Moving right along! A week a day, it’s like one of those stop-motion nature vids with a plant growing before your eyes!
Anyhow: this week’s chapter is called Summoning the Muses. It’s about showing up, being faithful to your creative practice, like Woody Allen advised. And the main task for the week, is to ‘invent a creativity ritual’, to get you in the right state of mind for your project, for creative endeavour.
Well. Thinking about it, I guess I already have one. Because every day, I get up, and I watch a little Frasier (because Frasier is of the immortals, never gets old, is never not funny.) Then I put the kettle on, I make a cuppa, I eat biscuits.
I watch an inspirational video: a Ted Talk, or Joel Osteen, or Steve Pavlina. (Love Steve Pavlina!)
And I write. It seems to work. I’m grateful to the writers and speakers who put me in the right frame of mind, who act as my trainers and call up the Muse for me, a long-distance connection.
So that’s my ritual. Tea, biscuits, and a little positive thinking. Pour a second cup, put a bourbon cream on the saucer, invite the Muse.
image – Betta Living https://www.flickr.com/photos/bettalivinguk/licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/
As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been watching Steve Pavlina’s 30 Days of Video series, which is still ongoing. Not all in order, and I’m not caught up yet. But this one thing I caught the other day – one of this series of vids in which he uses the word ‘bailiwick’.
Bailiwick!
As in:- bailiwick ˈbeɪlɪwɪk/
(noun): bailiwick; (plural noun): bailiwicks
1.one’s sphere of operations or area of interest.
“after the war, the Middle East remained his bailiwick”
2. (Law) the district or jurisdiction of a bailie or bailiff.
“the warden had the right to arrest all poachers found within his bailiwick”
Yeah, bailiwick! (Okay, I had to look it up on Google. I’ve heard the word without knowing what it meant, but I’ve never repeat never heard anyone use it in casual conversation before. Nor on a Youtube vid, for that matter.)
Profound vocab props to the Pav! Bailiwick, I’m going to have to find a way to lever the word into conversation sometime soon!
I had an insight while meditating. (Better get used to it, if you’re reading regularly). First, a Bible passage sprang into my mind.
The steps of a righteous person are ordered by the Lord. Psalms 37:23
And then this thought.
Image by Beryl_snw on Flickr, public domain.
If your steps are ordered – guided, approved, meaningful – then doesn’t it make sense to take a lot of them? Instead of just praying vehemently and waiting for your desired things to fall into your lap, to go out into the world and do your part, as part of the universe, in making it so? A lot of ordered, guided steps!
Very like Steve Pavlina’s posts on massive action, and the comments of those wiser than I on adherents of the Law of Attraction who think it sufficient to achieve the ‘correct vibration’, without going out and doing, going after what they want. Like the universe is going to dump a Porsche and their soulmate in their laps, right there at home. Vibration is movement, people, by definition! Vibration is action! It’s taking steps! (Divinely ordered ones, of course.)
The Universe is in motion, and you are part of the Universe. If you want it to bring you what you desire, you’d better remember that you form part of the machinery that can actually do that. Little cog, get moving!
ETA: uuurgh. written before I knew what a nasty cock-cheese brained shitlump Pavlina actually is.
I have a tremendous respect and admiration and liking for Steve Pavlina, in a slightly sad way since I’ve never met him. He’s honest and smart and a little wacky, and I don’t agree with him on everything, but I respect his opinions and his upright character and ethical choices completely.
This month he’s doing a series of daily vlogs – the 30 Days Of Video meme. Some of the vids so far have been really great – the one below, here, is especially good.
As an intro to each of the daily vlogs, he’s also talking about his 30-day water fast. That he’s doing at the same time! My God!
I guess that he’s a grown man and he knows what he’s doing. For myself, I have grave doubts – I’m deeply sceptical – about the efficacy and benefits of any kind of fasting. Juice fasting, water fasts, minifasts, maxifasts, you name it. If you believe that it’s going to leave you glowing and with your body generally and your liver in particular all cleaned out and raring to go, then more power to you. People should do what makes them glow, what makes them happy, if they can.
Whether I believe in it or not doesn’t have a speck of relevance, here. Although I don’t. Why would you want to give your liver a rest, after all? It’s not a nurse, a police officer, a fire-fighter, a public servant entitled to weekends off and an employer’s pension contribution. Where would you be if your heart or your lungs demanded danger money and Christmas and Thanksgiving off work? The entire concept leaves me boggled. My liver had better count itself lucky, and regard the bottle of Grey Goose awaiting my next weekend off with some apprehension.
But that’s just me. And I’ve come to accept that people you admire, respect, and might even want to emulate in some respects, have the same rights as any other person. That includes the right to be a little nutty in some areas, to espouse activities and causes you might gaze at askance, whistling gently and wondering about calling in the nice men with the van and the straitjacket. Teal Swan on the subject of vaccinations, for instance. (Well, Teal Swan on quite a lot of subjects, to be honest. I LOVE TEAL!) Ralph Smart, when he makes like he’s being punched in slow-motion, and his head snaps, and what the heck is that all about, Ralph, what’s it all about? Steve Pavlina’s ex, Erin, when she gets just a little too out-there even for me, on other lives and reincarnation and the universe. In general. What could be more general than the universe?
God bless Pavlina, though, and all the rest of them. I guess he’ll be okay – I hope he’ll be fine, although God knows he looks as if he could use a Gregg’s pasty in these vids. I want to order him takeout and send it round as an emergency care package. Nonetheless, the vids are terrific, totally recommended. And I plan to watch all of them with a sandwich, a cuppa and a pack of biscuits on hand.
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