Credit: pinterest.com
By Wes Annac, Culture of Awareness
I wrote the following for the one hundred and eighty-fourth issue of The Culture of Awareness Weekly Newsletter, which I offer for $11.11 a month.
Income from the newsletter helps me get by and ensures I can continue to offer free content, and every subscription is appreciated. The option to subscribe via PayPal (credit and debit cards accepted if you have a PayPal account) is given at the bottom of this post.
The pursuit of a life of purpose sounds like a great and fulfilling thing, but it comes with adversity.
There will be times when it doesn’t feel so great and we’d rather quit for a while and come back to it when we’re refreshed. While there’s nothing wrong with this, it can quickly turn to laziness or avoidance of the work if we indulge it too much.
We can avoid this by understanding that the work doesn’t always feel great, and even though there will be plenty of fulfillment and satisfaction by the end, you only get there by climbing to the top of the creative mountain, so to speak.
The climb can be perilous; it can be the most challenging thing we ever do. Once we do it, however, we’ll understand that we didn’t climb the mountain to get to the top, but to enjoy the journey.
Loving what we do inspires us to keep going when we don’t feel like we’re getting anything out of it, and even when our creative well seems dry, we’ll be sure of our purpose and it won’t bother us.
If we want to get something good out of our creativity, we have to put in the work that’s required. We have to push on when we feel uninspired, and it helps to look to the Most High for love and strength.
Giving up is the easiest, and usually most preferable, thing we can do. Take it from me; I’ve given up on writing plenty of times, only to return to it and remember how much I love it. It’s been said that true creative geniuses are constantly unsure of themselves while fools are narcissistically certain about everything they do, and this is especially true for writing.
Writing is a fun way to express your thoughts and feelings while connecting with yourself on a deeper level, but to commit to it is to commit to a life of uncertainty and, oftentimes, difficulty.
Writer’s block is just as common with writing articles or books as it is with music, poetry or other forms of art, and even when the words flow, they sometimes flow at a slow pace.
Sometimes, they pour out uncontrollably and other times, the whole thing is agonizingly slow and it doesn’t feel as fulfilling. By the end of it, however, the satisfaction returns in a greater volume because you created something that wasn’t easy.
It feels great to create something in a quick, flowing way, but it feels even better to finish something you struggle with. Your genius really shines through in work that challenges you, and those who never seek rewarding challenges will never know how it feels.
Anyone who’s committed to a life of purpose will tell you that it isn’t always easy, and while well-known creative people seem to receive a lot of praise and glory, everyone has their issues and many of theirs revolve around their work.
Creative minds live and breathe for their work; it’s as important to them as their family and other personal things. To struggle with it is akin to struggling with a major life issue, but the negativity goes away when we understand that the struggle is inevitable and necessary.
The struggle helps us grow, but it’s difficult to confront the obstacles in our way when we’d rather flow. The state of flow is as valuable to the creative mind as gold to the materialistic mind, and being in the flow takes us out of the illusion of time, gives us energy and vibrancy, and nourishes the spirit.
This is why people say that writing and music are forms of meditation; after being in the state of flow for so long, we experience true harmony and peace of mind. Our vibration gradually rises, and before we know it, creativity becomes our lifeblood.
The state of flow poses numerous benefits even when we aren’t working, but those who reach this state use most of their time each day to create.
It gives us energy to take on our other responsibilities, and after being familiar with this state for a while, we’ll look forward to creating because we’ll know what it does for us and what it allows us to do for others. When it doesn’t seem to be with us, we’ll know we have to work a little harder to reclaim it.
The worst thing we can do in this case is to be upset or depressed, because we aren’t being forgotten or left behind by our higher creative consciousness; we’re being tested to see how much we love what we do and how committed we are to creating.
If we’re committed enough, we’ll keep working even when we’re uninspired and the flow seems absent because we’ll know how powerful it is and we’ll know that if we dedicatedly pursue it despite all odds, it will take us somewhere great.
A life of purpose comes with its challenges and triumphs, and despite the difficulty involved, we find fulfillment and a sense of responsibility that we enjoy from our hard work. It feels great to contribute to the consciousness movement in ways that test our creative skill, and it wouldn’t be fun or fulfilling if it weren’t challenging.