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.

Related posts:

1. The Single Commonality of All Creative Geniuses
2. Relinquishing Control of the Creative Process
3. Welcome the Wanderer

When you resist what is, you struggle. You experience stress. You suffer.

Unfortunately, our minds are wired for resistance. The human mind wants to change everything.

To illustrate, try to think about a person in your life with whom you don’t hold any grievances. No matter how much you love someone, invariably you want to change something about them—and probably many things.

You can also look at the room you’re in right now. If you focus on any object, you may notice that you want to change something about it. It could be the positioning of a pen, the hum of your computer or two people talking in the background.

Right now, my mind wants to change the sound of my neighbor mowing his lawn. How dare he mow his lawn on a Friday morning!

The opposite of resisting something—or wanting to change it—is to accept things as they are. When you have acceptance, you allow things to be as they are in the moment. Acceptance doesn’t mean passivity or apathy—it simply means allowing the reality of the moment to be as it is.

I might want my neighbor to stop mowing so I can enjoy nature’s silence, but the reality is he’s mowing. My desire to change what is only creates repressed negative energy within me. What good does that serve?

If you allow things to be as they are right now, you become infinitely more resourceful. In a more centered state, you can tap into the creative impulse. You become a more productive, happy person.

The choice is yours …

No related posts.