Rahima Warren
Many years ago, I had an awe-inspiring glimpse of the Flow of Divine Creativity. It appeared to me as a cosmic Fountain of Creativity, endlessly flowing upward with an outrageous infinitude of vivid, colorful images: trees, cartoons, volcanoes, tulips, cars, babies, tigers, paintings, skyscrapers, movies, soldiers, roses, stars, drums—everything tumbling upward forever!
I saw that what we human creators do is tap into this infinite Fountain, and channel one little stream into manifestation, whether we are a musician or a parent, an architect or a writer, an artist or an engineer. Certainly this is my experience of writing my visionary trilogy, The Star-Seer’s Prophecy. A certain dream character had been haunting me for years. One day, I wrote a short story in my journal about this character, hoping the little story would make him stop bothering me. Ha!
I’d tapped into that Fountain and now the Flow was sweeping me away! I could have fought it and tried to get back to my life and my career as a psychotherapist. However, my spiritual path is a path of surrender. Our ego-minds are all about keeping control and staying safe, so any ego-effort to understand or get close to the Divine is doomed to failure. Only by surrendering that ego-control can we open ourselves to the Divine, and to our creativity (which are aspects of the same Flow.)
The Divine (however you name it) is not concerned with our staying safe and small, but with our blooming into our full, beautiful, creative selves. If I had ignored this flood of creative inspiration that I had tapped into, I would have stayed in my safe rut, and never discovered the wonders of allowing my creativity full rein (or in my case, reign!), or faced the “growth opportunity” of offering my book to the world. Instead, I surrendered to the passionate outpouring of this character’s story, whose name turned out to be Kyr. With no idea where his story was going, no outline, no plan, I just wrote whatever came through, no matter how dark or brilliant.
Kyr’s path is also one of surrender. At first, he has no choice but submit, since he has been born and raised as a slave of the Soul-Drinker, an evil sorcerer-king with vast powers that no one can combat. Then he is rescued and faces a choice: cling to his deathly loyalty to his master, or to take the unknown hard path toward life, love and the Light.
Kyr’s journey toward the Light is a journey of surrender. At each step of the way, he has to surrender his old view of who he is and what he deserves, and open more and more to his true nature. I suspect that may be true for all of us, but it is rarely easy. The ego-mind wants to stay with what it knows, no matter how awful, and to stay small, with the illusion that this makes us safe. In Dark Innocence: Book One of my trilogy, there is a scene where Kyr surrenders his pain and remorse to the Goddess. After all these years of rewriting, editing, publishing and now doing my best to let the world know about Kyr’s dark, intense, yet healing and inspiring story, that scene still touches my heart.
Contemplation Questions
Have you experienced that dilemma between safety and surrender?
Does surrender play a role in your spirituality and/or creativity?
Have you been “haunted” by an inner character in your dreams or imagination? How have you dealt with him/her? Have you tried letting them tell you their story?
I’d love to hear your answers! Please leave a comment, if you are so inspired.
Tour Notes
This week you can grab the first book in the Star-Seer’s Prophecy Trilogy for just 99 cents. That’s right Dark Innocence is marked way, way down, giving you the chance to explore this thought-provoking fantasy series for yourself. Get your copy at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or iBookstoday!
You can continue the saga with the newly released sequel Fierce Blessings.
Oh, and don’t forget to enter our giveaway for your chance to win an autographed copy of Fierce Blessings or a Star-Seer’s Prophecy t-shirt. We have a total of 4 prizes for 4 lucky winners, hooray! Enter the giveaway right here: www.novelpublicity.com/dark-innocence
About Dark Innocence: In an ancient world of blood sorcery and healing magic, the Soul-Drinker, a vicious necromancer-king, is draining the life from the souls of the people and of the earth itself. Worse yet, he has banished the land’s rightful Goddess, and disrupted the Sacred Balance, sending the mortal and divine realms whirling toward destruction. The only hope for salvation is a youth named Kyr, born and raised as one of the Soul-Drinker’s blindly obedient slaves. Kyr knows only the pain, evil and cruelty of the Soul-Drinker’s hell–and nothing of the Star-Seer’s Prophecy that declares him to be the long-sought Liberator. Rescued by strangers, Kyr embarks on a bewildering journey into a bizarre new life, where kindness and love are real. If he is to fulfill his destiny, he must battle his inner demons and fight to find his buried capacities for compassion and courage. Will he be able to surrender the inner ice that has been his soul’s only protection in time to save the world from disaster?
Again, you can grab your copy for just 99 cents at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or iBooks as part of this special event!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
How do they do it? The dynamic duo is here at 4writersandreaders today to fill us in… plus, they’ll share an excerpt from their book SUNNY SIDE UP by Maureen K. Howard, of course! ~ Bette A. Stevens
About the book: While novels and cinema have repeatedly sought after the historical Jesus, until now none have explored what may be a more tantalizing mystery—the Christian story’s anonymous creator. Logos is a literary bildungsroman about the man who will become the anonymous author of the original Gospel, set amid the kaleidoscopic mingling of ancient cultures. Logos is a gripping tale of adventure, a moving love story, and a novel of ideas. None of this should be regarded as out of place or incompatible in a novel about Christianity’s origin. Dissent, anarchism, and revolution—and incipient Christianity was no less these things than the Bolshevik, the French or the American revolutions—inevitably have involved ideas, adventure, and romance.
