It’s August and I’ve just come back into my computer after an absence; it’s summer and the humidity attests to it. What, I wonder, will be revealed in this computer that has been sitting quietly having nothing to say for itself outside a polite waiting for me. Does it know how uncomfortable I’ve become with all the new intrusive “updates” imposed upon us both? Is it uncomfortable, too? Fuss and bother now clutters the serenity of what was our simple approach to creativity.

This may be a machine, but it is aware. Trust me. It may have been invented by people with impersonal sensibilities, yet I know, I know, that as I start to write in it, an inner world emerges. A warmth comes that belies the sharp corners of its external presence and its internal chaos. When I tap keys, a door inside myself opens. It opens to reveal something so unexpected that I wonder once more about the depth of Reality and what it is made of and what it can reveal by means of me. By means of my fingers that are servants to my heart and soul. I write with a mechanical thing but I cannot escape what I am really made of. No matter the circumstances.

Isn’t that simply too wonderful? I cannot escape what I am really made of. I may fall, but I land upon Life. Even in a superficial world.

I do not come from here, I visit. She is the girl I am in this world. I know her well. I see her courage to please me, to be the best girl in the world she can be so that I can give my attention to this dream I am having. I chose her well this girl who was once a little child learning to be a little child, making her way through rooms of space and thoughts. She found herself in boxes. Boxes everywhere, but the biggest box, which was such a tight little box, was herself. In a body that now contained her and did not allow her to move as she knew she could move, should move, and even now wanted to move. Why had it all stopped?

Many things were stalled, becoming stagnant. Her mind once untroubled with pins and needles of obedience, lost its freedom. Each thought, each instant was examined to understand if she was doing it right. Getting it right. The Now had become something to answer to, not something to fully expand into with open arms and confident joy. Was she meant to find a treasure in all this immobility?

I am grateful for her courage. So much growth is happening for me from her daring. I truly love my human self.

Golden leaves are falling from the tree outside my window. Bright golden leaves that flutter to the ground to reveal Beauty. Most people walk over them or discard them as a nuisance. Still, now and then, a hopeful heart will reach down and pick one up and slip it into the pages of her book. Tender parts of life live in a few such pages.

My thoughts, too, are like golden leaves flowing from my mind to the movement of the world before me, bringing heartfelt traces of the meaningful lace of my truest self. All about this place is a golden pattern dressing our world in love and beauty able to be seen in all faces and certain books. It waits patiently to be acknowledged. Nothing else matters, really.

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.