Writing As Meditation
I recently re-started meditating and I now believe that writing counts as meditation. Some people might disagree, but I feel that when you are truly on the page, paused waiting for the next word to come, or lingering while your character makes a decision, that moment is indeed a meditation. Cobble those moments together, and the result achieves a similar after-glow to a good meditation session.
There’s a quiet that infuses the heart. It’s a peacefulness of knowing you’re in the right place and that you are not anywhere else. That, to me, is meditation, and that, to me is the meditation of writing. Here’s the Merriam Webster definition:
med·i·tate
1: to engage in contemplation or reflection
2: to engage in mental exercise (as concentration on one’s breathing or repetition of a mantra) for the purpose of reaching a heightened level of spiritual awareness
That last phrase is the sense of the word that applies to writing. Although some meditators would disagree that writing can be meditation, I would argue that we writers—when in the throes of creating prose—absolutely reach a heightened spiritual awareness.
It’s why I write.
On the other hand, a true meditative state invoked by breathing or repetition of a mantra, or other physical, psychic stillness, can create quite another type of spiritual awareness. There are levels, varieties, and indeed, nuances. Liken it to one of your favorite recipes: using the exact same ingredients, the end result may differ a tiny bit each time you make it, based on the freshness of the components, or the weather, or the occasion, and maybe even, the company. It’s not imperfectly different—it’s just different.
Some meditators I’ve studied actually allow the meditation of doing, the meditation of working, the meditation of exercise. I offer and support as witness, the meditation of writing. I submit that if you’re in the groove of your writing, and if you set your intention toward achieving that heightened awareness, writing is as restorative as any breathing meditation.
Some writing sessions produce Shakespeare; some barely reach Dick and Jane. We are not alone in this. Olympian wannabes break the record on a given day’s practice only to be barred from tryouts a week later. But, they continue to drill and train every day. Hopefully, we write every day. We meditate into our writing or we write into the spaces in our brain where the quiet places reside. It is peaceful there. Writing is meditation if you let it be, even on those awful Dick and Jane days.
