What a loaded phrase!
“The Muse”. Where do we find her? How do we encourage him to make an appearance? Who decided we needed a muse, anyway?
I can definitely see how this idea is attractive. Who wouldn’t want to put the burden of creativity into the hands of some mythological entity – takes the pressure off me for sure, but ultimately aren’t we responsible for our own creations? Maybe, maybe not.
What if we suspend all our beliefs?
What if you took the idea of a higher power and split that higher power into different personalities? If your staunch monotheistic, you might think of them as angels. If you’ve got a penchant for earth religions, maybe they’re fairies, or elves. I tend to think of everything as energy. Therefore, if I need the energy of a certain God/Goddess/Myth/Ascended Master/Whatever, I could call upon it as an energy. For example: if I’m working on an article about forgiveness, I might call upon Jesus, or the energy of the Jesus story. Even if you’re an atheist, I’m sure you can still see the correlation between forgiveness and the idea of the Jesus story, whether you believe it to be truth or fiction, or even somewhere in between.
The creative process isn’t always easy, and it’s certainly nice to get some help, wherever we may find it. Sometimes we need to seduce creativity, like a lover, into our afternoon. And maybe that’s muse-like as well. You might even need to seduce yourself into the creative process, becoming your own muse.
Just this morning, I decided to tackle my often overcrowded desk. I have a fairly large desk, next to a file cabinet, next to an end table and my altar sits behind me to my right. I’ve been in this spot for about four years and I’ve been noticing that it’s getting more crowded and dusty and just closed off.
Clean Up
I got out the duster and started to move some things around. I moved the printer onto the end table, moved the microphone and stand as well as my morning ritual book (right now it’s A Course In Miracles), to the file cabinet, cleaned up the wires and external hard drives (I have four, but I rarely need to access them) to a back corner of the desk and cleaned out all the old paperwork and mail that was sitting in my mail holder – filed and threw away, as necessary. It feels like a completely different space. I put things into containers that I don’t need to access often and even removed old greeting cards from my corkboard. Everything is within reach, but it no longer feels crowded and dusty and devoid of creativity.
The MUse Returns
After getting everything cleared out, I sat down to write and guess what happened. The words started to flow from my keyboard, the block was gone and I’ve had no less than six more ideas jotted down in my notes.
How do You INvite Your Muse IN?
What are you doing to create space for your muse? Let me know what this feels like, or looks like for you in your pursuit of creativity.
Check out my post about Social Distanced Artist’s Dates to keep your muse engaged!
