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Dalton
Roberts |
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Recently I had an experience that
clearly showed me the quality of my life is directly dependent on my
frame of mind as I experience it. That may seem like a self-evident
truism but no truism is true for us until we experience it. Two of my favorite magazines are Spirituality
and Health and Science of Mind. I have this longtime good
habit of keeping yellow pens handy (meaning all over the house) to
highlight good ideas I come across. So one night I took these two
magazines to bed along with my omnipresent yellow pen. To my chagrin I
found little in them I wanted to highlight. The next morning I put them in my
recycle stack. I remained surprised that so little in them had seemed
worthy of highlighting and remembering. Then a few nights later when I
had a shortage of reading materials I picked them up out of my throwaway
pile to browse through them one more. Soon I became aware I was
highlighting up a storm! I laid down the magazines and
meditated for a while on what happened between the time I saw little of
worth in them to this night when I was madly marking thoughts I wanted
to implant into my consciousness. I recalled that the night I saw little
worth in them I had been in a low state of expectancy. As Mance Dorgan
use to say, I was “plumb down.” Ever notice that no one can
encourage you when you are “plumb down”? You don’t really want to
be perked up. Your attitude is “leave me alone and let me slurp up my
blues.” Blues slurping seems to be an
intermittently mandatory thing for me. We all have more of the
manic-depressive streak in us than we allow ourselves to admit. Some
call it the pendulum effect – going from one extreme to another. The night I was slurping blues I
was not aware of my mental state. It wasn’t a particular problem --
just a loss of zest and an attitude of low creativity with concomitant
low expectancy. The night I was yellow highlighting
with great gusto I was feeling good and aware of it. I was taking on an
exciting new project. I was open to ideas. More than open, I was
actively seeking ideas. Joseph Campbell was asked if he
meditated. He said, “No, I yellow pencil.” I have tried many kinds
of meditation and have yellow-penciled for decades. I can tell you, they
are the same thing and achieve the same result of wrapping the mind
around valuable concepts and feelings. I recommend you get a large package
of yellow pens and take up the habit but if that doesn’t appeal to
you, just remember that we all have a yellow pen in our mind. We are
consciously or unconsciously highlighting words, feelings and ideas all
day long, every day we are on this planet. This being the fact, isn’t
it important for us to move more of our highlighting from the
unconscious to the conscious part of our mind? Being a songwriter puts one of
those old time flypapers in your mind for ideas. You quickly discover
that the titles and hooks that come your way quickly evaporate unless
you write them down. So it is with your life and your work, no matter
what you do. My experience with not highlighting
those two magazines and returning to them later with numerous highlights
shows the key role of attitude in the creative process. If you are low
as a snake’s belly you won’t see much of value in anything you read
or hear. So become like Ali. Float like a butterfly through the garden
of your day and sting like a bee by getting down all the good thoughts
with that yellow pen in your mind. Find your own best ways to get them
working in your life.
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