Writing away the ego: Thoughts on the spiritual practice
“Flick out the torch, the only thread between down here and daylight
and count five while the sea suckles and settles.
Self-maker, speaking its meaning over mine.
At low water
I swim up a dog-leg bend into the cliff,
the tide sloshes me almost to the roof
and float inwards into the trembling sphere
of one freshwater drip drip drip
where my name disappears and the sea slides in to replace it.”
Taking a break from the book-writing series today to share some thoughts on one of the 💫 writer’s problems ☠️ brought to me frequently—“It’s selfish to take time to write”; otherwise phrased as, “I always wanted to write but I thought it would be too self-indulgent.” The fear people are expressing comes from the idea that writers are self-obsessed (shudder to think you’d be caught ‘navel gazing’) and narcissistic (“I’m worth reading, because I’m really good and right” 🤢).
Yep, lots of writers are super obsessed with their own reputations, and use writing as a tool or prop to support their egos. This writing sucks.
If you’ve ever shared a fear that writing means you are this way or that writing somehow makes you this way, it doesn’t. Bad writing is a choice that sustains the ego. At any and every level, writing well requires asking good questions, and no truly narcissistic writing can withstand the scrutiny of questioning.
And, as a spiritual practice and a way of being in the world, writing can make us more empathetic, more connected, less egotistical and narcissistic, and less urgently concerned with trapping and freezing our personal identity. Writing as a spiritual practice connects you to yourself, the world, the present, and what’s possible, and is against ego for its constraining effects on the imagination.
It goes something like this:
The writer, by writing, observes her thoughts. As many of you have read or heard me say, writing is slower than thinking, and by putting a little brake on the train of thought, its cars and loads and wheels become more observable. How each piece fits together and where there’s tension among the stewards and friction on the drawbar. Look closely for the Place of Origin stamped on each deliverable. Observing her thoughts, the writer learns to turn each idea, notion, suspicion, or belief over and over, to ask questions of it and be patient in finding the answers, and to uncover its origin story and trajectory.
The writer learns quickly that each idea, notion, suspicion, and belief has a story, and that all of these stories have been co-written by her environment, society, community, family, body, history, and systems. The whole idea of ‘cause and effect’ that drives so much bad narrative is blown up—no single story could possibly be completely true! There is no one entirely complete perspective, interpretation, consequence, or cause—this is the writer’s knowledge.
Many writers might start at the myopic place and learn, through writing, to see. Some will ride their stories—their egos—all the way to the NYT bestseller list (not to mention the NYT op-ed section and the NYT editorial department). This is the narcissistic writing that, driven by the ego of its writer, flattens reality into a story that doesn’t risk the writer’s conception of his own identity! Many readers fall to the level of these writer’s self-assurance. This is what I call ‘bad’ writing—dangerous writing that is an expression of its author’s ego and therefore does not move outside of his initial perspective or toward any reader. Not open-armed or -hearted.
What our writer learns is that, while she must hold strong values and beliefs, these are not more valuable to her than someone else’s are to them. This isn’t moral relativism—a good writer knows that someone else’s beliefs and values are just as real to them as hers are to her. Only in this knowledge can she prepare her writing for the readers who need her, complicate simple received stories of cause and effect, and build complex narratives that really speak. Once this knowledge is achieved, the writer no longer grafts her identity to her own past beliefs because she can see them as stories, and relationships as stories intersecting.
Meanwhile, in the embodied practice of writing, the writer connects to the act itself, the present moment, another way of dissolving the concerns of the ego—to focus not on the potential future effect of your existence, but your existence now, doing. This is the embodied spiritual practice, where the writer experiences the mind-body connection that is shared with all human beings as consciousness.
It’s my personal feeling that this is where the true spiritual potential of writing lies—imagination, this shared miracle of human existence (about which I’ll write more later, gotta wrap this up).
The writer is learning that she can show up as a writer in the world even when she’s not writing physically—I believe this showing up, though different for everyone, makes for good writing when the writer is curious and brave, and always skeptical of whether a story she tells or hears is the whole truth, or whether what she sees or is shown is the only way to see things. Empathy is at the core of this skepticism which seeks to liberate others and ourselves from oppressive stories and open us to new ways of understanding. Writing that repeats or propagates master narratives is propaganda. The writer’s skepticism and empathy are values that outcompete the petty concerns of the ego.
Subsequently and over time, as she works to deconstruct concepts written by and for parties invested in her own and others’ oppression, and re-authors her past by externalizing problems that had been unfairly and uncritically internalized, the ego that clung to these creation stories further dissolves. She can now engage in and with new narratives in her practice—each possibility becomes easier to slip into, now that the writer has learned there is no single story she needs to write with her life.
I really define creativity as “making connections.” Writing as a spiritual practice emphasizes, over time, the interconnectedness of all things—death to life, past to future, tides to breath, body to mind, yourself in relation to others. Deep awareness of this interconnectivity allows us to transcend ego, because it dissolves the boundaries of the self.
Ok! Hope you enjoyed this dive into the spiritual realms! There are endless implications for what this all means, and 1M more words I could write about it. If you want more on these aspects of my work, comment or “like” or email me at rachel@racheljepsen.com. Please ask questions!
Next week, episode 3 in our book series! Here’s 1/ and 2/ if you’re catching up.
Happy writing!
