Who Am I?

This is a copy of a painting I have on the wall of my writing studio:  "John Deth" by Edward Burra.  The painting is an Hommage to the poet Conrad Aiken.  The painting has a different effect on me every time I look at it.  Today, it makes me think of the inner journey.  By this I mean both the author's and the characters' inner journey.  Ravi Ravindra writes:

     The struggle to know who I am, in truth and in spirit, is the spiritual quest.  The movement in myself from the mask to the face, from the personality to the person, from the performing actor to the ruler of the inner chamber, is the spiritual journey.  To live, work, and suffer on this shore in faithfulness to the whispers from the other shore is the spiritual life.  To keep the flame of spiritual yearning alive is to be radically open to the present and to refuse to settle for comforting religious dogma, philosophic certainties, and social sanctions.

     Who am I?  Out of fear and out of desire, I betray myself.

This is what I feel when the writing is going well--afraid, yet desirous of this fear.  The resulting tension between these two states of being gives you the cutting edge, helping you to tear through artiface and get to the truth, to say what the reader needs to know.  Ravindra warns that too often we cling to the herd for comfort.  Together we weave varied garments to cover our nakedness.  We guard the secret of our nothingness with anxious agility lest we should be discovered. 

I have seen a number of writers do this--write with "anxious agility," trying to impress, all the while hiding the inner darkness--yearnings, fears, longings--that would give the writing its significance.  I have written with "anxious agility," too. 

Who are the people in Burra's picture?  Who do they conceive themselves to be as they dance with death?  Who am I?  Ravindra writes. He says the answer does not ask for an enumeration of scientific facts:  it expresses a certain restlessness, groping, and exploration.  It is the beginning of a movement towards light, towards seeing things clearly, as a whole.  It is the refusal to remain ihe dark--fragmented and on the surface of myself.  It is a state of searching for meaning, comprehensiveness, and depth.  It is the desire to wake up. 

     It is, in essence, bringing your characters to epiphany.  But you have to take them into the darkness first.  Without sleep, there is no waking.  Without death, there can be no life.

Ravi Ravindra, Pilgrim Without Boundaries.   Morning Light Press, 2003.