I make it a practice, to allow myself to be still, where I spend long periods of time in nature.
I often find myself sitting on the bluffs by the ocean, allowing the sun and wind to hold me in a warm cocoon of cool sweeping movements. The pulse of the breeze brings the smell of fresh ocean air, and the living fragrance of nearby flowers and plants. The fullness of my breath becomes the intersect between my inner worlds and the life around me. The infinitude of the ocean allows my mind a certain freedom, where my imagination explores its edge.
There are worlds always moving within me.
I find it very important to be as close to these worlds as possible. In these inner realms, I hear messages bubble from the depths of my subconscious, accompanied by elaborate visions of colorful blossoming patterns flowing into melodic passages and tones. The patterns swirling within my psyche arrange themselves into potential paintings, music, and written word.
Sound and color have little to no distinction in my inner realms. When I paint, it feels as if I am composing music. When I compose music, it feels as if I am painting. And when I write, especially if it is poetic, it simultaneously feels both musical and colorful. It is all one and the same.
As I witness these beautiful patterns flowering within me, watching them organically take shape, I recognize that I am receiving, synthesizing, and translating light. I am receiving light, as a raw living informational substance, and then I am crystalizing it into form. Just like a plant – receiving light from the sun, and through photosynthesis, it creates new leaves and flowers – beautiful, and often colorful, geometric expressions.
I am no different. I am translating light into form, just as the plant kingdom. My creative process is my version of photosynthesis.
My creativity is directly connected my unique niche with the greater sphere of life. Just as the role of a plant is to convert light into another form to be utilized by the life surrounding it, my role is the same.
In uncovering our niche, we strike the source of our deepest joy. We rediscover our place within the tapestry of existence. In this, we join with creation in a balanced exchange of giving and receiving, from a place of naturalness and authenticity. We relate to life from that place of true reality within ourselves.
In uncovering our niche, we must find balance between celebrating our distinct essence, and honoring what is shared. But before we can honor what is shared, we must first embrace what makes us different, because it is only through our differences where we discover where our unique parts interlock within the whole. This is where we fulfill our niche. And it is only through fulfilling our niche, where we truly understand our connection to the rest of life.
Just as each flower translates light into a completely unique color, fragrance, and shape, so too are we each meant to translate light in our own unique way. It is through uncovering this unique expression, where we come to know who we actually are. We can’t know ourselves without knowing our function, and we can’t know our function without knowing ourselves.
We must learn what it means to embrace ourselves, fully.
When we deny ourselves, wait for someone else’s approval in order to be ourselves, or when we diminish ourselves through comparing ourselves to others, we do the world a disservice. True service and selflessness come through embracing one’s unique essence fearlessly and courageously.
In my own journey, what this has meant for me, is that I must prioritize my unique creative genius above everything else. My creativity is the vehicle of expression for my core essence, thus it is the most integral aspect in fulfilling my function.
I come to know myself, through that which I create.
So I prioritize time to sensitize myself to my inner worlds. I find myself watching and waiting with curiosity, as I move through a process that is beyond my rational understanding.
It often feels like I am pregnant, like there is an entire universe that is about to rise up from within me. At the same time, it can feel like this random anebulous soup, where I can feel something formulating, but it is still sort of senseless and vague. But it is never dry in this space, for I sense an incredible richness to what stirs within me.
It is precious, to bear witness to this process, almost like if you could watch an embryo forming within a womb, starting from something totally unrecognizable morphing into something human. It is a miracle. I am watching the miracle of nature unfold within me, as I learn to get out of the way of nature’s intelligent design.
And that is exactly what I am doing, allowing something of nature to grow from within me.
I am the gardener of my psyche.
I plant seeds and tend to the garden. I prepare the environment, and then I must get out of the way, so that nature may grow of its own volition.
I sensitize myself to the biosphere of my inner landscape, noticing the subtleties in ambiance, and the movements of cycles giving way to the inflections of seasons. There is a deep listening occurring. I take note of the subtle changes in mood, feeling, inner vision, and I wait and watch carefully to see what starts to sprout. The creative process is very sacred, very live-giving, especially when done with sensitivity and care. Just as a garden, my psyche is the intersect between my sense of self and the wilderness of nature.
We must remember, that we don’t create who we are. God, nature, designs us. Our job is to allow ourselves to grow into what we naturally are. This means trusting the intelligence of nature within us. And this often means simply just being still for a while, creating space within ourselves so that nature has room to work its magic.
Every day, I find myself deepening in the realization that I am simply an apprentice to that which desires to reveal itself through me. I must learn to obey its call, yield to its will, and how to hold space so that it may grow in accord to its own rhythm. It is that pure, blossoming revelation of nature, of Divine Will, that I must learn to nurture and support. This is my teacher. It teaches me how to truly live. It is my central sun, through which everything must orbit.
If I choose to disregard this central sun, the source of my creative light, then my world is thrown into disharmony, and I try to live by something that bears no real life. In this, I deny my function, and I live as something that I am not.
I must approach myself, and the seed of nature within me, with great humility and love.
I know all too well what it is like to ignore that central sun, and to allow some hollow idea to take precedence over my own inner light.
I’ve spent a lot of my life zipping around from one thing to another, trying to prove something of myself to the world – trying to prove my value, my worth. In my constant striving, I depleted myself, and no matter how hard I tried, I found myself in a constant state of angst. My main subconscious intention was to gain the approval of others, so I was always seeking external validation. I was lost in a world of mental static, mulling over menial circumstances and shallow relationships, trying to establish a false form of value and security. Constantly worried, constricted breath, and a cloud distorting my mind – I tried my best. Eventually after failing enough times and exhausting myself, I gave up.
And this giving up looked like the ultimate failure to an old version of myself, but in reality, it was not so much a failure, but a success on behalf of life, to get me out of my own way.
It’s funny, the ways in which life creates tension, so that it may find resolve. Those moments where we feel we have failed, where we feel we have let ourselves down, are actually those points where life has its greatest victories in us, where we finally allow an opening for something real to rise up from within us, just as a rose breaking through the concrete in a place where nature was once deemed forgotten.