Just as you’d be better equipped to tackle an assault course if you’d been training and working out in a gym for months, you’re also better equipped to find that inner place of calm in a crisis if it’s been your daily practice for months to get into that ‘bigger part of you’ space. There are many ways to get into that space; do whatever works for you. Currently I like to use meditation twice a day, but once you’re practised at getting into that space it takes little effort to get there, and you can do it just by focusing mentally, or listening to a piece of music, which is just as well if you’re a surgeon with a patient on the table and you have a critical decision to make, or a soldier in the midst of a battle making life and death choices.
Getting into the bigger part of you is not only useful for those times when you have critical decisions to make or need peace of mind, it’s a place in which you can find your creativity flourish. David Lynch, filmmaker and director of the renown Twin Peaks uses meditation to dive deep into himself to ‘catch the big fish’; the big ideas from which his art emerges. He believes that the deeper you dive, the bigger your creative ideas will be. He talks about desire being the starting point for fishing for ideas, and that the fish sometimes come in fragments – smaller fish, that attract other smaller fish until they emerge as a big fish. He considers meditation essential to his work and has been practising it for over 30 years. The creatives among you might really appreciate his book Catching the Big Fish.
Coming next: Daydreaming
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