Trust The Creative Guidance System

Everyone who has ever created something, whether it is a garden, a painting, a book, a dance, a new way to do something, a piece of equipment, a song, a comfortable home, a delicious dish; every one of them, every one of us, has experienced moments of doubt that it will work out.

Those moments happen when we sit down to write, and we are clueless about what comes next. It happens in those moments when we see that the garden is full of plants that aren’t growing, or the new design isn’t working, or the dancers keep tripping over each other.

In those moments, we wonder why we ever thought we could create something of value, and even if we manage to pull it off, who would care.

However, it is what happens next, when we don’t quit, when we keep on doing what we were doing anyway, when we trust that somehow, someway, it will work out, that is when we experience what some people call the magic.

Perhaps it is what keeps drawing us back to our craft and our art. I include all people participating in this process as an artist, not just those that call themselves an artist, but everyone who experiences the creative process, and surrenders to the faith that something besides them is doing the creating.

That magic happens when we recognize that we are an instrument through which a creation arises out of thought and into substance, and we let go and ride the wave to shore.

I remembered this passage from doubt and discouragement and back to faith in the process, when once again I hit a place in my writing where I had no idea what happened next in the story. I asked myself, “Who would want to read this, why am I doing it anyway?”

Finally, I sat myself down, metaphorically, because I had no time to actually sit, and asked myself, “What are you whining about?

I reminded myself how I used to choreograph. How the idea would form, and I would follow it. I would take the idea to my dance company where we would refine it, and practice, and refine, and practice. I would have daydreams, and night dreams about what happened next.

People would stare at me, because I would be making up new steps while waiting for streetlights to change. My dancers would stare at me while I explained to them a step that I couldn’t do, but they could, because I had seen it in my imagination. All I had to do was get them to believe in the possibility. I trusted the process. I trusted that the ideas that came to me came not from me, but from a creative guidance system.

I reminded myself of the many hundreds of blogs, and Ezines I have written in the past 14 years, and how each one of them has followed the same pattern that I had trusted when I choreographed.

I trust that an idea will pop in, and if I don’t doubt the gift of that idea, I can expand the idea, refine the idea, practice the idea, edit the idea, and trust the creative guidance system to lead me to the end.

I have trusted that creative guidance system for every book I have written. Some took longer than others did, but I always managed to get back to the awareness that it is not me doing the writing. I was simply the instrument for expression for that something that is much bigger and wiser than I am.

It doesn’t matter what we call it. I like calling it God sometimes because it forces me to constantly re-examine what I think God is, and constantly grow in trusting It. Not the god designed by humans. Not the god that allows or prevents suffering, not the god who answers or doesn’t answer prayers. Not that one.

God, the creative guidance system, the only cause and creator, the Principle of good that guides us when we listen, and is present even when we don’t, but when we listen and act on what we hear, that’s when the magic happens!

So no matter what you are creating, if that moment comes when you wonder why you are doing it or how it will ever work out; just remember, you are not the original Creator, you are Its expression. That means the possibilities are limitless, so relax, and enjoy the process, because the outcome is assured.