morning pages

muse-letter: reflections & how to bring more pleasure to this practice

hello precious friends,

I am sending soft and slow love your way, and wanted to share something with you this morning! Morning pages are holding me in so much joy and pleasure these days. I started this daily practice, introduced and made famous by The Artist’s Way, last year. But here’s what made me return to it not with the frequency of obligation but of excitement, ease, and joy:

1. Centering PLEASURE by combining the practice with a juicy playlist that makes me want to move my body (and often has me getting up to dance) + a cup of something warm and delicious (mostly matcha these days. due to a tragic caffeine sensitivity I have developed. I’m truly upset bc I love coffee. This process of giving up one of my loves to support my wellbeing has reminded me of the difference between self-destructive and -constructive pleasure… sigh)

2. Creating a space of literally NO judgment for myself. I feel comfortable expressing anything at this point, which was not always the case — especially with the fear that someone might read my journal! It is so wonderful (and now, for me, necessary) to have a private space where you can do this, especially when you share a lot of your work publicly. Interestingly, it’s only in sharing myself publicly and facing deep fears of judgment and criticism that I claimed and carved a space of the absolute absence of such a possibility. I’ve built a world where judgment is not present, and it’s a healing space to live in.

   I never used to understand why so many people “loved” journalling. Sounds laborious — what was I missing? Now I feel like, since so many of us are what I call soulnley (existentially and emotionally isolated, even as we may physically be surrounded by people) we love and long for a space to be fully known, and to know and see ourselves reflected back to us. Our deepest truths laid bare. It’s incredibly powerful, a kind of intimacy and witnessing we deserve to experience from other humans in loving community, but often have to settle for within ourselves.

   I also want to share a paradox that I’ve been realizing to increasing degrees recently. Sharing yourself online (often regarded with a kind of inherent inauthenticity) can paradoxically bring you into deeper authenticity with yourself. In sharing myself and not knowing if I will be granted refuge or ridicule, I have no place left to hide within myself. I have created a sanctuary within me of radical acceptance of my truth, even, and especially, the “unfavorable” parts of it. This has been deeply important to my healing journey, and yet it was delivered through a mechanism I could not have predicted would be healing at all. I don’t think that this has to be particular to the internet, but it has been my experience of sharing myself on it.

3. Not limiting the practice to 3 pages. I used to “strictly” do 3 pages when I started, given that this is the instruction you are given. Now I am kind of put off by the rigidity of this requirement. It seems that creatives are so starved of education in our cultures that we cling to any firm guidance we receive. I invited myself to ask what would be most nourishing to me, and since I long to express, limiting myself made no sense to me. We should be careful not to outsource our power to anyone who claims to know what is best for us. That being said, I am grateful for the invitation and even language around this morning ritual that TAW has provided (i have not fully done the program, it is more daunting than exciting to me, which means i have no space for it at this time. i know it has supported millions of artists, and i am one of them! I took what i needed from it and i am grateful).

After experiencing resistance towards journalling every morning for 3 pages of stream of consciousness writing, I can now say I literally LOOK FORWARD to love-drunkenly scribbling many more. I can’t wait to wake up and sit with my consciousness, and hold it with so much love and curiosity and focus, and move my hips to the playlist of the morning, and feel my hands running away with revelations, some of which become podcast episodes.

One added benefit for lack of a more sensual word is that when I start my day this way, I reveal to myself (or the divine/source/universe reveals to me….) a specific action I feel called to take that day that wouldn’t have appeared in my regular To Do list. Something of importance to my soul and spirit. I know you want an example and we are all about indulgence today so I will indulge you:

Because I have an overall philosophy of creating over consuming (a lot more to say here, I obviously love consuming art but I have an almost extreme level of resentment towards Big Tech companies’ manipulation of our attention, and I hate them determining my life, so I do a lot to resist their machinations (eg my phone is on greyscale, and I religiously use a wonderful app called ClearSpace to help me take a breath before I open addictive apps. This is not sponsored).

Okay so anyways, because of this, since everything comes with its attendant “downsides” again for lack of a more inspired word: I don’t spend a lot of time reading all the brilliant work on Substack. Journalling today about my gratitude for my wonderful and brilliant best friend,

love & liberation daily

, who holds me daily with the most support and love possible, the action revealed to me through journalling today was to go and read and uplift his amazing work and encourage more of you to subscribe and support his incredible work and writing.

So please, do go and follow and subscribe to his work if you don’t already. And here’s to recognizing when we are not adequately showing up for our friends, and taking action to correct that (I typed “corrective action” and instantly got the police/prison industrial complex ick…)

My hope for you is that in these deeply heart-wrenching and heart-opening times, you find the most aligned way for YOU to sit with your own consciousness — it is very precious, and full of surprises. And since I believe in collective and unity consciousness, the more you create space to love and accept y(our) own truths as they are, the more you will be a loving and welcoming space to the collective’s. Finally, for my fellow vocalizers, whose truth often resides in our voice much more than our wrists, I also deeply enjoy VoiceNoting myself and seeing what comes up, stream of consciousness style. You can do this using the Voice Memo app on your iPhone.

I am sending love to you my precious loves. I hope you have a wonderful weekend, and life unfolds through you in a most aligned and delicious way (we found our way back to the sensual).

all my love and gratitude,

Ayanda