“I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone’s heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark.”
— Raymond Carver
To hear one’s heartbeat in a moment of love is like feeling the whirring sound of the engine underneath you as you speed ahead on a motorway. Caught in the thrill of the moment, you may be reminded, briefly, that you are pushed ahead by more than just your own ingenuity.
Working on a creative project can feel like this.
You may have an intention within the work you make, yet in the end, the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
Between the craft, lies an unknown force.
To ignore this fundamental force, sometimes called the unconscious, God spirit, serendipity, and rely only upon the proficiency of your craft within the creative work you do is to deny the true importance of being connected to your own inner engine.
In this Bluezone, we’ll explore the heart, and how being connected to it can help you bring your creativity to the next level.
Be(at) True To Yourself
The very function of the heart is actually quite bewildering when one begins to consider it.
It quickens, it slows, yet it never stops.
It never stops, until it does.
What you do between your first and last heartbeat defines who you are.
Sounds straightforward, right?
Well…
Acting in congruence with who you are is actually (as it turns out) quite difficult.
What may seem authentic to you one day, can feel foreign tomorrow.
Beneath every benevolent action or twisted incentive lies a person seeking to love and be loved. This doesn’t mean of course, that the love is a healthy, pleasant kind. Yet attention to anything can be considered a type of love.
When a friend, a family member, a colleague or anyone that you try to impress projects a version of you onto you, it becomes difficult not to reject or play into it.
We act how we think they’d like us to act. We reply with what we believe they’d want to hear. Ultimately, we lie to them, and to ourselves.
The greatest artists seek undeniable authenticity from themselves. They speak and act their truth regardless of how provocative, controversial or embarrassing it may seem.
At least within their own work, they don’t lie to themselves.
To practice authenticity in your art, focus on on doing one true thing.
Write one sentence that is true, for you and no one else.
Do this enough, and you will start to hear this voice of truth more often.
This is the compass— this is that whirring sound of the engine.
The Invisible
The heart interacts with reality in a more irrational way.
Unlike the brain, which seeks rationale, logic and justification, the heart is connected with the unseeable spheres of reality.
The same way mantis shrimp can see thirteen more types of colour than humans can. We know these colours exist, we just accept the fact our eyes can’t see them.
In this same vein, there are parts to reality we cannot see, yet interact with constantly.
Stimulus we cannot see ranges from the obvious: oxygen, gasses, electric vibration, wind, air pressure… etc. To the esoteric or paranormal: emotion, ghosts, spirits, demons, angels, parallel dimensions, mind viruses.
To trust your heart is to be in touch with intuition.
It is no secret that our society values intellectuality over emotional intelligence.
Perhaps this is just the way we have evolved. Yet I think this way of prioritising, makes us more prone to losing touch with the heart, causing many of us to feel lost.
Trusting your heart doesn’t always make sense. In a world that prizes intellectual reasoning, faith in the unknown is a direct opposite. It can’t be explained.
Yet any type of creation begins with this faith in the unknown. Before something exists, we must have faith that it could, and trust ourselves to see it through.
Anyone with aspirations of creating great art should strive to trust one’s heart.
To trust that the logic with which your heart operates takes into account the unseeable, perhaps, unknowable.
Manifest Authenticity
The obscure, typo-filled English translation of the Russian “Reality Transurfing” (Vadim Zeland) expresses an idea significant to anyone who seeks to achieve a goal.
The idea suggests that the way to bring your dreams into reality requires a state:
Synchronicity between the heart and the mind.
When the understanding of the heart is in sync with the perspective of the mind, the world reflects harmony back to you.
The once intangible appears as a physical truth.
The mind always thinks about the means and how one should act. (…) The heart in contrast does not think. (…) The conflict between heart and mind arises because the mind doubts the goal can be realistically achieved. As soon as the grip of control weakens, the limiting conditions of the mind fall away to reveal unity between heart and mind.
— Vadim Zeland
Once upon a time the idea of building a metal tube that could fly through the sky was an intangible. An absurdity. A dream.
Yet someone believed in it, and trusted their heart enough to believe that human flight was possible.
Today, the Wright brothers are considered some of the world’s greatest pioneers.
Closing Thoughts
Ultimately— setting the intention to create from an authentic place is enough to move the dial forward and elevate your process.
Within my own work, this is a constant practice.
Within the authors I read, honesty and authenticity jump off the page. There is an effortlessness that oozes from certain passages and sequences, a way of expressing that is completely unique, multi-layered and unbearably honest.
Saul Bellow, Joan Didion, Henry Miller. F Scott Fitzgerald, James Baldwin, Raymond Carver, Milan Kundera, Franz Kafka, Jack Kerouac— are all shining examples of truth, expressed truthfully.
Bluezone’s
To interface with reality in a way which allows ideas to flow. To get into the zone.
It’s a big part of what this newsletter stands for : a limitless potential for creation in the flow state.
Being in a bluezone signifies positive elevation.
If you’re reading this right now, choosing to internalise these words, then thank you, and welcome to the bluezone.
I hope you’ve been enjoying these weekly newsletters— I would love to hear what you think in the comments.
Leave a like if you enjoyed this, share it with a friend and don’t forget to subscribe to get notified of every new release.
Till next time,
iL.
I agree with this, when I create I always try to do it authentically, but sometimes its so easy to get lost in the debate of what is authentic in and what is true. How do you tackle this?
I agree 100% 💪🏻💪🏼💪🏽🔥