The Writing Process that Transformed my Life.
Helping to heal anxiety, bipolar, codependency, addiction, trauma.
The title of this article makes a large claim but I’ll go beyond that, this writing process has made me a better person with healthier relationships.
Many of the things I have learned about the human condition and the realm of the unconscious comes from this writing.
In a way, it’s my Red Book. The Red Book is Carl Jung’s dive into his own inner world from which he learned much about himself and others.
The claim that many of life’s answers are within us is true but it takes work to reach them.
What is the process?
I call this writing piece “tree,” partially because I love trees and partially because it was inspired by the 365 lined chant poem titled “Tree” by Richard Berengarten.
I met him and was inspired to write more. I figured taking a line of his a day for inspiration was as good a writing challenge as any.
It didn’t take long before the work grew into something else.
When we’re mindful of the world within and do our best to get out of our own way it opens up to us and the Muses come knocking.
What “tree” has become is a cyclical writing process that I repeat every year.
Starting in January I restart the book. I go through and edit and write where I feel inspired month by month.
Where it’s appropriate I hit delete and make room for something new or wedge a new inspiration in amongst the old.
It’s not planned, I read as I go along and move through my month. Often I’ll find a theme is coming up in life only to open up “tree” in order to write about it and find it already written there from years before.
To help me keep track of the years and their layers I use different formatting for different years. It started off as basic text, then came the italics, the underlines I can’t produce here, and eventually bolds.
As the year progresses I write about what comes to mind. Sometimes it’s a poem, sometimes it’s a musing about life or society, sometimes it’s an inner experience that uses the page as a stage, a space for active imagination.
I didn’t start out with this as my intention. I wanted a work of poetry and I fought when things veered off that road but those are some of the lessons this work has taught me.
- Inspiration takes its own path. It isn’t always what we want it to be.
- When we set our perfectionism and expectations aside true inspiration is able to flow.
- When we make room to record what happens within, the inner world awakens with our observation.
What “tree” has taught me.
I’ve learned a lot about myself, the archetypes, the cycles of the year.
Repeating each year I’ve noticed that many themes come up in cycles. Typically they’ll happen in the world around me and then I’ll find them in “tree” on the next page to edit.
But “tree” has taught me that life isn’t a circle.
We grow.
Every month, every year has been a process of integration where working with “tree” and the concepts that arise there as well as my mindfulness and spiritual practice helps me to illuminate, understand, and embody the many parts of Self and the archetypes that arise.
What this has led to is an understanding that while the seasons turn and many things run in cycles when we are mindful and work with the realm within we grow in these cycles rather than spin in circles.
The images that comes to me are the rings of a tree rather than the swirls of a whirlpool or the way that year after year a farm produces wheat that is harvested and then used to sow the crops of another year.
While there is a cycle of growth that looks the same the fruit of those harvests grows a family who lives their lives, builds new farm buildings, has children that become doctors, painters, lovers.
When we pay attention to the cycles of the world we can integrate them in a way that allows us to grow.
What does this look like in practical terms?
- My anxiety is gone because I have clear evidence that while things cycle I have gotten better at overcoming challenges year after year.
- My depression is gone because when it tries to lie to me and say “the world will always be like this,” I have six years of writing to show me that’s not the case.
- I have greater confidence in myself and my relation to the world as well as to my own psyche.
- I have healthier relationships because the things that came up from the depths helped me better understand myself and what I was projecting and trying to get from others.
- I have a better understanding of the cycles and seasons that people go through and have explored these experiences in a way that takes in the facts as well as the emotional and spiritual impressions.
- Working on “tree” is a process that allows me to recenter. No matter what comes up in life if I’m able to sit down with this work and read it out loud I find my own rhythm again.
- Through observing the way that time piles year after year I realize how inspiration collects like the layers of a pearl. It’s not always a lightning bolt and even when it is that lightning bolt thought often requires ripening to fully come into its own.
What does it look like?
The writing is free form, sometimes it looks like poems, sometimes it’s a dialogue with characters from mythology.
Sometimes it’s a dream sequence or just a listing of words and their definitions because the definitions of things have a magic all their own.
I’m going to share a part I wrote during January several years ago followed by a piece that came up this last December. Due to the formatting here on Medium I can’t show it the way I’ve written it but it’ll be close enough.
I've selected these two pieces because they show the growth and the polarity that occurs when we take a look at our inner world year after year.
In my core is a vacuum, a space, place for a tree to grow.
Today, lying here on side, fetal, feral, nails grown long, they are living symbol, sign of neglect. There is a dog beside me. We sleep through the day.
There is a twisting inside me. Shaped hands half clutched. Will they loosen? Claw grasped. It is the same shape, mirrored shape, as my body, half fetal, caved, coved — dome trying, perhaps, still birthing a world for my soul to know.
There is a hole inside this core. Here traced by elbows, thighs and knees. Here resting its head upon the softness of my stomach as I lay sideways, fetal — feral, empty appetite rises, the sun rises. The hunger tries to eat the flaming globe.
I can not reach, can barely phantom, pantomime grasp of burning sun. I think to myself, “this is rare day, winter sunny day. Shouldn’t you get up now? Shouldn’t you move now? Do something? Please do something, make something, if it’s just a cry, even if it’s just a scream, do something!”
There is a hole inside my core, it hungers, twisting fog, it twinges here in arms that seek to wrap. It aches here in chest that seeks to hold.
The hunger stares at the sun, imagines it at tip of finger, growing closer, passing through smiling lips. it longs for taste of sunlit garden, the moment when you touch your face just to remember that you are not the light, not this vision that the eyes drink. You are not the light but then your mind sparks and you think, “all life is mud and light.”
There is a hole inside my chest. I am curled, on my side, hands half grasped. My mouth opens, I feel the ghost of your touch on my lips.
If I were to eat the sun, bring it within or find a way to nuzzle it beside this empty twin, then perhaps, dawning, the mists within would pull back and form these ghosts I see. Their arms and shoulders silhouetted by the hunger of the world within — around.
But my hands lie idle, grasping, unfurled, there is a hole. I am a hole. My eyes look out, my stomach fills with fog, the ghosts remain incomplete. I do not see my elbows, the moon and sun within. I do not see thighs and feet, trees, shoulders and stars. I do not see my arms and legs, the mountains, rivers and valleys.
In the fog, in the mass of ghostly shoulders and silhouetted heads, I miss the whole, I open my mouth. I make my silent scream.
These words were written in depression and act for me as a voice of where I was several years ago. I’ve spent most of my life depressed and so it’s a familiar voice and is made more beautiful when paired with the voice of today and the songs of praise.
what mystery is this? what wonder?
even my daemons you ordained.
chose green eye god, green eyed ram.
chose the idols to keep me safe.
held focus and taught weight of magic,
weight of psyche.
you transformed blue eye to green.
led the way to the parts unseen.
the parts i did not know.
you gathered them, showed them to me
in the longing, in the wanting.
you brought me back to myself.
beyond the eyes of blue or green.
back to your vision, star eyed, moonlit
sunshine.
you showed me that the gravity of stars holds true.
the gravity of stars outlines wake and undercurrent.
outlines the depths of vision.
you taught me magic. the ways to court your name.
you sent muse and daemon, awoke the seasons,
awoke the planets and the signs.
you saved me from my madness. from the craving
of cliff’s edge. from the chaos that arises within.
you have calmed the waters. you have taught
me how to mine the depths, to go beyond
the fear, to see the treasures.
i asked how to call you and you came and said
“call me by my many names,” and you taught
those names, placed the names of the gods
upon my lips. carved them in flesh
and dream.
you showed me where to find your mantel,
caught in the image of a foreign god.
the push and the pull, the love spell —
exorcism.
you showed me where to find myself.
how to press delete, to make
space, make room.
you taught me the breadth of chest.
showed how to paint a scene, how to establish
altar. the ways to construct a world within
and breathe into it life.
you breathed into me life.
gave to me the Sun to eat, to
fill my mouth and birthed in me
from ghosts and fog
a world alive.
my Ya, my Ya, you gave to me
a world alive.
Where does it go from here?
I plan to be working on “tree” for the rest of my life. Pruning, shaping, writing something new.
I want to take snapshots every few years to see where it is. After five years, this being the sixth, I have some 1,2000+ pages that are fairly coherent and starting to shine after much polishing.
I am currently sharing the work with friends and contributors on my Patreon page.
It wasn’t ready to be seen before this year and I do suggest that if you try the process you keep it personal to you until its roots are deep and ready to hold the weight of the world’s eye.
This year is the year for me to start that process. I could feel the Muses turn from their desire for privacy to their desire to be seen.
What “tree” has taught me more than anything is that you listen to the Muses not only because they are glorious but even when you hate what is coming out of you it’ll lead somewhere if you give it enough time, attention, and room to grow.
Care to give it a try?
It doesn’t have to be a book of poetry and musings. It could be a journal or a collection of short stories or some words and doodling.
I have a friend who has started a daily painting.
The important pieces are that you make space and time to do it, you allow your inspiration and intuition to rule over your “concepts” or “plans” for what you make and that you repeat the cycle each year; reviewing what came before as you create what arises in the moment.
May you be blessed by the Muses with deep learning and growth!
Love and share.
I’m starting something new. Writing every day as I put my random thoughts down on binary paper.
If you’d like to join me on this journey you can sign up for my email list here. I share thoughts, tips, adventures, and goodies.
