Reading = Writing: The End of His Story and the Beginning of Hers

Teetering in Love: Embracing the Paradox of Reading and Writing

I´m sitting in my favourite place to write in Munich, the Tushita Teahouse. The tea I choose today: “Bai Hao Silver Needle”, a white tea made from the Bai Hao tea plant. A sip fills me with the feeling of coming home. I can see me running through a large open field full of grass and blooming flowers. It´s spring.

Next to me on the bench lies one of the books I currently read: “Writing Down the Bones” by Natalie Goldberg. It came to me as a suggestion from an elder lady who I got to know through an online workshop. It already began to do it´s work of changing the way I write - like me adding these details. (P.S. I wrote a whole article about the book.)

I actually wanted to write about the crisis of masculinity today. But coming here I feel this strong urge to express my gratitude to both reading and writing.

Reading has been my best friend since I´ve been able to do it. On the other hand is used to hate writing. In school I was forced to write in unnatural ways. And writing, as a spiritual practice, has only been with me for nearly three years. Though, even if our shared time is pretty short, we already became the best friends we ever had.

Both together have managed to do what no therapist could. I´m now able to hold all my feelings in awe and wonder. It feels like I actually fell in love with my depression. by seeing it as the state of our collective human soul. Which we need to feel in order to act on it´s behalf.

There is beauty in our own condition. There is meaning behind every feeling we have. Anger, grief, joy and rage. Emotions, the messengers of love, guiding us through life with their unlimited energy.

Well anyway let´s start our little journey with my friends - reading and writing.

Reading: The Universe Is Writing You

Reading is a full-body experience, allowing us to see and feel the world through a different lens. We give away our power to change on our own to the book, being and becoming become one. In this way the book is writing us into existence. When we finish we are not the person that started reading.

You may think this is only the case when we read non-fiction books. But a study from 2006 has shown that reading fiction actually increases our empathy and social capabilities. By travelling through different universes and minds we actually learn to better relate to others.

The 3R/4P meta-theory of cognition by John Vervaeke explains this phenomenon with the term of “perspectival knowing”. When we read we know the world by looking at it through a specific perspective. Seeing through it also allow our self to feel through it. We are growing our own capacity for empathy and understanding by knowing more and more perspectives.

When I was younger I only read fiction books. There was a mobile coach-library that pre-selected the books I could read for me. My fingers flipped through thousands of pages by the time I finished second grade. Later, when I was put in a youth home, I started reading online novels as they didn´t have any good books. Sometimes I binge-read stories in a single night, giving up sleep to be in a different world.

As you can see for most of my life reading was a way for me to run away from our co-created reality. An easy way out of writing my own story, out of actually taking part in writing the universes cosmic love story together.

Since then what and the way I read today completely changed. On the one hand I now read mostly non-fiction books, on the other hand I always read many books at once.

There´s a metaphor to explain the why behind that. When we read we are actually in dialogue with the author. Our own unique being is dancing with the words. Thoughts and feelings are emerging. The knowledge of the book sinks into our very being and is transmuted by the very essence of our own truth. Reading multiple books is like sitting in a room with all their authors. They begin talking not to me but also to each other through me. I create space for syergy to happen. Letting something completely new emerge on the other side.

Writing: The Universe is Reading You

So let´s get to the other side of the duality: writing. The art of using symbols and space to paint our own complex inner world onto a medium that can be read by others. Writing isn´t just any skill, it´s a fundamental skill that actually makes us human. Beyond the strategic agenda of being a medium to transport information, it´s authentic expression, changing the one who gives it life.

Jeff Brown coined the term “soul-scriptures”, the idea of “the encoded transcript of our sacred purpose” living in the tissue of our body. When we write from our heart, we are actually, at the same time, reading our own soul scriptures. We are allowing evolution to take and change us. The person who begins writing is not the same person that stops.

Though not all writing is like this. We live in a society that´s build on the abuse of language. Most of the communication, whether it´s written or spoken, is strategic. We speak and / or write because we want something specific to happen. Get followers. Get likes. Earn money. I believe there is something lost when we speak or write like that.

As I pointed out in an older article, language actually emerged from the we-space, not from the disconnected space of you vs me. There was no fighting for being right. We simply gave names to what we saw and experienced. The idea of the lie came later as a strategic impulse to have an advantage against others. There is no lie if we name things from a space of shared reality. We are trusting life and allowing our poetic nature to do it´s thing.

There is no need for arguments and conflict if we are both connected to the absolute truth of reality. Me and you, if we are both living our most authentic truth, can always co-exist in synergy.

Buckminster Fuller once said that the true laws of the universe are all true at the same time. No single truth makes another one less true. The same goes for us as humans. No single human makes another ones pure expression less true. Though true humans will make the ones who live a lie feel threatened.

His Story and Her Story

So true reading and true writing are inseparable. When we read we are actually getting written into existence by the experience. And when we write we are reading our own inner soul scriptures.

It´s about dropping in into the moment with our whole being. Loving and trusting our every expression and feeling it all. Let the stories you read open up your frozen emotions and move from that place. Then write a new one and let us lift Atlantis from the depths of the ocean of our collective soul.

When we read we are reading his story - everything that already was. We are taking in. Breathing in. Words of old writing us into the present moment. If we are only reading and then write from our heads, we are repeating old patterns, based on what we know. We are manifesting our future based only on his story. But his is only part of the story - the past. A society built by men for men. That´s why we need to begin to write hers. A world build by men and women for men and women.

When we write we are writing her story - everything that´s yet to come. We allow our hearts to take charge of our path. We manifest the world that she (and we) needs to embody the whole potential of our species. We stop building on old patterns and create new ones that serve not only our ourselves, but the whole. She is the one creating new life - the bearer of our future. Let her beauty inspirit and take us to a new world.

A world in which we don't need armor to protect ourselves against the pain of the soul. One in which she can drop her guard and dance naked, hand in hand with the masculine, without the fear of being abused.

So here we stand now. At the end of history and the beginning of hers.

Thanks for reading!

Marco

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