I once was a commercial artist. I trained myself to use my talent to serve other people. I was smart, I made a living. I was hurt, I lost myself.

One day, in my hurt, my talent told me this:

The art you express is the inner world you tell yourself about. The art you make wants to come to you, it is meant to flow freely through you. You insult it by asking it to please anyone else. It is your own sweet life innocently moving from within you, presenting itself for your joy and delight. “See? I am come to you,” it says. “I am not come to be judged, approved of, critiqued, or denied by another in a world asleep. I am a simple act, a simple movement, a warm loving breath, yours to yourself. I am aliveness, expression, happiness in being. Let me out, trust yourself to let me come and show you who you are. I am not dependent on other people, not created for other people, I am your presence in utter simplicity. Do you see? I am an act of love. Love me. When you give to yourself you serve the world.”

I work in a warm friendly room with windows that show only trees. My workspace has a comfortable clutter; it contains paints and brushes, desks and chairs, framed art along the walls, and my creativity. Over the years, it has embraced my many moods as it welcomes me with unconditional assurance each morning.

Remarkably steadfast, it does all this in silence, patiently receptive to whatever I will bring today. Sometimes I feel vastly unable to create, I am stuck, lost, in deepest despair. But the room doesn’t change, it remains warm and friendly, it is the world-silencing constancy within a ceiling and walls that allow me to hear what my Soul is trying to say.

As a human, I externalize myself. A room is a deeply spiritual thing. It is an answer from the within of things as I walk a seemingly outside world. I believe in my friendship with my room, I am surrounded by its living consciousness that is real and supportive of my subtle nature. I do not have a scientistic mentality, my room is not just a room, it is how I nest in time and space. It is my sacred creation. It keeps me sane by allowing me a space that is sane itself. In a way, my room is wiser than I am with all my tortured human doubts. My room has been produced by the part of me that doesn’t waver from the centeredness of being. I see my room for what it really is.

It is Autumn now though the leaves haven’t begun to turn. The seasons have changed, we are saying. But were they the real seasons before and now they are not the real ones? It is important to understand this for I make things be a certain way and then despair of their changing. Has something been lost? Was it the better way before?

Is change a loss of something or is it the receiving of something unknown and unexpected? Something that brings wisdom? Why not be fluid about such things? I watch my peace of mind disturb itself over something merely different. Why not embrace the stability of my being and have all that revolves around me be only curiously interesting as I nest in warmth and consistency within my invisible wholeness? Am I not enough? Am I not Home in a place of awareness, in a conscious knowing feeling awareness?

Because what I am, is awareness. Nothing other. But alas, I make my inner dialogue about the world I live in, which serves no creative purpose for it heightens a shallow presence and obliterates my view of the depth of myself. So much empty thinking has obliterated me from myself and myself is where peace and power live. Thought is loaded with feeling and the feelingness I’m capable of is sweet, reverent, graceful, pure, and … simple.

Simplicity is a word I use these days in order to complain about the lack of it in the too complex world I live in. How does that complaining serve me when all the while I could be looking to myself and find there the plain and simple directness I need. Honestly, what a silly one I am.

I think I see crayon marks on the top of the table. Crayon marks come to mind because I spend my mornings drawing lines in little sketchbooks, filling them with unexpected swirls that I don’t force but follow, I am allowing them to speak to me. I do not understand what they are saying, yet I love the result. That result is a graceful pattern of lines on a passive page that suddenly becomes lively. I see movement. I see balance and order, too, a harmony that just comes all by itself, as if there is an intelligence at work that does not need me to tell it what to do. I love that this living thing can come through me, show itself to me, transform my outer world from some mysterious inner cause I am not aware of. It’s quite magical, don’t you think?

That’s exactly what it is. I am here seemingly not thinking of anything specific and when I type, or when I take pen to paper, something appears. Appears as if out of nothing, from nowhere. It is as if there is an invisible life here all around, waiting to be seen, to be set free. Is that all there is to it, to be the human conduit for something unseen but always present, always ready to appear? That is not so difficult a thing, is it, to happily know that something waits for me to draw forth its apparition? To welcome it, express it, let it become. And, more than anything, to trust its worth just as it plainly appears to be: a thing from within me just as I am, just as who I am, just as what I am. Yes, I possess a sweet invisibleness and I sense that it is treasure.

So why do I go about feeling empty, waiting for the external to feed me, show me, entertain me? It is what comes from within me that is my aliveness. It is what comes from within me that I am to experience. Life on earth is not a tourist attraction for me, instead there is something unknown in me that is so full of life and possibilities that it perpetually knocks on my door to let me know it is present, that it wants to give me itself that I may be myself. I am created to know, to value, to love, to give birth to this thing I am.

The joy, the receiving of this birth has nothing to do with the world. Nothing to do with how the world will receive it, or not receive it. I did not come to enlighten a world of people. They are not the reason for my treasures, the reason for my expression. I am an invisible being, silent in my ways, but my nature is such that it externalizes itself to become worlds. It creates the earth for itself. I need not concern myself with how things are perceived here, how things work, or what the world thinks are needed to make things work. The work is done invisibly so that is not my responsibility. I realize, I ask, I shine the light from my invisibility into form. I make a rich display of it, never requiring permission, never needing a door in the world to open for me. Whatever I bring is whole, complete. My invisibility opens all the doors I need opened for fulfillment. My invisibility is the full blooming of life abundant, it is the release of my breath into the divine meadow to sway its grasses into whispers that soothe a heavy heart. My human heart. I can be glad for my invisibleness. It can never be known here on earth but my breath will mystically touch and bless many human hearts. And theirs mine. What more do we need?.

I am invisibleness from within an infinite invisible source meant to remain invisible in this world. I need not feel inconsequential or make myself visible, life is infilling me eternally. I have the body I need for this temporal journey and the things of its sustenance. All I need is awareness of the invisible me through the ongoing dialogue with it. Only that. Everything else has already been done. For me. For everyone.

I am glad I am a writer.

Dear One, my writing says to me, the words you write want to come to you. In them I am your own life flowing up and outward to bring you awareness of the joy you possess. I come from you. I do not come to be misunderstood by a closed mind, I am a simple act, a humble gesture, the loving breath of aliveness. I come to you in a gentle way. I can be received by you only in your own gentle way.

I speak to no one but you. I am not anyone else’s language. I am your personal presence of eternity on earth.The only gift you and I make is the gift of peace that words without strife offer. A tightness can be released.

Only one thing is true. Only one: simplicity flowers a garden. I bring you deep truth in simple words that you allow. That you welcome. I am proud to be your language and to bring the feelings that you receive with such an open heart. Ours is a precious friendship. And a necessary one, for meaning is everything.