Creativity on the road

Creation is ready to serve you, if you just be you.

Yogi Bhajan

Three years in the Washington DC area: Italy, the dearest ones and a job left behind. A still life between the scenes of a movie, living the narration among the ups and downs of this new life.

Having too much time to think is like inviting your mind to an overcrowded party where you don't know anyone, with alcohol and maybe some heavy drug.
Philosophical questions start popping up, like: where is my place in the world? What will my future be? What am I missing from this side of the ocean?

Pressure is on us both when there is too much time available and when there is not enough.
Too little time to dedicate to ourselves provides stress, too much time lets us feel how much bored and depressed we can be.
It happens to everyone, because we are human beings and we live in an imperfect world and because time and space give us a life in that world.

This is how we sit on this bus on the road, terrified because we can't see where we're going, instead of driving ourselves or at least enjoy the view from the windows.

Changing seats and adjusting our view would be nice.

I visited the National Arboretum in Washington DC some days ago and I saw these beautiful trees:

Have you guessed they are bonsai?

Depending on the point of view, things can look bigger than what they really are. We put many burdens on our shoulders which make us feel smaller but, if we only allowed ourselves, we would be able to look at the trees from above.

What prevents us to fly? The fact that we keep on looking outside, without realizing that we can just be ourselves and be served by the entire creation. We can seek our own truth, not the others'.

Creativity is exploration, a journey towards ourselves, no matter where in the world we are located.
It is dancing with our eyes opened to see that we are shrugging off blocks, rigidity, fears and depression and also dancing with our eyes closed to feel that it is happening for real.
It is being ourselves, flexible and full of possibilities.
It is accepting what we can't change and finding the inspiration to build what we had not imagined.
It is pure freedom, inner strength, so much transparence that any evil passes through us without touching us while any good stays and blossoms within. Sooner or later, after the winter.

The journey is long and we don't know what there is going to be beyond the hill?
Let's keep on walking towards ourselves, not towards something outside: naked columns which don't need to carry burdens to be who they are.

Still Words in the giant forest

Sequoia National Park, Sierra Nevada, CA

In silence trees speak. As giant and thousands-year old sequoias they have even more to tell.
They told me about bears, deers and squirrels. About birth, life, death and rebirth. About the wounds from fire and the way they bear such a pain by keeping up in life.
I saw their blood, their scars, their wrinkles and their arms reaching out towards the sky whereas they are rooted on the ground.
I heard their breath, pet their wrinkled trunk, felt their roots under my feet, busted bears climbing on them. Like a little child, under these giant creatures I played the role of Dorothy in the world of the wonderful wizard of Oz.

Sequoia National Park is an enchanted forest like those I read about in some fantasy novels, a forest where you wouldn't be surprised to see some Tolkien's Hobbits or the trees themselves moving like human beings.
Into the wild it is easier to reach a meditative state of mind and creativity spontaneously comes up. This post comes from that wildness! Inspired by the forest I literally visualized some writing and communication techniques in the shape of trees.

How to manage the flow of our creativity? What are the steps to take in front of a blank page?
Trees are a good source to refer to: they suggest how we can stay with our feet on the ground but also reach our higher consciousness, where the best ideas come from.

Every time we draft some writing or we say something, words are like leaves. They are so many at the beginning of our flow of thoughts that we can't even count them.
If we don't want to be lost in the labyrinth of our mind, we need to realize that there are branches behind those leaves.

Branches are the grid, the structure through which we spread our thoughts and what we want to communicate. We can concretely organize this process by using a bulleted list of our ideas, so that we both leash our mind and keep the thread very clear to us from the beginning.

Branches are also connected to the trunk: if we write or talk far from our centre, we will deliver just fantasies without conveying a real message and there will be lack of personality.
The trunk is the power of connection between our pure creativity and the instruments that we use to express it: from that centre, all the points of our writing (the branches) and the words that come from those (the leaves) will be strongly anchored to the roots.

The roots are our experience, the background (or the underground stuff, we might say in this case!), the earth that ultimately nurtures our words. They also are the channels through which we connect to all the other trees (our public): words spreading from those channels express a conscious creative process.

How much better would it be if everybody trained their mind to think before speaking and let just flowers come out from the mouth?
If writing is both creative and rational, if words are under control and consciously expressed, the final product will have more chances to communicate with neutrality.
Neutrality corresponds to the ability of listening to the whole forest (environment) around us, from an higher point of view that allows us to see every detail, and also to the capacity of expressing ourselves with rooted wisdom and depth.
Neutral communication, as the result of the consciousness applied to each step of our creativity, is powerful and its feedback is long lasting. Just like a giant sequoia in the forest!

Independence

Boston, The Esplanade

3am. New York City shines from the bridge, as always. This time we won't stop by though, because we are heading to New England.
The streets seem to run too fast under the wheels, specially when there is calm within. Sitting in a funny crossed legs position on the seat of the car, in deep meditation by looking at the tip of the nose, I spend my time as my husband drives.
Seven hours on the road, before getting to Boston at dawn and greeting the sun with the Aquarian Sadhana chants.

What is this trip about? Independence: the red freedom trail in Boston is long but already walked by others before me, so I just follow the steps.
July 4th, parades and fireworks on the Esplanade. Rainbow flags, Harvard clothes, beer (and tomb) of Sam Adams, demonstrations against the NSA to the sound of "no more spying!" and "restore the fourth!" to make me aware of the US a little more.

Here we drive again: scenic drive towards Cape Cod, town after town, along meadows, ponds, colonial houses, white churches, graveyards, windmills, restaurants specialized in lobster rolls and seafood that I will never try since I am vegetarian. Beaches, lighthouses, sand dunes, until reaching the furthest point: here Pilgrim Fathers stepped on the American soil for the first time. I realize I have always been a pilgrim.

Independence and freedom sustain diversity in the little streets of Provincetown, crowded by the proud gay community.
"Love is equal" on the mirrors of some shops. "Rainbow pride" on several boards and many flags. "Be confident, own your sexuality, get tested for free" to fight the HIV. "Unattended children will be given espresso and a free kitten", reads a sign hanged on the door of the shop right next to it. Leashed pigs, wrapped in the American flag, draw the attention. Art galleries along the sidewalks are just a frame of this multicolored and original picture, expression of total freedom and creativity.

From the pink atmosphere of Provincetown we dive into the unknown darkness of Salem: fear and hysteria can still be felt at every corner of the town. Both authentic spirituality and fake shows for tourists exorcise the visitors' fears.
Witches are wise and radiant women who love life. Unfortunately, the witch hunt is not past history, because certain human beings are still dominated by fear and they keep on judging "different" what they can't control.

Curtains are down, lights are off: do we really need to put make up on our face? It comes out there is equality in diversity: uniqueness is something different, something that makes us recognize that the other is you.
We are ourselves, still we wear masks. We are free, still sometimes what we think to be a bright sign from the sky is just some fake fireworks: seductive lights but not really enlightening. Independence is something else: it is the freedom from our fears and the courage to express ourselves by following our true identity, our pure creativity. It is the unique way we have to communicate as authentic, liberated human beings.

*"Sadhana" is the daily practice of yoga. The Aquarian Sadhana is based on Yogi Bhajan's kundalini yoga teachings and includes the chanting of seven mantras, each one calibrated to sustain human beings through this time of deep transformation that we are living, the age of Aquarius. For further information: http://www.3ho.org/3ho-lifestyle/aquarian-age.

Boston, Freedom Trail

Yoga in the Everglades

Everglades National Park, Florida

I found Infinity in a swamp.

Walking along one of the trails in the Everglades National Park, a sign drew my attention. It was different from the others that I had read: it didn't just describe flora and fauna.

"There is more here than meets the eye". How many people do we meet here on this planet? How many experiences are we doing on this Earth?
Sometimes our relationships are challenging: we really meet rabbits, lubber grasshoppers, snakes, alligators, shy birds... Most of the time we think we meet these animals outside, but the truth is that we can encounter them even within us.

Every human being is sort of an animal. But there is an Italian word that is "anima" and it means "soul". Isn't it interesting? Anima is contained in the animal.
In every human being there is more than meets the eye. There is the soul.
The soul is fearless, far from being a rabbit. It is not clumsy, far from being a lubber. It doesn't need any poison to defend itself, like a snake does. It is neither aggressive like an alligator nor shy like a little bird, because it is beyond the environment that make those animal behave like that.

Our mind is perfectly able to make us behave like animals though.

"Stop for a minute, listen quietly, look carefully". Who wrote this sign, Patanjali?
I stopped for a minute, I listened quietly, I looked carefully. I found my breath, the synchrony with each sound of the environment around me, the vibrations resonating beyond shapes and colors. My soul, ultimately: infinite, eternal, free.

Do we really need to be anima-ls? The answer might be surprising as much as finding an anonymous sign like this in a World Heritage site: yes, we do.
What we can do is becoming aware of that "mental animal", recognizing it and taming it so that it becomes a friend and not just our mask anymore.

We can walk that path to understand who we really are, to let the anima inside the animal shine and show us the right directions.

I want to follow that light, full of gratitude and surprise in front of myself and any other human being, because "life here is abundant, but not always obvious".