Writing as Meditation
The Power of Letting Go of Expectations
Welcome to The Writing Sanctuary, a space where mindful writing meets transformative storytelling. Drawing from my training in therapeutic journalling and positive psychology, my many years of experience as a fiction and life writer, creative writing teacher and publisher, and my journey with mindfulness, Taoism, Buddhism, Gnosticism and metaphysics, each month I share insights and inspiration to help you develop your craft, connect more deeply to who you are as a writer and a human, and find ways of using your writing as a force for good in the world. If you’re a paid member, you’ll receive the full post and can share your thoughts in the comments. If you’re not yet a member, you’ll get the preview section to inspire your practice. Either way, I’m so grateful to you for being here and I’d love to hear what comes up for you.
This month, we're diving into something that transformed my entire relationship with writing — coming to understand that writing can be a meditation and spiritual practice. That it is something that I’m doing to find meaning in this human experience and learn deep and meaningful lessons from. That the stories I tell, and life writing I share, are not just entertainment.
It was reading Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones that first made me see this, at a time in my life when I had lost my way with my writing and it’s worth had become completely caught up in commercial success goals and what other people thought go it. I wrote about this book here.
On reading Writing Down the Bones, I started to change how I thought about my craft, about myself and about spirituality, the latter has always been seen as suspect in the world I come from. In my culture, we've also been conditioned to think of spirituality and creativity as completely separate things. Spirituality is what happens in churches, temples and meditation halls, or in the New Age world in the woods and in stone circles, while to be creative you go to studios, workshops, writing rooms and coffee shops. But I’ve come to realise that this division doesn’t really exist, that every time I write with genuine presence and intention, I’m engaging in a spiritual act.
How Writing Becomes Meditation
When I sit down to write now, I take time to settle into it just like at the beginning of a seated meditation. I feel my body in the chair, notice my breath, let my mind slow down and detach from whatever I was doing/thinking/saying beforehand.
Then something amazing happens. The boundary between me and my writing begins to dissolve. My monkey mind that usually chatters away with its opinions and judgements and hopes and dreams for what might happen with my writing, falls away and something deeper emerges. I tap into something beyond me. Whether you call that the muse, the subconscious, or the universe, all writers know that feeling when the words seem to write themselves and come from somewhere outside of us.
This is why we lose track of time when we’re deeply immersed in our work. I believe we’re experiencing something that the mystics have always known: that when we become fully present in what we're doing, time doesn’t really exist, our sense of self becomes lesser somehow, and we feel we’re touching something beyond ourselves.
What I’ve come to understand is that a mindful writing practice isn't about producing perfect prose or achieving some enlightened state, it's about showing up, again and again, with an open mind and open heart. To allow ourselves to touch that universal force and for it to come through us onto the page.
Finding the Divine in the Creative Process
There's something profound that happens when we realise that our creativity is a form of communion with what lives at the heart of everything in creation. Every story we tell, every character that comes to us, every sentence that seems to come out of nowhere — these are moments of connection with the divine.
I often think about the inspiration for my work and how my ideas for posts and articles and courses, and the characters in my fiction stories, take up residence in my head. Snippets and flashes of things, images, words and then sentences, that slowly form themselves into something tangible. We can't manufacture these moments, can't force them or schedule them or generate them on demand. They're gifts. And like all gifts, I receive them with gratitude. And in the case of my writing practice, with wonder. As despite the speculations I might have about how and why these ideas, stories and people come to me, I don’t really know.
The creative process teaches us so much about surrender. I have learned to trust what wants to emerge rather than forcing my will onto stories. My best writing often comes not from trying harder but from getting out of my own way. If I practice holding my ideas and plans for my articles, courses, and stories lightly, and staying open to the unexpected, it always leads to my most authentic and powerful work.
This is spiritual practice in its purest form — learning to collaborate with forces beyond our understanding, developing faith in processes we don’t control, and finding meaning in the act of creating, regardless of the outcomes. This is why I developed a mindful writing practice in the first place. Because the desired outcomes had become the most important part of the process.
Now, my writing definitely feels more like a meditation practice, as rather than thinking about where I can send a piece of work when it’s done and who might want to publish it, I am instead paying attention to the world around me and within me and know that whatever it is I am writing about is enough. I love the work of at Silentium as everything she writes feels like it comes from this place of attention and it always moves me.
Even when we write fiction, I believe we're connecting to that higher power — channeling characters to let their stories come through us and learning from their journeys things we need to know for our own.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Do let me know in the comments.
Now let’s get writing. The following three writing prompts have been designed to help you channel what lives beyond your own mind and connect to the wider energy and knowledge of the universe that flows through us all.
Prompt One: Becoming a Channel
Set aside 20-30 minutes for this practice.
Choose one of these opening lines (or if you’re really getting into it, do them all over time!) and let your hand move across the page without stopping, without editing, without thinking ahead to where you're going: