29/03/2012
Luz pura!! Be careful while you read it, then! ;)
Dear Brave Souls: Telling Secrets of Creative Life...
I've been working on a little book on writing/creating, for many years now. My idea was to tell the secrets I know many people who create hold close to their chests and do not share, for various reasons.
Just this then...
1. no one unless irradiated by the inter-stellar duendes composes a 500 page book or a penetrating homily or a screenplay in one fell swoop. BUT, it IS true some pages and more than some.... can come like the last stage of labor to have a baby: train's a coming, nothing but NOTHING will stop the new life from being born... and we flail in the pen and pages and brushes ... not always fast enough to catch it all, making up an insane shorthand as we speed along, one we dearly hope we can read... later. Leading to...
2. this... very few creators reveal that in those moments of trying to catch a sudden huge rainfall in a thimble (how fairytale) they are certain 'we are not alone' when we create. Angels, like dogs, are on the other side of the veil, and like dogs, the angels know when you are on the other side of the veil with pen, paint, knife, dreams in hand.... and whoosh, for a time, the veil is torn and the angelic pours and pours and pours. Do not doubt this. Some of the finest works/inventions/ discoveries in the universe have come with writer/ painter/ composer/inventor/actor as junior partner and exceptionally perceptive scribe.
2.a .) I'd add that when we flail to capture the pouring from another time and place as it pours into us and over us and around us, the reason we are flapping and gasping to get it all down in some fixed form, is our souls recognize immediately, inspirited ideas that carry an otherworldly process, are very different than the mundane day to day of putting one sentence in front of another. Which is fine too. But/ and, the psyche has an inner angel/ genius, who knows an angel from afar when one hears/ sees/ senses such.
3. Some say, well, I'll just create in mundane ways, thank you. Yet, I tell you my experience in life: No person in academia, no person in the garret, no person in a degree program for music, art, writing, dance, no logical being is immune to the angelic... those 'holy of another realm' who are poised, just waiting for you to take up your work and for the time being, that you agree to go without skin, without ego. To just tip forward, trust and go. Just as on a luge. Upstopping. Momentum from behind the veil, causes momentum on our side. And visa versa.
4. We could say it in many ways: satori; sudden rush of equilibrium and knowing. Flow was a popular word for a while. Jung called it personality #2. Some neurobiologists say this phenom shows odd brain activity though most would not name is as an elevated creative process. I just call it, 'angels break through'... like a huge pack of las lobas... who love us, agreed to accompany us, just waiting for a chance to help our callings. They inspire, that is pour into our novels, films, songs, musics. And those who listen/ hold/ create work that is in a different voice than anyone else's.
5. Unfailingly, I would tell you honestly too, this way of working is not for everyone. In part because it is more like climbing the north face of Everest in a snow storm, not knowing if the picks and ropes will hold, or that your equipment might be competent, but you might lose your wits, or go mad, or never want to come back down to base camp ever again.
Yet all these have to be moderated somehow, to each her own, to each his own. For me, after these 'interludes' I am beyond tired. With some levity, I feel like Sylvester the cat once again having been run down and splayed all four limbs out flat by TweetyBird. On a dead serious note, I sense my very neurons and nervous system have been 'borrowed' and depleted in order to bring a certain intelligence that is sometimes far beyond mine alone. I find that my one gift I carry and care for and can sometimes unleash --heightened perception-- is also in those times that can last for a moment to hours and days, sharpened to the point of feeling scathed and scraped raw by heat and light...
If you have ever had your eyes dilated and then gone into the sunlight with the shutters of your eyes far wider open than normal... it hurts~! And 'seeing' and 'hearing' and 'sensing' with all 8 senses is somewhat similar.
And because what and who pours through is relentless, and purer than I could ever be in a worldly sense... I have to, and I urge you to also if you experience similiar.... you have to say from time to time to that which is pouring toward you... Stop! I must rest. Come back later. I will be here at the gateway. But for now, I must sleep, or eat, or rest.
Sometimes one has to literally wrestle with the angels in order to get free to rest, restore strength again. I've appreciated understanding much more about the ancient story of Jakov wrestling with the angel, as a result. I think Jakov must have been a poet-farmer-king like so many of us too.
My experience is this, and I will keep to the terms I began with... the angelic is archetypal and does not understand basic human needs, even while apparently loving human beings dearly. The archangels especially in my experience, have mission, and in that sense, are close to us often in the feeling you and they are working together and that this is urgent for the sake of needful humanity, creatures and nature on Planet Earth.
I could call this phenom by some phrases other than 'angels break through,' but there are some hard facts to it, one such being that it is hard to hide wings in business casual. The sound of the feathers alone cannot be said to be just some strangely rhythmic wind.
I hope you are smiling with me.
Much of what I've written above is from 'the book with no name' [lower case] the working title I began with many years ago when I could hardly articulate what I saw, heard, knew. That has changed. I do se, hear, know... and do not in any way define this as spooky or eerie. Just as normal, natural. The only difference is in having courage to say it all aloud. To me, this is easy, for I would never want other creatives to suffer to learn and know, the way I did, the way so many did, because for whatever reason, those in the know, sequestered what they knew.
So may it be for you too... to share with others what you have learned the hard way, to not starve out sincere others who are doing the work.
And as per the mystical world... dont make it hard. But be respectful. To think of the pure world, is to be there immediately... and to remain for a time, as long as you can harness the ego from turning into a nattering ape. Going forward without skin to one can truly perceive also means shedding the council of apes.
And with love,
dr.e
