“How do I open to the Muse?” This is the age-old question for writers. We all know the moment when the words pour through us like gifts from the gods, and we know the dry spells where sitting at our desk feels like a prison sentence. How to bridge the two? Anne Lamott says: “…calm down, get quiet, breathe, and listen. Train yourself to hear that small inner voice.”
We make the common mistake of sweating, sitting at our desk and squeezing out pellets which we comb through with judgmental fingers, recognizing little of value in them. We can try, try, try, clenching our teeth, or we can surrender. Visitation by the Muse requires utter surrender. Only when we throw ourselves from the bridge and feel the water crash over our heads does she emerge and say, “At last! The blank page I require.”
Surrender is easy to say. How do we do it? We spend our lives contracting, protecting, spitting out identities we have worked so hard to create. Surrender means letting go of all of it, self, ambition, and most of all, the mind. The left brain was developed to help us remember how to get home through the forest, how to count the coins in our piggy bank, how to purchase a train ticket. It is not the seat of creativity and imagination. When we write from the left brain, we are in the realm of reporting and analysis. The Muse requires the wild jungles of the right brain, the unleashing of the imagination, full permission to roar.
Roar, lion of the heart and tear me open.
—RUMI
So is there a way to shift from left brain analysis to right brain jungle-roaring? Meditation. Meditation offers us the ability to quiet the mind, as Lamott suggests, to still the chattering ego. Only when we are able to access silence, can the Muse be heard. She is waiting for your sacred listening. She won’t be roped, trussed, caged by your thoughts. She is Pegasus galloping across the heavens and if you’re lucky you can grab a ride on her bare back. But first, get quiet. Listen. Wait. Learn to tolerate the empty page. Become comfortable with silence. When you’ve proven that you can do that, when you become an initiate of the order of the Holy Silence, the words will come for you.
Exercise: Try writing from a place of effortful trying. Feel in your body how that works. Try to be brilliant and creative. Now take a breath. Relax. Pause. See what words bubble up from your subconscious and write them down. Write only the words that surprise you. Feel the difference.
How does meditation work? We still the body and watch the mind. At first, we see nothing but monkeys chattering jungle gossip, and the chaos is overwhelming. But after some time of watching, we realize we are not the monkeys, we are the watcher of the monkeys, and the watcher is quiet, observant. Soon the quiet watcher becomes more predominant and the chatter recedes into the distance, less and less demanding of our attention. When we are able to become fully silent, even for a moment, we learn the Art of Listening.
Exercise: take a moment to listen to your inner chatter. Exaggerate it, as if it’s a marketplace of opinions. Now step back from it and tune into the sounds outside your window: birds, cars, wind. Step back even further and hear the deep silence behind all sound. Stay with that and see what emerges. An image? A feeling? Is there a single word that appears?
The Art of Listening is a state of mind that is fully receptive, open, uncluttered. It is a blank slate. Self is suspended, thoughts are suspended, even words are suspended. Nothing is there. From nothing comes a seed. The only thing required of us is to keep the floor swept, the room empty. We don’t seize the seed and turn it into an essay. We don’t grab it and water it and kill it with love. We allow the seed to show us the way. What does it want? What is it asking of us?
By cultivating this open mind, we become the Zen master with the calligraphy brush, awaiting instruction from the brush itself. We are its servant. We bow to the brush and we bow to the writing implement or computer that receives our seed. We bow to the seed. Writing happens. We allow it. If it helps to light a candle and create sacred space before we empty our mind, we light a candle. We make a beautiful cup of tea. We wait. And when the seed comes, we bow deeply.
This takes practice. But not the hard-earned, sweaty practice of striving; rather the gentle practice of sitting still, calming the breath, watching the mind. The practice of meditation, whether you do it formally or informally. In meditation, you step back and allow silence to give birth. You wait for the Muse to appear on her golden chariot. Then, with practice, you can hop on board and take the ride of a lifetime.
