The Writing Process: Purity of Heart

Is this off topic? You might say it is, but then, if we are to write the best we can, then surely a pure heart is a necessity. At least, if what we wish to produce is to speak to others, warm them and inspire them, then we have to move beyond the voices in our head that censor us and limit us. We also have to toss aside our prejudices and our preconceived ideas about others, so that we can get to the root of what really matters in the world. We need to find our deepest connection with the world, our love of humanity, and let our creation grow from that connection, that empathy.

In articles 3 and 4 I emphasised repeatedly this need for empathy and courage. In the light of the recent attacks on America, I have chosen to publish this article, taken from a press release of N.D. Walsches, which will again stress the need to live in a state of love.

This need to live in a state of love is necessary for living a good life, but also, in my opinion at least, the spring board for creative writing that is worth sharing with others. Love breeds respect and honesty. In order to write your best you need to feel that love, of self if nothing else. Writing is inevitably going to confront us with our demons, is always going to ask us to rise to the challenge of securing our honesty and purity. There is no way to avoid this. The very second you lose this connection with self, it will scream back at you from the page in the form of mediocre, emotionless, bland writing.

Without this sense of purity, we will write irresponsibly, and the joy that creativity ought to give us, will be hard to find.

Neal Donald Walsches words, applied to the recent American tragedy in this case, apply to all facets of our lives, and especially our creative lives. Forgive my divergence, and in the next articles I will return to a more defined approach.

"If we could love even those who have attacked us, and seek to understand why they have done so, what then would be our response? Yet if we meet negativity with negativity, rage with rage, attack with attack, what then will be the outcome? These are the questions that are placed before the human race today. They are questions that we have failed to answer for thousands of years. Failure to answer them now could eliminate the need to answer them at all. We should make no mistake about this. The human race has the power to annihilate itself. We can end life as we know it on this planet in one afternoon. This is the first time in human history that we have been able to say this. And so now we must direct our attention to the questions that such power places before us. And we must answer these questions from a spiritual perspective, not a political perspective, and not a economic perspective. We must have our conversation with God, for only the grandest wisdom and the grandest truth can address the greatest problems and the greatest challenges in the history of our species. It is not as if we have not seen this coming. Every spiritual, political, and philosophical writer of the past 50 years has predicted it. So long as we continue to treat each other as we have done on this planet, the circumstance that we face on this day will continue to present itself. The difference is that now our technology makes our anger much more dangerous. In the early days of our civilization, we were able to inflict hurt upon each other using sticks and rocks and primitive weapons. Then, as our technology grew, it became possible for clans to war against clans, ultimately, for nations to war against nations. But even then, until most recent times, it was not possible for us to annihilate each other completely. We could destroy a village, or a town, or a major city, or even an entire nation, but only now is it possible for us to destroy our whole world so fast nothing can stop it once the process has begun. That is what makes this point in our history different from any other. And that is what makes this call for each of us to have our own conversation with God so appropriate and important."