Fellow wonderer
If you’re anything like me, you have experienced long stretches of creative droughts. Maybe even to the point where you started hallucinating creativity where there was none! Like seeing a glittering fountain of water surrounded by lush flowers and greenery on the horizon of this vast dry desert you’ve been wandering for god only knows how long… FEAR NOT, I was just in that crisp desert myself and I believe I have found a way out for us. A way of consciousness. A way that begins always and exactly where you are right now. The place we never want to start.
Here’s how I chanced upon the way I’d like to share.
Just yesterday, I was treading the murky slumps of depression when I mustered the spirit to call a sage and brotherly friend of mine. As a true brother would, he let me take him for a guided tour around the muddy and all around dreary terrain I was in. Not anyone’s first choice for a guided tour I Imagine. Except maybe, for a true brother with a friend in need.
So I asked him kindly to please examine the terrain of my consciousness and report his gatherings. And so I shared. “I exist right now in the most heavenly time and place I can name on this planet, the spring blooming northern valley of Israel, surrounded by breathtaking green mountains, starring the shiny ice capped Mount Hermon and the life nourishing Jordan River, in all its thundering glory.” So far so good.
I continued “Still better, I finally have the perfect life conditions to take the first steps on the path of my dreams with this project “Ways of Consciousness”. The website is ready for takeoff, the social media installed, and a brilliant focused plan for its development with certified courses and everything. All around high leverage well reflected stuff, I tell you! Everything is in place”
And Yet…
Despite the seeming in-placeness of everything, I was still pedaling the sticky mud of depression and tasting the sandy dust of creative drought. As I told my friend, only yesterday morning I had waltzed up to the most illylic bird-chirping corner of the valley, holding on to my confident observation that everything was in place for the path of my dreams to emerge. I was going to be like another blooming flower in this beautiful spring. So I sat my firm bottom on my imagined writer’s throne, ready for the magic to start trickling down my pen, or my wand as I like to imagine it. It was going to be just splendid!
And, you guessed it, nothing happened…
That’s not true, I did strenuously lift up my now not-so-firm bottom from the chair and laid it down on the vibrant grass, crushed by the soul sucking weight of failure. Failure to create, failure to actualize myself and my dreams. In that moment, heaven itself would likely have failed to lift my spirits… Have you ever had this pleasure from the menu of consciousness? Ick..
Moving on… Still glued to the grass.
“What is the Way? What is the Way? What is the Way?” This is the question I like to ask of whatever it is that always ends up answering something to my inner ear. That which some call god, and which others call their unconscious to pick two of our fantastically many conceptions. You know yours..
“What is the Way?” I whispered repeatedly from upon the grass, gazing at the careless clouds. And as always, a way eventually began to emerge, the way that led me here, the creative way I wish to share with you. It happens to be captured by the title of this story, because it is a way that always begins with the question “What is alive in you right now?”
Okay maybe that was punching the line too early! Let’s back up a bit.
True to form, the greater something didn’t answer my question straight to the point. It made sure not to show me a way before having me doodle around enough to make me thirsty for it. It did give me enough to get me off the grass though. More precisely, it whispered a piece of world-class wisdom from the fountain of knowledge that is the Disney movie Frozen 2. It was like a clue in a treasure hunt, only I was not in the least in the mood for games. Here is the clue.
“You are lost, hope is gone
But you must go on
And do the next right thing”
The great thing about the next right thing, is that it is usually pretty clear even in the cloudiest days of consciousness. In that moment, the next right thing was to get outside on a walk, and to give the right person a guided tour of the swamp in which my knees were buried deep. Maybe this person could see a way forward from where he was standing? Maybe he could see the next right thing.
This next right thing turned out to be right as rain watering a dry flower. Very right.
As my friend and I began exchanging words, the spirit of my voice mirrored the swampy terrain of my consciousness. His voice on the other hand was a picture of a tall towering mountain, just like those that surrounded me in the valley I was in. From his voice, flowed a bouldering stream of nourishment, like the Jordan River that ran next to me. And so, my swamp conversed with his mountain. The stream that flowed from him, currently runs through my pen, as I hope it will soon run through your creative instrument.
“So you say you’re in a swamp,” he started after I’d shown him around in my consciousness “how about starting there. How about starting where you are” he went on. “Write about the swamp and find your way from there”.
There was the next clue.
You see, it’s possible to be years along a spiritual path and still lose touch with the very basics. When you think about it, what my friend said was a variant of the proverbial “Be Here Now”. Yet… you may have noticed that no one ever became enlightened from skimming the glossary of a spiritual book, despite the fact that the wisdom is all there staring them in the face. Thank god that doesn’t work, or else this story would have ended with its title and I would have had the most dreadful day. I believe the reason why that seed of wisdom sprouted for me in that moment was because the soil of my consciousness had become receptive and because my friend who planted the seed knew how to work with the soil very well.
So if you’re wondering why I’m being such a drag in getting to the point that is why. The soil of the reader’s consciousness needs tending before a seed of wisdom can take root. And thus, I am hoping that the story I am telling will help open up your consciousness for the way I wish to share.
Now here is the seed.
What if you could source water from even the driest desert, would you ever be thirsty again? By analogy, what if you could find creativity in even the crispiest creative droughts?
What if you could source water from even the driest desert, would you ever be thirsty again? By analogy, what if you could find creativity in even the crispiest creative droughts?
You Can. And if you need proof, here I am, creating.
But how, you ask?
The way I wish to share, is the way that begins with that which is alive for you in every moment. The present moment to be precise. Sometimes, what is alive is a ground shattering epiphany with the power to topple mountains, and other times it is the gentlest of creeks. A creek you might never hear unless you stop, still yourself, and listen for it by asking the simple question “what’s alive in me right now?” or “What is alive?”
Then you listen. Listen closely for the creek, and when you hear it, find it and follow it where it takes you.
Like a real creek tends to lead to more water, I find that the creek of consciousness leads to more creativity. Sometimes it even leads in the direction of where you were trying and failing to start, sometimes not. You can never be sure with creativity, but it tends to lead somewhere better than where you start, which is all around a great gamble.
. “The riverway of creativity”, I find this a good name for this way of consciousness. The way I received from my mountainous brother. The way that finally gave life to the project of my dreams, Ways of Consciousness, and the way I hope will give life to whichever creative seeds are waiting below the surface of your consciousness. I wonder what they can become with a bit of water.
So remember,
Something is alive in you at every moment even when you feel dead inside.
What is alive in you right now?
There is your creativity, there begins the way I wish to share.
Happy trails,
Sagi