On Strange Pulls, and Why This Newsletter is called 'INNER NECESSITIES"

Hello Beloved Friends--

For this week’s offering, I am sharing a piece I recently posted on Facebook, because I realized after the fact that this piece explains (in an indirect way) why I titled my Substack “Inner Necessities” (and also why that will likely be the title of my forthcoming memoir about the journey of self-healing).  Carl Jung once famously wrote: “The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by...inner necessity. The creative mind plays with [what] it loves.” This quote is actually quite similar to the Rumi poem I quote in the piece below: “Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you truly love.”

I guess that has been a theme for me in this lifetime--doing (and creating) what is necessary. And following the internal pulls.  I imagine this a theme for all of you, too. How else could we have found each other? [insert kissy-face emoji here]. 

For those of you who are new subscribers--thank you for the honor of your time and your attention.  My writings here are centered around three interconnected topics: creativity; self healing and self-discovery and spirituality; and dogs.  Please note that when I use the word “self” in self-healing and self-discovery I am referring to all of us.  I truly believe we are all connected, and that any insights I personally gain, or any moments of peace or healing or joy I am able to experience, or any form of beauty I create, benefits all of us, the entire cosmos. Likewise, I believe that any healing you achieve benefits the All.  Especially if we dedicate the merit.  (‘Dedicating the merit’ is a term from the Buddhist tradition in which we offer up all that is good and expanding to the benefit of all sentient beings.  I’ll elaborate on this practice later.).  

A NOTE TO OUR PAID SUBSCRIBERS: I will post another piece from my shelter-dog series this weekend.  And for the free subscribers, rest assured that there are many more free dog-related posts (from my Bark magazine archives) in the pipeline.  So thank you again for taking the time to subscribe and take part in this journey.

May all beings--all humans, all animals, all plants and trees, all birds and insects, all the waters and mountains and plains, all microorganisms--benefit from these posts and our shared time together. And may you all discover your own personal Inner Necessities and bring them forth into the world.  We are all here for a reason—so the best thing we can do in any lifetime is find those reasons and share them.

Love,

Lee

Here’s this week’s post, from October 5, 2022

A rambling post about strange pulls:

Twenty years ago, I left my husband, my beloved Park Slope apartment, my fantastic NYC literary magazine job (working for Francis Ford Coppola, no less) and I even left my dog (truly the hardest decision ever) in order to go live in a tent at a Buddhist retreat center in the Rocky Mountains, and study the dharma. My life as I knew it (couched as it was within the destructive systems of patriarchy and capitalism and unrealistic, advertising-driven visions of perfection) was not bringing me happiness-- nor was I bringing any true happiness to life--so one day I just up and left.

Normally I am not a quick-decision sort of person. Normally I am slow and cautious, with a tendency to over-think and over-analyze (think: freeze response. Or think: Virgo moon). But my happiness and confusion back then were volcanic and one day I just erupted. With flight. With awareness. With the realization that one can never truly affirm or create within a destructive system. And I went out in search of creative systems. Systems that expand rather than contract. So I immersed myself in practice at a dharma center and I found meditation. And meditation-or at least certain kinds of meditation--always leads one straight in to the truth of one's own mind.

But anyway....this is not a post about being lost and then found. It's actually a post about art. And dharma. Dharma art. Rumi wrote: let yourself be slowly drawn by the strange pull of what you truly love. Dharma art has been one of the strange pulls in this lifetime.

My job at the retreat center was to paint auspicious symbols for the interior of the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya. People always used to tell me about the glorious amount of "merit" I was accumulating by painting these symbols, and by participating in the creation of a stupa, but I did not understand any of that at the time. (I still don't understand it 100%. Maybe I've already exhausted all that merit with my unskillful behaviors of the past twenty years...). All I knew is that it felt so right to be at this dharma center, waking with the sunrise, eating organic garden grown-food, meeting great Rinpoches, and painting sacred art.

Lately I've been painting sacred syllables again. Just dabbling at the art studio, using black walnut inks and metallic gold paint. I create like the classic Aquarius I am...I never really know what I am doing until several months (or years) after I have done it. Maybe this means I am a not-entirely-embodied person. (And that's true--I'm not). Or maybe it's the strange pull again. [NOTE: Many translaters offer Rumi's poem as "Let yourself be silently drawn by the STRONGER pull of what you secretly love." ]

Long story short: I didn't realize until today that all the recent drawings and paintings I’ve been doing—drawings that felt like mindless dabbling—were/are in preparation for my own album art. (I'm preparing to release a new single--the Medicine Buddha Dharani featuring Benjy Wertheimer and Steve Gorn and Ben Leinbach-- in a few months). I wasn't planning on doing the graphics myself, but suddenly I see that all the groundwork has been laid. Like, for twenty years.

Whether this pull is strong or strange--it's there. As the second line of Rumi's poem reads: "It will not lead you astray." ["it" being the pull]

I remember how insane my parents thought I was to decide to up and leave my mainstream life. I had stepped off the conveyor belt of the American Dream. My stepmother, as I recall, was particularly unimpressed, because as she saw it I was going from everything to nothing. (She ALWAYS spoke her truth, bless her).

But those of us who have experienced nothing know that, hey, it's actually everything.

Form is emptiness and emptiness is form! Just saying...

And my dog? I could write a whole book about my dog Wallace, and I did. Dogs are another pull, but that's another long tangent...

Sending you all so much love. I encourage you/us all to follow those strange and strong pulls! Truly, it will not lead you astray.

The image is from Shambhala Times. You can kind of see some of "my" decorative artwork on the columns and ceiling. (All designs were conceived by master artisan Joshua--for me, it was paint by numbers, but Kalachakra paint by numbers. )