Trust the soup of life

Quote of the day: “Forget rational thought. Play. Play like a child.”  — Steven Pressfield Do the Work

And more Steven Pressfield wisdom:

Next to Resistance, rational thought is the artist or entrepreneur’s worst enemy.

Bad things happen when we employ rational thought, because rational thought comes from the ego.

Instead we want to work from the Self, that is, from instinct and intuition, from the unconscious….

When an artist says “Trust the soup,” she means let go of the need to control (which we can’t do anyway) and put your faith instead in the Source, the Mystery, the Quantum Soup.

The deeper the source we work from, the better our stuff will be—and the more transformative it will be for us and for those we share it with.

Whenever I rationally think about making photography and creating a business I end up thinking I’m crazy for pursuing photography. When I work the numbers or think about how to create a business that brings in income, I want to give up. I can’t figure it out. It doesn’t compute. I realized a while ago, that taking a job doing something that I don’t love is in some ways a lot easier than following my heart. But it’s also a major cop-out (for me at least). What I’ve noticed is that every time I enter one of these manure-filled phases (think fertilizer for something new to grow), that I immediately start looking for ways to escape the discomfort, including imagining myself getting a job, traveling to some other place (anywhere will do), or changing my daily routines.  The trouble with those fantasies is that as Jon Kabat-Zinn says, “Wherever you go, there you are.”

The past few weeks I’ve been mucking around in a soup of doubt and discouragement. At the same time I have been actively working to trust the soup—allowing myself to experience the dark and chaotic muck—trusting that this time is necessary to take me to my next stage, whatever that is. The poet Rilke called this process, “Living the Question.” Rather than seeking for a quick easy answer which probably doesn’t come from Source, I’m sitting with my doubts and questions and frustrations and fears and observing with compassion.

I don’t know where the soup will lead me, but I do trust that out of the soup, something good will grow.

How about you? What part of your life do you need to let go of the need to control and “Trust the soup?”

Feathers

Painted turtle floating in reflections of sky

Hyland Park Reserve Landscape