I've been reading a book called called Radical Presence: Teaching as a Contemplative Practice by Mary Rose O'Reilley. It has been giving me ideas about an "experiment in friendship." I'll quote a bit from the book:
"In order to practice radial presence -- to come home to your heart and listen deeply to others who look for your there -- someone must first listen to you. Celtic spirituality calls this person the Anam Chara, or soul friend. For years I had wished for a true spiritual teacher ... What I fond instead was a buddy.
"... As we became friends, we decided to spend two hours a week in a process we called 'deep listening.' We developed a simple formula: you talk for an hour and then I talk for an hour. We didn't plan to ask a lot of questions or interrupt much beyond a few clarifications, or give advice. At various times, we broke most of those rules.
"How does this listening work, and what's deep about it? Don't all of us know how to listen? On the contrary, I think we know how to shut down. Self-preservation compels it. ... There is much to hear, but little worth listening to."
That passage got me to thinking (I heard it in a woman's writer's workshop in January). Even though the author started the practice of meeting for two hours a week with someone "radical listening" for spiritual reasons, I thought it would be very helpful for the process of writing. In my job day-to-day, I work on my own and I spend very little time interacting and talking with other people. By the time I sit down to by myself write, I feel anxious to go talk to someone, to socialize. To me, it would be enormously helpful just to articulate my problems and difficulties with creating a story, with the frustration of the writing life, with just anything that comes up. I think it would speed up my growth and development as a writer.
I certainly would not rule out reading and discussing my work with another writer, however, I want a bit different focus. In the book, the author goes on to relate moments where people's lives are transformed just because someone listened to them. For me, as for the author, the talking for an hour was the hard part. If I can't even talk for an hour with my friends, how can I write from my heart for the hours on end it would take to finish my novel?
I have in mind that if, after listening to me for a while, that if someone offered to read my stuff, that would be great, but that I wouldn't necessarily ask or expect the other person to do so. I'm lucky in that I already have a lot of people willing to critique my writing. What I don't have is someone to talk to the doubts, the struggle with finding a voice, my fuzziness about technique, frustration with not finding or making the time to writer, about the whole process of writing and being a writer.
All these fantasies are moot, because I can find no one interested in experimenting. Is listening to each other really so radical? Really?
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