When people come to see me about faltering creative enthusiasm, I usually recommend a news fast for at least six weeks if not permanently. I tell them to turn off all media stimulus – tv, radio, and throw out the newspaper.
My premise is: if we disconnect ourselves from the iron lung of the media telling us how to breathe we will take imaginative breath more freely on our own. We will begin to think for ourselves and find a center of peace from which to gift ourselves with inspired effort.
The ancient meaning of inspire was to take in breath.
I don’t have a tv connection. I refuse newspaper subscriptions and listen to the BBC for current events. News is like a soap opera. If we tune in once a week to a responsible source we will pretty much have the important points of the story.
When people ask me how I accomplish so much, I tell them I have the time and ability to add two more lives of accomplishment to my own years simply by giving up the media habit.
A very sensitive and intuitive young client was concerned because she felt bludgeoned emotionally and psychically overrun by the media and yet received counsel from her friends she needed to be “connected” to what was going on in the world. We are all sensitive souls and when we allow continued abuse it becomes commonplace in our lives. We become habituated and dulled to the idea we are even being abused. The media eventually convinces us we are too stupid to understand what is best for ourselves. We sell out our individuality for numbness and meaningless conformity.
If we allow ourselves the silence of our own thoughts we will experience the full depths of our abilities.
Some of us are terrified of the vastness of our inner landscape and escape to the safety of others telling us what to think. I’ve spoken about this topic in various places and inevitably someone, usually a woman, will tell me she keeps the tv on for noise in an empty house, to have “company”. My response is “how much more would you enjoy the company of the Spirit that leads us home to ourselves and our talents?” When we confront the unbounded greatness of our gifts and abilities we realize our own and everyone else’s genius.
We begin to have confidence and confirmation we can achieve our visions.
People will often splutter indignantly they only watch “educational channels” - travel, history or science programs. My concern is the effort and time it takes to manage the amount of information coming in is busy work eating into our discretionary time. Time we could be using to grow our creativity.
The inundation of outside material is a drug to keep us from thinking original thoughts and exploring our feelings and turning them into art or music or a birdhouse or the novel we’ve always wanted to write.
When we grab the gold ring and learn who we are, what we really feel and how we think, we will have or make the opportunity to be more in tune with what we desire to do creatively. We don’t need to be in hyper-search mode continually for what we are supposed to do, for the next big trend and how it will affect our success.
We can rest assured knowledge will come to us when we need the information and support.
If there’s a reason for us to be involved in an event of our community or the world we’ll know. When we turn off the media, we tune into a greater intuitive information source. For example, when the tsunami hit in India - without a tv or radio, I knew there were people in the world who needed my healing meditations in their behalf. There was nothing else I could do at the time and who knows but what some of my prayers may have given assistance.
When we release ourselves from the media yoke we find peace and creative impulse is still alive and well in us. We find ourselves less anxious and stressed out.
Our personal integrity is enlivened and we start keeping promises to ourselves.
We free up hours a day of our time for innovative pursuits. Our concentration turns from consumerism and buying what others have imagined and made to examining the possibility we could be bringing new ideas into being, selling our stuff, supporting ourselves and being happy.
Do you notice that if you type tv into the word processor the computer dictionary considers it a spelling error and underlines for capitalization? In the commercial world, we are not allowed to minimize the icon of tv. In the creative world it’s necessary.