Inspiration on Demand

I finally started working on my book. It’s been a while since I first came up with the idea, about a year and a half actually. I have realized recently that I have enough material from all the blog posts I’ve written over last several months to put it all together and produce one comprehensive story. Full of excitement and eagerness I sat down to my computer only to find that writing a book is quite a different story from writing on the blog. My posts aren’t thought out, prepared, pre-calculated. My posts come from a moment’s inspiration, from a stray thought that shows up in my head and allows me to see an aspect of reality in a different light. When I write my posts I don’t think and analyze. I open to what it is I want to say and I type. The ideas, feelings, perceptions, translate themselves into words and show up on the screen. It isn’t as easy with a book, I thought. There needs to be a structure and an intention larger than just one or two pages of ideas. And yet when I sat down to write the introduction I found that unless I write the same way I write my blogs it simply doesn’t work. If I write with my mind, try to analyze, explain, convince, then what I write is empty and soulless and the whole process is utterly frustrating. I was finishing the introduction for my book today and I observed myself going through the motions of being caught up in my mind — letting go — opening to who I am — opening to the aspect of relationship I want to describe — and writing it out. There was a hesitation, a sense of overwhelm before I sat down to write. There was a fear that I won’t be able to do this, that it is to big a task for me. I thought: this is trauma, not who I am. I let go — opened — sat down to writing. I wrote from exactly the same place that I write my blog posts from – I wrote as myself. Not as mind, but as me. Later today, while describing this process to my husband, I realized that this is what is usually called “inspiration”. Isn’t it? Being in a space where your mind goes away, where ideas show up and you simply let it out, through writing, painting, playing, whatever the medium. This state of being is called “being inspired”. I realized that this state of “inspiration” is nothing else that being who you are. It doesn’t come from outside — it comes from inside. It is the most normal, the most natural state of being oneself, of being God. As such it doesn’t depend on the proper situation, the proper environment, the proper mood, the proper … anything. All it requires is a choice, a choice to be oneself, fully and completely.