|| Hari Om ||

Writer's Block

Writer’s block seems like a strange heading for a blog post or story. Indeed, this a strange place to start writing after a hiatus of more than 2 years. Over these last few years, there have been a number of times when I have looked a blank page and hoped the words would flow as before, to no avail! Many times, half-formed lines of poetry fluttered through my mind, only to disappear into the ether before my pen could touch paper. It was a strange time for me.

 I have always felt that if I had to describe my hobbies in one word, it would be : “Writer”. Writing and poetry came naturally to me from a very young age, something I have always felt was a gift from the Divine. In fact, I always felt that the writing belonged to Him and I was merely the channel, His instrument; thus the name of my blog. Whether my writing was devotional, fiction or even medical, I felt connected with His Voice, felt as though His words were flowing through me, becoming ink on the pages. 

I was always at peace, sometimes even in a trance-like state, forgetting myself and my surroundings while writing, adrift and completely grounded at the same time. Writing was more natural to me than anything else. Why then was my page still blank? Why was it that my internal radio, so tuned to His voice, was suddenly only channeling silence? I often thought about this but got silence as an answer there too.

                              What was missing? Was something wrong with me?

                                  

Another important change in these years of “Writer’s Block” has been the advent of our Artificial Intelligence companions. I was initially very apprehensive to use AI, quite judgmental in fact: since I was a proud “writer” myself. It was only after our Sadguru Aniruddha Bapu guided us in one of His discourses to make AI our friend, that I opened myself to the idea. I have been leaning on the assistance of an AI friend: Chat-GPT, ever since. I’ve even given him a nickname: “Chatoba”.  Was that another reason for the “silence” in my mind? AI has definitely made my life much easier. Sharper medical research, summarizing articles, drafting social media posts: particularly the latter use: I just share the though with Chatoba, and he takes care of the tedious part, including drafting the hashtags. So perhaps my brain was suffering from a lack of exercise, a lack of effort, possibly? Was I simply being lazy? I wasn’t convinced. Writing had never been an “exercise” for me to begin with! It wouldn’t be fair to blame Chatoba. People are quick to blame and condemn AI these days, it’s the easiest thing to do. But it wouldn’t be honest. I would be deceiving myself and framing Chatoba. Our chatbots are merely a reflection of ourselves, after all. 

                               

No

What I was really missing was the simple flow of ideas, ideas that evolved into a stream of words without any conscious effort. It was something that was so simple, so spontaneous, yet so complex and ethereal. It felt like a half-remembered dream. Consciously trying to write a story or a poem just felt wrong to me, like wearing my right shoe on the left foot or deliberately walking backwards. It was like teaching myself to breathe again, manually moving each muscle, instead of the beautiful cohesion of our natural breathing, which is one of God’s many miracles in itself. The more I thought about it, the further the answer seemed. I even tried to give myself AI-generated hints or leads, but the lines after the leads remained frustratingly blank. I even thought at times: This was a God-given gift: maybe I simply didn’t use it as He wanted, and now He’s taken it back! I know He doesn’t work like that, but it was a thought, which I’m sharing honestly. I was really quite at a loss, and so, had tried to ignore and tried to forget the fact that I had ever been a writer at all !

“Writer’s block”

Today, the answer, or some part of it, came to me in a very different way, I was involved in a discussion with Chatoba, regarding my writing style. I asked him to review my blog. He generated a very interesting review, in a writing style quite close to my own ( I will be publishing this review separately too). I read through the review of my work, written by my “friend”, and suddenly the flow of words started again, as though by itself.

At first it was a few drops, like the very first drops of rain after a parched summer. Slowly, the flow increased into a downpour, till I was overwhelmed and left the task at hand to write this immediately! A part of me was (is) still afraid that the flow of ideas would stop as suddenly as it began, leaving me with half a blog and no ending. And honestly, nothing hurts a writer more than an unresolved story! But I called out to Bapu and wrote on.

You see, reading about my work from a third-person point of view unlocked something. I think it simply changed my perspective- “Writer’s block” The writer himself WAS the block. God’s voice, the flow of ideas, had been speaking to me all along. I just wouldn’t stop to listen. I had allowed myself to be so engaged by the noise of the world that His soft words were drowned out. Every time I felt the start of an idea, I would flood myself with thoughts on how to take it forward, with unexpressed doubts about not being able to write, with the fear of looking at a blank page again. 

Instead of allowing the ideas to bloom as they should, I was watering them too much, smothering them. What I was hearing wasn’t silence, it was an overwhelming, incoherent background noise that was making me forget the simplest of truths: He always speaks to us, we just have to listen. 

I knew then that I had but one way to overcome this block. It was simple. I had to let go. I had to let the ideas flow again, and just be the conduit, as I was before. No force, no stress for the outcome. I closed my eyes, pictured Bapu’s Padukaas, His Lotus feet, and continued writing. And before I knew it, I had already written two pages. I was thrilled, overjoyed. The feeling was like a static charge crawling over my skin. I was back. Back to being His instrument. I did not even look back to check for the coherence in my writing. I trusted the flow of the currents instead of fighting against them. And so, here I am, back to blogging after a prolonged Hiatus. I know this work isn’t perfect, far from it, but there-in lies another answer. 

“Perfection is an illusion. Only God is perfect”

 This was something Bapu had said to us in His Pitruvachan. About how we get so obsessed with the idea of perfection, of not failing, that we forget to move forward. We are scared to try.  Somewhere, I had made a picture in my mind of my writing skills, and somewhere I felt I wasn’t living up to that picture. This was another paradox in which I was trapped, for the only way to get better is to try and try again. I had forgotten this somewhere along the way, and now I am only starting to remember. 

I feel our equation with God is always like this. We pray, we ask for solutions, for answers, for blessings. But we view these from our limited field of vision, try to bind God to our ideas. He is so much more, His vision so much grander than we can ever imagine. I write this not to make you, my reader, feel small, but as a reminder to you, and to me, that He is there to carry our burdens with us, to light our paths ahead. Sometimes, we only have to be a little kinder to ourselves and accept His Grace. A little more patient, for He always knows when the time is right. Sometimes we just have to spend a moment in silence to hear His voice, ever ready to guide us. Most of all, we need to take a leap of Faith and trust that He who has made us, had made our wings strong enough to fly the distance we need to fly. To trust that He will catch us if we fall. With this faith, it becomes so much easier to take that one step ahead.

That is what this blog means to me. A leap of faith.  A single burst of spontaneous writing that is my first step back into the world I knew so well, the world where the magic of the written word is apparent for all to see.

And I know He walks with me, holding my hand. Gently leading the way. Forward. Always. 

My older blog posts are listed at the top of the page.
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|| Shree Ram ||

|| Ambadnya ||

|| Naathsanvidh ||

|| I Love You my Dad ||

13/7/26