UNLEASHING

Once pathology disappears, everybody becomes a creator. Let it be understood as deeply as possible: only ill people are destructive. The people who are healthy are creative. Creativity is a fragrance of real health. When a person is really healthy and whole, creativity comes naturally to [her]; the urge to create arises. --- OSHO author of Creativity: Unleashing the Forces Within and The Book of Secrets

More important to me now is living my life creatively. Not one book, not one poem, not one play but a full spectrum life that is receptive and grateful to the Most Creative, the Original Creator. As I fully embrace the way of the Tao, and a seek out a more universal consciousness, I realize that it is so NOT about me; not about awards and plaques that grace a wall and raving reviews by ordinary human being reviewers. Not even about million dollar book advances and that elusive spot on Oprah. More and more it's about using the good to create more good. For me, it's about an everyday creative consciousness that looks toward renewable energy sources, saving our bays and streams from pollutants, devising creative options for learning that embrace different learning styles, trying new approaches in medicine, looking for cures rather than patching. It's about bridging the gaps in and across the diaspora, discussions that lead to planning, implementing and executing. For me, it's about bringing all that I do in my writing life into my real, everyday life. My same open approach to my charachters is an approach I need more of in my everyday, day-to-day. For me it's about living as close to nature as possible, doing everything I can to support my mental and physical health even when that means attending a different kind of church with different kinds of people, saying and doing different kinds of things. It means shedding old skin, old habits and embracing what is fresh, what feels good and right not just for myself but for the environment and those I share this Earth with.

I know I'm not on this journey alone and I know I'm not moving into this new space alone. I know there are others in other places thinking and feeling the same. I was reading a new "green" magazine I stumbled upon and smiled at San Francisco's move toward Universal Healthcare for every citizen under the age of 25 and their recent approval of a $100 million revenue bond to pay for the installation of solar and wind power technologies on city-owned properties: california solar center . I smiled at Sacramento's zoning code that requires parking lots have 50 percent tree shade coverage and Chicago's government requirement that 20 percent of its electrical needs be provided by renewable resources--enough to power 80,000 homes. Is it the complete answer? No. Do we have so much further to go? Of course. But getting there begins with being and thinking creatively. It's about imagining, day-dreaming, proposing, sketching, revising -- all those things we writers do everyday.

For me it's about moving into this new space with grace. Where will the road lead? Where will my spirit dwell and when will I get there? Will it be abroad in a totally new country? Will it be my love, San Francisco? Will it be back to New York, upstate? I don't know. I really don't. Right now I know I'm being readied and that's all a girl like me can ask for.

Namaste.
---A.