Answering the call to create means saying, “Yes!” to this moment, yes to a Spirit that beckons to us to claim our true nature and become a conduit for the expression of our authentic voice. We are all called to create in some manner—through artistic expression, writing, parenting our children well, developing a strategic plan for our work, cooking, making something with our hands, generating new ideas for a cause—and we each have a choice about answering the call. Pressfield, author of The War of Art, writes, “Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.”
We’re all familiar with the call. Sometimes it begins with a dream, a vision, or an idea. The call to create may also come as a vague nagging sense that something isn’t quite right with our life. It may come as a faint whisper. When the call to create summons, it behooves us to make room for solitude, silence, and listening to the quiet voice within. Some of us say, “yes” right away and move toward the call, eager to see where it takes us, opening ourselves to see in what form it will take shape. Others of us ignore it, and it grows louder and more prominent until we find ourselves engaged in an internal battle between the Source of the call and our self-doubt. “You must,” pleads the call, and our self-doubt argues weakly, “I can’t. I don’t know how. What if I fail?” or sometimes simply, “Go away.” Those who argue or ignore the call are familiar with the danger—it takes more hours of not getting out of bed, more hours of wasting time, more food, more alcohol, or more of whatever you reach for to drown out the call’s pleas. Pressfield also warns that “the more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.”
Saying yes to the call to create means embracing who we were meant to be. It means saying yes to living life wholeheartedly and authentically. It takes willingness, courage and perseverance to move through fear and self-doubt and to answer the call to create, but once we push through the resistance, the rewards of living authentically far outweigh the perils of a life half lived. Gregg Levoy, author of Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life, writes, “Generally, people won’t pursue their callings until the fear of doing so is finally exceeded by the pain of not doing so, but it’s appalling how high a threshold people have for this quality of pain. Too many of us, it seems, have cultivated the ability to live with the unacceptable.” Levoy considers that perhaps why some people ignore calls is that “we instinctively know the price they’ll exact. In order to become authentic, we’re going to have to give up something dear: a job, a house, a relationship, a belief, a lifestyle to which we’ve become accustomed, the prestige of being a big fish in any size pond, security, money, precious time, anger at somebody, or just the pleasures of cynicism.”
Try to make time this week for solitude and silence to listen to the whispers of your own calls to create. When you hear them, try using your mindful journaling practice to write about them and to give them a voice on paper. Embrace your own authenticity, honor the call, and take the first step toward creating something.
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