Fun Things to Help Bring Out and Harnessyour Creativity

by Nigel Baldwin

www.thewriteinn.co.uk

www.nigel-baldwin.com

www.nigelbaldwin.com

Drop the Slop.

This is just basically automatic writing. I call it

Drop the Slop – others call it Morning Pages,

Autopilot – because it is a way of getting rid of

negative thoughts, negative thinking, petty

worries, and allowing more positive feelings, more

artistic leanings to come through. We have a lot of

‘stuff’ in our subconscious/unconscious. I go into

more detail about this in my Writing Course but the reason I call it Drop The

Slop is because in the UK there is a process in prisons called ‘slopping out’

which is basically the taking out of the cells in the morning the bodily wastes

or human excrement passed the night before. So I use the metaphor to apply

to getting rid of all the waste in your mind. And to do this you’ve just got to get

out of the way and dump the unwanted stuff on the page. It’s predominantly

an unconscious process because it helps to write before you’ve thought about

it.

Basically get your self a pen and notepad (or if you can’t face looking at your

scrawly writing a keyboard will do, though it doesn’t work as well for me) find

some place to be alone where you are not going to be interrupted and just

take half an hour or so to write about a thousand words. That’s roughly three

to six pages of A4, the discrepancy in number being dependant on your

handwriting. Just write. Write out the slops.

It’s also a way of by-passing what the German poet Schiller called ‘the

watcher at the gates of the mind’, the one who censors you, tells you how

pathetic you are. Your gremlin in other words, your self-censor. What you

need to do is just fill up those pages with whatever comes into your mind or

psyche and not look at the results afterwards until you’ve done about ten days

to two weeks of them. Because if you do you will make judgements on them

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and the point of this exercise is not to judge the quality but to ‘Drop The

Slops.’ The self-criticisms, the doubts, the fears, the ‘I-can’t-do’s’. It’s these

kind of slops that stop us going forward in the first place. And never, ever

show these slops to anyone else. Except when you are proud of the product.

After you have dropped the slops you see, good stuff might out.

This can be a very healing process. Eventually after the slops have gone the

writing can become very ordered. This is also a great exercise to do if you are

feeling particularly isolated. Everyone needs to vent their feelings and writing

can take on the job of therapist. In earlier forms of therapy (still practised to

this day in the guise of counselling and psychotherapy) we used to talk to

another about what bothered us, what held us back, what we hadn’t achieved,

what had hurt us. Slowly you will see a direction and patterns emerging and

now these are down on paper – in form – you can begin to learn from them.

Writing gives you a sense of control over your thoughts and – as when you

are dropping the slop – you might well express (and I would encourage you to

do so) thoughts and feelings that you harbour and that you are too ashamed

to express to anyone else. Suppressed issues can be uncovered which

sometimes can be disturbing, even frightening. But, remember until issues

are uncovered, there can be no healing.

At some level we all need – and want – healing. We have all scuffed our

knees and stubbed our toes on our journey. Some have bigger wounds than

others but we all could do with it. Writing can be a form of self-healing. Write

what made you angry, write what hurt you, write about who humiliated you,

who mistreated you. Some claim that writing is the means by which you reach

the goal of creativity, implying that being creative is a union with a higher

energy. When I first did this exercise, after the slops had been dropped, I

started – somewhat mysteriously to me – a dialogue with what I can only call

a higher part of me, something I illustrate in my writing course at

www.writeinn.co.uk It was a quite a release, and something of a testament to

my spiritual component, and consequently a healing.

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Four Card Stud(y)

Take a pack of playing cards and deal yourself

four face up. Then make a scenario up from the

four you have. You must include both the suit

and the denomination. (You can use the

singular or the plural of the denomination.) If

something comes up twice you have to use it

twice.

For example I have just done this and come up with the two of diamonds, four

of hearts, queen of clubs and ten of hearts.

So –

“I woke up at two in the morning dreaming that I had been to see a concert

with the four piece rock band Queen. I knew in my heart of hearts that this

was impossible since they had split up and one of them had died. Freddie

Mercury was a diamond singer. I counted to ten and was back in sleep as if

I’d been hit on the head with a club. “

(‘Diamond’ is London UK slang for ‘wonderful’)

Or –

“I carried two diamonds in a pouch close to my heart. Mike had given me four

but I kept the others at home. When I walked into that club at ten that night

my heart was pounding. But I still felt like a queen.”

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Ace of Spades, five of diamonds, Jack of clubs, two of clubs.

“I couldn’t make up my mind which club to use, the five iron or the hybrid. I’d

be better off digging myself out of the rough with a spade. Sometimes I

thought I didn’t bring enough clubs with me. I calculated the ball needed to

travel no more than two metres. Afterwards my son Jack said the shot was

ace and bought me a Diamond White to celebrate. “

(Diamond White is a very strong cider in the UK. I know nothing about golf by

the way!)

Or –

“Ace was a big guy, upwards of two metres with shoulders that measured

twenty five inches across. He once defended himself from a man with a club

with one bare hand, nearly ripped his neck for his shoulders. As such, of the

four of us, he did all the spade work. All the lifting, all the grunting. Me I was

more of a jack of all trades, small but good at fixing and fetching things. One

of the things I always fetched was a beer for us all in the middle of the day

from the Diamond Club across the road.”

It doesn’t matter how long it is but you’ve got to eventually use all the cards

and all the denominations. Not in one sentence, you can take a whole page.

By which time you’ll be well into your story.

If you turn up four of the same denomination – particularly if it’s spades which

is the most difficult suit – try a poem!

This is great fun and somewhat challenging, but it’s also addictive so make

sure it doesn’t eat into your real writing time!

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Brainstorming/Storytelling with One or More Friends

I use this a lot and it’s great fun. A version of a

panel/parlour game played – I should imagine – since

time immemorial. I use this frequently with students

and they are constantly amazed at what transpires.

Even if you only have one other person to play with it’s

fun. Firstly have a conversation with each one of you

taking every other word. “This-morning-I-went-to-the-baker’s-for-some-bread.”

Try to go as fast as you can and not think too much about it. If you can record

it digitally even better. Eventually you will be speaking as one and you might

have even put a coherent scenario together. Once you have, go on to the

next stage. This time you have alternate sentences – or if there are more than

two of you, a sentence each until everyone has had a turn and then go

around again. Again, after a bit of practice, a coherent scenario will start to

emerge. It helps to not be too self-conscious about this and make judgments

on the quality of the material. Remember you are using it as a tool to harness

your creativity not to write a proposal to submit to a publisher or producer.

With students this always works, except when they make judgements. And

the hardest task with students is to get them to not make judgements. And,

yes, you’re allowed to stop and go back. Even if there is just the two of you. If

something emerges which is interesting, even inspiring, and the next

participant ‘blocks’ it, you can observe this and go back and take a different

direction. It’s a ‘re-write’ if you will.

You can do a version of this on your own.

Firstly take a writing tool – pen, paper/computer – and write down as quickly

as possible ten words consecutively which are NOT associated with the

previous word. These words should represent objects/solids rather than

concepts. Concepts – such as time, space, religion, philosophy – can have all

sorts of unseen associations and are best steered clear of. Otherwise you

might end up arguing with yourself a bit like players do when they’re arguing

about a valid word in Scrabble. Objects only – living or inanimate. So: cat-5

mustard-penny-clock-water-phone-paint-radio-light-television.This takes some

concentration. Mostly there is usually an association. I started doing this and

wrote cat-monkey which have association in that they are both animals, so

start again. This will get your juices flowing.

Then ten words with none of them associated out of the whole ten. So from

the above example radio and television would probably have to go. Even

radio and light have a bit of an association, as do radio and clock. Keep

going, you’ll soon have the cobwebs cleared.

Then write sentences that seem to have no association. After about ten, sit

back and look at them. Where are the associations? What associations can

you make? Is there a way of making the connections less tenuous? Can you

firm up the connections? Rearrange the order of the sentences? Soon you

should have the beginnings of a story.

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Changing Your Story/Changing the Story of Others

Even if we think we can’t control everything that

happens to us we can write our own story about it. As

Viktor Frankl says in his book “Man's Search for

Meaning” we are in charge of how we think about what

happens.

Quantum physics tells us reality is not as solid as it seems and that matter

and events may even be malleable.

How many times has something annoying happened in your life and you have

heard yourself saying “It’s going to be one of those days” ? And how often

have you turned out to be right and then consider yourself to be a victim of

circumstances? But if quantum physics has any validity then to some extent

we created it. So why not change the story: “Today is going to be a great

day.”

Pull yourself up when you’re telling a negative story, change it, and watch

what manifests in your life. At the very least, you’ll begin to feel better about

your difficult day. But, even more, you might find that what seemed initially to

be a challenge or problem could turn out to be the indispensable prelude to a

bunch of positive experiences.

This can be difficult at first – after all we’re all conditioned into thinking we

have very little control over our lives – but with practice it will come. The

following is based on the preceding storytelling exercise and can benefit all

involved.

You can tell this on your own, with a friend or with a group of people who all

take turns in telling their story and having it changed. The principle is the

same whether you are on your own or with others. The more participants the

more people who benefit.

Tell a story about something that happened to you which wasn’t exactly great.

Better to start off with minor stuff, profound traumatic material really needs a

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very safe and formal therapeutic environment. Say it’s a story about your dog

running off. After one or two sentences stop and ask what you said which

was negative about the event. Try to turn the negative into a positive. It didn’t

matter that it didn’t actually happen, this is a process of healing. Maybe your

dog ran off and you got frantic but at the end of the day a neighbour brought

him home. The negative here is you being frantic. But instead of being frantic

you could say your dog had gone off on an adventure and tell that adventure

culminating in the dog returning with a pouch full of money! It doesn’t matter

how outrageous and untrue it might have been, this is all about healing the

psyche.

If you are doing this with one other then tell your story in the most negative

fashion you can (exaggerate!) – one or two sentences at a time – and let your

partner retell it in the positive.

If you are doing it in a group use the same principle except that everyone else

takes turns to put a positive spin on your story. The first person on your left

takes the first two sentences and then the next person takes the next two and

so on….

What happens if you tell this in a group or even to one other is that you get

your positive experiences affirmed by others which will enhance your self-

esteem. The idea is not to change the essential event – the dog did run off

after all – the idea is to change the experiencing of it.

Nothing is really negative or positive, only what we make it so.

There is a very popular, very old Sufi story that illustrates this.

“Hundreds of years ago, in a poor Chinese village, there lived a farmer and

his son. His only material possession, apart from the land and a small hut,

was a horse he had inherited from his father.

One day, the horse ran away, leaving the man with no animal with which to

work the land. His neighbours, who respected him for his honesty and hard

work, went to his house to say how bad it was and how much they were sorry 8

for his loss. He thanked them for their visit, but said:

‘Good? Bad? Who’s to know? ’

A week later, the horse returned to its stable, but it was not alone; it brought

with it a beautiful mare for company. The people of the village were thrilled

when they heard the news, for only then did they understand the reply the

man had given them, and they went back to the farmer’s house to

congratulate him on his good fortune.

‘Instead of one horse, you’ve got two. Congratulations!’ they said.

“Good? Bad? Who’s to know? “ said the farmer.

A month later, the farmer’s son decided to break the mare in. However, the

animal bucked wildly and threw the boy off; the boy fell badly and broke his

leg. The neighbours returned to the farmer’s house, bringing gifts for the

injured boy. The elders of the village sombrely presented their condolences to

the father, saying how sad they all were about such a bad accident.

“Good? Bad? Who’s to know?”

These words left everyone open-mouthed, his son was going to be

permanently crippled, how could that ever be interpreted as good?

A few months went by, and Japan declared war on China. The emperor’s

emissaries scoured the country for young and sturdy men to be sent to the

front. When they reached the village, they recruited all the youths and young

men, except the farmer’s son, whose leg had not yet mended.

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None of the recruits came back alive. The distraught villagers visited the

farmer who gave them his condolences. They said how lucky he had been

that his son had broken his leg when he did. The accident had had a good

outcome for him.

‘Good? Bad? Who’s to know?’ said the farmer with infinite compassion and

wisdom.”

Events in themselves do not have meaning, we give them meaning. Give

everyone in your group a chance to tell their negative stories and each one of

the others change it into a positive. It becomes a very life-enhancing

experience.

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Five - Words, Objects, Characters

This is for the egg-heads among you. More difficult

but fun because it is demanding and you get to use

new words! (Or rarely used ones anyway.) Take a

dictionary and choose five words that are semi-unfamiliar to you. Learn their

meaning and application. Then choose five objects in the room you are sitting

in, and then five characters from life or fiction (any fiction).

So, I’ve just done this -

Words – aristology, nomogeny, heuristic, lacteal, calefacient

Objects - book, computer, lamp, vase, rubber plant

Characters - Desperate Dan, Popeye, Jed Bartlet, Othello, Winston Churchill

Now use them all. So –

“Staring, as if mesmerised, at the rubber plant is his office, sitting under the

standard lamp by the fire which was distinctly calefacient, Jed Bartlet

dismissed comparisons to Winston Churchill as he closed his book and

contemplated re-election. In the next room he could hear one of his speech

writers tapping away on the computer keyboard. He liked how his staff, and

particularly Joe - affectionately known as Popeye - embraced a heuristic

model of life. Jed knew the speech, addressing excess budget spending,

started off with a metaphor based on the comic hero Desperate Dan. They

had discussed the opening sentence. “Being a glutton Desperate Dan’s

favourite hobby was aristology.” He liked Joe’s turn of phrase, but wondered if

an audience would understand what he was referring to. He also liked his

velvet tones. If Joe had been an actor he would have been born to play

Othello. Joe and he always argued about the origin of life, Joe buying into the

theory of nomogeny whereas Jed had a more religious perspective.

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Jed reached for his drink, a lacteal confection which was supposed to help

him sleep. Something he had been having trouble with lately. As he did so his

hand slipped and knocked a small ornamental vase from the table. It hit the

floor and shattered. The typing in the other room ceased as if the typist had

been suddenly struck dead.”

It’s not going to win a Nobel, a Pulitzer or a Booker, but it’s great fun, and it’s

surprising how you find you are using the words, mostly not in the obvious

way you imagined. And you get to develop the use of your vocabulary. If not

entirely new words, words re-membered. It’s also challenging, but that’s not a

bad thing.

Once you have done that, make one of your characters yourself. And then tell

your story in the first person, changing your negatives into positives as per

the ‘Changing Your Story’ exercise. Do yourself a favour, challenge yourself.

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Right and left handed

If you are right handed write with your left for a page of A4.

It’ll stimulate the opposite hemisphere of your brain – the

creative side. Reverse if you are left-handed.

Autobiography

Choose a fictional character – cartoon is permissible –

and write his or her biography as if you were them.

Where you were born, what you like to eat, where you

want to go, your ambitions, how you came to meet

your friends and colleagues. How that accident happened. How you did/didn’t

marry/sleep with/go horse riding with a counterpart. What car do you drive,

what are your hobbies, what clothes do you like to wear when on a date? Do

you mix easily with others or are you a loner? Where do you like to go on

holiday? Even if you are a fictional character it is now your autobiography, so

who would play you in the movie of you? Have fun, be expansive. It’s a form

of playing – which leads onto the next one.

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Learn to Play

When you are stuck or blocked, unblocking is in effect

allowing the creative child to come through and heal.

Observe how creative children are in their playing. Play

yourself. If you are embarrassed skipping along the sea

shore singing a nursery rhyme then find some woods

and skip where no-one can see you. The creative child you may have

suppressed for so long – the one who delights in so many things – wants to

come out to play. Make some musical instruments out of pots and pans, bells

and jewellery, paper rolls and paper clips in small containers that you can

shake, rattle and roll. Have fun.

Having fun is the opposite of trying too hard – and trying too hard is

sometimes what blocks us. We fret, we worry, we think we’ll never do it.

Children never have those problems, so rediscover the child in you.

Creativity is about having fun and playing, it’s not a duty – “I don’t want to go

to the gym, but I must to lose weight/get fit.’ Whoever or whatever created the

Universe had fun doing it – imagine painting in your mind all those species of

living things, plants animals etc. Doubt that was duty. It was fun.

It is essential to laugh more. If you can’t find something that makes you laugh

then sit down and just exhale using the term ‘ha’. If you run that term together

again and again ‘ha-ha-ha-ha’ as quickly as you can you won’t be able to stop

yourself laughing. Works every time.

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St. George and the Dragon

(Skip this if your schooling and childhood was so

perfect that you already feel that you are in the realms

of the angels. Others might find it useful.)

This is more a meditation than a game, but it is very

useful for those who are stuck because the story they

are telling of their own lives is peppered with concepts as ‘can’t-do’, ‘I-was-

told-I-was-no-good’’, ‘people-always-laughed-when-I-said I wanted to write.’

We are the authors of our own lives and we can retell/rewrite the stories. I

was told as a child that I would never amount to anything, which was my sole

and principle motivation to stick one in the eye of my detractors. That’s

because I’m recalcitrant and antiauthoritarian, so if anyone tells me what I can

or can’t do I’ll do the opposite. Bloody minded if you will. But many people get

stuck in the beliefs they have been fed by their family/teachers/mentors

because they want to please them and be seen to be agreeable.

Now, you’re going to consider yourself as a character in your story in the third

person so that you can be a witness to this narrative and not be immersed in

it. You are Michelle or Michael rather than ‘I’. So the story might begin

“Michelle/Michael was born in London on a wet stormy night on April 1st at five

in the morning. Being born in foul weather on April Fool’s day seemed like an

apt omen for the life that then transpired.” You’re not going to write “I was

born in London etc…” because you are a witness. Then tell your story as

other people might see you. But not your whole life’s story because it would

be too long and, most likely, discourage you to do the whole exercise. Pick

two or three incidents or events where you were manipulated (mostly

unconsciously) into being what someone else wanted you to do or be.

Embellish that story of how you fitted into other peoples’ perspectives and

expectations. Tell the story (if it indeed is so) of how you complied with your

parents’ wishes to be a doctor when you really wanted to be a circus clown,

but tell it in the third person. And try to identify the moments when your

creativity was disparaged or crushed because all children (and therefore all 15

adults, even if suppressed) are creative. It is said that all creativity comes

from the inner child, but the inner child has no defence mechanisms against

the disparagement of disapproving adults. This is why criticism of your

creative endeavours can hurt so much. Make it about 250-1000 words

depending on how healing it is for you.

Okay, so then retell it how you want it to be now. How you have come to

realise, despite all the obstacles, what a creative creature you are. That

whatever people said about your inability to dance, sing, write, they were

wrong, They thought you were an ugly duckling whereas you were really a

swan. Rewrite the story so that when someone told you that you wouldn’t

amount to much or, as parents, you would be much better off earning your

living in business than in the arts (or whatever you want) you include a scene

where your heroine/hero rejects that. This is the novel/script of your real life.

Now, the third and final part. Sit and relax and go into meditation or

visualisation mode and imagine you are St. George and you have come to

slay the dragon which has imprisoned the damsel in distress in the castle.

The damsel in distress is your true story, the dragon the old one imposed

upon you when your intuition, reasoning and real desires were a hostage to

fortune. Imagine St. George battling and killing the dragon and carrying off the

damsel, your real story. Be as elaborate as you want about this. Your psyche

will accept the gear shift.

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Expanding your Consciousness

This takes some commitment but is really useful in

developing an awareness to allow your stories to come

through. It is also only useful if all your senses are

unimpaired. If not – you have a hearing issue for

example – it doesn’t mean you can’t develop your

awareness, just that this exercise wouldn’t be useful for

you. Once you who are blessed with unimpaired senses have mastered some

of this exercise (and it is really difficult to master it all) you might find your

channels much clearer and your stories come through from your ‘muse’

(whatever you perceive that to be) with an elegance that surprises you. P.D.

Ouspensky, a student of Gurdjieff is credited with devising this when he

asserted that most of mankind is sleepwalking through their lives. I don’t hold

an opinion on that, I just know that this is useful (even though I have never

mastered it completely.) It is not easy though and you need to take about half

an hour to do it.

Take yourself out for a walk and for the first five minutes concentrate and the

visual stimuli. Not just looking but seeing – cracks in the brickwork of houses,

TV aerials and satellite dishes, the plumage of birds and the colour of the

leaves on the trees. Be aware of the colours and really see, as if you are a

child looking through a kaleidoscope for the first time.

After about five minutes (but don’t get distracted by formally looking at your

watch) add to this your world of sound. The passing traffic, the voices of

people, the birdsong, the distant sound of a speedboat on water, an

aeroplane. Don’t let go of your visual stimuli.

Ten minutes in bringing in the sensations you feel with your sense of touch.

The breeze on your skin, your footsteps on the road/path, even how your

clothes brush against your body. You are now conscious of three types of

stimuli.

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After about fifteen minutes bring in the sense of smell – the flowers, the dust,

the honeysuckle in the woods, the smell of grass after a rainfall.

Now try to pay attention to all these four sensory inputs simultaneously. (If

you’re a real glutton for punishment you can include taste by sucking on a

sweet, but I didn’t ever take it that far.)

Once you have anchored these four (or five) senses start to count your

footsteps as you walk AND recite a piece of poetry that you know well or a

nursery rhyme.

If you do this even moderately successful you will slip into an altered state of

consciousness which is akin to the meditative state which enhances

creativity. You need to have patience though.

I would also like to add that you can’t fail at this because it is a tool to help

you unblock yourself and enhance your creativity. It’s like running: some

people run five miles, other people run five minutes, it’s what it does for you

that matters. Also, unlike all the other tools/games I have illustrated here this

one doesn’t involve directly sitting at your desk and writing. So when you

need to get out ….

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Make Friends with Your Muse

This is a contentious one, but where do your ideas

come from? Now, even the most avid atheist who

has thought about these matters must have asked

where consciousness comes from. Max Planck,

the father of quantum physics, claimed that all

matter was a derivative of consciousness. So what

is this consciousness? I suggest it is your muse,

the gods and goddesses in other dimensions

tickling your creativity button. So who or what is your personal muse? That

depends on your model of reality. God, the Universe, The All-That-Is, Spirit,

your creativity, your Auntie Bessie. Just let it through and make friends.

Yes, take some time to sit down and make friends with your muse. In epochs

past when man and woman contemplated how the Universe came into being

they coined the word God or Allah or Yahweh or Krishna or numerous other

names. It’s simply a name expressed in symbols (letters). Our artists have

since been trying to express the Divine in their paintings, music and writings.

And because we know no other way we personify Him/Her/It. So God is

personified as a man even though no man is God and God is not man.

I have no denominational or religious views on this but often wonder where

my ideas come from. So I have made friends with my Muse and sit down

often to talk with him/her. My Muse metamorphoses often – sometimes he’s a

middle-aged hippy in sandals and red corduroy trousers, other times she’s a

gorgeous goddess in the most stunning golden robes beckoning me to an

ecstasy I haven’t yet experienced. (And still haven’t as it happens. But there’s

a way to go! And fun on the way!) It doesn’t matter. Make friends with that

part of you/higher self/source that partners you in your creativity and give

him/her/it an image you are comfortable to sit with. Then have a dialogue.

And after the dialogue, record what you remember. Then make a date to

meet your Muse at your desk and/or writing space the next time you approach

it. It’s a yummy new date!

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Many artists will consider their work a ‘channelling’. Nothing wrong in that,

since we are all connected to the same source and each other. I’ll conclude

with what Giacomo Puccini said. (Substitute the word God in the following

quotation with your concept of the energy of the Universe.) Puccini when

speaking about Madam Butterfly said : “The music for this opera comes from

God. I was merely instrumental in putting it on paper and communicating it to

the public.”

And if you think it all comes from you and not something as well as you

(because of course all things do come from you because you are not

separate from the source) contemplate this as a wonder about how complex

an organism we are and how the astronomer Fred Hoyle calculated the odds

against us evolving by accident. “A living cell has a chain of amino acids: the

function of these amino acids is dependent upon 1,000 to 2,000 different

enzymes. The probability of a thousand different enzymes coming together in

just the right way to help amino acids function in a random way over the

Earth's several billions of years is 10 to the power of 40,000 to one.”

In the light of that (wow!) make friends with your muse.

We are creative people who with the creator created us being creative.

The word Inspiration derives from in-spiritis (emanating from spirit), the word

enthusiasm (a must for the creative heart) derives from en theos (emanating

from God, whatever that means to you.) “In the beginning was the word” says

one spiritual tradition (though I don’t adhere myself to any one specific

philosophy) and other religions also place metaphysical emphasis on sound

and creation being inextricably linked.

Food for thought there huh? Who can deny the creative power of the word?

Let’s get going!

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