May 13, 2019, 1:48 am. Sitting in my dimly lit room, finally starting to get some words down after just staring at my laptop for quite a while. I feel a sudden urge, an overwhelming inspiration to write. But to write about what? The issue isn’t really what to write about, but rather how to begin, or where to begin writing about it. How can I begin at any specific point in time when the message I try to convey is timeless, bubbling up from within me as an extremely powerful force which consists of all the wonders of the past and all the greatness that will ever come of the future? It is not only mine however; this force is impersonal, and it is within us all. It is the source of all creativity and progress. If I can’t accurately write about this timeless spiritual dimension which lies beyond and yet within all of us then what else is there to write about? Nothing else compares, so this is what I must write about first of all. Now, if the topic is so wonderful then why haven’t I seriously sat down to write about it before today? Why haven’t I used all this overwhelming inspiration to write every single day? Why did I stop writing only 8 days into my initial goal of writing a thousand words every day? The answer is resistance. There are various reasons really, but they all amount up to resistance. Joseph Campbell stated that “the psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight.” I really feel I need to start being more of the latter than the former, as I often feel I’m going crazy from seeing so much confusion, if not in my own life and mind then in those of others. Due to all this confusion I’ve been letting resistance get the best of me for far too long. That’s no excuse, just the unfortunate truth of the matter. Humanity as a whole needs to be actively working to transmute all of life’s chaos into art, into creativity, but by doing nothing instead, or by panicking in the face of pressure and running away into the arms of comfortable pleasures that later turn into vices, we become paralyzed. Resistance becomes the ruler of our lives. I’ve begun to drown in the waters of life, questioning everything and reaching no absolute conclusions, becoming completely paralyzed by uncertainty. But the truth is no one needs an absolute conclusion, an absolute knowledge of life, in order to get started on any creative venture. I just finished reading Steven Pressfield’s ‘The War of Art’ last week, and it honestly couldn’t have found me at a better time in my life. Pressfield says in the book that from the age of 25 to 32 resistance kicked his ass all up and down the block and yet he did not realize it until after all those years had passed. Resistance is tricky as hell, and subtle too. I’m about to be 25 on November 25th of this year, and I seriously have been feeling like I need to get started, like I really can’t afford to stall this any longer. I’ve known that resistance is fucking me up and that I simply have to beat it since before I even read Pressfield’s book and could clearly recognize my problem as resistance. It was just an unnamed, negative force before then, yet I knew it was there. I need to move forward now and make a change. I don’t feel any regrets when it comes to my past, as everything is a lesson to learn from, yet I do have greater expectations for the future, and I need to change a lot of my old habits as well as develop a lot of new ones if I’m serious about creating such a reality. I shouldn’t mention the future though, since the future never really exists. I feel like the present is constantly being ripped away from us by the pressure of remaining alive and significant in a future fantasy in our minds. Even though I am aware of this, I’ve often felt like I can’t escape it no matter how hard I try. It is in our genes to try to survive, and to feel as if our survival is more important that of others. The truth is it isn’t. We aren’t in any way more special than anyone else, and people are born and die every day. Do we cry, do we mourn for all these people? We all understand that we are all equal in God’s eyes, yet we would die only protecting our own lives and the lives of our immediate families, but never for the lives of strangers. We clearly favor ourselves, and maybe there’s nothing wrong with this. But sometimes we need to sacrifice ourselves for the greater good of all, for our own greater good even, as we are not separate from all our earthly brothers and sisters, though it might seem that we are. I have always understood this, seeing a clear example of this in Jesus, who I was taught about very early on life, yet I have never actually put it into practice. What I’ve been doing for so long is simply surviving, wasting the days away in fear that things could go wrong if I try, doubting myself until the last bit of motivation is murdered within me, or even in fear that I might succeed, and that my life might be completely changed to the point where I can no longer handle it. Instead of living serenely in the present and trusting in life or God to take its due course, I’ve been living in a world of future possibilities, in a fantasy world. I’ve taken the comfortable route and decided to work 9-to-5 jobs one after another without putting any actual effort into my real calling, my writing, my music, my creativity in general. I’ve been focusing only on what works best for me at any given moment, passing time and ignoring what is meant to be my true contribution to humanity, the passion I hold within me and the talent that I’ve been blessed with. I haven’t been willing to sacrifice the petty pleasures and habits that hold me back. None of us have anything to offer the world other than ourselves, who we truly are. I haven’t always been true to my authentic self, but as of today, that fake me is dead, and the true me begins to rise from the ashes like the legendary phoenix. I see now that there is no time to waste, and that I need to put in some serious work in order to achieve my dreams. Time is ticking.
To be continued tomorrow, on Day 2.
~ Rebel Spirit.
rebel eye 