Our attachment to reassurance
“Attachment comes only when we expect a return”
— Swami Vivekananda
I was listening to Seth Godin talk about the process of creativity, more precisely writer's block and how he doesn't believe in it. He mentioned this story of when upcoming writers would go to see Stephen King talk at a writer's conference and they would raise their hand to ask "Stephen King, you are one of the greatest writers of our time. Please tell us what kind pencil do you use?". As if you knowing what kind pencil Stephen King uses would help.
Then he goes into something that really spoke to me:
"What we seek when we are afraid, when we are looking for the way out is reassurance. We want the reassurance of someone telling us everything is going to be okay. The reassurance of knowing how Steven King does his writing. This is foolish, because reassurance is futile. There can never be enough reassurance. After you are done at the writer's conference you need to go home and sit by yourself and no one is standing there telling you everything is going to be okay. You can not rely on reassurance because reassurance will let you down, instead we have to learn how to fly. To fly solo. To dig a ditch, to do the plumbing, to come up with the bad ideas on our way to having the insight to tell apart from the good ideas"
Then he goes on talking about how these emotions are connected with our resistance, which belongs to our limbic response: fight or flight, an idea we explore vastly in meditation. Our limbic brain is our primitive brain, that helps us survive and evolve as a species but as he puts it, it back fires. It back fires because when sees danger, it freezes up, it gets our heart racing and it's very clever because it will come up with a thousand ways to avoid doing the thing it's afraid of.
I'll leave this one here, right where he raises the reflection on our attachement for reassurance (not only with our creativity endeavors but really in everything in life) and the inquiry can lay on: What are we hiding behind this attachment? What are we holding back? What are we are trying to find in ourselves through the lenses of others?
With Love,
Mariana
I'd like to invite you to join me for 2 events this month:
Rooftop Meditation at the Ace Hotel / Sept 16th 10-10:40am
Talk+ Guided Meditation : Meeting myself where I am at the Row Dtla/ Sept 13th 7:30pm