Picking up where we left off last week … I’m starting a new fiction project, very heavy with Resistance, self-doubt, doubts about the viability of the project, etc. I decided to keep a dream diary. Last week I posted the first two dreams. Here are the next two. This first one comes about a week into the work (3/28/16). Self-confidence in very short supply. I’m committed, but still feeling extremely tentative … I was a pilot. I had somehow gotten the training and become qualified. I was traveling via ship and train to Antarctica with my friend David and…

I’m gonna take a break this week from our series on Theme (we’ll be back) to address an issue that’s happening with me right now. Dreams. I’m just starting a new fiction project that’s overwhelming me with Resistance, and my dreams have been really interesting. I’d like to share a few of them—and the whole interactive process between waking, working life and nocturnal who-knows-what—over the next couple of weeks. Maybe this will ring a bell with your own psychic adventures. Here’s the backstory: About two months ago I had an idea for a story. Immediately I was swamped with Resistance.…

“Hook,” as I define it in this post, is probably not a legitimate psychological term. It’s more like hippie psychology. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) But it’s such a vivid term and so accurate in its depiction of how this phenomenon works that I’m gonna stick with it, even if it might not pass the DSM test. A “hook” is an action or statement designed to provoke a response. A hook is always hostile and always bears evil intent. (See this prior post, “The Principal and the Profile.”) If you’re a working artist, people are throwing hooks at…

My friend Roda is on the cusp of finishing her second novel. We were having breakfast the other day and she was telling me she was absolutely overwhelmed by Resistance. “I know the dragon gets stronger the closer you are to the finish line … but wow, this is really more than I can handle. I’m stuck. The dark side is winning.” Here’s what I told Roda: “If you’re feeling that much Resistance, think of it as a compliment. Resistance is paying you a compliment.” Remember: the level of Resistance we feel at any point is directly related to the…

There’s a certain kind of relationship that often seeks out and torments writers and artists. Maybe you’ve had one. Maybe you’ve had more than one. In this type of love, one of the partners has become aware of her Resistance and is taking active, courageous steps to counter it. She’s writing her novel, she’s initiating her startup, she’s turning her life in a positive direction. Her lover admires and respects this. He’s drawn to her by her drive and her commitment. She has an energy. Good vibes radiate from her. It’s fun and exciting to be around her. Her lover…

There are concepts that are so obvious that it’s almost impossible for us to grasp them. This is one of them. What I mean by “so obvious” is, someone says something to us and we think, “Of course. Sure. I know that.” Then the concept blows right past us. It’s out the window and gone, and we’re no better off than we were before we heard it. Here’s the concept (focus hard): Resistance is not us. That voice we hear in our head? That’s not us. Those thoughts we think are our own? They’re not our thoughts. They’re Resistance. “You…

Consider James Rhodes, whose April 26, 2013 article in the Guardian UK I stole for last week’s post: I didn’t play the piano for 10 years. A decade of slow death by greed working in the City, chasing something that never existed in the first place (security, self-worth, Don Draper albeit a few inches shorter and a few women fewer). And only when the pain of not doing it got greater than the imagined pain of doing it did I somehow find the balls to pursue what I really wanted and had been obsessed by since the age of seven—to be…

[Some quick notices before we get into today’s post: [Remember the “Ask Me Anything” Q&A we did a few weeks ago? The hour-long audio went out then to everyone who had signed up for First Look Access. Well, since then Shawn and I and Jeff have recorded three more half-hour AMAs from that original batch of questions—questions we didn’t have time to get to in the first AMA. [We’ll be sending the first half-hour audio out by e-mail on Monday. The other two will follow between then and the New Year. All are free, no sales pitches. [If you have…

Hang on while I make the case that self-loathing is a good thing. I don’t mean only within the comedic-material sphere, within which self-loathing has been mined for years by Woody Allen, Howard Stern, Richard Lewis, and the godfather of them all, Philip Roth in Portnoy’s Complaint. What exactly is self-loathing? It appears almost always as that nasty, brutal voice in our heads. “You’re a loser, you’re a bum, a worthless waste of oxygen. Look at you. Do you imagine that someone like you could produce something original, something of quality, something that anyone else would care about? What ideas…

A thought to remember when we wake up each morning and confront anew that dastardly dragon: Resistance comes second. The Dream comes first. The dream of whatever work or enterprise or endeavor you and I are called to. Resistance is the shadow cast by that dream. Resistance is the equal-and-opposite-reaction of nature to the New Thing that you and I are called to bring forth out of nothing. There would be no Resistance without the Dream. The Dream comes first. Resistance follows. The other thing to keep in mind is that Resistance’s strength is equal to the power of the…