2002-09-17 - 11:14 p.m.
I have an almost superstitious belief in the power of books to come into my life and give me what I need when I need it. Sometimes when I feel at loose ends, I just go to a big book store and wander around, watching for something to sparkle. That is one of the first processes I learned to trust.
The book I am reading now may end up on my short list of influential books. It is called Trust the Process (by Shaun McNiff). And while I can't say this is a phrase I have never heard before, I had never before considered how important trusting the process really is. Reading this book made me feel like a lightbulb just went on in my head, or as my mother used to say, I have that "Ah ha" feeling.
"Trusting the process is based on a belief that something valuable will emerge when we step into the unknown. There are elements of surrender and letting go which have more to do with flexibility and the ability to change direction, than with defeat and annihilation."
I remember being horribly depressed and anxious, in the year when several of my friends and coworkers got cancer, my next-door neighbor died, my sister was dead. I didn't know how I could go through life just wondering when something terrible was going to happen to me, too. Finally my anxiety prompted me to see a counselor. And I will always remember what she said when I told her I was so frightened about the future. "What does the word surrender mean to you?" I said I thought it meant giving up. She led me to think of it as relinquishing my illusion of control over things that cannot be controlled.
I have thought about it ever since. Surrender does not come easy to me. But I have at least come to appreciate that my life has its own energy and momentum, and I can't impose some preconceived pattern on it, no matter how much I might want to. All I could really do was to make myself crazy worrying about it.
But I never realized how learning to trust the process had to do with almost everything else I am trying to do.
"If we are able to stay with a situation, it will carry us to a new place."
I think I have always been guilty of overthinking everything, and deciding in advance how it will go. (Which has to be the opposite of trusting the process.) But the idea is to begin whatever process interests you and be open to the possibilities suggested by the act of doing it. In order to be open to the magic that happens when the materials, creative energy and attention are all focused in one place, you must also be willing to encounter the unknown. And to recognize that part of the process can be frustration and anxiety.
Can I learn to trust the process of making art? It is the thing I most want to do, but sometimes I can't get out of my own way.
Can I trust the process of learning to play the guitar? Trust that my frustration and uneven leaps in ability will eventually lead me to play well? Trust that my teacher has planned these lessons in this order for a reason?
Can I trust the process of keeping up my exercise routine? Trust that showing up every day for a walk, even when I don't feel like it, will eventually lead me to a sane relationship with exercise?
"Anything truly novel and significant comes through unwatched, unintended, daimonically."
So finally I understand that you don't just "think up" creative ideas. You have to create an environment for them. New ideas are a response to something in life, not an immaculate conception. Some of my best work evolved into something other than what was initially intended. But I always looked upon that as an accident rather than as the basis of my approach.
I am reminding myself these days to just jump into things, to sometimes leap before I look. To trust that there is always a new direction for things to go, one I have never even heard of before.
I think I am more comforted in the middle of the night by this idea than by any other: there is always something else. Something you don't know about. Just when you believe you have to choose between A and B......there is Z.
If you trust the process.
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