Make a Date with your Inner Genie

Artists, scientists as well as all other magical people know that if they focus their attention in the present moment and search for answers and thoughts, while allowing their beautiful inner genius to connect the dots among those varying ideas, theories, themes and harmonics, something truly new emerges.

A new idea is born, a new theory is discovered. Buddha realized enlightenment from sitting still and thinking, meditating, for a long time. Think again about Mozart, Beethoven, Einstein, Emerson, Whitman, Shakespeare, Jesus - the list is infinite. They all entered into their own personal present moment and found waiting for them inside a beautiful concerto, a new scientific hypothesis and spiritual revelation to chase down, with a pen, computer, microscope, telescope or a team of others. 

One thing all these people had in common was a passion for their art or science.  It was like a jealous lover, calling them day and night, stalking them, whispering to them all the time.  They were only happy when they were creating. The driving force behind the desire to formulate hypothesis, research and find answers to questions is that same kind of passionate pursuit.

  

Being busy may seem like a good excuse for not getting into that magical place of creation, but it is exactly the reason why so many people don't experience it.  Busy means just that - you're moving here and there, quickly consumed by a deadline, a task, all of which is future-focused. It may even be tedious and boring rather than joyful because it's not in the present and it's not your own joy you're pursuing. Rather, it's someone elses.

If you're feeling sluggish, tired and weary - even sick - it may be because you're focused too much on the past, and putting all your vitality and life-force energy on the past.  That's like sending your spirit down a black hole. We all have within us something I call our "inner tyrranical dictator," that inner voice that tells you that you must be out there serving, doing for others, making you virtually a slave to an external system - church, government, school, institution.

Of course it is good to care about others. Service to humanity is our most noble endeavor, but as we are filled with our own creative light and joy, we can then direct it outward to light the world and serve our human family. Without that kind of in-filling, outward directed service can become so all consuming of your time and your life, that you feel drained and even guilty if you spend an hour in your garage workshop, or in your spare room studio, or on the beach meditating or even reading.  It is that very negative force within us that actually blocks our inner creative flow.

So, if you hear your inner genie whispering to you and you find yourself struggling against it, resist it not and just go ahead and do what you're longing to do.  Don't tell them I said so, but call in sick and go do what you love, if only just to make a date with it and return to it after work another day.

What if you reached for your inner artist or your inner scientist and dove into whatever thoughts, ideas or dreams that you're interested in and really spent some time on them?  You would enter into the present moment, focused intensely on something that interests you and even brings you happiness and joy. You would find that childhood joy of play return.  You would feel energized and healthy.  You would even feel younger. You would feel alive again. You would feel happy.

If you are any sort of artist (scientist, too), you would engage in something Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced, "chicks send me high"), a wise and wonderful psychology professor and former chairman of the Psychology Department at the University of Chicago,  called "flow."  It is that creative flow into which we enter when we dive into our own creative inner genie. Csikszentmihalyi suggests it is that inner flow that we tap when we get into our creative passion. 

I would add to his thesis, that as co-creators with the Ultimate Life-Force Creator, we get in touch with the very life force and source of the universe when we get into our creative flow.  It is a most spiritual of all encounters and experiences. We enter timelessness.  We connect with the heartbeat of all of life.  We enter into a kind of Zen moment that is timeless and exhilarating, life-giving and joyful.  We enter life. 

Sometimes we  have to slow down our minds, focus, light a candle, put on some music in order to center our frenzied minds and then allow that interior focus to have his way with us.  And, then, our own inner music begins as our own inner candle is lighted and then we begin to slowly find ourselves lost in our art or research.

    

Also, just in case you're interested, 

Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has written several books, which are Flow; The Evolving Self; and Creativity, the Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. Published by HarperPerennial (a Division of Harper Collins Publishers); 1997.