The Muse is Calling — Your Life Depends on Answering

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I don’t believe in “I choose not to do what I love, because I will no longer love it.”

It is the lie of the plateau; of evil’s spell to numb us and make us question why we started and where we’re going.

To keep us small, faded, soul-detached.

I deeply believe in this.

…

Work matters.

Our soul work matters.

In it, love is not in every moment of the work that we do, but the work to push through the lie. The work to dissolve a transparent barrier.

If all it took to love what we do is just in doing it, progress would never happen. We would never become better, become masters.

That’s what it means to love what we do.

And we cannot become masters of it if we never take steps toward it.

Especially the boring and uncomfortable ones.

And I think that may be the difference between hobby and obsession.

One is just to get away from the world.

The other…is a endless, gnawing frustration to change it.

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I’ve only wanted a few things from this world.

This…beautiful chaos of humanity, with all of it’s awe and savagery.

A few things from this universe of endlessness and unfathomable deeps of heart and soul and mind.

Things that every man wants, even when he finds the fear too great to ask.

Things that he finds among the abstract chaos which pull him into a gravity made by the light of The Muse. (reference: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield)

Things that make him not a better man, but a part of the universe itself.

Things that as men — while in the midst of our greatest mental and spiritual battles — will be our solace, our antidote, our strength.

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Bring a man love and meaning, and he will turn the world over for you.

Bring him a divine duty that he will proudly carry the way Atlas carries the sky.

Bring him what eases the ache, subsides his pain, grays the darkness of his burdens and battlefields.

I think every man will take his chance with crafted wings, and seek to find the perfect height of currents in the air that will whisk him away unto the salvation of love and meaning…even if it means risking the same fate of Icarus, ignorant of his wise father’s warning cries.

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But the greatest risk is not in a man’s leap, but his direction.

Did he give too much to the wrong compass? The wrong love? The wrong meaning?

Will he find the land of salvation he chose too quiet, too strange, too false?

And that’s what often keeps him from jumping.

From seeking The Muse in all her romantic devotion.

That is why man must find his compass.

The divine child of love and meaning.

The following is based on an epiphany I had about how unfairly I was showing up in my attempts to meet The Muse; the one, as Pressfield tells it, shows up when we have dug in deep enough in order for her to touch us and translate our soulful purpose.

But, I digress…

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But do you hear me?

Do you reach for me, with all your power, as I desperately reach for you?

Do you think of me as obsessively as I think of you?

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As I wait for you, I feel the grasp of truth letting go of me.

What is this?

Why do I lose myself in this patience?

Why do I feel dissolved in this quiet nucleus of anticipation of you?

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How could I possibly stay here?

How could I feel so alone as I save this space for you?

As I defend the hole in which you were meant to fill?

Where are you?

I need you.

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Restlessness has taken me.

I no longer feel safe, or together, or my own.

I must leave this place.

The place that would be home to you and me.

For my own sanity, I must abandon all the things I dreamed of being with you.

There is no more me, here.

No more essence, no more vibration.

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But then, where would I go?

Where do I put my effort and grit, my love and my worship?

What do I romance if not you?

What do I bleed for if not you?

What do I look to, if not your color and your vitality?

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My beautiful Muse.

Could it be…

That I have watched my compass, waiting for you to reveal yourself…instead of meeting you at the center of love and dedication?

Have I stapled my own feet, stayed my own hand?

Have I been a groom in waiting?

Have I betrayed you with my lethargy, and left you to wander the world without me, waiting for me?

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Maybe it’s you that I should love, not what I ask you to give.

Maybe it’s the empty you that I should fill, not the holes within my ego.

Maybe…maybe its you I unfairly seek to be my joy, my prosperity, my peace.

Maybe it’s your open hands I should find and firmly grasp.

Maybe the adventure of you that will give me everything I’ve asked for.

Maybe it’s the motion of mortality that helps me find the love and peace and romance that is you.

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Is it you that waits for me?

Have I foregone my purpose, melted my meaning, and forgotten your beauty?

Have I ignored your call?

Have I muzzled your voice by deeply howling with my own?

The mutating wolf, alone in front of a harvest moon…

Calling but never pursuing.

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I must find you.

With every breath and stride I’ll hunt for you, my Muse.

With every beat of heart and inhale of scent I will come to you, my love.

You are my North.

My compass.

My legacy.

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Truth and Love, Reader.

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