A Lasting Change

Lasting change: 

it's few books that have such impact as to actually be a catalyst for lasting change, a deep inspiration that carries past a number of days and weeks and reaches into years. I've been blessed with some of these, books that have grabbed my attention and forced me to readdress the conditions of my life, the status of my joy and passion, and have caused me to make a lasting change. Of course I just might be highly impressionable, more easily swayed to new directions. But the books I'm thinking of have a more quiet energy to them, they don't so much lead the reader to drastic action as they gently plant a seed that continues to blossom years after they've been read and perhaps we're no longer even aware that we're acting from this source. I smile as I write these words, thinking of one book in particular, Steve Pressfield's The War of Art, and his message that urges a writer to simply do the work, writing only for the sake of writing, everyday, because that's what writers do...

they write.

and that message gave cause for a lasting change. 

I write.

everyday. 

it's a wonderful book, and again I've been blessed with a few that have struck me equally deeply. But I have no idea as to why or how this has occurred, of literally hundreds of books read each year and yet this perfect and certain message has found me so surely as was needed. I can only liken it as a continuation of some subtle energy, that it's a living thing transferred through pages directly to the soul. Pressfield is steeped in the lore and language of the Bhagavad Gita, he's a yogi, and perhaps he's a conduit to Krishna's will, that these are not truly a mortals words as they are a breathing message from a higher muse. Whatever the source, and without further speculation, reading The War of Art transformed me as a writer, created a lasting change -

very simply, I began to write.

everyday. 

more so, I began to write without fear of criticism and rejection, and solely for the sake of my own creativity. Writing is meant to be shared, it's gifted from its source directly to any reader who happens to find those particular words - and yet that's where it ends, any meaning or value is for meant for the reader alone and isn't of the authors concern. Or it shouldn't be. The writer remains free of anything that comes after the sharing of their words, without the effects of karma, but only if the intent is pure, that the writing took place within a joyful heart, expressed through the passion of a writer's soul. 

true freedom, 

joy.

it's a living message, energy passed through words. 

over twenty years since I first read Pressfield's book, and whatever energy passed through to me continues even now, everyday...

a lasting change. 

~

Peace, Eric