out of the way and let the inspiration flow.
If you have practiced the first four steps, the next one should be simple. Keep your ego out of the way, and be receptive to the flow. Swami Kriyananda says, “Once this clarity comes, inspiration flows.”192 He also warns, however,
The ego is an energy-stopper for creative activity of all kinds. The simple thought, “I am painting a tree,” is enough to hinder the clear flow of inspiration. The greater the flow of creative energy, moreover, the greater the stoppage of energy in the thought of “I.”193
We will investigate this problem in Chapters 5 and 6 on the role of the self in creation. When artists become preoccupied with their own self-expression, they can lose the thread that binds them to the source of inspiration. When they are inspired like Kriyananda, works can come quickly.
Buddhist author Mark Epstein uses the metaphor of Thoughts without a Thinker: “‘Thoughts exist without a thinker,’ taught the psychoanalyst W.R. Bion. Insight arises best, he said, when the ‘thinker’s’ existence is no longer necessary.”194
6.If you lose the felt sense of what is trying to happen, repeat stage 3 and/or 4.
It is common, after you’ve been working awhile, to feel a loss of contact with the Unified Field. You will notice when it happens: the flow will sputter into spurts, and you yourself, the small ego or I, will intervene to help, making up the words, advising the forms or colors, suggesting an additional chord or note. When this happens, as it will, stop what you are doing. Close your eyes and reconnect with the form.
Swami Kriyananda relates an experience of revising a paragraph, again and again, without being able to get the words right. He stopped to meditate, and the correct words came in a flash to him: words entirely different from the ones he had been trying to manipulate when he was less connected.
In Crystal Clarity: The Artist as Channel, he explains how he has written music that expresses the spirit of a certain place, such as the Holy Land:
If my mental definition was sufficiently clear, the melody has come, usually instantly, and has seemed completely appropriate not only to me, but to others who had visited those places with me.
If, on the other hand, the melody wouldn’t come to me, then instead of worrying at it from the musical end, I would work at clarifying my mental image. Once the image has been crystal clear, the melody has come of itself.
I have never known this method to fail. It is why I insist with so much faith that one tune in, artistically, to the reality to which one wants to relate, whatever that reality, and then give it meaningful expression.195
You “hold” your idea “mentally before” yourself and keep returning to it as your act of creation “progresses.”196 You ask yourself, “What is trying to happen here?” “What is trying to express itself here?” and “What is the center of it?”197 You have clarity when you have “one-pointed concentration,” but “Nothing can be accomplished in the arts without complete attention, any more than a camera will take clear pictures if the lens is out of focus.”198
7.Take a break.
The value of incubation is touted in most theories of the creative process. Often cited is the observation by Poincaré that “sudden illumination” is “a manifest sign of long, unconscious prior work” and that it appears only “after some days of voluntary effort which has appeared absolutely fruitless.”199 He recommends taking a break to facilitate this process. Crick, who shared the Nobel Prize with his coworker Watson for deciphering the form of DNA, credits incubation as a major key to their success:
Neither Jim nor I felt any external pressure to get on with the problem. This meant we could approach it intensively for a period and then leave it alone for a bit.200
When Bertrand Russell tried to “push his creative work by sheer force of will, he discovered the necessity of waiting for it to find its own subconscious development.”201 Jonathan Young (2006) says that such forcing often results in a creative block.
Also common are reports of illuminative dreams. Kekulé, stumped about the structure of the benzene ring, fell asleep in exhaustion and dreamt of a snake swallowing its tail. Elias Howe solved the problem of the sewing machine needle when he dreamt of savages chasing him, their spears punctured with holes in the ends. Dmitry Mendeleyev dreamt the placement of elements in the periodic table. In 1963 Otto Loewi won the Nobel Prize for an experiment told him in a dream. He had to repeat the dream the next night because his notes from the first night were indecipherable!202 In each case the dreamer was actively engaged in solving a problem and fell asleep, stymied, after “voluntary effort” that had seemed “fruitless.”
Harpist Derek Bell, when asked how to court inspiration, replied in an interview,
Buddha gave the correct answer to this question in my opinion. He said if you want to know anything, humbly sit down and ask the great void. Ask for help, ask for what you need, and maybe next morning, when the morning light comes in, something will be given to you if you are fit to have it . . . The less you are thinking about it, the better it comes.203
8.Watch for synchronicity to help you.
Synchronicity is the message from the universe that you are not alone, that there are forces waiting to help you if you are focused enough, full of concentration and will power, engaged in a task that will benefit the whole. Synchronicity, as defined by Jung, is a meaningful coincidence: “‘the simultaneous occurrence of two meaningfully but not causally connected events’; or alternatively as ‘a coincidence in time of two or more causally unrelated events.’” Combs and Holland call such events
. . . the uncanny intrusion of the unexpected into the flow of commonplace happenstance, an intrusion that hints at an undisclosed realm of meaning, a disparate landscape of reality that momentarily intersects with our own.204
They add that, according to Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers, when you follow your bliss, “there is often a sense of ‘hidden hands,’ of unexpected opportunities and unanticipated resources.”205 Sometimes they seem to be arranged by a trickster with a sense of humor,206 such as the episode narrated by Shirley MacLaine in Out on a Limb when she entered a book store and the book she needed fell on her head. When we are cooperating with a greater energy, there exists “an attitude of synergy by which a state of cooperation exists between the individual and the world.”207 Look for such opportunities, and make use of them.
9.Try it out in the material world.
Take your project to someone you trust and ask for feedback. Try to get your ego out of the way and listen, dispassionately, for ways your work can be improved.
Lennon and McCartney did most of their best composing together. Sir Paul often discusses how they used each other as sounding boards, how his romantic tone was toughened by his partner’s sardonic irony. A favorite example of his is quoted by Barry Miles: “I was sitting there doing ‘Getting better all the time’ and John just says
