When I am old and frail and sitting by a warm fireplace somewhere in the Rocky Mountains (hopefully), I will tell my grandkids about 2023. Not about the turbulent political landscape. Not about the wars or global events. I will tell them that it was a year of creative and spiritual awakening — a year that my life changed forever.
It wasn’t a sudden epiphany, but a gradual and slow opening of the mystical eye on my forehead — an arduous journey that required an often painful excavation of the soul. I don’t know when or how it happened. Maybe it was therapy; maybe it was the books I read; maybe it was writing; probably a combination of all these things. The point is: something finally clicked this year. I made a decision to reconnect with God. Not the Catholic god or the Jewish god or the Protestant god, but God God, The Big G, the divine creative energy — or as poet Dylan Thomas called it, “the force that through the green chute drives the flower.”
God is creation. Pure creation. And as artist Julia Cameron writes, “Creation is the natural order of life.” We are made in the likeness of God, creative forces. For too many years, I had been repressing my own creative force. Denying it. Starving it. Ashamed of it. But in January 2023, my inner artist showed up at my door once again, a dark shadow of me I had refused to acknowledge. He knocked on the door of my heart in one final attempt to get me to accept him. His emaciated skeleton dropped to its knees and I heard the words wheeze out of his unloved lungs, “Please… Please… Please.”
“Fine. Come in. Sit for a while.”
I fed him. Bathed him. Listened to him. And when he had regained his strength he stood over me and guided my hand across the page. Together, we wrote something. It was awful. He came back the next day. We wrote something again. It was better. We did it again. And again. Soon, we had written something beautiful. Not perfect, but honest. And honest is beautiful.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, one thousand and one times. He should’ve hated me; I mean, I let him starve for decades. But he kept coming back. I fed him again. And he grew stronger and began speaking louder. Together, we began sharing our work. And the more we shared, the stronger he became. Each word of positive feedback and encouragement only emboldened him.
Soon, he was coming back every day. We would walk together. And talk. And he would describe the world to me in ways I had never heard before. “That is God,” he’d say, pointing at the blue silhouette of an oak tree at dusk. “That too,” — pointing out the sound of a child’s laughter in the park. “And that,” — pointing at the silver reflection of the moon dancing on the surface of the ocean like a thousand vibrating eels. “That is God. And God is within me. And within you. God is all creation. God is creation and prayer — creator and created.”
I could describe my transformation in a thousand different ways. But it’s simple. I became a creative force again. I learned to pray again. By creating. By writing. Painting. Moving. That’s not to say that I’ve achieved any sort of enlightenment. Far from it. Still, as I write this, I am looking around with new eyes. Once again, I can live in the world with full attention, accepting the simple beauty of light and leaves and the soft kisses of wind. I feel God’s creative energy and I am slowly learning to become a channel, to open myself up and let the creative force flow through me.
These days my inner artist wakes me up in the early morning before the sun comes up, the liminal hour between night and day that the French have called l'heure entre chien et loup, the hour between dog and wolf, the dark blue time of day when you cannot distinguish the shadow of an innocent dog from that of a menacing wolf.
I don’t want to work at that hour, but he insists. Every day since the start of the new year. 5:00 a.m. L’heure entre chien et loup. “It’s time,” he says and nudges me out of bed with a forceful push. He’s well-fed now. And stronger than ever. I don’t put up a fight. I drag my feet to the coffee pot and then to the desk, open the page, and let him guide my fingers along the keyboard. Together, we pray into the page, dream into the page, and bleed into the page.
Like I said, I don’t want to work at that hour; I want to flip my pillow onto the cold side and pull the warm comforter above my head until the sun comes up. But I know why he insists on that hour. Creation is an act of surrender — of getting out of the way and letting the creative energy move through me. He knows, at that hour, I’m too tired to put up a fight.
Yes, it’s early. But I’m not crazy… Well, I am a little crazy, but I’m not alone. The hour between dog and wolf has been the preferred working time for many an artist. Long before there was sleep science and research to explain all the stages of sleep and their effects on creativity, the surrealist artist Salvador Dalí came up with an unusual technique to get in touch with his divine creative force. Before sitting down to paint, Dali would lay down with a stone or a key in his hand. Underneath his hand he’d place an upside-down plate. As soon as he’d begin to fall asleep, his hand would relax and he’d drop the object onto the plate. The sound would wake him up, just as he was on the precipice of sleep. He’d wake up in a trance-like state, a hypnosis between the waking world and the dream world, an in-between place where his body could paint and his mind could dream. Thus, he would become the “painter of dreams.”
Dalí understood something that others did not — that creativity is merely opening yourself and becoming a channel, of stepping aside and letting divine forces work through you. The waking brain, with its rationality and inhibitions and fear and uncertainty, is a block. The waking brain is the voice that tells you to ignore your inner artist, the voice that tells you that you’re not good enough, that makes you doubt, that makes you terrified to put pen to paper or brush to canvas. So Dalí, madman as he was, devised a plan. He’d lure the waking brain to sleep. He’d lay down until he was standing at the edge of a giant cliff waiting to jump. Then, at the precise moment, he’d let his waking mind disappear into the abyss, while his dreaming, creative, artist’s mind would go to work. His inner artist, his divine creative self, could work freely without the resistance of his waking self.
Science has since caught up to Dalí, and provided research and evidence of this liminal state’s magical powers. Of course, I didn’t know that when I started waking up at 5:00 a.m. to write. My inner artist was desperate to create and, with a full-time job (thanks to my waking brain), 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. was the only time we had to sit down together and work. But pretty soon, I realized the only things I was actively doing were getting up, making coffee, and sitting down at my desk. What happened next was beyond my control. My waking brain, all the voices of doubt and fear, were still asleep. In other words, I sat down at the desk, my hands started typing on their own, and two hours later the page was full. I had dreamt on the page. Some voice had spoken through me. I couldn’t explain it. I looked at my inner artist, who sat besides me and put his palms up and his shoulders to his ears as if to say, “I don’t know either man. Just go with it.”
I started working every day at the hour between dog and wolf. Pretty soon, I was starting to learn how to enter that liminal space throughout the day, not just first thing in the morning. I was learning to silence the waking brain, the critical voice of reason, and let my dreaming brain flow. Dreams, after all, are the language of the unconscious. And our unconscious, is the galaxy within, where that divine energy lives and works. It sounds woo woo and silly to even write that. But I have found no other way to explain it. Plus, if you read anything ever written by Carl Jung, you’re likely to find equally mystical language. I’m not the only one.
There’s a quote that’s been widely attributed to Ernest Hemingway (whether or not he actually said it is up for debate): “Write Drunk. Edit Sober.” I like this quote, not because I want to write while intoxicated. In fact, if Hemingway did actually say this, I doubt he meant it literally. I read it as a metaphor: write without inhibitions. Dream on the page. Channel that divine creative force as freely as if you were writing drunk. Then, go back later and gently tame the wildness you’ve unleashed.
So this is where I am, a quarter of the way into 2024. I just turned 28. But in many ways, my inner artist is still a newborn. Nonetheless, every morning, I wake at the hour between dog and wolf. I bow at the altar of creation and let my inner artist speak. Life is not perfect. I am not perfect. Very, very far from it. I still struggle. I still beat myself down. But things are lighter now, more gentle. The more I reach inward toward God, toward creation, the more God reaches back and gently nudges me on the right path.
Maybe, when I’m old and frail and sitting on my rocking chair telling my grandkids about my life, I will call this the year between dog and wolf. Does it make sense? I don’t know; I’m drunk (metaphorically), but it seems fitting.
Hat tip:
Dreaming on the Page by Tzivia Gover