*May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back...* –Rilke
*Sketchbook,* L Doctor

Don't insist on going
where you think you want to go

Ask the way to the spring.
– Rumi

Every now and then you enter the river, experience effortlessness, and what you make seems to come from some place other. This creation has nothing to do with right or wrong, good or bad, popular or forgotten. It has nothing to do with impressing others, or winning prizes. What you have made is your song, and that is enough.

Isn't this sense of belonging at the root of all yearning to create? There is no formula for getting there. Yet every now and then there is someone who seems to live there a lot of the time, like the poets, Rumi and Rilke. Poetry can mirror your yearning, remind you how you want to be. It's important to have people and things in your life that recall, not intentionally, but just by their presence, an image of what your are reaching for.

How do you shape your life to invite more of this experience?

Being a doer myself, I am continuously trying to make more time for being. Is it possible that being, doing nothing, is an essential ingredient in the generation of your work?

I return to a simple dream where I had this vision:

I am hard at work and a woman appears at the door, holding up a needle and a spool of white thread. Time to thread the needle, she says. I stop what I am doing and look up. Then I understand what she means. It is time to pause.

I am using the word, pause, in the sense of renewal, commemoration, remembrance, refreshment– stopping. It is challenging to cultivate patience or experience boredom– and these are two essential ingredients in pausing, and in the creative pattern. (One must have a lot of patience to be a creator, and be willing to stick with something long enough to get bored with it. Spontaneity, play and improvisation are on the other side of that door– the door that opens after long periods of boredom– and it takes patience to get there.)

Distraction or entertainment is not what the woman holding up the spool of thread meant when she said time to thread the needle. Threading the needle has become a metaphor in my imagination for something that takes all of your attention, and patience, and careful seeing. You cannot do anything else while you thread a needle.

*Enlarged from pocket sketchbook, (small pointed brush)* – L Doctor

Some of you have heard me talk about this idea in class lately: do not underestimate the power of pausing. It is related to the ancient idea of the Sabbath: a sacred pause, repose, cessation from exertion. Listening. Active waiting.

This gap can also be short, take place at any moment in your day. I have been experimenting with this exercise I mentioned in an earlier post: Try stopping to notice and breathe before you enter a room full of people. See the entire room. As you enter, greet the place you are in– as if it has presence, is alive. Imagine that you are creating more space, rather than taking it up. (We all know what it feels like when someone enters a room, and suddenly he or she has taken all the space). Observe what happens. Listen. Feel the widened field of response. I enjoy myself and others so much more when I switch to this way of operating.

Pausing can also be structured as a practice of prayer, meditation or observation in the natural world. Habits take time to break, and to develop. Any habit can be cultivated by a commitment to practice it five minutes a day. I am encouraged in my efforts to take time apart, as it seems to expand the time I have in a day, rather than taking away from it. It is most important to try it when you think you are too busy.

In these silences, or at night in your dreams, is often where the deepest sense and direction for your work comes from. So much of pausing is stopping to remember what you already know. The most important things, the ones forgotten in busy–ness, are timeless, are a recognition of what you have always known.

Every night in your dreams symbols arise, for dreams happen and are not invented.
– Robert Johnson, Living Your Unlived Life

*From "On Angels" by Czeslaw Milosz,* L Doctor Sketchbook

What happened to the ancient tradition of Sabbath? Traditionally, it was a sacred time, a recurring time set aside for renewal. A time for asking direction– ask the way to the spring. For not knowing. For getting lost. Surrender. Whither thou goest I will go.

Most of you have had an experience that confirms that, in the end, it is not so much about what or how much you do, but the level of awareness you bring to your doing. This, I think, is where the juice is for your work.

I will end with this poem by Rumi, Moving Water:

When you do things
from your soul,
you feel a river
moving in you,
a joy.

When actions come
from another section,
the feeling disappears

Don't let others lead you

They may be blind
or, worse, vultures.

Reach for the rope of God

And what is that?

Putting aside self-will.

Because of willfulness
people sit in jail,
the trapped bird's wings are tied,
fish sizzle in the skillet.

The anger of police is willfulness.

You've seen a magistrate
inflict visible punishment

Now see the invisible.

If you could leave your selfishness,
you would see how
you've been torturing your soul

We are born and live inside
black water in a well.

How could we know
what an open field of sunlight is?

Don't insist on going
where you think you want to go

Ask the way to the spring.

Your living pieces
will form a harmony.

There is a moving palace
that floats in the air
with balconies and
clear water flowing through,
infinity everywhere,
yet contained under a single tent.