Here's how it feels.
I've been using Preptober as a place to hide.
Hide from the Resistance to do the work.
Resistance to do what I need to do, on this training ground to be the person I aspire to be.
And from confronting all the stress and pressure I've been put on myself.
It is an excuse, a genius one. It fools me into believing this is the most important thing I must do right now. It deviates my attention to things that are more comfortable to deal with; the typical pattern often occurring when one's attention has gone unconscious, unaware.
Lacking awareness is an old friend of mine. I once again opened the door to welcome it back into my life by keeping away from the crucial part of my day– meditation. And I'm not talking about it being the practice of deep relaxation and concentration to calm the mind or increase the sense of peace.
Of course, that is the benefit, but I mainly practice Vipassana meditation to see the truth as it is, not how it looks or how I want it to be. It helps develop the sharpest sense of self-awareness, and this is the most valuable aspect of a regular practice of Vipassana that I've found to be true– it's to see my Self with the utmost clarity.
Hence, I began to notice in my days more of preparation but never execution.
What feeling am I trying to numb? I asked myself.
There's some hint of anxiety here and there, the stress of having too much on my plate but still adding more to it by believing that the preparation should be meticulously planned to achieve perfection (which we all know doesn't exist), or taking the edge off some absurd fear of disappointment and failure?
I've been avoiding all of that.
To begin creating something feels like that edgy moment of putting the pen and stroking the first line on a white, pristine, blank page of a new notebook.
It's a catastrophe to see that the page will no longer be perfect again; this unsullied blank page will never be in this pristine state of perfection. The ideal place is forever gone, and here I am, dreading to recreate another perfection on that same page.
It's impossible.
I know it's true, but in the bottomless pit of my mind, I don't want to believe it. I want perfect, but I will never have it– why the hell not?
The truth is too stressful to deal with, so I built a system to go around it.
My entire last week was spent drowning myself in research for my novel writing next month for I had enough of confronting my doubts and fears. In the same way, some of us get caught up in preparing for the future best life, not knowing that by unconsciously and continuously doing this, we'll never get to live any life because when the present moment arrives, we will keep preparing to live better.
Preparing to live, but never live.
Always the future, but never now; when all the future we chase and dream about will become the present when the moment arrives.
All we ever have is now, and if we're not careful about each passing moment with the clarity of this truth in mind– don't even dream that we'll stand a chance to live this precious life.
Yes, I began this writing journey, in part, to become a novelist. To tell stories that matter and resonate with my deepest values, and to entertain while inspiring a positive impact in humanity, even in the slightest way.
But had I noticed the pattern that deviated my attention from keeping up with the blog (which is the arena to cultivate my courage to be seen), I wouldn't have recognized this distraction. The genius excuse the mind created to fool me, to keep me from focusing on the present moment but on the glorious future that may or may not arrive.
This awareness of the distraction's pattern allows me to see through the whole story. It's how I go about developing self-awareness. One degree in the wrong direction can take me to a completely different landscape.
I'm glad I sat down on my meditation mat at the break of dawn today.
I embrace the feeling of wanting to bury this in my private journal as I usually do. But I will share this in the hope of the smallest change that may inspire some of you who read it until this line.
This is my unyielding commitment, the one I relentlessly strive to keep. It's the resilient and enduring nature of the courage to be imperfect, but staying real at all costs.
Because it is the most courageous battle I have fought, and it will always be.
