Saturday, August 10, 2013

Awakening

'Awe is what moves us forward.'                                       - Joseph Campbell

As writers, we struggle through many challenges particular to mastering our craft. The rites of passage are lonely, often dull & utterly necessary. We have excluded ourselves from countless social occasions; we resist all forms of distraction in order to negotiate with the vast scope of an activated imagination. To obtain a lasting view of what the deeper parts of subjective wisdom & experience wish to express to a readership, this is the rite of passage.


Eventually—the reward for effort begins to emerge. Something from deep inside experience & will; something which has greater resonance than the affects of everyday life manifests as proof of this evolution. We are overcome by the awesome nature of our own distinct creative process.


Once we have typed the final period of a closing sentence, then sat back to begin to understand what has just been accomplished, a feeling of transcendent satisfaction emerges. This wave of intuition & insight lifts us from the earlier position of nose-pressed-against-a-whirling grindstone of effort & we are permitted to realize that we have indeed, created something comprehensive, something wholly unto itself.


There is dignity in this expanded awareness; something supreme has been realized & this exhilaration is justly experienced. Imagination has not only responded to repeated requests for insight but has done this in a most mysterious way, with so little conscious effort. There is a cohesiveness to the work we have brought-forth & this unity would not have been likely if we had been operating from the exclusive territory of a conscious will to power.
                                         

Some confounding mechanism in the mind has surprised & provided; the culmination of aspiration, experience & effort has brought forth the fruit we yearned to harvest.



{Artwork by Hélène Druvert}