Back in the sixties, when visiting gurus\u00a0from India were all the rage, my friends and I sat on the floor with our legs\u00a0crossed, our spines straight, our hands resting on our knees, palms up, our\u00a0first finger and thumb touching, our eyes closed and we would breathe. Inhale.
Exhale. Repeat. Be Here Now. We were told that doing this would help us become\u00a0more spiritual, all knowing and enlightened. If we used our discipline and\u00a0devoted ourselves to a daily practice, we would gain clarity and compassion and\u00a0peace. All that sounded great but it just didn’t work for me. I feel a little\u00a0bit guilty admitting that if I sat like that for more than a few minutes, my\u00a0back would start hurting and I\u2019d become anxious and impatient. Every minute\u00a0felt like it went on forever. I just didn\u2019t get it.<\/p>\n
One day after I\u2019d sat for an hour\u00a0and felt worse than when I started, I decided to stop trying. This was obviously\u00a0not for me. I thought that I should like it but I didn\u2019t, so I turned to the computer to write about it \u2013 my go-to form of expression A little later, when I checked the time in the upper right hand corner of my monitor, I was stunned. I thought I\u2019d been there for a few minutes but an hour and a half had flown by. I had lost time, my heart was lighter and I felt more alive than when I started, the things that mediation claimed to offer. That was when it came to me. Writing was my meditation. In my past, I had learned discipline in motion, not in being still. I didn\u2019t find solace in sitting cross legged on the floor and breathing. I needed to put my hands on the keyboard, turn on my brain and follow where it took me with no judgments or preconceived ideas.<\/p>\n
A disturbing experience added to my\u00a0turning away from sitting meditation. A renowned Indian guru, Maharishi Mahesh\u00a0Yogi, who brought Transcendental Meditation, (TM), to the west, was known for\u00a0his famous followers, the Beatles and the Beach Boys and various movie stars. People\u00a0flocked to him so I decided to learn TM. One afternoon, I visited a man who had gone through a specific TM training that allowed him to initiate other people\u00a0into the practice. I entered his apartment where he and wife were living and he\u00a0led me into a closet where he whispered a sacred secret Sanskrit mantra, a word\u00a0just for me that I was meant to repeat over and over while I sat in silence. We\u00a0walked back into the living room, we sat, and I was about to have my first\u00a0experience of TM when his wife tiptoed over and quietly asked him what he\u00a0wanted for dinner. He scowled and told her, \u201cShut up and meditate.\u201d That, and\u00a0the allegation that the guru was making sexual advances toward one of his famed
followers was enough to repel me. I turned away from meditating and turned toward\u00a0writing, which has always been there for me.<\/p>\n
People have said that if you\u2019re not\u00a0quiet and still and focused on your breath, it isn\u2019t meditating. I disagree.\u00a0Granted, if you’re chasing a deadline, editing a book or stressing over an\u00a0academic thesis, that may not the best way to find inner clarity. But when I\u00a0sit in front of the computer with no music, people or distractions and let my
fingers fly across the keyboard without an end game and just write, I get into\u00a0what I call \u201cthe writing zone.\u201d I never know what will show up on the page and\u00a0it’s exciting and mysterious. If you paint or dance or sing or play the guitar,\u00a0those things can be your meditation if you can refrain from judging yourself\u00a0and just let it rip.<\/p>\n
After I\u2019d written a number of\u00a0bestselling books, I started teaching classes in 2016. A group of people would came\u00a0to my house once a week to write and read their pieces to each other in a safe\u00a0and confidential atmosphere. At first I wondered if I had anything of value to\u00a0share. It turned out that I did as people dug deep into their psyches to see\u00a0what was hiding in there and coax it out in the company of encouraging peers. I\u00a0allowed no negative critiques. No suggestions to express things differently. Only\u00a0encouragement and sharing personal experiences.<\/p>\n
Someone asked me why I didn’t teach\u00a0online so I could reach more people. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to be with\u00a0people and create community. Then along came 2020. In order to continue my
work, I had no choice but to make Zoom my best friend. I announced to friends\u00a0and on social media that I was starting an online series of classes and before\u00a0I knew it, two classes filled up with people from all over the United States\u00a0and Australia. I kept it small, no more than seven people at a time, and I was pleased\u00a0to find that the intimacy and convenience increased. No one had to fight\u00a0traffic to get to my house. They were in their own homes where they felt\u00a0comfortable and cozy. For my part, I didn\u2019t have to make sure the living room was\u00a0spotless and I didn’t have to supply snacks. It was all about being at ease and\u00a0writing. Nothing else.<\/p>\n
I never went back to teaching in my\u00a0home. I still do my classes on Zoom and it\u2019s satisfying and compelling. I love\u00a0choosing a topic a few days before and writing a piece like this one that my\u00a0students can use as a prompt to start writing. In my opinion, there is no good
or bad writing. I believe that if you tell the truth on the page, it will
always be interesting so I encourage people to stop thinking and let their\u00a0fingers take off.<\/p>\n
When I started teaching, I had no\u00a0idea that my gatherings would become a haven for so many people. The little\u00a0class that could. Seven years later, it feels like home. It\u2019s a place for\u00a0people to be creative, to tell their stories to each other and to know that
someone is listening. A place to speak from their hearts and not be judged. For\u00a0me, it\u2019s a way to offer something that apparently, people want because they\u00a0keep coming back. The camaraderie is astonishing and we have all befriended and\u00a0supported each other as we come together to meditate on the page and help each\u00a0other heal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Back in the sixties, when visiting gurus\u00a0from India were all the rage, my friends and I sat on the floor with our legs\u00a0crossed, our spines straight, our hands resting on our knees, palms up, our\u00a0first finger and thumb touching, our eyes closed and we would breathe. Inhale.Exhale. Repeat. Be Here Now. We were told that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2339"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2340,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339\/revisions\/2340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}