Whether I’m doing group classes or one-on-one sessions with people, it’s not uncommon for them to go home and have a friend or relative ask them how the class went and what they learned. But the people are always surprised when the students tell them that they did learn a lot, but they’re not really sure how to describe it, or the lesson. That’s because it isn’t a lesson in in an adding knowledge kind of way. It’s a different kind of learning.
For me as a writer, the hardest part of creating this blog was letting go of my habits as a writer. On top of the typos we all inevitably make, now I also had to ignore some grammatical rules. I had to have no internal “correctness” editor, because what I’m communicating cannot afford any flexing or hewing. And because of what I’m trying to do within the reader’s mind, it means I also have to jump around with less of a sense of flow than I always wanted as a writer.
Andre Gide once said that art was a collaboration between God and an artist and the less the artist did the better. That is how this process feels. As though it spills out of me in such a pure and beautiful way, that I cannot imagine deigning to edit its form. I write it as I would say it, and I say it in the way which best allows me to create the desired effect. To that end….
Imagine that your mind is like an incredibly flexible, powerful mass, through which it is possible to bore in any direction. Imagine an idea known to you is envisioned as a opening within your mind. A cavity. A vestibule where one or more other channels of thought intersect. This is a headspace—an idea, or concept—you are comfortable resting energy within. My words then appear almost as a sound that challenges that idea. You hear me like the knocking of other miners, alive in another vestibule running parallel to yours. And so you dig toward the sound of my voice.
I ultimately get you to do this from multiple directions at once. That’s why my writing sometimes seems to bounce around. It’s because I’m pulling at you from different angles at the same time. You experience this digging as confusion, or intense thought, or wondering. But each moment of it moves you closer to the reality you wish to create.
Soon you have a new synaptic connection. When these disparate ideas finally link and the energy of your mind can flow through that new channel, you experience what is referred to as an insight. That is your Aha! moment. It lights up your brain. That’s my job. To light up your brain, back to the way it was before judgmental thoughts about your experiences clogged it up.
When you were a little kid, if I would have asked you if you could dance you would have said yes. And if I asked you if you could sing you would also have said yes. But for a lot of us, experiences convinced us those things couldn’t be. But that’s simply wrong. And this blog is about me proving to you that your ideas about reality are wrong, and if you could see the truth of reality clearly, the vast majority of your problems would vanish through that deeper understanding.
Everyone would like more peace of mind. I’m glad many of you are achieving it through my work here. I very much appreciate the emails and comments from those of you who have been helped—with Correen’s recent comment regarding her experience reading Facing the World being a good example of the subject matter of this blog.
I encourage you to share these with others who are seeking a deeper more profound experience. The world can easily make a massive shift in its tenor. But to do that, each drop in the bucket must alter how it processes life.
Join in. Be kind. Helpful. Compliment others. Be patient. Expect less. Love more. And endure struggle. Do this, and you will live in a bigger world.
peace. s
Scott McPherson is an Edmonton-based writer, public speaker, and mindfulness facilitator who works with individuals, companies and non-profit organizations locally and around the world.
A serious childhood brain injury lead Scott to spend his entire life meditating on the concepts of thought, consciousness, reality and identity. It made others as strange to him as he was to them. When he realized people were confused by their own over-thinking, Scott began teaching others to understand reality. He is currently CBC Radio Active’s Wellness Columnist, as well as a writer, speaker and mindfulness instructor based in Edmonton, AB where he still finds it strange to write about himself in the third person.