Lake of Dreams

There’s a parable in the ancient Vedic scripts of two birds sitting in a tree. One bird chatters and eats figs, while the other looks silently on. The silent bird represents the wisdom and silence deep within each of us.

Heron Dance is a creative journey. An experiment. I explore the experiment in my journal.  Some soft, gentle jazz plays quietly in the background. I close my eyes and take ten deep breaths. I relax my upper body, my neck and shoulders. Then the rest of my body. The breaths gradually come slower, the spaces between each longer.

I imagine this creative work as a person.  I ask it if it has anything to share with me. Advice to offer. I record the thoughts as they bubble up.

For forty years you’ve kept journals that have explored the underlying currents of your life. Throughout the tens of thousands of miles hitchhiked, the thousands of miles paddled, the thousand or more books read, the subartic, Dogrib Indians, Wall Street, Heron Dance. Sometimes it seems that the search is a search for a challenge. Sometimes the search is a search for wisdom, for balance and cohesion. A desire to somehow hook into the balance and cohesion of the natural world. Of the universe. And to live in harmony with that wisdom and balance. I’m generally out of sync. But not always. The constant challenge is how to get back in sync with the song within, with the creative flow.  

This journaling practice has contributed a lot to my life. When I’ve paid attention to the insights offered. When I haven’t, the results have generally been not good.

The answers are inside ourselves. Relative to the force, the power, however, of our conscious mind, our ego, those answers are shy and reticent.

Journal questions:

When you imagine your song within as a person and ask it for advice, what does it want to tell you?