Writing and Standing Up to Live with All of It.

 How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

Henry David Thoreau

Am I vain or am I finally maturing as a writer and as a human being?

I write, or at least try to write, what I have lived as I stand here in this life experience...on very wobbly legs, mind you. :) I try to strip away all the egoic costumes I am used to wearing to create an image and to just be the imperfect, struggling human, the imperfect, struggling writer, and the imperfect, struggling learner that I am. That raw vulnerability and imperfect presentation is unsettling for many. The may find it hard to read this.  It is often unsettling for this "me" that is becoming less and less the driver of this life experience, to stand in Life and write about it.

Whatever remains of this "me" wants comfort and ease, a certain freedom from pain and suffering.  It erronously believes through its conditioned programming that it "should"  get what it wants as a writer: appreciation, validation, publication, payment, notoriety, a certian life style, and freedom from this life it is experiencing now  as it  does what it does. It should also be free from the unwanted:  criticism, rejection, obscurity, poverty, difficulty, and invalidation for what  it offers the world. Somehow "me" thinks if I get what ego wants and avoid what it doesn't want, I will be fulfilled as a writer, and as a human. But as Singer reminds us

Getting what you want doesn't work!

Knowing that it doesn't work, however, doesn't mean we need to pretend we do not want the things we want and that we want the things we do not want, that we renounce, that we stuff the wanting  and the unwnating way down inside us either.

Suppressing our preferences doesnt work.

What about expressing those preferences and aversions?

 Expressing our preferences doesn't work...

Yet, isn't that what you do here -express what you see as your desires and aversions?

Expression here, I believe, refers to our seeking and doing to have our desires manifested or "expressed" in our everyday life circumstances, and to avoid our aversions.

So though I write, aware of these desires and dislikes, I try to stay unattached to the outcome of this writing. I am definitely not fully evolved or enlightened, but I have matured enough to know that I will keep writing, as I feel pulled to do, independent of the possible outcomes that will be expressed in the life circumstances this human may encounter. I know now, after so many experiences with desire and aversion in this lifetime, that spending energy attempting to get what I want and avoid what I, as "me", don't want is a ridiculous waste of time and precious resources.  It will never make this "me" happy.  It will simply lead to more suffering. 

"Been there, done that." 

Knowing that, Singer tells us, is a sign that we are becoming mature souls. I have evolved enough to understand... 

If you are okay getting what you don't want or  not getting what you want...you are enlightened. 

Again, I am not sure how evolved or enlightened I am at this point but hopefully I am getting there. 

Go through what you need to go through  ...grow through what you need to grow through...mature with every experience...you actually become deeper because you went through the experiences you go through.

You go through what you need to go through...everthing you go through is for the purpose of  liberation...taking you to God...pulling you up. 

All is well

Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe/ Sounds True (July 2, 2026) There Are No Problems, Only Experiences.

Henry David ThoreauWalden(1854) Walden: Life in the Woods.  Ticknor and Fields.