It’s hard sometimes to shut off the analytical mind—the mind that wants to control, predict, and forecast outcomes. This mind certainly has its time and place, but not when you want to be in a creative space, for creativity is about flow, openness, expansion, and trusting the information and ideas that arrive in our minds. When we are in this state, it’s like our minds are radio antennas, picking up frequencies and information that exist behind the visible light spectrum. This is the state of being from which creativity arises and unfolds.
For nearly eight months last year I was in that flow space. If you read my earlier blogs, you know it culminated by living in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico for two-and-a-half months to finish my book. Then I came back to Seattle and contracted…and contracted some more…and even more until the point where when I was alone in my own company, I was almost unbearable to myself. I was in such a state of contraction and discontent, I was blind to my future.
At the beginning of 2018, I made a decision to get clear, which included quitting alcohol, coffee, and sugar for a minimum of 21 days. I remembered doing another 21-day cleanse about seven years prior, and I remembered how clear and creative I felt at the end of the second week. The Being Experiment was born out of the clarity of these 21 days in January, and the idea downloaded to me right at the end of that second week. What also occurred at the same time was that although I knew not what it was, I could finally feel my future moving towards me—so much so in fact that I wrote on my desk calendar on January 31st, “Finalize book deal.” While I didn’t know what that meant, I wrote it on there anyway.
Today, January 31st, marks the 21st day of the cleanse. When I woke up this morning and performed my morning meditation practice, which in turn changed my state of being towards the day into one of excitement, I said to myself before leaving the house: Anything can happen today. Today is going to be a great day. Even though I said this, I was unattached to any outcome, and since I picked the word “peaceful” that morning in The Being Experiment, I knew even if nothing else happened, I would be at peace at the end of the day.
Like any normal morning, I made my way to a coffee shop to write. On this day, I happened to choose KEXP, Seattle’s independent radio station. (If you are a music fan and don’t know about KEXP, this is one of the best independent radio stations in the United States and it streams all over the world.)
At first it seemed like any other day, however, when I opened my laptop I received a message from an internationally renowned New York Times bestselling author and lecturer. He told me he had received my name from a publishing house and asked if I would be interested in working with him. I was in complete shock. This great unknown showed up, or materialized, completely out of nowhere.
Of course I thought it was a joke, because it was so absurd that not only had I said something great would happen today, but I had also written on my desk calendar, “Finalize book deal.” While this communication with this author was the opening salvo of a negotiation, none the less it was a start towards finalizing a book deal. Not only was this occurrence seemingly preposterous, it was exactly what I had been focusing on creating during my 21 days of cleansing and meditation; a client from whom I can learn, a client to whom I can offer value, someone who has a big message for the world, someone who values me, and the freedom to work from anywhere I want.
As I said in the previous blog, in getting quiet, focused, and still, I have changed my internal state from fear and worry to joy and trust. Nothing changed in my external world, but I managed to change my internal state of being. It’s my belief that what we see and experience is just a sliver of a greater mystery that revolves around our consciousness and who we are being—and that our external reality is simply a projection of our internal reality.
In A Curious Year in the Great Vivarium Experiment, this is one of Thomas’s main discoveries—that the universe is not cold and lifeless, but loving and interactive, and that it responds to who we are being.
This was originally written on January 31st, 2017 and edited on September 26, 2018