How to draw closer to your mystery

The above audio is a reading from a transcript. It is a thirdhand creation story. They are not my words, but the story was told to me orally by someone I loved, and for almost twenty years has lived on a microcassette unplayed. It is an unearthed treasure and I wanted to share it with you.

TRANSCRIPT:

My dad used to tell this story about the beginning of the world. And initially all is covered in water and there are two animals on a row boat. And one was a Coyote and one was a Duck. And the Coyote was the creator but he didn’t have any raw material with which to create the world because all around was water and the boat. And the duck didn’t have any creative powers of his own but he could dive and the duck did dive down and took up a little piece of mud in his beak and brought it back to the Coyote. And the Coyote took that piece of mud and spread it out, spread it out, spread it out, kept working it and working it until he had a continent - and that’s how the earth came about. And it’s the same with the creative process in that you have all the raw material you need to create but it’s sediment at the very bottom of your mind. The bottom of consciousness and the layers of the subconscious and you can’t get to it, but at some point when you keep trying and trying you discover a diver – you discover a duck that will go down in to your subconscious and bring back pieces of raw material with which to work and you don’t really know where they came from, but you found some part of your mind that is capable of retrieving that information. And then where do your stories come from? I don’t know from the bottom of your mind.

Here’s another way to put it. John Lennon was talking about George Harrison. He said George Harrison is not a very interesting man, but what is interesting is the mystery inside of George, and watching George discover that mystery over the years. And it’s the same thing, we’re all boring people, but in you is a mystery that’s very interesting and the closer you live to that mystery the more interesting your life will be. And that’s what you’re doing when you’re writing - you’re living close to your mystery.

Here’s another one, Annie Dillard said “Some people can go to bed at night and sleep well without having written a single beautiful sentence all day long.” And it’s true - some people can sleep without a single beautiful sentence. But the question you should ask yourself is, “What do I have to do everyday? What do I so deeply need everyday that if I don’t do it, I don’t sleep or I don’t sleep as well?” And that’s your mystery. Whatever it is, whatever your deepest, deepest need is, so deep that you need it each day, that’s your mystery. And just draw closer and closer and closer to that need and you’ll be more and more centered and more and more beautiful and more and more radiant and ever more transcendent.