Laduree, left bank, Paris

Inspiration came calling (stage one), you incubated new ideas and feelings and thoughts and plans (stage two), you sought illumination through your dreams to point the way (stage three), and you began your new project. Now it’s time for the last of the four stages of the creative process:  Verification, or… will it work?

Mimic the season of spring within your own mind.  Imagine your idea, plan, project as a plant just beginning to grow, breaking free of the soil in which it grew.  It takes time to tell whether or not this one will survive, or if you must enrich and till the soil, and then plant again.

Experiment with asking yourself, ‘what do I need to help this [plan, idea, project] grow?’  Before you go to sleep tonight and for the next few nights, ask yourself this question several times, as you drift off to sleep.  In the morning, write down any dreams you’ve had.  Remember, we have only 3 seconds once we open our eyes to remember a dream, so try to go over it first in your mind.  Consider your dreams a response to your question (for some dreamers, it takes two or three nights to remember something pertinent–don’t give up!).

Then, take action.  Verify!  If you do that thing or give yourself that experience, or receptively wait for that quality to appear, does it help your project grow?  Will it work? Keep at it, and eventually the answer will be yes!

Tarn Hows, England

(Feel free to email me with comments or questions; comments are closed, and I’m ignoring the ~15K spam-ish ones.  :)

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Nothing interrupts inspiration more completely than tugging at the budding roots of the newly growing seed.  But if you’re able to wait, with hope, during the sometimes long winter of not-knowing-what-to-do (incubation), then you’re rewarded with creative energy and new direction.

Sometimes creative illumination comes as an idea, or an image that emerges from memory, or a feeling of waking up, refreshed and ready to go. Often, inspiration arrives in a dream we can’t shake, whose images haunt us.

Wait, watchfully, for a dream that evokes awe, wonder, surprise, or joy. Deeply and quietly consider the images within the dream: they may gently lead you into your next painting, story, play, drawing, sculpture, collage, or…who knows?

Until next time… sweet dreams!