Twenties and Spiritual Awakening

I recently came across a piece on NY Times on the emergence of young females fashioning themselves as self-help gurus. Although their fees are hefty, these females guarantee advice on all matters of the heart, mind, and soul.

Reading the piece made me think of the path of self-enlightenment that has infected my friends and I. Maybe this is a late-twenties phenomenon. My closets friends and I have been for quite some time exchanging, extrapolating, and discussing ideas and ideologies from spiritual books to enlighten our current need to further evolve into better human beings.

Lessons we learn from these profound books are swiftly disseminated among each other, quietly reflected upon, and are used to deal with challenging times, situations, and/or people.

But I wonder where this need to be spiritually awakened appears from? We can all attest that we have had degrees of experiences, ranging from trifling to harrowingly soul-challenging; some experiences similarly shared; others we can only empathize and locate a common understanding and compassion. But all of our shared and unique experiences are compelling us to tackle literature that will awaken and enhance our spiritual re-birth.

Knowledge that I see us quickly dispense to people who come to us for advice. Knowledge that allows us to ignore and gently expel negative energies transmitted by people who are struggling and drowning in their own self-imposed negative nightmares. Knowledge that allows us to stop reacting to situations as we once would and did but now coolly assess the circumstances and find positive solutions.

Our quest to become spiritually enlightened is having a profound impact on how we collectively display ourselves on the public domain. As well as an incredible effect on how we regard matters that are beyond our control, and make peace with not having control.

I suppose it must be a late-twenties stage. That need to nicely sum up the experiences we have had and make sense of the direction we are taking. But it certainly does feel rewarding to know that females out there around the world are collectively on the same path as we are on spiritual awakening.

On inspiration, writing, and fellow writers

Inspiration is always tricky. You can never foretell when you’ll be jolted by a powerful electric surge that sends you into a frenzy of creativity. Or what. It can be the most trivial object that you sighted upon the road, it can be a name, word, or even a lore that you happened to hear or read or watch one day, or it can be a life story of another being that you must capture in words. In essence, inspiration is difficult to define.

Writing is indeed a solitary activity, as many writers will attest. Writing involves sequestering yourself from the world, immersing yourself into a make-believe world, and plunging deep inside fictitious characters, stories, histories, plots. I often wonder if writers find it difficult to distinguish between the imagined world and the real world. Writing involves dedication and discipline to the art and joy of simply writing. It can be pretty exhausting as well. But just writing, just to be able to express a feeling, an idea, a person, an event, or even just a thought can be beyond cathartic.

You never know what to expect when you meet other writers. Writers are known to be eccentric and temperamental creatures. I am fortunate enough to know a group of talented writers who have become close friends and supporters. I have found associating with these fellow writers have cajoled forth inspiration lurking in the corners. I have found while writing alone, I am always mindful of the encouraging words and constructive criticism of my writing by my fellow writers. In short, I have found that while I may write alone, I am always comforted and encouraged by the inspiration I derive from my writer friends.

Every writer should have a network of wonderful and artistic writers that I have. It can be so rewarding and refreshing to bond with writers who are keen on crafting human stories. There is no greater joy than to know madcap writers who are obsessed about finding that perfect word, line, tone, pitch, adjective, verb, to describe perfectly the thought.