There’s a wonderful essay by the poet Mary Oliver called “Of Power and Time” and in it, she’s explicitly talking about the process of writing, but she makes the point that what she’s saying applies to “creative work” of any kind – and that includes spiritual practice. She’s talking about how easy it is to get distracted from the task in hand, and she says: “But just as often, if not more often, the interruption comes not from another but from the self itself, or some other self within the self, that whistles and pounds upon the door panels and tosses itself, splashing, into the pond of meditation. And what does it have to say? That you must phone the dentist, that you are out of mustard, that your uncle Stanley’s birthday is two weeks hence. You react, of course. Then you return to your work, only to find that the imps of idea have fled back into the mist. It is this internal force – this intimate interrupter – whose tracks I would follow. ” (Blue Pastures, p 1) As I say, she’s talking specifically about the process of writing and distracting herself from writing, but it’s easy to see how this applies, for instance, to sitting on the meditation (and being able to stay there are not get distracted and get up and do something “more important”). At the end of the essay, she evokes that wonderful feeling, when one has broken free of the gravitational pull of teeth, mustard and Uncle Stanley’s birthday…. “On any morning or afternoon, serious interruptions to work, therefore, are never the inopportune, cheerful, even loving interruptions which come to us from another. Serious interruptions come from the watchful eye we cast upon ourselves. There is the blow that knocks the arrow from its mark! There is the drag we throw over our own intentions. There is the interruption to be feared. It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absent-minded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt. My responsibility is not to the ordinary, or the timely. It does not include mustard, or teeth. It does not extend to the lost button, or the beans in the pot. My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive. If I have a meeting with you at three o’clock, rejoice if I am late. Rejoice even more if I do not arrive at all.” (Blue Pastures, p7).
Posted on: Mon, 02 Sep 2013 23:42:08 +0000
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