Chapter 2

Before action, thought.
Everything creative evolves out of the still point.

If we cannot wait,
we cannot know the
     right time to move.

If we cannot be still,
our actions will have
     gathered no power.
- Friends of Silence

 The source of your power is your still point. Your power comes from harmony with your inner world. That relationship is nurtured in silence, in solitude, in reflection.

Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance,
And there is only the dance.
-   T.S. Eliot, from “Burnt Norton”, the first of the Four Quartets, republished in Eliot’s Collected Poems.

Everything unique and beautiful grows out of the still point. Art evolves out of that wellspring because it communicates on a visceral level, a level deeper than words.

An artist must have downtime, time to do nothing.  Defending our right to such time takes courage, conviction, and resiliency.  Such time, space, and quiet will strike our family as a withdrawal from them.  It is. . .
An artist requires the upkeep of creative solitude. An artist requires the time of healing alone.  Without this period of recharging, our artist becomes depleted. . .
We strive to be good, to be nice, to be helpful, to be unselfish.  We want to be generous, of service, of the world.  But what we really want is to be left alone.  When we can't get others to leave us alone, we eventually abandon ourselves.  To others, we may look like we're there.  We may act like we're there.  But our true self has gone to ground.…Over time, it becomes something worse than out of sorts.  Death threats are issued.
      - The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

In 2005, I interviewed author John Hanson Mitchell, author of several books exploring the human relationship to the natural world. I asked him about the role of downtime, quiet, relaxation, contemplation in his life. He offered a stream of consciousness answer:

I have to have it. Every day. I stare into space probably two hours a day. Doing nothing. I get up, have coffee. Think. Don’t do anything. Sit around. Then I’ll take a walk. I’m quite lazy. Gardening for me is a meditation. I love to work. Physical work. But that is kind of also downtime. Pure muscle.

To paraphrase Joseph Campbell, when you enter the forest at its darkest point, where there is no path, where you must make your own path, which is what living life on your own terms entails, much depends on knowing who you are and what you want out of life. That self-knowledge requires reflection, quiet time, to nurture and build. Before expending energy, build energy. Spend time in contemplation, in a pre-verbal state of receiving, waiting for guidance.

Within us is the soul of the whole; the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is related.
     When it breaks through our intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through our will, it is virtue; when it flows through our affections, it is love.
-       Ralph Waldo Emerson

The role of art is to communicate the things that are most difficult or impossible to understand, that are buried deepest in our psyche. The things that we find most mysterious about the world around us. Our role as artists is to communicate from our depths. Creativity and art therefore depend on a close relation with one’s unconscious. That relationship needs to be nurtured. It doesn’t just happen. It requires a time commitment.

I am almost incapable of logical thought, but I have developed techniques for keeping open the telephone line to my unconscious, in case that disorderly repository has anything to tell me.  I hear a great deal of music.  I am on friendly terms with John Barleycorn.  I take long hot baths.  I garden.  I go into retreat among the Amish.  I watch birds.  I go for long walks in the country.  And I take frequent vacations so that my brain can lie fallow -- no golf, no cocktail parties, no tennis, no bridge, no concentration, only a bicycle.
      - Confessions of an Advertising Man, David Ogilvy

No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.
      - Walter Bagehot, founder of The National Review, Editor-in-Chief of The Economist

If waters are placid, the moon will be mirrored perfectly. If we still ourselves, we can mirror the divine perfectly. But if we engage solely in the frenetic activities of our daily involvements, if we seek to impose our own schemes on the natural order, and if we allow ourselves to become absorbed in self-centered views, the surface of our waters becomes turbulent. Then we cannot be receptive to Tao.
       There is no effort that we can make to still ourselves. True stillness comes naturally from moments of solitude where we allow our minds to settle. Just as water seeks its own level, the mind will gravitate toward the holy. Muddy water will become clear if allowed to stand undisturbed, and so too will the mind become clear if it is allowed to be still.
– Deng Ming-Dao, from 365 Tao, Daily Meditations

When I detect a beauty in any of the recesses of nature, I am reminded by the serene and retired spirit in which it requires to be contemplated, of the inexpressible privacy of life, — how silent and unambitious it is. The beauty there is in mosses will have to be considered from the holiest, quietest nook. The gods delight in stillness, they say ‘st–’st. My truest, serenest moments are too still for emotion; they have woolen feet.
     - Henry David Thoreau in his journal, Thoreau And The Art Of Life.

 

Work without contemplation is never enough. 
-  Quaker writer Douglas Steere.

Without great solitude no serious work is possible.
      - Pablo Picasso

. . .

A journal note I made years ago after reading a biography of Abraham Lincoln:

Perhaps the most thought-provoking characteristic of his life is the serenity with which he conducted his relationships, even when dealing with dishonesty. Lincoln had a particularly close bond with his stepmother, who is described as having been a constant source of encouragement, support and love to him.

It is very possible that Lincoln’s serenity was the direct result of his stepmother’s love and faith in him, which inspired self-love.

Studies of children from abused home situations or who have mentally ill or otherwise dysfunctional parents show that about fifteen percent grow up to be well-adjusted.  These kids make a bond to themselves. People who overcome great difficulties have a trusted, trusting relationship with themselves. They know that if all else fails, they have a sacred entity within themselves -- what Saint Peter calls the inner man of the heart. They are aware of the inner core of themselves that is always there, that never ages and dies.
- At The Leading Edge (interviews by Michael Toms), from an interview of Marsha Sinetar.

Creativity, survivability, serenity all draw from an inner wellspring. Serenity is an indicator that a person has achieved a degree of clarity about who they are. Serenity indicates inner peace, and thus wisdom. We don’t want to live boring lives and adventure definitely has a role in a life well-lived, but serenity is an indicator that someone has thought through their life and pursued it with discipline and goodwill. It means that a lot of other things in someone’s life are working well. They don’t try to take on too much, for instance. They have a margin of energy in reserve. They set aside time for the contemplation of beauty. There’s not much rushing. Hectic activity, desperation –- these are not part of a life of serenity or wisdom. Serenity implies a comfort with silence, both silence within, and silence without.

Serenity evolves out of acceptance, including acceptance of one’s own faults and the faults of others. It may be easier to accept life, including our faults, when we are also comfortable in the knowledge that despite those faults, we are valuable or important to ourselves and to others. Characteristics of serenity:

• an unwillingness to judge oneself harshly

• an unwillingness to judge others harshly

• an absence of conflict

• a feeling of connectedness to others and to nature

Journaling Question

• Enter into a dialogue with your still point. What does it want to tell you about how you are treating it?

I imagine my quiet center as a person, and enter into a dialogue with it. Do you feel nurtured? It responds with an immediate answer, one I’m not particularly wanting to hear. It tells me to give it a day a week, a weekend a month and a week every six months to focus on our relationship. No computers. No internet. No work other than a pen and paper.

It asks me to set aside time for solitude, quiet reflection, for journaling, lots of sleep.

Offer space for that quiet voice inside to come forth. That voice is shy, reticent and profound.  

Robertson Davies, the Canadian author, said one of the most important things in his life was being able to take a nap every day after lunch for twenty minutes. That’s for two reasons. One is that by developing a schedule that’s under your control, you are not being flogged around by life, as he puts it; you are not always jumping to someone else’s tune. You develop your own rhythm of work and rest. The other thing is that it’s during idle time that ideas have a chance to recombine in new ways, because if we think consciously about solving a problem or writing a book, then we are sitting there forcing our ideas to move in a lockstep, in a straight line, and probably what comes out is not very new or original.

For original ideas to come about, you have to let them percolate under the level of consciousness in a place where we have no way to make them obey our own desires or our own direction. So they find their way, their random combinations that are driven by forces we don’t know about. It’s through this recombination that something new may come up, not when we try to push them directly.
– Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi interviewed by Michael Toms in the New Dimensions newsletter.