As a writer, I can say that writing is indeed therapeutic. I choose to consider it this way:
I’m with a pen and paper now. That’s easy to imagine. Then I have in me the wisest person there is who knows me so well than I can ever know myself. Writing actually puts me in a state where I cannot but listen to the wise one. How else would I be able to write anything meaningful? Thus I observe that I listen to write and engaging in writing opens me up to listening. It is in writing that I savor the sense of clarity that has always been there right underneath the myriad of confusion and perplexity. This wise one, with time, I have come to realize isn’t another but me. It is the me that is more real than any other that I can experience. It is the way, truth and life. The wise one is the essence of all things unattached to anything we conveniently choose to identify with down here.
What’s more, the wise one isn’t personal. I’m not more or less of it than anyone else. I’m not any wiser because I listen to the wise one neither am I foolish for not listening. The wise one isn’t a criteria for comparison or a standard to live up to. The wise one is our inextricable oneness with all. The land, the sea, the air, the stars, the manifold life forms…everything. So when I listen to the wise one I actually listen not just to myself but to all of life. I cannot be short sighted or what most call “selfish” for I come to a place beyond self and form to the formless essence of all things. I am open to receive life’s lessons no matter the medium through which they come. It could be through the bird which soars care free in the clear expanse of the sky or the fish that wiggles its way through crevices to its food. That same intelligence with which they feel, move and act is not foreign to me, I too have that. In fact, I’m it.
Restpiration 