STRUGGLING WITH STRUGGLE
At
long last my publisher has informed me that my fifty year investigation
of the nature and use of meaningful coincidences has actually been
shipped from the printer yesterday. My friends and
family are all excited. "You must be thrilled to death, what a fantastic
accomplishment, I can imagine how you must be feeling." Of course this
is how I would and have felt when someone I have know has or would tell
me about a book they have recently published. However - the actuality of
my current feelings is remarkably neutral. I think the reason for my
unexpected 'flatness' is due to a significant shift in my attitude
towards my own creative process.
Creative process
- what am I talking about?
I literally began
recording what I considered to be 19 meaningful coincidences
(synchronicities) in my journal when I was 19 years old. That was fifty
years ago. During this time my initial amazement shifted to curiosity
shifting yet again to scientifically investigating the multiple
perplexities of these quite remarkable and uncanny occurrences .
After
twenty years I had enough material researched enabling me to write a
paper on this subject which I sent to The International Journal of
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy for their consideration in publishing it.
Much
to my surprise I received a highly pointed and detailed critique of my
efforts on November 19, 1979. The date is significant to me as you can
see it is thirty one years ago.
The critique
began: Dear Dr. Williams - The Editorial Board of the IJPP has reviewed
your paper, "The Psychodynamics of Meaningful Coincidences." I am sorry
to inform you that our readers were not able to recommend acceptance of
this paper for publication in the Journal. They did, however, indicate
considerable interest in your subject, and made a number of
recommendations for revision. They indicated too that they would be glad
to reconsider the paper if you found our recommendations helpful and
undertook the necessary reworking. "
My reaction was
shock. I took no action on the critique except to continue researching
these scientific anomalies. In fact I misplaced the letter
re-discovering it thirty years later. In assessing the reasons for my
shock I have concluded that I was frozen with panic anxiety. The first
threat to my self was a perceived sense of failure. The second and
infinitely more significant fear was an extreme aversive reaction to
potential success.
During the next decade of the 80s I faced up to
these paralyzing fears session by session in my 11 year psychoanalysis
three sessions per week. On numerous occasions I revealed my profound
longing to be able to write a book on this subject but either couldn't
begin or didn't feel adequate enough to take the necessary steps to
complete it.
My wise analyst assured me that as I worked through
my various blocks, stuck points, resistances, clarified my thinking,
knew that I had something original to say and could finally take myself
seriously having forged a self that I could take seriously, I would most
likely know when the time was right and step by step author the book on
coincidences.
I learned something that is obvious to me now but
at the time seemed elusive about my creative process. A book like any
desired objective such as a published book first begins with a desire to
make an abstract idea into a concrete object.
The gap between
starting and completion is like like a marker used to measure the
progress over time of a campaign to raise a certain specified amount of
money. One begins the campaign at zero and incrementally fills in the
space until the 100 percent goal is reached.
This is obvious. What
was not obvious to me at the time was the fact that each increment of
progress was experienced as both triumphant mastery quickly and
inevitably followed by surprising and unexpected dreaded feelings of
tension and high anxiety.
At such moments a thousand ways to
divert my attention with the express purpose of getting away form the
unpleasant feelings would automatically set in. Despite my insistence
that I should not be experiencing these 'negative resistances" they
would occur irrespective of my list of what was and was not supposed to
be along with associated judgments.
It was only when I shifted my
attitude from dread of unwanted tension and anxiety with each new task
on my current to do list from aversion to acceptance that I began to
significantly close the gap between being preoccupied with the fantasy
of a published book to doing the disciplined day to day activity
eventuating in t he concrete finished manuscript sent to the publisher.
I
also experienced the gradual ascent towards mastery of the process as
not only incremental but also as uneven. Moving up and onwards more
often than not was experienced by me as trench warfare - 14 trenches
ahead and 6 back - contrasted with my initial expectation that once I
put my mind to it I would - as The Secret appears to promise - that I
would ride my creative process like a knife cutting through butter.

Illuminations were followed
by ditch digging - inspiration mixed with slow, plodding, scut work. The
whole process for me is like planting a seed, surrounding it with
conditions favorable for maximum growth and development, initiating a
root system, nurturing its development, resulting eventually in the
unfolding of its nature as a tree, or flower or whatever.
This
brings me to the here and now. My publisher said the book is in the
mail. That sounds nice. But the truth is I will believe it when I see
and touch it. Until then no celebration. However last night I had a
dream that seemed to run the whole night. I think I was holding a copy
of my book and looking and re-looking over the table of contents. I also
think I was feeling in between a mixture of disbelief and and pure
unqualified joy.
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