When I Stopped Doing This, the Words Came Naturally

On deleted drafts, a messy mind, and the relief of not having to fix anything

My messy mind was never the real problem.

Over the past few days, there has been so much going on in my head that I couldn’t get any of it out in the way I wanted. As a result, I have now thrown several drafts into the trash. Drafts of pieces I initially intended to publish, some of which were already long enough to take several minutes to read.

For some reason, I no longer wanted to reread them later. I didn’t want to edit them. I just wanted them gone.

I sound like one of those confused writers now, hair all over the place, pen in hand, crumpling sheets of A4 paper into balls and throwing them into a metal wastebasket. In my imagination, he is wearing glasses too, even though I don’t.

It is strange, really, that I picture the typical writer wearing glasses. It must be some kind of conditioning I picked up somewhere in my life, because this image cannot be entirely original, even though it exists in my imagination. I probably saw it on television.

“Television tells your vision” is a phrase that stayed with me from Ralph Smart, a YouTuber I used to watch a lot. For a while, his channel, Infinite Waters (Diving Deep), was part of my daily routine.

That man genuinely inspired me. During the period when I watched his videos, I experienced him as an incredibly positive person. He talked about things like not giving a shit about what other people think, loving yourself, and becoming the best version of yourself.

At the time, I was receptive to those kinds of subjects, without realizing that they rested on the assumption that something was wrong with you. As though you were broken and needed to be repaired.

That may not have been his intention, but it is what I now take from it. Typical self-help bullshit that made people a lot of money back then. It still does, by the way. Motivational speakers still sell out entire venues while waiting lists for mental healthcare continue to grow.

Human insecurity is being thoroughly exploited, and when you didn’t already know that something was wrong with you, the industry would happily invent something. Money has to be made, after all.

Why do people so rarely tell you the opposite?

That there is nothing wrong with you?

That you simply are what you are: energy in motion. A human being who experiences, feels emotions, and notices thoughts. Sometimes it is messy, sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes it is heavy, sometimes light. Sometimes it is insane, sometimes intensely joyful.

It is part of being human.

Since when do we control what we think? Thoughts simply arise. We do not have to do anything for that to happen. Just as clouds appear in the light of the sun, thoughts appear within our awareness.

Vrittis, if I remember correctly: mental objects within the non-dual tradition of Advaita Vedanta.

I am not saying that everything Ralph said was nonsense. There were certainly useful things in there. I am simply no longer convinced by all of it.

In the same way, I have learned a great deal from Advaita Vedanta, as well as from other perspectives and philosophies, but I do not identify with it. That would simply be another trick of the ego, another addition to my learned self-image.

Through Dzogchen, another perspective rooted in Tibetan Buddhism, I began to recognize many of those ego tricks. Including the way my ego struggled with being as confused as I described at the beginning of this piece, even though sometimes that is simply how things are.

The thought that it should be different is where most of the friction begins.

A huge, angry resistance to what is.

Reality itself was what I resisted most, even though that resistance creates a fight that can never be won. Giving up that resistance, on the other hand, seems to be the only path to inner peace for me.

It was as though peace appeared the moment I made room for what was actually there. Calm returned to my mind, even though my mind is still messy.

I began writing this piece without resisting my inner chaos, and the words started flowing on their own. One by one, they appeared on the page without effort.

Do “real” writers feel this way too? Is this how they find the words they need to fill those enormous books? Do they simply give up all inner resistance and let their fingers do the work?

What do you think?

© 2026 Wesley van Peer. All rights reserved.

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