Deadline. A brilliant word made up by somebody who really understood what they were talking about. Its meaning never quite got through to me until the deadline I had this week, last Thursday for my first book, 10 WYS. The ingredients for this experience:

-    A year of lost loves
-    A lifetimes’ supply of ego, grinded
-    All of life’s essential themes
-    Three months of time
-    Four hours of sleep a day
-    Excruciating loneliness
-    A handful of lost illusions

Et voila, there you have your recipe for a delicious nervous breakdown cake! Slowly towards the end of my deadline, my practice of yoga and meditation went down while my neurosis and anxiety went up. Not a good thing when you’re supposed to be saying something about the Essence Of Virtually Everything.
 
I was shocked to discover the death in deadline. As time ran scarce, human functions went ran out with them and for the first time in my life I experienced something I could only describe as a ‘ writers coma’; where all of the vital functions not necessary for writing seem to slip into a coma. Talking –on the occasional human encounter- was hard for example, I couldn’t find the appropriate word in social situations, mixing up ‘hi’s’, ‘goodbye’s’ and ‘thanks’. Day, night, sleeping, eating and writing melted into a deep fog and I slowly died in the world I had known. I died sad, painfully and repeatedly. I only functioned within the writing, within the book. As soon as I stopped or did something else, my mind of terror sank its teeth into my flesh and released me only when I returned to the only safe place left; right now, write now.
 
This tiny piece of land left where I didn’t experience a continual nervous breakdown became my new world: a world of writing. No matter how lost and terrified I had been in the known world; in the kingdom of Write Now I was strong, lean and beautiful. Words surrounded me like lovers and in this world there was no lack of anything; no loneliness, no fear, no hope. Just the feeling of bodies turned inside out in a beautiful way; warm flesh and welcoming skin everywhere. “To live is to be willing to die over and over again.” says Pema Chödrön, and I guess the land of Write Now reminded me of that.

So ironically, writing a book about life’s deepest wisdom connected me with my life’s deepest terror. I died a little on my way to my deadline every time I wrote about something profound; only then to do the exact opposite once I switched my computer down. This discrepancy between knowing and doing, and being aware of this discrepancy so vividly is what kills us. It was my death in deadline. Yet a spark of wisdom in me that went beyond the words of my book found a rebirth in the newly discovered world. Even though it is a scary and yet unknown land; I place my trust in this transition. From this land I will call out to you and wherever you are in your life you will feel it in your heart as a kiss that silently says “yes, finally”.