The immensely powerful practice of present-moment, impartial, self-observant writing.

[Nightwise]

I'd like to share with you a practice that I had found out about in the summer of 2019. It was during the first day of my intended vision quest in which I was meant to get a vision about my life's purpose (and to be honest, it kinda failed but that was alright in the end)

It was during one of these moments that once in a while came along where I was just really stuck in confusion and a lot of mental pressure. And the feeling of just not knowing what to do with myself and my mind, how I was meant to get myself out of this.

But I had taken a notebook with me for that vision quest, in which I was meant to journal how my experience of these days up in a remote hut in the norwegian mountains was going to be.

What I tried to do was just to be very present to thoughts, feelings and sensations, and try to be very much in the moment. But I felt that the effectiveness of this practice was limited and not as satisfying or effective as I would've liked it to be.

But then, suddenly an idea occured to me.

The idea was: What if I try to do this same practice of being mindful and present, but whilst actually writing down in real-time what I'm thinking, feeling and experiencing? What if I simply start naming everything that I am thinking and feeling, not judging it, not interpreting anything, but just being very keen and alert on what my mind is doing and what I'm experiencing, and writing it down exactly as it is?

And that's when I discovered a very, very powerful technique that I personally found to be much more profound and powerful than simply doing mindfulness without any tools, without any method.

Now don't get me wrong: I think regular mindfulness and meditation practices have its place, and should probably be used far more often than the technique described. This technique that I'm covering in this post, however, is something to be used when your identification with your mind is too deep-seated and too intense for regular mindfulness and meditation practice to access it. 

There is just something about writing and putting something on paper (or in an online comment) that is just so immensely powerful. That's why I personally love journaling and writing so much. It just gets the ideas and thoughts that sometimes are stuck and sticky in my head out there, and it provides a sense of distance and relief. Once I start writing my thoughts down, I start to feel that the thoughts that I'm writing down are really getting out of my system. Or at least, a sense of clarity and distance is coming in. I can start to feel like these thoughts are not essentially defining me, and now these thoughts suddenly have taken on the form as an object of study and investigation, which suddenly turns it from dense and sticky to very intriguing and fascinating.

This technique that I'm going to talk about here is particularly useful for what I would call 'emergency situations'. Emergency situations imply that the mess that your mind is making is really intense and intrusive, and you just don't seem to be able to create any distance with you and the noise by doing regular meditation and mindfulness practices, or not sufficiently enough.

I personally haven't used this method in quite a while now, as my mind has been a lot calmer the past couple of months, but I know I can always resort to it when I would be grasped and dragged along by some intrusive and obsessive stream of mind activity. That breeds comfort in me.

It is very, very important that this practice is done with having absolute zero judgement about what you're thinking and/or feeling. This is the trickiest part of the practice. Many people tend to already have their judgements, interpretations and assumptions ready about how things should be and how things should not be. They already have a narrative for themselves of who they are and how particular thoughts and feelings fit into the context of the identity that they have.

For instance, if they feel a lot of shame, they may become ashamed about that shame, thinking: "Why am I feeling all this shame? I have been working on myself for such a long time now. It should be gone by now! I am not making any progress! This is never going to work, I am never going to get out of this!".

Now that these kind of thoughts of discouragement and even despair are not as uncommon as you may think, and even people who have been on the path for some number of years can sometimes still have bouts where they feel hopeless and think that they are failing at it all.

It is difficult but certainly possible with a very strong and keen intention to not allow yourself to become judgemental about whatever you're thinking and feeling and remain completely or at least largely impartial about and detached from whatever thoughts, sensations or feelings you're experiencing. And in my experience, it is even more effective if you name it, and in particular if you write it down in real-time, which is what this practice is about.

The intention is to remain very, very objective. The idea is to be as a scientist towards your own experience. I really like that statement, because a (true) scientist does not make any assumptions. A true scientist does not jump to any conclusions. A true scientist is simply interested, curious, inquisitive. A true scientist just wants to know what's going on, wants to see, wants to observe, wants to investigate and experiment.

This is the thing: If people were to treat their lives as if it were one big experiment, one big exploration, one big project for the sake of finding out about Truth, then there wouldn't be any suffering anymore if people were actually 100% keen on living their lives in that way. Because even the very painful stuff that one comes to encounter is just another experience that is very fascinating, very intriguing, something to be very curious about. ("ah this is interesting. What does it mean? how does it fit into the bigger picture? What can be learned from this? Let me feel into it and just explore it. What is this? It's fascinating!)

But to be able to have that kind of appreciation and fascination towards even the painful stuff requires a very open and curious spirit. It requires someone who is genuinely interested in finding out what it's all about to the extent that this curiousity is more powerful, more vigorous than any form of fear.

So if you can bring that attitude of immense curiousity towards your own experience into this practice, it will be incredibly helpful. It is this spirit of genuine impartial objective interest that will decide whether this technique will be effective for you or not. If you are more interested in judging yourself and having all kinds of interpretations about what should be done and should not be done and whether it is good or bad or not what's happening, then this practice will fail for you.

So if you want to do this practice, grab a pen or pencil and a notebook, and start writing down whatever comes to mind, whatever comes into your awareness. You can write like this:

Quote

"I now notice that there are thoughts regarding the dinner I had this evening", followed by:

"I now notice thoughts and feelings that contain judgement in regards to the notion that I would have been distracted",

"I now notice the tendency within myself to start thinking about what all of this means"

"I now notice some thought that I fear to think because this thought appears to be as really inappropraite to put in this notebook"

"I now notice judgement and a sense of heaviness about the fact that I'm thinking that I'm not supposed to have that one thought"

"I now start to wonder how long I am going to do this practice for"

"I now feel an itch. I notice that a sense of hesitation comes into my awareness about whether or not I should scratch or not"

"I notice a sense of resistance against the idea of scratching because I am meant to witness and not act"

"I notice that the intention to not scratch causes tensions within me. I feel hesitation coming up in regards to the idea whether I should scratch altogether or not"

And you can go on like that.

As you have noticed in the example, it is possible for you to start attaching yourself to the notion of how the practice is meant to be done. You may find yourself so keen on doing this exercise correctly, that you lose your sense of flexibility and your contact with your intuitive guiding system.

The thing is, whatever acts you do aside from your practice to write all that you come to think and experience down, is really not essential here. When taking for instance this example of doubting whether you should scratch or not... It is totally fine to scratch. There is nothing wrong in doing that. Whether you scratch or not is simply not the point. What is the point, however, is that you note down how your decision to scratch yourself affects your mental-emotional system. Write down what thoughts and feelings occur, and you can also describe to yourself how the itching is experienced as and how the scratching is experienced as physically, and of course how the itching and scratching is experienced as on a mental-emotional level.

You can also take a short break from the practice if you want and drink a cup of water or something, if that's what you feel really eager to do. You don't have to create this tightness in yourself of 'needing to stick with the practice at all costs'. Just... keep your keenness and alertness and a strong intention at least whilst you're doing it.

That is basically the practice. Just be very, and be very, very keen that you don't start judging yourself. If you do start judging yourself, the moment you notice that you are doing that, then write it down that you are doing that, what thoughts are accompanied with it, what feelings are associated with it, and at the moment you do that, you once again have stepped back on the right track.

That's basically what meditation and mindfulness is in essence all about. Whenever you get distracted, even when you get distracted on the topic of distraction itself, simply be aware of that, and at the moment you're aware of it, you're right back on track. 

So never start analyzing if you're doing it correctly or not, whether you're a good practitioner or not. The moment you become aware that you got distracted, you are a good practitioner. The moment you start thinking or doubting about whether you are doing it correctly or not, at that exact moment you have lost the path, and at the exact moment you become aware that this is what's happening, you're right back on track.

Of course, there is always a time and place to think and analyze and start forming certain ideas and interpretations. There's always a time and place for that and I wouldn't even recommend against doing it. Very deep, genuine and inquisitive philosophy can certainly allow you to grow and expand your awareness and accelerate your inner growth. But there is also a time when you want to let that go and focus more on Being. And that's when other practices come in, such as the one described in this post.

Edited January 10, 2020 by Nightwise

[Angelite]

I used to write a lot during my teenagehood. But then I got no time for that anymore. And writing becomes too slow for me. 

Writing is second degree. Reading third. 

 

[Angelite]

Speaking...hmm idk. Sometimes I understand better through reading than through other people's teachings of someone's book. 

[Shin]

I recommand this method ☺

[Ingit]

@Nightwise great.