Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Your Spirit, Your Muse

Our Spirit, our Muse
Inside all of us a candle burns…that candle is our spirit. At conception the wick is lit and if a whole lot else is not evident at birth, the flicker of that flame in the wide eyed look of an infant is obvious to anyone. Our science for all its advances has made little inroad into how this candle works, its function and what causes it to glow and dim but we all know it’s there and feel it in ourselves…yes not just see it in a spirited look but feel it in the wonder and awe we experience from time to time in life.

It is a part of us that is the genesis of our religious beliefs and in our meditations, words like “…the holy spirit and burning in the heart…” are expressions of the universal human recognition of the presence of the spirit of man. I see it in children as I go about in life…a hundred men and women are oblivious to my presence in Wall Mart, yet as I walk past a children in strollers, they look up in wide eyed wonder…I walk past a young woman or man and they look nervously out of the corner of their eye wondering who this is… or an old lady or man takes note, unafraid any longer of the eye contact and smiles broadly as kindred spirits recognize one another. Take my word that I do not appear as Rasputin the Mad Monk, my dress is very common and I appear on the surface as a most ordinary sort of man. I believe that falling in love is an attraction of these flames that see in each other properties uniquely important for tomorrow’s generations.

To a writer this flame is probably tied somehow to that thing we call a muse. From the time we wake up to the time we fall asleep thoughts and ideas bubble up onto the video screen of our awareness flit around for a brief time before returning to the dark vortex from which they came. It begs the question “Do they originate from inside our heads or like the candles of lovers do they connect by some external cosmic thread…?” Where they come from is not as important as the fact that we note them in our awareness and for the briefest of times experience their presence.

This blog entry is the result of what started as a dream and then flowed into my mind in a state of semi consciousness. I remember thinking hard about it which attached a thread to the notions and held them barely until this morning… Then I still retained the faintest recollection and seeing it stuck to my memory like a June bug, resolved to pull it closer and once more get a good look… Imagine my delight when instead of finding an empty string the thoughts and ideas of last night continued to buzz about the other end.

Yes, our muse is tied to our spirits and is perhaps a part of it and it needs to be nurtured. The Greeks had inscribed on the Oracle at Delphi two thoughts. “Know Thyself, and Nothing in Excess.” The first is an idea that merits a separate discussion but the Nothing in Excess notion applies directly to this discussion.

We often hear it said…”Too much of a good thing.” While we begin the road to death at the time of conception there is much that we do along the way that speeds the process alone. Excess is the big life shortener. Whether it be excess eating, excess ingestion of chemicals, or excess indulgence in pleasures, the fact is that our excesses shorten our lives. If the means to protect ourselves from the corrupting influence of power is humility then the means for protecting ourselves from excess is our willpower. To maintain our health we need a little food, a little exercise, some fresh air, clean water and a little sense of direction…yet we become obsessed by the little things in lifestyle that give us pleasure and these little things work insidiously inside causing us to rot from within like the Oak Tree I talked about recently….It’s like we never outgrow that teen age mentality that if a little is good a whole lot is that much better. The idea that if one beer is good that a six-pack must be six times more satisfying and that a case must be twenty-for times the “Feel Good.” This is a subtle but dangerous notion.

Carry a notebook as you go about. When your muse gives you an idea jot it down….plug it into the outline you keep expanding for the stories you write….your muse wants to help and her contributions will take you scribbling’s from the “ho hum” to the “Wow!” Give him/her a nice home and by this I refer to your body. The more you cultivate your relationship with your spirit the more enjoyable life will become and your creative energies will find a much fuller expression.