I will tell you what it is like to create. It is this:
You are walking in the dim, in the dark, near dark, an ombre of a lack of light between moments of dusk or sometimes moments of blinding clarity and you can only keep going by putting one foot in front of the other. Even when you wobble, even when you are not sure where the ground is, you must step with reasonable absolute certainty and expel the fear that you will tumble off and fall through darkness.
You must know without ego that it is both of you and not of you, from you and nothing to do with you. The you at the surface that you think you are and the you at the unreachable beyond the back of your mind. The proto-you, the meta you, the demiurge of you. The one that is waiting patiently to be heard over or under the ruckus of the conscious mind and the rest of the world. The one that will always be there but you have to listen and not with a conqueror's ears and a wooden heart but as a trusting partner whose heart is soft and scarred and full of love.
You must do this dark walk with an open and grateful heart, trusting fully that you know the answer but you might just not know it yet and you will find out exactly when you need to, which is not to say it is predetermined. You cannot do nothing, you must prime the pump, create a space, create a habit, create a need. Make it so ordinary, this presence of grace in your life, that one could just dismiss it as routine. But it is not. It has tremendous power. It is an active give-and-take where you are in the middle of knowing what you are doing while blissfully admitting what you don't know. And then, like a quiet spring rain, or the first stars on the horizon, you have the answer. Sometimes it is more dramatic than that but it requires confidence without brash hubris, gratitude without simpering, compassion, and patience, seemingly endless patience.
So you keep walking, knowing that you never really fall, even though it feels like it. And if you feel like you've fallen, or you feel the elevation growing steeper and the air thinner, or you worry that you can't do it, or you suddenly become afraid of the dark, then you must rest, but briefly. You can only stay on the ground for so long before you must get up again, rested if not wiser, and if not rested, then at least with a ragged tenacity that will pick you up and pull you through. You must bear it. Connect to the diamond grit in you, the part that is survival, and demand that you keep moving, that you start walking again, that you will see this through. And while you are in the dark, or the dusk, there is plenty to do as you move forward towards the bright.
This is how it is to create. And I say create but like many things, it is also how to live.
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