I hope you are well. Recently I've been pondering over the connection between spirituality and creativity, partly as a result of the course I'm teaching on poetry and spiritual awakening. It’s striking that so many poets have been spiritually awakened people, or at least have described powerful spiritual experiences, such as Rumi, Hafiz, William Wordsmith and Walt Whitman. It's also significant that so many spiritual texts are written in a poetic form, like the Upanishads and the Dao De Jing. 

            I also speak about this in my upcoming book on The Beatles. In 1967 The Beatles went on a meditation retreat in India with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. They were only there for a few weeks but came back with about 40 songs. John Lennon alone wrote 15 songs in seven weeks. Most of the songs were included on the album they recorded later that year, the so-called White Album. It's a graphic illustration of the power of meditation to induce creativity. The Beatles' trip to India also introduced meditation to millions of people, as it received massive publicity, and they spoke so much about the benefits of the practice. When I was 19, I signed up for a weekend course on TM (transcendental meditation) just because I knew about it from the Beatles. 

            In recent years, there has been a lot of research on creativity and psychedelics. In some cases, psychedelics can definitely help creativity, by breaking down concepts and mental habits and revealing new landscapes of possibility. This is also true of the Beatles. After taking LSD, they made massive creative leaps. Just 18 months after singing mostly simple love songs in 1964, they were recording songs like ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ with spiritual/philosophical lyrics, sitar drones, avant-garde tape loops and so on. However, I also read an interesting piece of research recently that found that although artists thought they were being more creative on psychedelics. observers or listeners rated their creativity lower. So there may not be a totally clear relationship between creativity and psychedelics. But there is definitely a strong relationship between creativity and meditation, or between creativity and spirituality in general.

            In my view this is because creativity and spirituality are two facets of the same deep state of being. To become spiritual is to be creative, and to be creative is to be spiritual. When we attain a state of mental spaciousness in which ego boundaries fade away we also gain access to our creative potentials. Meditation connects us to inspiration.

            I recently wrote a blog for Psychology Today on this topic, which you can read here.

Upcoming Workshop - Back to Stillness 

Continuing on this theme, on June 6^th, I am leading an online workshop on poetry and spirituality, based on my book Back to Stillness. We’ll be cultivating spiritual states through meditations and visualisations. Then we will (optionally) create our own poetry, based on the Japanese ‘haiku’ tradition of describing moments of intense experience. See here

Russel Williams

Last month it was the 8th anniversary of the death of Russel Williams, the great spiritual teacher who I regularly visited for about 20 years, and who I helped write his book Not I, not other than I. Below is a photo of me the chair where Russel used to sit and share his teachings, at the premises of the Buddhist Society of Manchester. I felt slightly reluctant to sit on the chair, as it feels like a sacred space, but it was a wonderful way of connecting with his energy and presence. I still miss Russel's powerful spiritual presence - it was an amazing experience just to sit in the room with him. Sometimes it didn't really matter what he was talking about; I could just bathe in his powerful spiritual radiance. But I still feel permanently and continually enriched by his wisdom. 

Survey on Time Expansion Experiences

Following on from my recent book Time Expansion Experiences, I recently received some funding to conduct further research in this area. I’m doing a survey to find out how common time expansion experiences are and when they occur. It would be wonderful if you could help my research by filling in the questionnaire. It should take just a few minutes. The link to the survey is here:  https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdvFIjXN0xcT0P4ReGVzbNhXhBt5VSdpKGEIn60pCFnQTQMOQ/viewform

Poem

Recently I’ve been spending quite a lot of time in the countryside, and have become intensely aware of the therapeutic effects of nature. I wrote the following poem to describe the effects. For me, ecotherapy is so effective!

Natural Therapy

The best therapy is simple. 

You don’t have to pay or even make an appointment. 

The therapist is always available, for unlimited sessions. 

She doesn’t need to know your condition or symptoms.

You don’t have to talk about your childhood or your relationships.

There are no strategies to follow, no techniques to learn. 

You don’t even have to pay attention to the therapist. 

You can daydream in her presence

chat to your companions, barely even glance at her. 

But still her therapy heals you.

You just need to climb her hills or mountains

walk through her fields and woods 

swim in her lakes and tarns

for long enough to absorb her radiance. 

Her healing is so subtle 

that we don’t feel her touch as she massages us. 

We don’t hear her voice as she soothes us.

But all the time, her healing energy

flows gently through our being.

She awakens us to the present 

so that the past and future stop disturbing us.

Her radiance spreads through our inner space 

so that shadows of fear and worry fade 

and love and hope and gratitude rise 

and meaning reveals itself around us 

like the beauty of a landscape at dawn. 

And at the end of the day 

we are purified, refreshed

reconnected to our source

reattuned to natural harmony. 

 All best wishes and blessings, Steve