Steven Barnes's Blog, page 59

The Hero is Confronted by Santa

Trying to unpack the most basic steps of the “Manifesto” is harder than it looks.   I want to make things as simple as possible…but no simpler.  “The Hero is confronted with the challenge” is the first step, but what does it mean?     This is always a desire to either decrease pain  or gain pleasure.  It sometimes requires action (our big-screen blockbusters) but ALWAYS  requires a clarifying of the Big Two questions: “who am I?” and “what is true?”   Always.

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Once upon a time, like most ki...

Lifewriting Manifesto 4/22/17

I’ve modified the “Lifewriting Manifesto” so that there are ten steps, each keyed to a step of the Hero’s Journey.   There are other story patterns, and other patterns of human change and growth. But Lifewriting is the only one that does BOTH.  Once you begin to apply it to writing a story (“plot”) the PROCESS of writing a story (“work flow”) and the process of living and growing in the world, you tap into something huge, a truth floating just beyond conscious thought.  And once you can sense...

What is a Lifewriter?

I was asked this question last week, and realized I’d not defined it clearly.  I still have no clear definition, and that’s not fair to people I’m asking to consider this path. What I HAVE done is taken a crack at a “manifesto.”  I am asking for critiques, thoughts, suggestions, refinements.   Thank you in advance!

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LIFEWRITING MANIFESTO

Lifewriters understand the basic steps of the Hero’s Journey: They are aware of the CHALLENGES in their lives. They know they must master the FEAR that...

Sex is for adults

There is a gentleman who has been reaching out to me for some time.  His problem is that his girlfriend is far more sexually experienced than he is, and apparently talks about it more than he likes.  He complains in pretty ugly terms about it all, and here are my thoughts, in general.

In this context, in this instance, the numbers of her sexual history  means no more to me than how many people she’s played racquet ball with.  The more important question is: why does it hurt you so much? You...

A Black Belt In 24 Hours

I think the Dalai Lama is right: the purpose of life is to be happy.

 

Let me tell you a story.  Years ago, I was working at a women’s self defense workshop under Dawn Callan.  She is the greatest self-defense instructor I’ve ever seen in my life.  In two days, she could teach a woman more about protecting herself than most instructors can in two years. What did she do?  Drill a few simple techniques, and work through the negative emotional crap that comes up for civilized human beings when t...

Die before you die

(from 2005)

No, that’s not the title of the new James Bond movie. It is a Sufi saying that relates to the need to shed ego. We are going to start with the specific, and then go broader to the entire structure of the Mastery Technique, Lifewriting’s highest expression.

We struggle to reach the next level in our lives, whether that represents finding love, losing weight, career advancement, whatever. We struggle to let go of one way of being, and embrace the new. We feel massive fear, discomfor...

What would you do next?

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a writer more than anything in the world.  I’d rather have failed as a writer than SUCCEEDED at anything else–I wanted it that badly.  But I’d never met a writer. No one I knew knew one.  My mother was terrified I would fail, and actually burned my stories.  Teachers mocked me, and bullies beat me up just for being a lonely, nerdy,  sensitive, creative kid.   I was told `black people don’t write.’

 

But I was too stupid to quit, to know when I was beat, and bu...

Do you love yourself?

And so we come back to the question of loving yourself, possibly the central issue in the process.

The reason that I have placed so much emphasis on relationships is that they mirror who we are. True, an advanced soul can travel through life with no such connections (for instance, Sri Chinmoy, who I consider one such genuine soul, has no sexual or physically intimate relationships). But the problem is that about 98% of the people who have claimed not to need or want them strike me as being in...

Thoughts on Yoga

(From 2005)

Yoga, a Sanskrit word meaning “to yoke,” or “to unite” is a set of disciplines that address the body-mind split in many powerful ways. Meditation, concentration, physical postures, breath control and so forth are some of the better known ones. Certainly, the physical postures, “asanas” are the best known form, and contain much of the benefit of the other “branches.” Yoga is particularly good for the back and joints.

There is a truth in the realm of the esoteric: there are things t...

The Next Step

 

 

We are approaching the next level of human maturity.  For much of our history, human beings hunted and gathered, and in many ways, that was a phenomenally good life, requiring only three or four hours a day to gather all the food we needed to survive.  Population pressures grew, and our extensive gathering patterns put us in conflict with other groups, one of the reasons that intensive farming patterns became more popular–the ability to extract larger amounts of food per acre of land.  W...