I’ve been lightly looking into Vedic astrology these days, and I have come to see that both Venus and the Moon have a strong influence on my life. Venus is the mother of creativity, she is the force that sends sparks of inspiration to me. That’s how inspiration feels to me – little sparkles that I try to capture and write down into a long list of ideas that I want to bring to life one day. Some days these sparks seldom come, other days it feels like I am on fire. I’ve noticed a true and deep connection between my inspiration and my spiritual practice. The more consistently I maintain my spiritual practice, the more my day is filled with fireworks. I write in my blog much more when I am connected to my practices, when I am living my truest, most authentic life.
Every blog post I have written has always been directly linked to a lesson I am learning in life; a realization I have come to, or a new understanding and acceptance about life that I am living. I can’t write about something I am not going through or have not recently gone through. I know in the beginning, this blog often read somewhat like a “how to book”, but I don’t think that’s what it is anymore.
I am a student of life. I am not a master, or a guru – there is nothing I can write a How-To manual for. If it’s a “how to” manual you want – there are so many more credible sources for this kind of information out there. But what I can offer is my experience of everything. I am dedicated to my pursuit of personal growth. I am loyal to my soul. I am devoted to life. And I write. It’s how I have always processed things that happen to me. So I write about all these crazy beautiful painful things that happen in my life, as I walk this path of discovery. I’m a seeker. I’m looking for something more. And I think you are too, if you enjoy reading these things.
Morning is my most creative pocket of time. I am filled with possibilities and ideas. But I mute that voice so that I can begin studying. I know that I only have a limited amount of mental energy in the day, and I must channel it into what I am focused on most right now – which is studying. I tell myself, that I can write later. But later in the day, my inspiration is fizzled out and I don’t feel like writing anymore. Well – these days, with my little babe in tow, I rarely get luxury of this option later in the day anyway. Blog posts take a long time to write. And you know how long my blog posts are! It’s like writing an essay! It can take up to 2-3 hours of constant writing to complete a post, and then I have to edit and format it, and add photographs to it before I publish it. I would save doing this whole process for my one day off in a week, and this would take half of the day, and I would be pretty mentally tired after it. And sometimes I wouldn’t even get it done in half a day, and my energy would have run out and I would feel frustrated and unproductive – like I spent so much time and energy and I have nothing to show for my efforts.
So now I’m trying a new thing – where I let myself write for 30 minutes every morning, before I start studying. I do what I feel called to do, which may be writing a blog post, or poetry or prose, or perhaps video editing (I’m trying to get into making simple home movies), or photography. 30 minutes is long enough to answer my calls of inspiration, but not long enough to tire me out and affect my studies that I begin right after.
So now, blog posts are built slowly over the course of a week, and come together beautifully and wholesomely on my day off. It feels good. I feel good waking up in the morning knowing that the first thing I get to do is write (as opposed to – studying right away.)
To turn this personal experience into something that perhaps could be valuable for you, here are some guidelines I try to follow to truly nurture my creativity
- Give yourself permission to create every day, for a certain amount of time.
- When inspiration calls, answer. Find your most creative time in the day, and use it.
- Use your most creative times fully – don’t waste it on other things that take away from your creative energy (even though it might be in the area of interest) – like writing e-mails, or responding to comments (you can do that another time – you don’t need to be inspired to respond to a comment but you do need to be inspired to write a poem!) – Just CREATE!
- Your best source of inspiration is your life – live your life more fully, with presence and intensity – and the rest will come.
- I believe that your spiritual practice sets up a direct connection with the divine, which acts as the perfect line to download beautiful ideas straight to you.
Thank you for reading. I have a new blog post coming for you guys really soon!
love
Malavika xo
