Thoreau wrote about living deep and sucking the marrow out of life.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear, nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.
       - Henry David Thoreau, Walden, “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For,” 1845

Heron Dance is for people who want to suck the marrow out of life, and who are open to the proposition that the important insights, the big answers, live inside themselves. Sometimes deep inside.

The notes below are rough and random. I plan to explore them in more detail in future issues of the e-journal, in Heron Dance Press books and at journaling retreats.

Your Song Within:

• Definition: Your inner beauty and potential to create a deeply meaningful experience on this journey and adventure called life.

• Life is a precious gift to be treated with awe and reverence. Time is easily wasted.

• When I think back on the periods of my life that have brought me the deepest joy and satisfaction, two come to mind.

  • Long wilderness trips when I got into the rhythm of nature and lost my sense of time.

  • Periods when I’ve been totally absorbed with a creative work. Others, thinking on these same feelings and sensations, may think immediately of traveling or family relationships or giving of themselves to others in some unique or particularly meaningful way. Or learning. It doesn’t matter.

• A primary purpose of journaling: to help you understand and, to the extent possible, build your future around those times when you’ve felt in complete balance, living in harmony with your inner world, absorbed by a project, endeavors or relationships that have contributed deep joy to your life.

• When I look back at my journaling notes from twenty years ago, I notice recurring themes both that I dealt with successfully and problematic scenarios that still recur, still cause problems and upheaval in my life, today.

 Meditation

 Transcendental Meditation has probably been the single most important reason for whatever success I've had. It helps slow things down so that I can act calmly, even in the face of chaos, just like a ninja in a street fight.
-       Ray Dalio, founder of institutional investment management firm Bridgewater.

• Relax the conscious mind, the self-protective mind, the ego mind, the mind that thinks it knows a lot more than history would indicate it actually does.

• Close your eyes, and take ten deep breaths. Relax your upper body, your neck and shoulders. Move gradually down your body, relaxing each section. The breaths gradually come slower, the spaces between each longer.

• Or put on some particularly gentle, beautiful classical or other music. Mozart and Beethoven seem to work best for me. The sonatas. Close your eyes and lose yourself in it. I often turn to jazz:  Myles Davis, Stanley Turrentine, Ben Webster. Or Japanese flute music.

• Any practice that puts you into a quiet mind is great — any place where the wisdom underneath feels welcome and can come bubbling up. It’s often reticent and shy. Meditation combined with journaling will welcome and encourage it.

 Dialogue

• Imagine entities that can offer ways of seeing, new approaches to recurring themes, and that can offer advice, insight or feedback. It is important that whatever entity you imagine be one that knows and cares deeply about you.

• One example I consult: myself twenty or thirty years from now, after having lived a life of meaning and deep satisfaction.

• My friendship with myself. Imagine this relationship as a person, and ask it how I’m treating it.

• A guide you know personally or one from a book or film. Someone with deep spiritual insight.

• The recurring patterns of my life are guides I consult. Some have brought me joy, some have brought me and others trouble and upset. Again, I imagine those themes as entities with life-nurturing wisdom and advice, and ask for their guidance.

• Another example, imagine your health as an entity. As with many journaling practices, this one can definitely bring up advice you don’t want to hear, but should hear. I know this from experience.

The Stillpoint, The Reflective Mind

Nurturing the relationship with yourself, with the song within, with your creative work, starts with a relationship with the stillpoint from which all creative work evolves.

The first requirement of being effective, of being creative, is to have an energy reservoir to draw on. Rested, the brain has tremendous, unknowable power.

What restores your energy?

-       We spend a lot of time responding to the impulses and chaos coming at us from the world, from others in our lives. Rather than creating our future. Journaling offers an opportunity to pause, relax, reflect and out of that process create future more in harmony with our own inner world.

• One of the adverse recurring patterns of my life is to pile into new ideas, new projects, new endeavors, some of which involve years of effort, without adequate prior reflection.

• I enter into a dialogue with my stillpoint and ask it how I am treating it. It responds with an immediate answer, one I’m not particularly wanting to hear. It tells me to give it a day a week, a weekend a month and a week every six months to focus on our relationship. To focus on my inner world, my song within, my stillpoint. To nurture the deeper levels of my wisdom – those that are shy and reticent and particularly profound.

• That set aside time is for solitude, quiet reflection, for journaling, hikes, lots of sleep. Reading is a part of the reflective time, but reading focused on spirituality in its broadest sense – which might, in my case be summarized as the beauty, wisdom and harmony of the universe. The natural world in all of its manifestations. I don’t have to be totally alone, but alone is better. If with another or others, they need to be made aware that the time is for quiet reflection and not for trivial conversation or worse, differences of opinion, or spirited discussion of any type.

• I do paint and draw during those quiet times.

. . .

Above, I’ve touched on questions. These and many more will be explored in much greater depth in the daily issues of Reflections Of A Wild Artist.

As you use this journal, occasionally go back over what you’ve written and reread it. Record new thoughts that come to mind. When I do that, I find that the thoughts I came up with yesterday, that I thought were important and new, were the same thoughts I had years ago. The fact that they recur, and that I think that they are new when they do recur, indicates that they are important and not being given enough attention in my life.

Much of the above comes right out of my own journals over the past several decades. Some of it reads like stern dogma. It was initially written to me alone. Most of it was written in a meditative state. Some of it is a little blunt, but I’ve decided to include it here because I think it stimulates thought. I’m not suggesting how you should be living your life. Ignore what I’ve written if it doesn’t fit you, or better yet, explore your completely different take on the subject.

 . . .

I didn't trust it for a moment
but I drank it anyway
The wine of my own poetry
It gave me the daring
to take hold of the darkness
and tear it into little pieces.
-       Lalla, or Lal Ded, 14th century Kashmiri poetess and mystic