Creative Help Arrives

Once you’ve decided to pursue the creative path, you can count on help arriving. The hero, once committed to the creative quest, has begun the summoning of guides and support. This emotional pact, the solidity, and decisiveness with which you are closing off doubt, notifies the universe that you are ready.

Sounds silly. Like an enchanted owl will crash into your room and alight on your pillow. Or an anonymous donor will bankroll you into high society.

More likely you’ll feel an inner source of courage you haven’t before. Or a skeptical friend will encourage you. Or odd coincidences, that are “you’re headed in the right direction” messages, keep happening. Often, an unexpected mentor will appear—maybe for ten minutes, maybe for ten years.

This is an exhilarating time in the creative hero’s journey. Your job is to enjoy looking for the magic and then following it. I’ve found, as you may have, that this commitment phase doesn’t just happen once. You must re-commit again and again to the path you’ve chosen.

Fortunately, the magic doesn’t fade away with the number of times you commit. It’s always there to meet you.

• What magic is happening around you?

“Until one is committed, there is a hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.

A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings, and material assistance which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.”

--William Hutchinson Murray (Scottish mountaineer and author of The Scottish Himalayan Expedition, 1951)