This Is the Way
“I believe that above the entire human race is one super-angel, crying “Evolve! Evolve!” Angels are like muses. They know stuff we don’t. They want to help us. They’re on the other side of a pane of glass, shouting to get our attention. But we can’t hear them. We’re too distracted by our own nonsense. Ah, but when we begin….we get out of our own way and allow the angels to come in and do their job. They can speak to us now and it makes them happy. It makes God happy. Eternity, as Blake might have told us, has opened a portal into time. And we’re it.”
— Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
“Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.” — Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
Being too distracted by our own nonsense is something we all deal with. It’s like seeing our goal just on the other side of a rushing mountain stream, meandering rock-to-rock looking for a way forward, every step a risk of being swept away. Some choose to just let the current take them where it will. Others seem to get across with ease. We, the would-be writers and artists and craftswomen and men, struggle for tangible forward progress one small step at a time. Swept now and then downstream, we get back on our feet and begin again.
Pressfield invokes the Muse to see him through. Beginning the work is a bold leap to that first stepping stone. Doing the work every damned day is the next stone and the one after that. We do the work or we get swept away. It’s really no secret at all, is it?
And yet we all struggle at times to find our meaningful routine. This blog is one routine of many for me, you surely have similar routines yourself. Surely I focus too much on the stream, I’ve used this analogy before but still reconcile myself with the current. I won’t pretend to have it all figured out, but the blog indicates the path I’ve taken. Perhaps it’s folly, this self-absorbed pursuit of becoming something more, but we see the changes in ourselves by tracking our progress. All with an eye forward.
The point is to listen to those angels crying out for us to evolve. Break through the Resistance and cross the chasm between our ears. Listen and see! Forget the current and just take the next step across. For this is the way.