I ran across this piece of writing as I was redoing this website and transferring files. It’s the introduction to my book Marry Your Muse. I thought when I read it, that it still has some value, so I’m sharing it here. I hope you enjoy it…
This is a book about deepening our relationship with the Creative Spirit. It is an exploration into possibility, an exercise in dissolving the line between the mundane and the magical, the sacred and the secular. As much as it is about doing, it is about undoing. As clearly as it speaks to creating, it speaks to being created.
In our moments of common thought, we may think of the Muse as someone other than ourselves. In moments of grace, we may experience her as our own Being, coming to life as we surrender our fears and begin to create. All parts seeks the Whole and as we, in our mortality seek the Divine, Divinity may find its rapture in merging with the mortal.
Creativity is a manifestation of wholeness, springing from the weaving of spirit and matter. As our bodies are manifestations of divine thought, our creations are manifestations of divine union. All life and energy is generated from the union of two polar opposites. Before thought is born, two hemispheres of the brain must combine forces. Before art is created, the mortal must be touched by the spark of the Spirit.
Throughout the centuries, the Muse has been seen as an angel hovering over the shoulder of the artist at work. We see her outside ourselves, as we have been taught to see God, as a force transcendent, above and beyond us. But imagine that the Muse is immanent, within us, of us, as some teachings suggest. Imagine that Spirit is seeking to create through us, to regenerate itself into this culture, Word waiting to be made flesh through our creative expressions. Imagine the Muse ever poised, constantly ready to co-create, full of grace and terrible beauty. Imagine yourself the vessel of transmission, the one chosen to birth the Sacred, in word, song, clay, image or dance.
Do not doubt that you are born to create. Do not believe for a minute that the realm of art belongs to the others. Do not believe what you have been told or think you heard: that you are incapable, unimaginative, not artistic. This is blasphemous, as it denies the potential to create which is your birthright. If you have believed these things and woven your garment from this doubt and fear, disrobe and look within. Look within until you find what brings you joy and go there for your creating. That is your place to move with the Spirit, for the Muse lingers near the home of our joy.
There is no one to say it is this way or it is not this way. There is no absolute truth about the Muse or the creative process, for creativity is of the inner realm. Each of us becomes our own experts. In seeking we find what was never lost. In our creating, we ourselves are created, added to, enlightened.
What matters is the movement, the union with Spirit, that subtle drive that wakes us from our sleep, takes us from our dreams, and has us be the dream expressed.
