As you move toward a dream, the dream moves toward you.
Life is a spiritual dance and that our unseen partner has steps to teach us if we will allow ourselves to be led. The next time you are restless, remind yourself it is the universe asking 'Shall we dance?
Leap, and the net will appear.
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You do not need to work to become spiritual. You are spiritual; you need only to remember that fact. Spirit is within you. God is within you. (67)
God does not give us more than we can handle," I am told but I wonder if God doesn't overestimate me just a little. Or perhaps, and this is likely, I underestimate God.
The voice of our original self is often muffled, overwhelmed, even strangled, by the voices of other people’s expectations.
Writing is like breathing, it's possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what.
Creativity requires faith. Faith requires that we relinquish control.
Pray to catch the bus, then run as fast as you can.
Serious art is born from serious play.
No matter what your age or your life path, whether making art is your career or your hobby or your dream, it is not too late or too egotistical or too selfish or too silly to work on your creativity.
Often it is tenacity, not talent, that rules the day.
Art is not about thinking something up. It is the opposite -- getting something down.
Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise...As creative channels, we need to trust the darkness.
Procrastination is not Laziness", I tell him. "It is fear. Call it by its right name, and forgive yourself.
But do you know how old I will be by the time I learn to really play the piano / act / paint / write a decent play?" Yes . . . the same age you will be if you don't.
The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.
Just as a good rain clears the air, a good writing day clears the psyche.
Creativity - like human life itself - begins in darkness.
We are not accustomed to thinking that God's will for us and our own inner dreams can coincide.
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Sometimes the dying live more fiercely and wisely than the rest of us. (146)
Survival lies in sanity, and sanity lies in paying attention...the capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.
Creativity occurs in the moment, and in the moment we are timeless.
Artistic anorexia & sexual avoidance have the same root fears – fear of intimacy, fear of exposure, fear of failure”.
We always do the best we can by the light we have to see by.
It takes constant vigilance not to slip into negativity or simple apathy. It takes courage to believe over any given period of time that we are getting better and not sliding into decline.
Wherever you are is always the right place. There is never a need to fix anything, to hitch up the bootstraps of the soul and start at some higher place. Start right where you are.
Making art has taught me that the tiniest smidgen of progress is something to be cherished.
Art is born in attention.
Judging your early artistic efforts is artist abuse.
The need to be a great artist makes it hard to be an artist. The need to produce a great work of art makes it hard to produce any art at all.
Progress, not perfection, is what we should be asking of ourselves.
The reward for attention is always healing.
Artists are visionaries. We routinely practice a form of faith, seeing clearly and moving toward a creative goal that shimmers in the distance - often visible to us, but invisible to those around us.
What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us.
When you feel yourself to be in critical condition, you must treat yourself as gently as you would a sick friend.
Anger is meant to be acted upon. It is not meant to be acted out.
A career must be husbanded. Care must be taken. Everyday must bring some small bit of progress. How would an artist with any self-worth act? Act that way.
When we walk, the two halves of our brains converse.
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Far from making me feel different and special, my [spiritual] experiences made me feel the same, ordinary, and interconnected. If I felt more spiritual, everyone else felt more spiritual as well. (276)
The heart of creativity is an experience of the mystical union; the heart of the mystical union is an experience of creativity.
Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise.
We have this idea that we need to be in the mood to write. We don't.
We will experience the life we have the faith to experience.
FESTIVITY BREEDS CREATIVITY. RIGIDITY BREEDS DESPAIR
I believe that what we want to write wants to be written
Agendas tend to drain the life out of relationships.
The trick is to metabolize pain as energy. Learn, when hit by loss, to ask the right question: "What next?" instead of "Why me?
We've all heard that the unexamined life is not worth living, but consider too that the unlived life is not worth examining.
Each of us has an inner dream that we can unfold if we will just have the courage to admit what it is. And the faith to trust our own admission. The admitting is often very difficult.
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And why are we supposed to be serious about God? Did God show up and crack the whip? “You there, Annie in Ohio, I see you laughing a lot and frankly it really pisses Me off . . . “ (50)
All too often, it is audacity and not talent that moves an artist to center stage.
I have learned, as a rule of thumb, never to ask whether you can do something. Say, instead, that you are doing it. Then fasten your seat belt. The most remarkable things follow.
Creativity requires activity…And most of us hate to do something when we can obsess about something else instead.
There is no such thing as being done with an artistic life. Frustrations and rewards exist at all levels on the path.
. . . reaching toward God has made me more me and not less me. I was always afraid you would erase me. Instead, you are helping me to sketch me in.
...when we move out of faith into the act ofJ creation, the universe is able to advance.
Make your own recovery the first priority in your life. ROBIN NORWOOD
Always remember that your Censor’s negative opinions are not the truth.
There is a treadmill quality to workaholism.
The trick to finding writing time, then, is to write from love and not with an eye to product.
Your depression is exhaustion. Like Atlas, you try to carry this world on your own shoulders. This was never my intention. Allow me to carry the world.
Creativity - like human life itself - begins in the dark
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. SENECA
The truth of a life really has little to do with its quality. The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.
Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace, and power in it.
The trick to finding writing time is to make writing time in the life you've already got.
Our tears prepare the ground for our future growth. Without this creative moistening, we may remain barren. We must allow the bolt of pain to strike us. Remember, this is useful pain; lightning illuminates.
We tend to think of the rational as a higher order, but it is the emotional that makes our lives. One often learns more from ten days of agony than from ten years of contentment. MERLE SHAIN
Once writing becomes an act of listening instead of an act of speech, a great deal of the ego goes out of it.
In order to achieve escape velocity, we must learn to keep our own counsel, to move silently among doubters, to voice our plans only among our allies, and to name our allies accurately.
I’d rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck. EMMA GOLDMAN
Fame will come to some. Honor will visit all who work.
If we are invested in a writing life—as opposed to a writing career—then we are in it for the process and not the product.
I began to pray for help with what I needed and wanted as well as for the knowledge of God’s will for me and the power to carry it out. Immediately, I felt a heightened sense of spiritual companionship.
It’s not the answer that enlightens, but the question. EUGENE IONESCO
When we let ourselves write from love, when we let ourselves steal minutes as gifts to ourselves, our lives become sweeter, our temperaments become sweeter.
The myth that we must have “time”—more time—in order to create is a myth that keeps us from using the time we do have.
To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong. JOSEPH CHILTON PEARCE
There is the risk you cannot afford to take, [and] there is the risk you cannot afford not to take. PETER DRUCKER
Listening to the siren song of more, we are deaf to the still small voice waiting in our soul to whisper, ‘You’re enough.
