Creative Geniuses Surrender to the Moment
Even the tenacious devotion of the creative genius must at some point “let go.” Creative inspiration doesn’t come from sheer will, but through the willingness to relinquish control and enter the state of wandering.
The ability to let go—to surrender to the moment—is perhaps more difficult than a laborious decade of study. In our Western world, we tend to neglect the wanderer within.
Our lives are inundated with perpetual activities, work and family, emails and phone calls, and other demands of life. Yet, it is those rare moments of allowing when the creative impulse ignites. Intense study and practice is likened to swimming upriver; surrendering to the creative impulse is like floating downstream.
Periods of reverie are a prerequisite for inspiration. The analytical mind drifts aside, allowing the intuitive mind to align to inspired ideas.
Playwright Neil Simon acknowledged this altered state of consciousness by saying, “I slip into a state that is apart from reality. My mind wanders—even when I talk.”
We’ve all experienced these precious moments of insight while taking a shower, driving on the freeway or walking through the woods.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart reflects, “When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer—say, traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how they come, I know not; nor can I force them.”
Poet Rudyard Kipling also understood the need to lay the conscious mind aside and embrace the wanderer: “When your Daemon is in charge, do not try to think consciously. Drift, wait and obey.”
Exercise: Commit to walking in nature, cracking open your journal, reading poetry or sitting silently. Schedule time, even just 20 minutes, to minimize distractions and surrender to the moment.
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