Impulse

Have you ever lis­tened to some­thing over and over, think­ing each time that you under­stood it, and then sud­denly you really get it — as though you were truly hear­ing it for the first time? I just had one of those moments watch­ing Joseph Campbell. I’ve lis­tened to his Power of Myth inter­views at least 4 times now. They’re fas­ci­nat­ing (a must-have if you’re into sto­ry­telling or mythol­ogy), but I always blew off the last inter­view as a bunch of overly-spiritual, new-agey gob­bledy­gook. Well, until today. Now I think I really under­stand how zen and sev­eral other the­olo­gies con­verge on the cre­ative act.

Joe (as I like call Campbell, just like I always call Mozart, Wolfi) talked about the dif­fer­ence between eter­nal and ever­last­ing, say­ing that heaven was ever­last­ing but not eter­nal. This is usu­ally when I tune out, but stick with it: ever­last­ing means some­thing exists through­out all time. It trav­els with time to infin­ity. Eternal exists inde­pen­dent of time. Time is irrel­e­vant, or as Joe puts it: time does not exist in the eter­nal.
For what­ever rea­son, as I heard this, I thought of my expe­ri­ence when I’m doing some­thing cre­ative — when I’m really in the groove shoot­ing pic­tures or writ­ing. Time van­ishes when I’m in that place. I have absolutely no sense of it. As all my friends know, I nor­mally have a very acute sense of time, so much so that I don’t bother wear­ing watches. I can guess the time accu­rately. Not so when I’m cre­at­ing: I not only sense time pass­ing, it really doesn’t seem to exist for me.
Joe went on to describe that when you expe­ri­ence the eter­nal, you reach a place with­out desire or thought. You have no inten­tional path; you intuit your way. You have a sense of some­thing greater than your­self that guides you.
Bingo: again exactly like my expe­ri­ence: my brain sud­denly goes quiet. I feel directly, tan­gi­bly con­nected to my sub­ject. I don’t know where I’m going, but I can sense some­thing out­side me that I fol­low. If I’m writ­ing, I call it the story telling itself to me. If I’m shoot­ing pic­tures, it’s a visual thing — almost like an arrow that appears and says, “here, now!”. This is exactly the state of no-mind that all those zen books were talk­ing about. Or, in Joe’s school of thought: it’s expe­ri­enc­ing the eter­nal.
Earlier in the inter­view, Campbell had talked about the gospel of Thomas. It says that heaven is not some­thing that is to come. It is already here, but peo­ple are blind to it. Several other the­olo­gies believe sim­i­larly on this point. The obvi­ous con­clu­sion there­fore, is that you can expe­ri­ence heaven any time you want if you choose to and learn how.
Adding this all up in my lit­tle nog­gin gave me a com­pletely dif­fer­ent way to look on life. I’m a per­pet­ual pro­cras­ti­na­tor. One of my most com­mon tricks is, “I’ll get to have this thing I really want once this other thing is done.” It is a per­fect echo of the idea that heaven comes when you die and until then you will expe­ri­ence none of it. The idea that heaven is already here is a com­pletely dif­fer­ent model. Each time I do some­thing cre­ative, I do get a lit­tle taste of heaven (at least it feels that way). All I have to do is tap into it more often.
Ergo: Make good art.
My favorite mantra appears once again! Even if all the rest really is new-age gob­bledy­gook, it’s still a handy way of break­ing a pro­cras­ti­na­tion pattern.