Courting the Muse of Inspiration

It’s raining today in Austin and the house is dim and calm. I’m savoring the felt sense of a cooler atmosphere, insulated from Texas’ already electric heat by a blanket of gray clouds as this springtime storm continues to drums its ambient white noise on the fat green leaves of the trees that surround my office window. 

The storm arrived at dawn, in the first glow of daylight, announcing its arrival in gusts of strong wind. The sky was growling low in its belly, stirring me awake through waves of thunder and the movement of my confused cats, circling around my feet on the bed. I let myself accept the invitation to get up earlier than is usual for me this year. (My circadian rhythm, which was not very rhythmic to begin with, never quite recovered from the pain med-induced insomnia I battled after my breast explant surgery in late January. It was thoroughly defeated by my darkness retreat, which taught me that, without the stimulation of light, there is far less need for sleep.) 

I fed the kittens and seized the opportunity for a hushed morning of sacred solitude, eager to enjoy the stack of appetizing books that have been accumulating over weeks of stimulation, preoccupation, and overwhelm, in one form or another. I had just added 3 to the top of the stack yesterday (I regularly pull from my shelves or order something in a stroke of inspired interest) after visiting my father’s favorite book store on a weekend trip to San Antonio, from which I’ve just returned. The bookstore is closing forever next weekend, so I made a point to drop in after decades away. The carpet seemed to have never been changed, nor had the hand written signs or creaky bookshelves. It was a haunting, sacred moment of reverence for death, bearing witness to the end of lifetimes within my lifetime. I felt the dreadful flicker of grief and fear for what has already been eaten by time and written as history. And an urgency to seize the opportunity to write a good story with what is left of my own unknowable future.

Eager to explore and devour the time I reclaimed by rising early, I got straight to consuming information, highlighting, underlining and asterisking by hand, before I would need to get to all of the things I “have to do” today: write my overdue website copy, prepare PDFs for this week’s classes, post something on Instagram for goodness’ sake to stay connected with my audience (and ongoing area of perceived failure that threatens professional and social irrelevancy), write a newsletter because it’s been far too long! And for the LOVE OF GOD, respond to all of these text messages that haunt my inbox before all of my friends come to hate me forever! 

Oh, and - be sure to work out, take care of my body, prepare the house for Monday’s stacked schedule of appointments, make plans for a summer trip with my mother.. Yes, yes, all of this must be done, and be done now, because it is Sunday and there is space for it. Who knows when I will have such space again?! 

All of this pressure crowded in, encroaching upon my morning sanctuary of stillness from the back of my mind, as much as I tried to ignore it. I was hardly aware of it, in fact. In my conscious mind, I was gratefully enjoying my new, very old book by Laura Archera Huxley, Aldous Huxley’s wife who I have admired since Erick gifted me her novel This Timeless Moment when we began dating. 

But as I read, I began to notice a faintly disturbing quality of my presence. I was hurrying. 
Hurrying through the pages and casting a net across the lines to capture the most value I could find, trying to consume it while I had the chance, bouncing from book to book to taste as many flavors as possible, taking notes in my journal and cataloging ideas. 

There, in the analog world of flow and embodiment, my mind was still operating in the digital; trying to move at the speed of a computer, habituated by so much time on screens. There was a momentum in my brain that was used to receiving information fast, processing it shallowly at lightning speed, and task-switching to the tabs of potential presence that blinked at me with opportunity. 

What struck me, however, was the fundamental energy at the source of this drive: it was SCARCITY… The perceived scarcity of time, sparked by the terror of my own finitude, that generated a hunger to “make the most of it while I can”, as though something beyond my control was waiting on the tick of the clock to take away my books, my permission to relax and, ultimately, my freedom to enjoy myself. 

What was the hunger for though, really? It was not just space in the onslaught of my schedule. Space was a desire, yes- but for what? 

The answer of what I was truly seeking in this elusive “space” was INSPIRATION. When I am inspired, I feel alive. I feel human instead of machine. I feel divine instead of mundane.

I reflected on the subterranean dread and grief that was provoked by the book store, and recognized this tension also as an echo of it. 

If the scarcity of time could be traced through the programming of busyness down to my fear of death, then the longing for more time was really a hunger for more life.

At the heart of my unconscious patterns of time-scarcity is a longing for a certain quality of aliveness that comes with inspiration. The more frequently I execute tasks, drive with focus towards my duties and dreams, and fill the space with keeping up on relationships that I have been accumulating over decades (whether through text messaging, email or lurking on Instagram stories), the less time I have to listen with all of my senses, to what wants to received by me, and lived through me. 

And the longer my unbroken stretches of momentum in this preoccupation with “doing” are, the stronger the pattern becomes; the more normal it feels, and the more it primes my mind to repeat it. 

I have been starving for the space for inspiration; which, in so many ways, is life force itself. 

Etymology often gives us clues, I think; to be "inspired" (Latin: in-spirare = into + breathe) is to be filled with the animating breath of life. 

Creation is the exhalation of this breath; the generative product of what I receive, take in, and transform into something new, as oxygen is converted into carbon dioxide through the respiration of animals and plants generate healthy air quality through photosynthesis. 

The ego is driven towards self-actualization and affirmation in our productivity culture. There’s not an easy escape from that, as there is no escape whatsoever from the essential presence of our ego-consciousness. The drive to be productive can be fruitful and satisfying to our natural developmental urges. But without balancing this “drive mode”, we will burn out and begin starving for that life force of inspiration.   

Just as being creative is different from being “productive”, inspiration from an open state is a subtly different experience than consumption from a focused state (according to what feels most valuable). 

Especially when, in my case today, that value is being informed by an energy like scarcity, which carries the implicit fear-story that “I don’t have enough” (time, money, likes, resources, love, etc).

As I noticed this automatic pattern this morning, I could observe the insanity of it: Here was time I could spend filling my own cup with the abundant creative materials of aliveness. But in the hungry drive to maximize my productivity, there was a motive already informing and buzzing in the antenna of my consciousness. I wasn’t open to receive guidance or inspiration. I was cramming my mind-gullet with more information that would need to be digested, or processed, and adding it to the sense of overwhelm that fuels my scarcity story around time.  

This wasn’t a brand new revelation. Rather, it’s a hauntingly recurrent one. 

Over the past couple of years, I’ve found myself wandering from writing much poetry or journaling for presence and pleasure, for exceedingly longer periods. The majority of the time, I end up funneling my passion for writing into work, and using my journal to analyze myself like an object that needs perpetual fixing. I catch myself all too often moved by my inner judge, or my ego. 

When this goes on for too long, I desperately begin to miss my MUSE. I long for her. I feel grief for the distance of separation. Anxiety gets stronger, sleep gets disturbed, and my soul suffers. 

If I don’t catch it, I’ll try to fix it by doing more, and in that “doing” there is very little open space to see past the anxious perspective of separation. It’s a slippery slope into the quicksand of scarcity.

When I am open to inspiration, I meet the Muse. This connection instantly attunes me to an abundant reality. As I step into this parallel dimension, I am immediately nourished with the satiety of gratitude. And from this fullness, I have more to share. 

After my explant surgery in January, and the consequently confronting waves of grief, physical pain and identity transformation that dominated my healing process, re-connection with my long lost muse has become a central quest of my life.

Just two weeks ago, my singular wish for my birthday was to go away and seclude myself into a container to court her by removing as many distractions as I possibly could. Like today, I had big plans to edit my poems, write more, and plan the new year cycle ahead of me. 

Not long after I arrived at my little AirBnb sanctuary, I found myself dropping my to-do list to court my muse instead. I realized that without the true inspiration of my life force energy restored, any work I could do would be hollow of substance, and sourced from scarcity. 

I spent 75% of my time there making her gifts, playing with craft supplies like a child until an entirely unplanned art project was born, walking the surrounding land like a huntress until I found her gaze in the big glistening eyes of a curious buck, and dancing to our favorite music in my underwear at my altar like her perfect seductress.

I produced very little of what I expected of myself in the 3 days of my getaway, but the time I spent pursuing my muse through play, relaxation, and curious exploration, was an invaluable investment of my attention. It fortified me with new material to create from and charged me with aliveness. 

Moments like that weekend, and like this morning, remind me that it’s not “space” or “more time” that I am actually craving. 

I have been longing for my own permission to look up towards the sky, positioning myself to be mouth-kissed by my muse and receive that sacred breath of life.  

With this sudden awareness, I shifted gears. I stepped out onto the wet front porch of my home with a new intention; to just receive what is here for me today. 

I found a carpet of soggy pecan catkins, confettied with delicate white flower petals from an adjacent tree. I took a deep breath of the smell of fresh rain in the thick air of mid-Spring. I listened to the sound of urgency in tires slicing over wet asphalt on the main thoroughfare a block away from the contrast of my calm and quiet home. I looked up at the dripping branches which made a mosaic of the monochrome sky and said a prayer, offering myself into communion with Her; that one that breathes through my body. As I surrendered into that spaciousness, I felt myself let go of the rigid expectations in my well-planned Sunday. I will soften into flow, and let today be a discovery.

And I discovered that I felt truly inspired to write this newsletter; not as something that I “need” to do today, but something that would continue to feed the breath of life. 

Inhale, exhale.. 

May the muse kiss your upturned cheeks this week, my friends.

I invite you to join me in questioning the source of the drive in your own productivity program:
- What is the motive for why I am here, doing this, this way, right now?
- Am I operating from my fear of death, or generating from a connection to my aliveness?
- Am I open to receive the abundant gifts that await my recognition when I listen? 
- Is my channel clear enough to receive the breath of life?

I look forward to the next inhale that brings me back to this letter of communion with all of you-

Love, Caitlyn