers, though there were less than there’d been when I visited the city 17 years prior.
The chill of an early spring rain and the smell of spices and Creole seasonings drifted from the restaurants we passed.
Our stomachs were soon growling and though we weren’t quite hungry we perused menus searching for dinner, but nothing sounded good and we made our way to Jackson Square, it was then as the chill and scents of New Orleans ran through our senses the heavens opened.
It wasn’t the rain we were used to. It was a southern downpour.
We ran from awning to awning and sidewalk to sidewalk dodging the torrent unleashed upon us.
We stepped in puddles as our clothes became drenched and then we decided to sit, eat and take in the flavors of New Orleans.
I’d only been doing TM a week, but after our meal we returned to our hotel for my second meditation of the day.
My wife thought it was a phase at that point, or that I couldn’t be experiencing the things I told her, but now that it’s been months later, she understands that it’s not a fluke and she’s closer to learning the TM technique.

How Transcendental Meditation changed my Writing Fears Into Confidence

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He strode across the floor, his walk more of a glide than I’d anticipated, but there was confidence in it. He looked past the veil of flesh of my exterior, seeing only the soul within.
The look scared me.

Before Transcendental Meditation, I felt like I’d create a new blog post, start a new story, I’d always have that thought, just before I’d finish, “Can I really show this to anyone? How would they feel about who I really am?”

With TM came a new understanding of who I am, not just as a person, but as a writer. I no longer worry about whether someone judges what I write. For my fiction, I write for myself, for my blog posts I write to free myself and hopefully help others, which is extremely gratifying.

I’ve sat, staring at my monitor, my finger twitching, my hand on the publish button before, but now, publishing a blog post is a given. There are posts which don’t get the words out right and they may never be published, but I wrote them.

Sometimes getting past the fear of judgement is the greatest fear we deal with. It can be writing, performing or it can be our day job, but the fear of judgement dissipates.

Fear is the only thing which held me back from writing what I wanted. Fear is the only thing holding any of us back from becoming who we want to be and who we deserve to be. TM has truly been a blessing to me, one I intend to share with my wife and kids.

My fear of judgement on my writing and personal life is considerably less than before TM.

 

Why I Rethought The Way I Look at My Writing.

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Each day we’re stuck living someone else’s dream.

We go to a job where oftentimes, we’re creating something for someone else, because it pays the bills.

What if we decided to live our dream, pay the bills and still keep people happy?

This was something I thought about the other day when I was writing.

I work a day job, which I had considered my main job, obviously neglecting my writing and anything creative in the process.

That was until this past week, when I was struck with something, I’m not a writer. I’m pretending to be a writer.

What I realized in that “moment of clarity” is that I’ve been looking at my writing as a second job, sure it doesn’t pay the bills right now, but as long as I treat my writing as the second job and not the first, it will always suffer.

In this realization I thought, “Damn, if I think this way, others do as well.”

What do we do about it?

We rethink our creative side, redo the way we look at our day and come up with ways to put our creative efforts first, and other things second.

I say this as a husband and father, “If your creative side isn’t in first place, it will never win.”

I have obligations, it’s not like I’m going to quit my day job, not right now. I see the time coming when that will happen, but it’s not right now.

The thing is, we all have things we want to do, but we put them in second place out of fear, shame or other reasons.

Fear of rejection, fear of someone not understanding and the fear of failure. And shame, damn, shame is the worst. When we look at the things we’ve failed at there could be a big list, and because we failed at those the shame and fear of it happening again makes us not want to try, not want to do it again.

But, when we come to the realization, as I did, that what we wake up for in the morning should be first. That the thing we want to do most in our life should be first, then, and only then will we discover the will to do it.

I’m not going to lie, it’s going to be hard. There will be people who say you can’t do it, there will be that damn voice in your head and when the voice in your head talks, tell it to F off.

The only way you’re going to do what you want with your life is to put your creative pursuits first and anything else second.

We live someone else’s dream every day, isn’t it about time we live our dream?