Whole Writing: the basics

Here I am. I am doing a Whole Write. I am meditating aloud. Instead of counting breaths, I am making keystrokes. Instead of striking yoga postures, I am forming sentences and paragraphs. Instead of praying, I am offering my Write as a gift to spirit as best I understand it. Whole Writes are a new twist on a very old vocation: spiritual practice.

My Whole Writes have a purpose. They help me to integrate more fully who I am in every possible way and with everything that is not-me. They break down the imaginary walls that divide subject and object, perceiver and perceived, writer and reader, symbol and reality. The writing process is inherently transformative: our psychic interiors become our exterior signatures. Consciousness surprisingly reveals itself not to be our secret depths, but the page or monitor screen.

Symbolizing ourselves is a highly practical activity. We can make to-do lists or love-letters. We can sign contracts. We can write poems or a book. We can blog. Most of us write something every day, at least a bit. Some of us write a lot.

However, most writers don’t intend to turn their writing into a contemplative prayer or yoga. Unless we are highly experienced keepers of journals who have taken specialized workshops or seminars, the notion of writing as a spiritual discipline is probably foreign.

Well, consider it! Words mediate the relationship between the spirit and Self, Self and self, self and other, other and spirit. Words are the most literal form of Logos, the creative principle of the Universe. Pay heed to words; they deserve your undivided attention. In yoga we stretch the body and in Whole Writing we stretch our mind to recover the mysterious present of consciousness.

I’ve mentioned something called a Self so I might as well take a moment to discuss it. (I’ll return to the notion of Self in later blog posts.) That which we recognize as the self is not the Self. The Self is the That which recognizes that the self is not the Self. Got it?

As I write this sentence, my self pitches words, and then catches a sentence. The Self is neither pitcher nor catcher, but the source of creativity itself—the energy of the wind-up pitch, the velocity of the fastball, and the explosion of the ball into the air. (Spirit is an even more encompassing concept: it includes the Self, plus the self and other in an interconnected unity.) These are not difficult concepts to grasp. But spirituality isn’t really about grasping the concept of the Self. Spirituality is about inhabiting the big-case You in real life and allowing the creative lifeforce to work its magic through little-case you.

Whole Writing is a distinct and relatively original form of contemplative practice (usually done by individuals) which uses the written word as a tool in a defined process of integral inquiry. Basically the process begins with preparing a suitable environment^Q/4 and calming the mind through meditation. The next step is raw creation, unedited, and rough. You articulate words as an audible voice, and by envisioning them in a visual form. When the rough draft is complete, the Write is then revised according to the demands of its audience. Words are made suitable for an audience of one (for your eyes only) … the whole world … God … or some happy medium. Finally, integral markup is added to the prose to make explicit the interconnectedness of body, mind, and soul in all dimensions.

What is markup? In Whole Writing, words may be annotated with standard colors, symbols, drawings, even glyphs and scribbles. Mainly the markup represents concepts such as stations, developmental stages and developmental lines, states of consciousness, and perspectives. Don’t worry, it’s nothing too arcane. The notation can be as simple or sophisticated as you want it to be and are able to give expression from a place that’s authentic. Ultimately, Whole Writing can lead us to greater mindfulness and attention in all aspects of our lives, allowing words to be the vehicles that drive us forward to immeasurable heights.

The Whole Writing blog is a resource for anyone and everyone who wants to be more fully creative, original, and integrated. If you write now, you will learn how to express yourself in a more natural and flowing style. If you don’t, follow along and you will discover your own true voice and may even discover that writing is fun!