CREATE AS IF YOUR LIFE DEPENDED ON IT

I was at a crossroads. I had just received my MFA, and I wanted to write, but I was fighting lots of messages that said I shouldn’t. I might not be good enough. I might not sell enough to support myself. I already had a big job. I was too old to start from scratch. Everyone agreed I should concentrate on earning money and status.

But I quit my big job anyway, took my savings and bought a car, and took a cross-country road trip with a friend. I was racked with guilt. Every meal I bought, every gallon of gas, were a waste of time and resources I thought. If I hadn’t been with someone, I would have turned around, come home and begged for my job back. 

But then we got to Carlsbad Cavern, New Mexico. You approach through an amphitheater at the cavern entrance that bats swarm home over at dusk. I went in. Thirty miles surface, 1600 feet down. Room after room of stalactites and stalagmites in breathtakingly unique designs. There was no end to it.

I took a zillion photos of the formations, but none of them captured their enormity and mind-blowing variety and inventiveness. 

It was only the second time in my life I was conscious of the life force. Call it god. Call it energy. Call it mystery. I was in the presence of a master creator, an artist, and this force approved of me—loved me—welcomed me as kin. I knew I couldn’t go back to who I’d been pretending to be. This was who I was, who I am: a creator. 

At one point the guide shut the lights off to show us what it was like for the human explorers who discovered it. This masterpiece had been hidden in total darkness for millions of years. And it didn’t matter if anyone ever saw it. This was a revelation. It was the force and the expression of this force that mattered. It was the act of creating not approbation that mattered. The act of creation was divine. It’s no accident that the god of religions is called “Creator.” It’s the life force.

This was an important realization for me, someone who never attached mythological figures to my idea of the divine, to spirit. It was doubly important for me because I truly believed that a person cannot be whole if their mind, body, and spirit weren’t in working order and communicating with each other. So, what is spirit? For a long time, I thought spirit with a capital S was eluding me. I have never been successful at conjuring Jesus or Mohammed or Yahweh. They were figures with two eyes a nose and mouth, and the force I met in Carlsbad Cavern was bigger than that. It was the spirit of life itself. And it was flowing through me.

Just like it’s flowing through you. 

And it’s a creator. Just like you. 

You don’t have to get caught up in worries about whether you’re good enough or have talent or if people criticize what you do. It Does. Not. Matter. The act of creating is the divine in you. You can show it off if you want. You can sell it if you want. Or you can keep it 1600 feet underground in the dark. The act of creating is the divine in you. And you might consider getting acquainted with it if you want to feel the wholeness of your being.