There is a part of you waiting to guide you and your writing.
In the world of writing and writers, we talk a lot about the concept of the inner critic, that creature – gremlin, gargoyle or perhaps even an old writing teacher – that crouches on your shoulder, hissing nasty things in your ear.
I think we don’t talk enough about the concept of our inner teacher or mentor.
I really believe that this concept is just as true.
We all have an inner resource, a sense of something, however flimsy or shadowy, that knows what we need and wants to guide us towards it.
This inner teacher may have been missing in action for us since childhood. It often gets crowded out by the voice of the critic.
But when we can make the space to tune in, I know that we can nurture it.
In all the years that I've been doing this work, I have never met anyone, no matter how battered or broken or stifled or doubting, who didn’t find somewhere inside themselves – with gentle support and a little practice – the beginning of an inner knowing.
Your inner teacher may be only vaguely present to you right now. Perhaps you’re worried that you can’t hear them at all. But if you begin to listen, I believe that you will.
In Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Towards an Undivided Life, educator and activist Parker Palmer urges us to take notes, not on what our external teachers might tell us, but on ‘the words that arise within us’ as we listen, read, learn. These thoughts and words within us, he writes, offer us access to our own ‘inner teacher.’
How do we begin to reconnect with our inner teacher?
Well, stories and poems, music and dreams, art and nature are fantastic places to start.
These objects – internal or external to us – that offer us glimpses of our inner world are what Parker Palmer calls ‘third things,’ the art objects or texts that can help us to reconnect with what we know inwardly but have learned to forget or turn aside from. He writes:
"What T. S. Eliot said about poetry is true of all third things: '[Poetry] may make us . . . a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves."
Writing invitation
You could use these questions as starting points for some writing in your journal:
What are the metaphors, images, words, colours, rhythms that you feel drawn to? What made you calm or happy when you were very young?
What are the the scents and textures that evoke memories for you?
What do you see or hear in your dreams?
We can also help one another to recover a sense of our inner teacher. Parker writes:
“First, we all have an inner teacher whose guidance is more reliable than anything we can get from a doctrine, ideology, collective belief system, institution, or leader. Second, we all need other people to invite, amplify, and help us discern the inner teacher's voice.”
Who in your life invites, amplifies, helps you discern?
Who helps you to explore, acknowledge, remember?
Over the past twenty-five years, I have helped thousands of people to connect with their inner writing teacher. if you'd like to find out more, you could check out my writing retreats here and my WRITE IT! programme here.
