Being Creative from the Stillness

I have done a lot of nerve wracking things in my life, and yes - my nerves were sometimes really wracked! As a classical musician, and now as an opera director, I have had to perform my best, in front of a lot of people, with only one chance to do it right.

Sometimes I was a success and sometimes a disaster, and I used to base my happiness on making the first option come true. I did this by preparing for hours and hours, planning it to perfection, making sure I could do it in my sleep. Then I'd pray for a magical touch of inspiration.  Miraculously, it often came, but it was an exhausting way to live, and in spite of my successes, a subconscious fear of failure was running inside my head.  Now, after learning to be intimate with the stillness within, I have totally changed my way of working.

At the same time that I was doing my Mastery of the Self-course with the Ishayas, I finished my education as an opera-director, which was a dream come-true. The director´s task is complex. She decides whether the opera takes place in a gloomy cellar 300 years ago, in a modern office-building, or in a French brothel in the twenties. It's her job to know if a character is lying or telling the truth, or if he is secretly in love with his aunt, and it´s the directors job to inspire everybody to express that in the best way possible.

As a very fresh opera-director, I staged an opera for school children. At this time, I was developing a pretty stable experience of inner peace, and just before we started rehearsing, I spent 6 weeks on an Ascension retreat and recognized that I could choose for this peace any time. So, I went back to the opera house with the intention to do my work from this space.

It was a totally magical experience. I was calm, in the flow, spontaneous and on top of the situation. I interacted with the singers in a completely new way, since I was actually there, present to what was given to me in the moment. We had so much fun together! And what was most amazing was that this was done without planning. I am not saying that I wasn't prepared, after all I had cut the piece together myself, but I didn't plan every little detail. I wasn't planning ahead in my mind as I had used to do, always preparing for what I was going to do inthe next five minutes. I was present. It was great. If all of a sudden I didn´t know what to do, I took five seconds and focused inwards, and there it was - a brand new idea.

Occasionally the old habits of control came to visit me. I was still holding onto some of my old ways of trying to make everything perfect. I sometimes still believed that if something went "wrong", it was my fault or that I wasn´t up to the task. Sometimes I would be struck by fear and sit up all night planning for the next day, as I always used to do. The next day it was not even half as fun, and after a short while I went back to plan A: To be still, and see what happens.  It worked like magic! It was pretty clear to me that the best thing I could do was surrender to the stillness and see what happened next. Worrying just didn't work.

People started to notice how calm I was, in the midst of the chaos of an opera house approaching a premiere. My days were a constant flow of decisions to be made; what lighting do you want here? Can she wear these shoes? What does my character feel right now? I did things I had never done before, creating new scenography, shooting pictures to be projected on giant screens on the walls, collaborating with everybody at the house. And I just had fun, deciding without fear of doing mistakes, trusting the impulses I got from my inner source.

The singers trusted me, the staff trusted me, and I am sure they were influenced by my stability.  Actually the whole production was influenced by it. The atmosphere was joyful and appreciative. From day one, everybody involved had a strong belief in this production, and I honestly cannot tell you why, other than that I myself was without fear of failing.  Because I had realized that my happiness is not dependent on the outside.  Happiness lies within, and the outside is a big, big playground where we all get to have fun.