Last week, I told you that Pressfield got it wrong. That making art is not a war, that resistance is not your enemy, and that you can put the sword down.
I did not have the Spanda Karikas in mind when I said it.
But here is what happens after decades in practice.
It stops being a thing you consult. It becomes you. It gets into how you see and what you notice and what makes you sit bolt upright. And then the good part starts, because you get very, very good at spotting where it comes out in your life. That is the tradition, wearing my clothes.
So let me introduce you to my most favourite ever:
One of the texts I love most in the whole Trika tradition is the Spanda Karikas.
So much so that at one point, I coined the term spanda woman. I was going to make a t-shirt. That is still in the pipeline, by the way, I have not let it go. Maybe there will be a few spanda women in time.
Spanda man, too, if that is you.
Ninth-century Kashmir. A man called Vasugupta wrote it. It is not long, a few dozen verses, and spanda means the throb, the pulse, the creative vibration that everything comes out of and goes back into. It is a text about the universe pulsing, and it turns out it is also a text about you at your desk.
And there is a verse in it that is so relevant to this whole creative identity thing and the struggle.
Here is what it is translated as:
‘That the one who is stopped is the one who is incapacitated by his own impurity, and who still longs to do what ought to be done.’
Incapacitated. And still longing.
Not indifferent. Not lazy. Not lacking. The wanting is completely, entirely intact. It is right there, burning, the whole time.
That is what makes it hurt so much.
If you did not want it, you would just walk away and take up lawn bowls.
That is the artist. That has always been the artist. Somebody wrote it down before the printing press and did not need to meet you to know exactly who you were.
And then a second man came along
Because this is what happens with these old texts. Somebody writes the verses, and then somebody else writes a commentary explaining them, and sometimes the commentator is the one who lands the punch.
His name was Kallata. And he tells us what that agitation actually consists of.
The agitation, he says, is the felt-sense that takes the form “I am so-and-so.”
Read it again.
The agitation is not the block.
The agitation IS the identity.
I am the one who never finishes. I am not disciplined enough. I am the one who was told at nine that I had no talent. I am not a real artist, not like them. I am the one who always ruins it right at the end.
I am so-and-so.
That is it. That is the whole thing. That is what has been sitting in the seat marked I, wearing your name, quietly collecting evidence against you.
And Kallata says that when THAT dissolves, what you were after is simply there. Not achieved. Not built. Not won. There. Because it was never anywhere else, and it never went anywhere.
You do not fight a veil.
And there is one more
The verse sitting right before it finishes Pressfield off entirely.
It says a person does not act by driving the goad of desire. One acts by coming into contact with the strength of the Self and becoming equal to That.
Not force. Contact.
Your whole creative life in one line. Ninth century. No sword anywhere in it.
So what do you do with this:
Nothing needs fixing. That is the first thing, and most of you will not believe me.
But there is something you can do, and it is very simple, and you can do it this afternoon.
Next time you are stuck, do not look at the stuckness. Look underneath it.
There is a sentence under there. There always is. It starts with “I am…..x”, and then it says something about you.
Find it. Then start taking words off the end of it. I am the one who never finishes. I am the one who never. I am the one. I am.
Keep going until there is nothing left but the bare I am.
And notice that it is still completely true. Nothing has been lost. Everything that was hurting has come off, and the I is still standing there, entirely undamaged.
That is when you ask, and you ask it like you actually need to know and not like a phrase you are repeating.
Who am I?
The so-and-so will answer first. Of course it will. It has had years of practice and it is very fast.
Refuse it. Ask again.
Do not go looking for a thought; you will not think your way to this. Just keep the question open and turn your attention around to face whoever is doing the asking. Hold it open longer than is comfortable, because the entire thing is in refusing to close it.
And what turns up is not a sentence.
It is a throb. A pulse. A current.
Spanda.
That is all I will say about it here. It is not really a technique; it is a looking, and it takes about ten minutes and a willingness to be honest about what you have been calling yourself.
Then get up and go and make something. That part is not optional. Recognition that does not move the hands is just a nice afternoon.
So, what is your sentence?
You know the one. Put it in the comments if you are brave enough to write it down, because writing it down is already half of it. And I read every single one.
Put the sword down. There was never anything to fight.
With great love,
Mata Kamaleshwari
wisdom . service . love
Jai Jai Maa 🌺🌺🌺
MataKamaleshwari©
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