I'm Carolyn Zeal.
Thank you for joining me.
Let's start by getting comfortable,
Either seated or lying down,
Eyes closed.
And let's take a deep breath in through our nose,
Holding it at the top,
Exhaling through your nose.
And another in through your nose,
Exhaling out your nose.
And one more deeper than the last,
In through your nose,
Holding it at the top.
And as you exhale through your nose,
Feel your body relax,
Your shoulders sink,
Your body sink into the earth.
Feel your connection with this earth through your breath.
And just notice your breath.
Notice it moving in and out.
Bringing nourishment and life through your body to every cell.
Surrender to this moment.
Give yourself this gift of nothing else to do and nowhere else to be.
And as thoughts come and go,
Don't attach.
Just let them float on by.
Julia Cameron wrote,
The creative process is a process of surrender,
Not control.
Mystery is at the heart of creativity,
That and surprise.
Surrender is to yield to the power of something,
To give up control,
To give oneself over to something.
The creative process is messy.
It is mysterious.
It's a process that you don't want to control.
You want to be surprised.
You want to allow it and surrender to the mystery,
The messiness,
Because that's where the beauty is.
And in this moment,
I'm going to ask you to surrender to a creative process right now,
Through your imagination.
Envision yourself outside.
Maybe you're sitting on a beach.
You feel the sand under you.
You hear the water lapping against the shore.
Maybe you're on a hilltop,
The earth cool against your skin.
Maybe you're in a field or a meadow.
You can smell the grass,
The flowers.
You look up into a midnight blue sky.
And you see billions of stars.
Stars shining,
Twinkling.
You realize that this sky filled with stars is really a sky filled with possibility,
The possibility of ideas.
You see each star as an idea.
That pinprick of light in the sky is inspiration,
Creativity.
And so you decide to sit here for a moment and surrender to what comes up as you do.
Surrender to what you feel.
Allow in this moment your thoughts to come and go.
Allow for the surprise,
The mystery that is at the heart of your creative process.
Take a moment now and just feel yourself.
Feel anything that might bubble up.
And name it.
Without judgment.
Just name it.
Take note.
In a moment,
You'll leave this place.
The night sky.
The starry ideas that shine above.
And you'll come back to your current surroundings.
Knowing you can always come back here.
Come back to a sky filled with ideas.
Inspiration.
And all you have to do is close your eyes and turn toward yourself and allow.
You might want to turn toward your journal.
You might want to just write.
Without trying to write anything.
You might want to just write.
To surrender in that current moment to what you see around you.
To the details.
To the sounds you hear.
To any distractions.
And just write about that.
Or you might want to write about your experience under that starry sky.
Coming back to your body now.
Noticing your breath.
Any sounds around you.
Slowly opening your eyes.
And remembering that the creative process is one of surrender,
Of letting go,
Of allowing yourself to be messy,
Of allowing the surprise to bubble up.
And as you turn toward your journal,
Practice that.
Thank you so much for meditating with me.
Namaste.
