Same Horse, Different Saddle

I’m pretty sure just about everyone is familiar with the phrase, “back in the saddle.” After traveling for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, squeezing a ten-day retreat in the middle and polishing it off with New Years, productivity had almost become a distant memory. Like so many, I leveraged the new beginning of our latest “January 1st” to climb back into my writing chair with renewed focus.

Truthfully though, there are tangible differences in how I feel about my writing and my life that can’t be attributed to the new calendar complete with picturesque waterfalls that now graces our ‘fridge. The effects of my retreat experience still linger in the form of having new priorities and wider viewing angles. While I’ve avoided the details of that experience to the point of almost complete abstraction, there is one thing that permeates how I approach almost everything now. “How does this really matter?” is something I ask myself repeatedly each day. I’ve also come to understand that each of us will answer that question differently with each situation… sometimes based on our present mood! When we sit back and truly witness the thoughts we entertain and what we worry about, these things often don’t hold up well to intense scrutiny. They start to break down under the pressure of “is this really important?”

Invariably however we come across the deeply ceded memories that rage against the idea of being insignificant. This one is just “too big” or that one had “such a negative impact on me” that we’re not willing to write them off as “unimportant.” I understand this as I've seen it in myself. For those things, I’ve taken the tact that what is most important is finding my way past them. There are loads of books on how to deal with painful memories and forgiveness; I’ve even read some of them. Whichever technique we use is almost insignificant compared to the necessity of working at it. For me, the retreat gave me an appreciation that we all experience pain and unfortunately those same experiences shape who we become… if we allow them to. I’ve taken on the opinion that whomever we find disagreeable or unloving possesses their individual set of issues which have yet to be exorcised. Or the reason we find them disagreeable is they touch a nerve associated with one of our own unresolved pains! In either case, I find the work resides with me. Either I’m not addressing my issues or I’m not seeing how they’re simply responding to their own issues. Seeing it this way shifts the focus away from forgiveness and more towards compassion. The final hurdle (for me) presented itself as a resistance to being compassionate toward certain individuals or circumstances.

How does this all relate to writing and saddles? (I always seem to be pushing the envelope as to what qualifies for a “blog about writing.” [smile]) I’ve taken a less rigid approach when considering what to say and even what needs to get done. I’m aware now of my objectives to both write and take the necessary steps to let go of my past. They happen to be interrelated in my case, especially given how authentic I feel you must be to write about true spirituality. So if I feel there’s something I need to do to unravel my past, I plan and execute the steps to achieve that. If I’m meditating and all I can think about is writing I step away and start writing. The meditation chair will be there when the writing is done, and vice versa. So my writing saddle is quite a bit softer than it was before, yet it’s still guiding me through the miles I need to scribe.

By way of learning to be compassionate towards others, it’s rubbed off a little bit when dealing with myself.