Hudson Valley Astrologer

“Ritual is the act of sanctifying action—even ordinary action—so that it has meaning. I can light a candle because I need the light or because the candle represents the light I need.”

~ Christina Baldwin

The morning ritual has become a thing, as seen in the book My Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. He shares a revelation he had, having accidentally tripped into his morning routine by way of deep physical pain and anguish. His “discovery” is positioned in the book as being an original idea, and it may have been, however, the structure and process he proposes mirrors an ancient practice rooted in Ayurveda called Brahma Muhurta.

Although Elrod could have come up his morning ritual on his own, and as he suggests, created this unique process by what amounts to playing a medley of the all-time greatest hits of morning rituals, we really have to appreciate that there is in fact nothing new under the Sun. Elrod combines common practices into what he positions as a “new” synthesis of traditional techniques. To aid in remembering the routine he cleverly applies the acronym SAVERS: Silence, Aphorisms, Visuals, Exercise, Reading, Scribing.

I guess my problem with the SAVERS approach is not about its soundness or efficacy. My issue has more to do with practicality. For instance, take the exercise component. My idea of training is doing a 1-mile swim, followed by a 3o mile bike ride, and finishing up with a 3-mile run. I wish I could do all that in 10-minutes, but not only is it impractical — it’s also impossible. Or take the writing piece, which answering these daily prompts is all about. How much writing can you possibly get done in 10-minutes?

There is a book on my desk called Draft No. 4, written by John McPhee. He was a professor at Princeton and this little book is often referred to as a “master class” in writing. His pedagogical toolkit impresses me as being highly creative, intuitive, and systematic. Drawing diagrams, for example, to visualize the structure of a piece — your “blueprint,” makes sense even before beginning to write one word of an essay. This process alone takes at least 10-minutes. I’m not doing that with these prompts because my goal here is speed. I’m using these prompts to stimulate my frontal cortex, but the aim is to shift after a specific amount of time, to pieces that are more involved.

Writing every morning is a big part of my routine. I write here and on Reddit. Soon, my efforts will expand to other platforms but there is only so much time in a day. Trying to be efficient I engaging with artificial intelligence to get realtime critique and feedback which has been powerful but also reveals glaring gaps in my first drafts. I suppose McPhee would also have gaps in his first drafts and why he called his book Draft No. 4. The revision phase of writing is a core part of the process that requires relentless editing and refinement. Again, way more time than the 10- minutes allocated by the Miracle Morning ritual.

Part of my goal in how I am approaching writing is to honor McPhee’s insights about structure being invisible and revision being iterative. Good writing takes time. With all the noise and excitement about A.I. powered tools like Chat GPT, learning how to write is probably more important than ever. In the same way that the hand held calculator and computer did not displace our need to learn and know math, A.I. and large language models will not displace our need to learn and know how to write, or more broadly how to communicate. Conversely, the technological advances only exacerbate the need to learn to write. My reasoning is that writing, like mathematics, is a skill that is cumulative. We only gain in our expertise by doing more writing, or in the case of math practicing calculations. But writing for me is not necessarily about what others might learn from my writing. Writing is less about me putting on a performance and more about what I can learn from the process. A.I. can help with a lot of things, it can speed things up, edit, clarify, etc., but it cannot imagine, or decide (choose). McPhee taught to imagine how a piece might be held together by an invisible structure, and that making the piece sing authentically and coherently requires a certain je ne sais quo, having discernment in selecting what stays or what gets cut. These are human skills, and an essential part of the art of writing. Turning these tasks over to a robot denies the writer the experience of learning whatever it is they are delving into, denies them finding their own voice, and denies them the gratification that they created something from their own prefrontal cortex. A give away that someone uses Artificial Intelligence in their writing seems to be that that the piece lacks emotional depth, style, and has no personality. It’s not human!

My morning rituals are not to emulate a robot but to be and become kore fully human.

HVA

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