Documentation

I came to a realization last night about why I've not been meditating. I was lying in bed, not tired but knowing I had to get up at six in the morning and so really ought to sleep. My breathing had started to slip into a pattern, my mind starting to slide into an altered state, when I thought, I should grab a pen. Somehow I had acquired the idea that if I meditated -- and especially if there were visions or messages involved -- I had to write it down.

I say 'somehow,' but I know exactly where it came from. It's from that epic pile of 101 books I've read over the years. Every single one at some point indicates that if you're going to be meditating/astral traveling/spirit guide contacting/whatever, you should keep a written record of the thing. And boy, did I absorb that one. Thing is, it didn't make me keep a record; it made me not do it in the first place. (I'm sure this is not a universal problem. Then again, at the same time, I'm sure I'm not the only one.)

The thing I can't figure out is why. I am a particularly word-oriented person; I keep three blogs and a series of personal journals in addition to a latent pile of fiction mss. Writing down spiritual experiences does not help me at all. If it made an impact, I remember it; not always consciously, I admit, things do sink and resurface, but they're there. And this is experience, not academia, goddammit. We're not doing Science when we talk to the gods. And any written record I did produce would be entirely useless to anyone but me (and I can tell you, from rereading notes I wrote myself in high school, they're not very useful to me, either).

Now let's see if I can convince my academically-oriented brain of this in practice.