Creativity: The Most Positive Thing I've Been Freaking Out About

About a year ago, something big happened. It involved a raucous breakthrough and it permanently altered my relationship with the Muse.  
But first let me back up and create some atmosphere.


I was trudging through the second draft of my manuscript, burdened by my own anxiety. It lingered, (this slippery anxious energy), in my muscles and joints like a parasite. It presented itself as a kind of gut gripping perception that this is such hard work and it might end up being terrible and time is running out according to...someone, (I’m not sure who), and oh god I’m an awful person, (I’m not sure why), and my book hates me. 


Things weren’t really flowing, creatively speaking.


Hmmm. I wonder why?


One evening I got tired of my own bullshit. 


In a moment of total exhaustion I bowed down beneath the weight of self criticism and with swift grace, a revelation bowed down beside me.  


I was flooded with the powerful, visceral recognition of the miracle of creativity. My cells began to buzz. I laid on the floor wide eyed and moved my hands from my belly to my heart. My joy was uncontainable. 


Oh my god, I thought, a smile stretching across my face. 
I have this invisible and eternal source within me called creativity. 
I am in relationship with this source as long as I am breathing. In fact, I’m probably still in relationship with this source when I stop breathing.   
This source is here to nourish me and create beauty. 
It is a well of endless interest for my mind and delight for my soul. 
It never runs out. 
No one can take it for me. 
It is the opposite of scarcity. 
It’s the closest thing to Love that isn’t Love. 
We are all gifted with it.
We get to use it in whatever way we please. 
And I’ve chosen to tell stories. 


Oh my god. 


I have stories to tell!
My book is one of those stories!
I love this story and I get to unfold it...
How lucky am I?!


Awhile back I read Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, which I highly recommend. She speaks directly and eloquently to the idea I’m touching on above - that inspiration is an entity we enter into relationship with and like anything or anyone we are in relationship with, it expands and contracts based on our approach. The book impacted me profoundly and the resonance of her teachings finally seemed to be stitching a coherent action plan into my psyche. 


The next day when I sat down to write, I had this loving gratitude, this perspective of awe, this sense of the miraculous coursing through my body.


And guess what?


My story started to speak to me in entirely new ways. 
An important character who had been annoyingly evasive suddenly stepped forward, moving toward my adoration like a sea of ants toward a drop of honey. 


So my friends, that was my breakthrough. 
It’s simple and it isn’t. 


We are lucky to live with creativity inherently imprinted in our DNA. It doesn’t matter what, (non-harmful), thing we do with it. 
Yet, if we enter into loving relationship with it, if we build it an altar in our hearts and feed it wonder, we will find that our creativity surges forward like a cleansing wave and extracts our heavy pretenses. 


We will find that we have everything we need inside us.


We will find that we have an invisible magic and the fortitude to make it visible. 
And isn’t that the blessing of a lifetime? 
Isn’t that worth freaking out about?