Does spirituality go with school?
Today, I have the pleasure of hosting Dr. Noelle Sterne (Ph.D., Columbia University) with a guest post on being an older PhD candidate. Noelle is a dissertation coach and editor, academic and mainstream writing consultant, author, workshop leader, spiritual counselor, and persistent encourager. She publishes articles, stories, essays, and poems in educational, writing, literary, and spiritual venues, and her new column for graduate students and professors appears in Textbook and Academic Authors (https://www.taaonline.net/). In Noelle’s academic editing and consulting practice, she helps doctoral candidates wrestle their dissertations to completion (finally). Based on her practice, her handbook addresses students’ largely overlooked but equally important nonacademic difficulties: Challenges in Writing Your Dissertation: Coping with the Emotional, Interpersonal, and Spiritual Struggles (Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2015). Noelle also helps new “doctors” publish articles and books to further their careers.In her self-help guide, Trust Your Life: Forgive Yourself and Go After Your Dreams (Unity Books, 2011), with examples from her academic practice, writing, and life, Noelle shows readers how to release regrets, relabel their past, and reach lifelong yearnings. Visit her at www.trustyourlifenow.com
Does spirituality go with school? School requires your intellect; spirituality requires surrendering your intellect. School subsists on logic and realism; spirituality survives on faith.
I used to hold fiercely to these assumptions. Spirituality and school were completely contradictory, I thought, or at least unequivocally separate.
Privately, I’ve often applied spirituality in my longtime academic practice of coaching and advising doctoral candidates as they complete their dissertations—I’ve asked for guidance on a daunting project, forgiven an ornery client, let the right assuaging words flow through before a difficult meeting.
But I hadn’t come across any public acknowledgment of spirituality and graduate school until I did research for my book, Challenges in Writing Your Dissertation: Coping With the Emotional, Interpersonal, and Spiritual Struggles (Rowman & Littlefield Education, September 2015).
In a provocative scholarly article, Sheryl Cozart, Ph.D., examined her struggle between spirituality and academia. She wrote, “I acted as if spirituality was a third kind of consciousness [as an academic and African American female], rather than part of my merging double-consciousness into a better truer self” (“When the spirit shows up: An autoethnography of spiritual reconciliation with the academy,” Educational Studies, vol. 46, p. 253).
Cozart came to a reconciling definition of spirituality: It is “inner submission to my God consciousness. This definition is not meant to refute other definitions, only to add location to my relationship with my God consciousness. I acknowledge that I cannot live within my own power but through the power of my God consciousness” (p. 257).
I admire Cozart for admitting, especially in a scholarly journal, reliance on her “God consciousness.” In my own work, I’ve found too that reliance on my own power does little good. Rather, especially when I’m stuck, turning to my God consciousness (or intuition, inner guide, voice, inner light) gives me answers that prove to be the best ones, and often, after I’ve asked or pleaded, with astounding speed.
Maybe you’re thinking, “Oh sure, I go to God for my health, for my brother’s cancer diagnosis, for money. But school? Doesn’t apply.” But give it a try. If you’re wrestling with a dissertation, or any other type of writing, I’ll help you use your own God consciousness for a major issue many writers experience: the dread writing.
As you begin, two techniques are essential. These are meditation and affirmations.
Meditation. Meditation was sanitized for the West by the courageous Harvard M.D. Herbert Benson with his 1975 groundbreaking and evidence-based book The Relaxation Response. Today meditation is widely accepted and even prescribed by enlightened physicians. You can meditate at home, in the library, at the bus stop, on the checkout line, waiting for your major professor, even in church.
Books and articles on meditation continue to proliferate, but it’s really quite simple. Sit in a quiet place (park your tech appendages out of thumbs’ reach). Close your eyes and take some deep breaths. One method is simply to follow your breath: In. . . out . . . in . . . out. I like another method: Choose a word, phrase, or sentence that means something to you (“Peace,” “Ahhhh,” “All is in order,” “Chocolate”). Silently repeat your chosen word.
One of the most recommended stints is for 20 minutes, but I can never last that long. At about 4, my to-do lists start knocking at my head. I often set a timer (highly recommended) for 5 minutes and just about complete the session.
Be patient with yourself. All kinds of thoughts will intrude—they do with all of us, even with the most practiced meditator. But just keep coming back to your word or phrase. At the end of the time, your mind will grow sharper, you’ll feel rested, and you may even look forward to the next session.
Affirmations. Popularized by Shakti Gawain (Creative Visualization) and Louise Hay (How to Heal Your Life), affirmations too have filtered into popular consciousness. They are positive statements for anything you desire, dream of, and don’t yet see in your present perspective.
A few rules: Create and repeat affirmations in the present tense, with fervor, describing clearly what you really want, as ridiculous or impossible as it may seem at the moment. Affirmations are based on the principle that as we change our thoughts, we change and fashion our experiences. When you try affirmations, your mood will actually lift, probably to your shock.
Now to apply these two techniques to the writing you’ve been avoiding . . .
First, recognize and admit your anxiety. Clients have blurted, “I can’t write a thing.” “Sure I knocked out those doctoral course papers—and got As. But now I’m paralyzed.” “I sit and stare. The time is flying, and my stomach is sinking.”
So, to meditate, go sit outside, or in a comfortable chair, away from your computer. Take some deep breaths. Follow your breath or repeat that favorite word. Your anxiety should lessen, even melt.
In your meditation session, “ask” yourself where the best place is to begin. Listen. You will receive answers.
Sometimes you’re frozen because you’re trying to plunge in at a tricky place, like the first chapter of the dissertation, or the opening of another writing work. Contrary to the King’s advice to the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, you don’t have to start at the beginning and keep going until you reach the end.
I often advise clients not to start at the beginning, that is, the first chapter. Why? This chapter demands a synthesis of the topic, something many students don’t know until they’re well into the work. No doctoral Divine Lightening will strike if you start in the middle, like with the more straightforward description of your sample. Ask again. Listen. You will be told.
Affirm
In the calmer state during or right after your meditation, you’re ready for some affirmations to begin the writing and stick with it. Here are a few.
- I have all the courage I need to plunge in.
- The answers are here.
- I did it before (remember that first frightening undergraduate paper or a published work). I can do it again.
- I act as if I can do it (Hamlet, Act III, iv, 161).
- I listen to my Inner Mentor for perfect guidance.
- Every idea flows to me in perfect order.
- Every one of my sessions is productive.
- I ’m stronger than this stack of paper/notecards/journals/books/outlines/scribbled notes.
- I stick with it, I Stick With It, I STICK WITH IT.
As you develop the meditation-affirmation habit, it will get easier. The truths of your affirmations will happily seep into your mind, calm your nerves, and rebalance your stomach. Your pages will mount. And you’ll probably find yourself using these techniques more often with your dissertation writing, any other type of writing—and the other aspects of your life.
Share with your peers!
