• Unhappiness. We feel bored, we're restless, We can't get no satisfaction. There's guilt but we can't put our finger on the source. We want to go back to bed; we want to get up and party. We feel unloved and unlovable. We are disusted. We hate our lives. We hate ourselves. At this point vice kick in. Dope, adultery, web surfing. Resistance becomes clinical. Depression, aggression, dysfunction. Then actual crime and physical self-distruction.

The artist and the fundamentalist both confront the same issue, the mystery of their existence as individuals. Each asks the same questions:

• Who am I?

• Why am I here?

• What is the meaning of my life?

At more primitive stages of evolution, humanity didn't have to deal with such questions. These are not easy questions. They're not easy because the human being isn't wired to function as an individual. We're wired tribally, to act as part of a group. Our psyches are programmed by millions of years of hunter-gatherer evolution. We don't know how to be free individuals.

Fundamentalism is the philosophy of the powerless, the conquered, the displaced and the dispossessed. Its spawning ground is the wreakage of political and military defeat, as Hebrew fundamentalism arose during the Babylonian captivity, as white Cristian fundamentalism appeared in the Americal South during Reconstruction, as the notion of the Master Race evolved in Germany following World War I. In such desperate times, the vanquished race would perish without a doctorine that restored hope and pride. Islamic fundamentalism ascentds from the same landscape of despair and possesses the same tremendous and potent appeal. He cannot find his way into the future, so he retreats to the past. He returns in imagination to the glory days of his race and seeks to recontitute both them and himself in their purer, more virtuous light. He gets back to basics. To fundamentals. Resistance to the fundamentalist is the call of the Evil One, seeking to seduce hum form his virtue. The fundamentalist is consumed with Satan, whom he loves as he loves death. To combat the call of sin i.e. Resistance, the fundamentalist plunges either into action or into the study of sacred texts. He loses himself in these, seeking to return to a purer world from which he and all have fallen.

The humanist belives that humankind, as individuals, is called upon to co-create the world with God. This is why he values human life so highly. In his view, things do progress, life doesn evolve; each indiviudal has value,a t least potentially, in advancing this cause.

When fundamentalism wins, the world enters a dark age.

It may be that human race is not ready for freedom. The air of liberty may be too rarefied for us to breathe.

"The truely free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery" — Socrates

Those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.

When we see others beginning to live their authentic lives, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own.

Individuals who are realised in their own lives almost never criticize others. If they speak at all, it is to offer encouragement. Watch yourself.

Self-doubt can be an ally. This is because it serves as an indicatore of aspiration. If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends, "Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist" chances are you are.

Are you paralyzed with fear? That's a good sign.

Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator, it tells us what we have to do. The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.

Resistance is directly proportional to love. If you are feeling massive resistance, teh good news is, it means there's tremendous love there too. If you didn't love the project that is terrifying you, you wouldn't feel anything. The opposite of live isn't hate; it's indifference.

Grandiose fantasies are a sign of resistance. They are a sign of an amateur. The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like.

Sometimes we balk at embarking on an enterprise because we're afraid of being alone. We feel comfortable with the trive arond us; it makes us nervous going off into the woods on our own.

Friends sometimes asl, "Don't you get lonely sitting by yourself all day?" At first it seemed odd ot head myself answer No. Then I realised that I was not alone; I was in the book; I was with the characters. I was with my self.

The athlete knows the day will never come when he wakes up pain-free. He has to play hurt. The part of us we imagine needs healing is not the part we create from; that part is far deeper and stronger. The part that needs healing is our personal life. Personal life has nothing to do with work. Resistance loves "healing". Resistance knows that the more psychic energy we expend dredging and re-dredging the tired, boring injustices of our personal lives, the less juice we have to do our work.

Seeking support from friends and family is like having people gathered around at your deathbed. It's nice, but when the ship sails, all they can do is stand at the dock waving goodbye. The more energy we spend stoking up on support from colleagues and loved ones, the weaker we become and the less capable of handling our business.

Aw, come on! Nothing's more important than sex.

have you ever gone a week without rationalization?

Resistance is fear. But resistance is too cunning to show itself naked in this form. Why? Because if resistance lets us see clearly that our own fear is preventing us form doing our work, we may feel shame on this. It doesn't want this. So it brings in Rationalization. It presents us with a series of plausible, rational justifications for why we shouldn't do our work and it makes sense.

The muses were nine sisters, daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, which means "memory". Their names are CLie, Erato, Thalia, Terpsichore, Calliope, Polyhumnia, Euterpe, Melpomene, and Urania. Their job is to inspire artists. Each Muse is responsible for a different art.

The moment a person learns he's got terminal cancer, a profound shift takes place in his psyche. At one stroke in the doctor's office he becomes aware of what really matters to hi. Things that sixty seconds earlier had seemed all important suddenly appear meaningless, while people and concerns that he had till then dismissed at once take on supreme importance.

Maybe, he realizes, working this weekend on that big deal at the office isn't all that vital. Maybe it's more important to fly cross-country for his grandson's graduation. maybe it isn't so crucial that he have the last word in the giht with his wife. Maybe instead he should tell her how much she means to him and how deeply he has always loved her.

Faced with our imminent extinction, Tom Laughlin believes, all assumptions into question.

• What does our life mean?

• Have we lived it rihgt?

• Are there vital acts we've left unformed, crucial words unspoken?

• Is it too late?

The self wishes, to create, to evolve, the ego likes things just the way they are.

The Ego is that part of the psyche that believes in material existence. What Ego believes:

1. Death is real.

2. Time and space are real.

3. Every individual is different and separate from every other.

4. The predominant impulse of life is self-preservation.

5. There is no god.

What self believes:

1. Death is an illusion.

2. Time and space are illusions.

3. All beings are one.

4. The supreme emotion is love

5. God is all there is.

The Self is our deepest being. The Ego hates Self because when we seat our consciousness in the self, we put the ego out of business.

Fear is the consequence of following our heart. Fear of backruptcy, fear of poverty, fear of insolvency. Fear of groveling when we try to make it on our own.

All of these and many more are serious fears. But they are not the real fear. Not the Master Fear, the Mother of all Fears that's so close to us that even when we verbalize it we don't believe it.

Fear That We Will Succeed. That we can access the powers we secretly know we posses. That we can become the person we sense in our hearts we truely are.

We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are. More than our parents/children/teachers think we are. We fear that we actually posses the talent that our still, small voice tells us. That we actually have the guts, the perseverance, the capacity. We fear that we truely can steer our ship, plant our flag, reach our Promised Land.

We know that if we embrace our ideals, we must prove to be worth of them. And that scares the hell out of us. What will become of us? We will lose our friends and family, who will no longer recognize is. We will wind up alone, in the cold void of starry space, with nothing and no one to hold on to.

We wind up in space, but not alone, Instead we are tapped into an unquenchable, undepletable, inexhaustible source of wisdom, consciousness, companionship. Yeah we lose friends. But we find friends too, in places we never thought to look. And they're better friends, truer friends. And we are better and truer to them.

None of use are born as passive generic blobs waiting for the world to stamp its imprint to us. Instead we show up possessing already a highly refined and individual soul. We are not born with unlimited number of choices. We can't be anything we want to be. We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny. We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become.

Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we outght to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.

To labor in the arts for any reason other than love is prostitution.

• Territorial

• Hierarchical

In the hierarchy, the artist looks up and looks down. The one place he can't look is that place he must: within.

The act of creation is by definition territorial.

Of any activity, you do, ask yourself: If I were the last person on earth, would I still do it?

When Krishna instructed Arjuna that we have a right to our labor but not to the fruits of our labor, he was conseling the warrior to act territorially, not hierarchically. We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.

To labor in this way, The Bhagvad-Gita tells us, is a form of meditation and a supreme species of spiritual devotion. It also, I belive, conforms most closely to Higher Reality.

Every breath we take, every heartbeat, every evolution of every cell comes from God and is sutained by God every seocnd, just as every creation, invention, every bar of music or line of verse, every thought, vision, fantasy, every dumb-ass flop and stroke of genious comes from that infinite intelligence that created us and the universe in all its dimensions, out of the Void, the field of infinite potential, primal chaos, the Muse. To acknowledge that reality, to efface all ego, to let the work come through us and give it back freely to its source, that, in my opinion is as true to reality as it get.

Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action.

Do or don't do it.

If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don't do it, you not only hurt yourself, even distroy yourself. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the plant.

Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It's a gift to the world and every being in it. Don't cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you've got.