3 Secrets to Honoring Your Wondrous Devotion: Seizing Time for Your Creative Self

This summer I am pale and I love it. I don’t have the ruddy tan of the social. I haven’t gone to pool parties and I haven’t kayaked down any rivers. Instead, I’ve stared at a computer screen, but I am not talking about sitting in some cubicle, doing other people’s work. I am talking about doing my work, Work with a gorgeous capital W. I am pale with devotion. I have stayed true to my writing this summer.

Being creative is often a lonely endowment. We are given these strange gifts that require time, solitude, imagination, and focus. Other people might not always understand. “You have to eat,” they say with pouts and mockery, which really means you have to stop them from feeling lonely and abandoned. But beware. It is reckless to ignore your creative calling. Your Muse is like a scorned lover. Should you ignore her to appease someone else, she might just throw all your jeweled ideas into the swamp and steal your brain cells to boot. You friend may have bought you a hamburger and a glass of beer. But you’ll have paid with the silken ticket of astonishment that once allowed you admission into a dimension of rapture and grace. Sooner or later, you’ll want to choose more wisely.

I remember seeing Clarissa Pinkola Estes the New York Times bestselling author of Women Who Run with the Wolves give a lecture in which she discussed loneliness. She said they were many fantastic people she would never meet, great events she would miss, and causes she might not be able to support. I loved her commitment to her craft. I loved her for saying yes to the whispering inner summons and daring to believe in her dreams more than she believed in being polite or popular.

But I am not lonely this summer, though I have surrendered being a social citizen of the world. I am not lonely. I am basking. I love stealing off to my chamber of dreams. I love becoming reacquainted with the sacred part of myself. I love having this wild affair with the Beloved, the randy spirit of my creativity. I am entertained and enlightened and accompanied. I am not listening to someone else’s lament or minutia, or discussing the media’s biased news, instead of changing my world. I am doing what I came here to do. I am facing myself and it’s hard. I am facing myself and it’s glorious.

I invite you to dare your own companionship, to slip into the secret dimension of creative and spiritual abundance. Go ahead, “waste your time,” puttering with your art, your writing, your music or meditating, contemplating, and traversing down the paths to your true self. Everything you want is there.

To help you accomplish this wondrous devotion, here are three tips for stealing creative time.

1. You don’t need blocks of times.
You don’t need to forsake your children, your spouse, or your job. You don’t need a cabin in the Alps. Slip into the crannies that you have. You do have crannies, and they will grow with use. Devote 5 minutes today and see what happens. J.K. Rowling, bestselling author of the Harry Potter series said the secret to her success was that she “Writes anytime and anywhere.”

2. It’s okay to feel bored and awkward when spending time alone.
You’re learning a new secret language. Besides, boredom and frustration are often the bodyguards of inspiration and grace. They test your sincerity. Commit to staying with the process and knowing your loyalty will always be rewarded.

3. Do not feel guilty
Staying faithful to yourself will bless everyone around you. When you answer an inner calling, you’re doing the bidding of Spirit, which has a great love for everyone concerned. It’s easier to connect with those you love, when you have connected to yourself. While sacred self time may feel almost ridiculously indulgent to you, do not forget that tending your creative gifts are a tremendous giving back to the world.

© 2007 Tama J. Kieves, All rights reserved.