Inspiration within reach

When I sorely need to grow in some area, a favorite form of inspiration is finding its exemplar in someone within reach.

Inevitably there is someone within my greater sphere of connection who already lives the quality I seek, lives it larger/deeper than I do.

The fact the example I'm seeking is a living, breathing person with whom I'm familiar — rather than some impossibly idealized version from afar — means that I can relate. It makes it feel all the more doable.

From there it’s easier — sort of —

It’s like walking in someone’s mental steps — though of course I still must do my own walking.

I observe — I pepper with questions as needed — then take my own first feeble steps in that direction . . . .

Your experience goes supernova once you begin drawing inspiration from those who surround you. Your life becomes rich, wherever you turn there it is, illumination.





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Starting simple: How creators do it

When I was speaking recently with the artist Schnicker (yes, inartfully made up name) about his work process, what stood out was how simple he'd made his starting process.

His work space is a detached structure in his back yard. He starts early, after the coffee kicks in. 

Upon entering the studio he performs 15 minutes of light stretching — what some might call yin movement — with the painting he's working on in full view. 

He's done his share of yoga and other body articulating exercises over the years, so this 15 minutes is a mashup of some of his favorite postures and stretches. 

After 15 minutes of body wake up — studying the painting in an almost off-hand way throughout — he knows exactly where to start. 

He steps forward, opens his paints, grabs an implement . . . and he's off and away.

(Note the simplicity of the pattern, the one thing leading to the next, till he's in — in creative production mode — without having to overthink a bit of it. In fact, without having to really think at all.)

This is part of the What creators do series, where I look to people who are creating something meaningful in the world for inspiration and tips — and pass them along to you.

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Asking, why am I doing this?

Sometimes the right question can illuminate a drudgery.

Here's what helps me find the meaning instead of the slog when I get bogged down.  I pause — when I remember! — for a momentito of meaning:

I ask myself, Why am I doing this? 

Yes sometimes it comes off as, Why the hell am I doing this? — but it's because I'm no longer conscious.

Whatever I'm doing is always for some larger purpose; the question sparks an act of remembrance.

If the larger purpose doesn't come to mind — I stop. 

I clarify it to myself or quit what I'm doing. By connecting to that higher purpose I find propulsion. It's . . .  

. . . income for my family

. . . my very own self-stated mission

. . . a commitment I've made (and then I remind myself why) 

. . . the stepping stone to something I desire  

. . . who I wish to be even if I'm not feeling it this magical minute (and then I remind myself why I wish to grow myself in that way) 

Simply connecting to the reason you're ultimately doing a thing opens an energy spigot.  

That happened to me the other day when I was cleaning up, mostly other people's messes. 

I got all snarly about it.

So I took that minute to remind myself oh yeah, love family, want family happy, want me happy with family, me happy with family when things are picked up, no matter who picks what up, ah feeling better, me happy now . . . me be happier when I teach family to put things away better . . . no matter, hakuna matata.

Cleaning went better from there.




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The un-cost of commitment

You know what a commitment costs? Almost nothing at all . . . after you've grooved into it.

Do you think it's painful for Steven King to write every day after having done so for decades? No, it is painful for him not to write for a day. 

Is it difficult for me to meditate daily after having done so for years? No, difficulty only arises when I don't meditate for a day. 

Is it painful for George Clooney to be so good looking . . . No! 

There's an open secret about commitment. It costs nothing at all, it takes nothing at all. People make commitment out to be incredible sacrifice. Rarely. More often there is a rapturous regularity to it once established.

Ask Miles Davis, Nikola Tesla, Brother Lawrence, your mother.

Commitments are incredible gifts of individuality, as we will all commit to different aspects of life. 

Do you want another sweet truth about commitment? Commitment can start impossibly small. Five minutes a day can be a good start. 

Want to be create something? Start with five minutes, every day, for weeks. 

Want to evolve yourself? Start exploring something meaningful for five minutes a day, for weeks. 

Groove in from there. 

(You know, ten minutes, then fifteen, then more, day after day, week after week, till you're grooved in, you groovy thing.)




Part of the What creators do series.

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Do you ever shout this out loud?

Do you ever just shout Thank You Thank You Thank You for this beauty-drenched world?

Sometimes the feeling is so acute I have joy spasms, such as finding these, collected from underneath our frangi pangi after a rainstorm.

For you, a handful of flowers, because you deserve it.

Sofia Vergara: "I've never had a plan for anything"

On the cover of this month's Cosmopolitan Magazine the pull quote for Sofia Vergara shouts:

"I've never had a plan for anything."

I suspect that's true. I suspect Sofia Vergara lives passionately from where she's at. I also suspect she's always had a vision of herself as a thriving entertainer.

If you click on the link above you also find that she's excited by all the opportunity thrown her way from Modern Family's success. She is working it, working those opportunities hard (and joyfully).

That's no I'll lay on the couch and see what comes up sentiment. That's an I'll dive right into whatever comes up in my field of interest passion.

Is a plan needed? No, but embracing every opportunity in a general direction, yes.

Is it any surprise events have conspired to give her a heady moment?

Part of the What creators do series.

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A definition of the divine

What is divine? Being alive in the creative moment.

You know that feeling? When you are fairly pulsating with aliveness in what you're doing. For me it seems to happen in these instances:

I'm with someone and we're sharing a meaningful moment

I'm connecting silently with Self Spirit God Being OmJah

I'm sparked by something in nature (could be the trees) (could be the wind) (could be my dog)

I'm doing something and I'm utterly there, whether it's vacuuming or yard work or work work or writing or contributing to others in some way or reading or whatevering. . . 

Those four. Relationships, connection, nature, engagement. That is divinity to me. When I'm most alive in the creative moment. 

A designer speaks: Messy beginnings, purity at the end

Website and graphic designer Cristina King:

For a project I gather all my inspiration and ideas and photos and dump them in Photoshop.  

The process is all about building a structure. As I build the structure I eliminate the clutter.  

I end up with a clean slate. I end up with simplicity. 

The simplest concepts are the purest.

She free associates until she finds what is essential to the project.

I think of Hemingway (again). In an interview with writer Ernest Hemingway an interviewer was surprised to find a mess of papers stacked in Hemingway's writing room. ("But I know where everything is.")

Evidently he too began with a jumble of ideas and then simplified. Hemingway said he wrote and then eliminated all that was unnecessary. In his case the result was taut muscular prose.

Do not be afraid of messy beginnings, only inelegant endings.

Note: This is part of the What creators do series, where I look to people who are creating something meaningful in the world for inspiration and tips — and pass them along to you.

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Click here for an email update once or twice a month from The World Is Freaky Beautiful.

When conservatives go Buddhist

When conservatives go Buddhist, you know a change is in the zeitgeist. 

This is not meant as a slam on Republicans. The conservative movement is as necessary as the progressive movement. It is vigorous debate that moves a culture forward.

What I mean is this: When conservatives embrace a progressive idea it then becomes a part of the national character. 

Think civil rights, think women's suffrage — the right to vote. Once the conservative membership of a country accepts a new principle, the issue is thus settled.

Not all ideas are good ones — think Prohibition — which is why it's as important to have idea thinker uppers as it is to have wait a darn minute there-ers. 

For your mental pleasure here is an excerpt from a Yahoo news account about conservative Republican Mark Sanford and meditation:

Between stops around town, Sanford ditched his campaign driver and started hitching rides with reporters. He asked to ride in Yahoo News' rental car and we zoomed off toward the next event. On the way, I asked him about his unorthodox campaign tactics. After all, Sanford was meeting only a couple people at each stop. The entire exercise seemed grossly inefficient. 

"My view is, bigger the crowd, the fewer the votes," Sanford said. "If you can just keep moving as an individual and you're present — I don't want to sound Buddhist on you — but you're in the moment. You're present with them, you actually can have a real conversation. You can talk about issues that they like, what they don't like, in a way that you can't if you have a crowd." 

I asked him about Buddhism. (Let's face it, it's not every day that a Southern candidate for national office will drop a Siddhartha Gautama reference in casual conversation.) 

Sanford told me that his interest in Buddhism stretches back three years, to when he retreated to his remote family farm after his term as governor ended — a term marked by scandal over his secretly leaving the country to be with his Argentine mistress, whom he now plans to marry. 

While in exile, Sanford began studying meditation, a practice he continues to this day. 

"A buddy of mine said, 'Mark, you're becoming a Buddhist Christian.' I come from the Christian faith. That's my faith tradition. But what I do like about Buddhism is the idea of being present," Sanford said during the car ride. 

"I think that that's missed in Western culture, where we're so busy looking a week out, two weeks out, a month out, a year out, and we're hurried and we're busy. And I think if there's any one thing I learned from that year I spent on the farm in the wake of getting out of office and just having a very, very quiet year, is the importance of stillness and quietness. And that extends beyond just the physical location. It extends really into the moment of, are you really with that person or are you thinking of the next thing you've got to do? So I do like very much that part of Buddhism. I think it's right."

How did you like the sound of that — "you're becoming a Buddhist Christian." It's the cross pollination of cultural memes. To my mind it's a beautiful (and significant) thing.



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The contagion of creativity

Have you seen photos of people living underground in Paris or Vegas or some elsewhere? 

What is striking is the degree to which people make it a home — not only are the utilitarian items there, so are the nonsensical and the meaningful. 

Art will have found its way there — it could be magazine photos tacked up; it might be a mannequin, festooned with feathers.

Spiritualized objects too will have made their way there, crosses, circles, aphorisms, amulets, stones, gems, texts, a plastic Jesus, even items that one might never suspect to be highly charged spiritually except to those who live there, stones for instance. 

Stones are quite spiritualized for me. By me. I find one that speaks to me and take it with me. By handling it when I’m meditating, or thinking, or uncertain and seeking answers, I spiritualize the stone, I transfer psychic soul energy to it. 

Stones — and shells — do it for me. It is the same with others everywhere. They find their spirit object.

There is a contagion effect to creative living. If not for this effect we might all be living in dull hobbit holes of dreariness. Even in the most impoverished of areas there is adornment of body and shelter.

The contagion of creative living spreads like every other spreadable thing, through contact. 

Once you witness someone do a creative thing, you’ve been opened up to a possibility. Possibilities linger in the mind. Ultimately they find expression, somewhere, somehow. 

Someone who’s seen a museum on TV may put up a drawing or construct a wall out of beer cans. Tinkerers beget tinkerers. Someone shaking it prompts someone else to shake it!

It's how it all began. One creative act sparks another and soon you have the whole of civilization participating. 

It started with tools and will end somewhere out amongst the stars when the last one dies . . . and maybe not even then. Humanity will have become gods by then, able to forge its own suns and moons from the smithy of its genius.