Tapping Into the Sacred Flow of Creation

How I found inspiration during an uninspired year.

Bob Olson is a former skeptic and private eye who has investigated life after death for 27 years. He shares meaningful stories to expand minds, comfort grief, and uplift souls. He’s the host of Afterlife TV, author of Answers About The Afterlife and The Magic Mala, and founder of the directory of credible psychics, mediums, animal communicators, and intuitive practitioners, BestPsychicDirectory.com.

Photo by Mike Hindle on Unsplash

In May of 2014, my book Answers About the Afterlife was published. I spent the next year promoting it. In addition to being interviewed on radio shows and podcasts to promote the book, I was working on Afterlife TV, Best Psychic Directory, and investigating life after death. Consequently, even though I felt ready to write my next book in May 2015, I wasn’t inspired to write anything new. In hindsight, it’s not surprising I felt this way. I hadn’t had any time to rest and rejuvenate.

I tried writing a few books out of sheer willpower. After ten or twenty pages, the ideas fell flat. Eventually, I surrendered to the notion that the timing wasn’t right. It was late spring, so I hoped inspiration would come over the summer. It didn’t. I decided to let the autumn leaves be my muse. The leaves turned color and eventually fell from the branches without a single twinge of inspiration for me. Before I knew it, it was May again—2016.

That’s when Melissa gave me a new keyboard for my birthday. The Bluetooth keyboard was designed to look and feel like an old typewriter from the 1930s. It even had that clickety-clack sound when I typed the round, concave keys.

After setting up the keyboard, I wanted to play with it. I decided to write a fictional story based on my experiences after getting my first mala beads. I had absolutely no intention of sharing this with anyone. I genuinely just wanted to play with my new keyboard.

The moment I began to type, something unexpected happened. A story began to unfold inside my head. I don’t know where the story came from. It was based on my experiences, but I quickly recognized that it led in a different direction. It began with one character named Robby, who found some mala beads stored away in his attic.

I was typing frantically because the words were flowing through my brain, and my fingers were struggling to keep up with the fast pace at which the words and images were being revealed. From another room, Melissa could hear a symphony unfolding, the rhythmic beat of clickety-clack keys. I got so lost in the story that hours went by like minutes.

Melissa popped her head in to suggest I take a break, reminding me it was lunchtime. Since this entire experience was new to me, I was afraid to stop. I worried that the story would cease to flow if I interrupted the stream of consciousness. I kept going.

New scenes were unfolding, with new characters entering each scene. After Robby, I was introduced to his wife, Mary. Then I met his father, Dave. Before I knew it, there was his mother, Margie, a priest named Father Burke, friends named Matt and Caroline, and a mysterious stranger in a library named Tru. I learned so much about these characters in the first few chapters that I quickly felt attached to them.

Robby and Mary were struggling financially, and he was in the attic searching for something to pawn. The unfolding of events in the first few pages revealed his love for hockey, his childhood romance with Mary, and a softhearted compassion that led him to free hornets out of a window despite his fear of being stung. I also learned that Robby was skeptical about the mala beads he found, even a bit cynical.

I wasn’t merely recording events. I was writing about well-rounded characters with flaws, strengths, needs, and challenges. I found myself cheering for their victories, cringing at their missteps, and rooting them toward accomplishing their dreams.

Where were these details coming from? The story seemed to be waiting for me to access it, much like the mala beads in Robby’s attic. For example, names appeared in my mind’s eye. Even when my intellect knew that having a mother named Margie and a wife named Mary might confuse readers, the story insisted that these were their names. Changing them didn’t feel like an option.

I wondered, Is this what channeling feels like? Who is dictating this story? As my curiosity grew, I told myself, Don’t ask questions. Just record it before it’s gone.

By the end of the day, I was mentally spent. I hadn’t eaten, used the restroom, or stretched my legs. I typed like the story would disappear forever if I didn’t keep up with the flow of words, pictures, and movies streaming through my mind. Out of sheer exhaustion and a need to eat supper, I stopped typing. I sat behind my new keyboard, suspended in time, already grieving the sacred connection of pure creation.

I thought, This must be how Mozart and Michelangelo felt all the time. What a gift to have known this connection, even for a single day.

I woke up the following day, curious yet tentative. I poured a cup of coffee and walked into my office. I sat in my chair. Every move felt deliberate and paramount, yet I moved with guarded hesitation. I was prepared for disappointment but hopeful, nonetheless.

I sipped my coffee, switched on the keyboard, and watched my screen indicate that the Bluetooth was connected. Like a pianist about to play the first notes before an auditorium of people, it seemed as if I were moving in slow motion. I placed my fingers above the keys and closed my eyes. Clickety-clack. Clickety-clack. I realized I’d been holding my breath when a burst of air escaped my lungs.

The connection—the sacred stream of consciousness—was right there, waiting. It had not dissolved due to my absence. The story picked up where I had left off, and I continued the dictation for another day.

This went on for thirty days, at which point the rough draft was done. The story was complete, with multiple characters, an underlying theme, character arcs, and life lessons.

Once I read the manuscript, I recognized the lessons told in the story. It was wisdom I’d gained about life from my investigation of the afterlife. The characters whose stories illustrated these lessons were new to me, but I recognized they would be with me for the rest of my life. I think of them nearly every day.

In May 2017, The Magic Mala was presented to the world. I didn’t give it the publicity tour Answers About the Afterlife got. It found its own audience. I felt the story was born of its own making, so it would create its own platform. It did, and it was fun to watch. I enjoyed witnessing how it changed people’s lives as much as I enjoyed writing it.

After reading the book, many people began their own mala practice, and they shared some of the most miraculous stories with me. Two years prior, one man had requested professional representation with an agent and was rejected. Suddenly, after doing his mala practice for two weeks, that same agent who rejected him called to ask if he was still interested in representation. He accepted, and his career and income escalated because of it.

A young married couple began using their malas to improve their housing situation. They were unhappy with their current rental accommodations. Two months later, they found a beautiful home they could afford. They told me it felt like miracles and serendipities lined up before them to make it possible for them to buy it, including a promotion at work and a discount on the asking price.

I was inundated with stories like these in the year following The Magic Mala's release. It reminded me of the time I first began using a mala myself. It was 2005. Melissa had attended a weekly class about working with malas and would return home to tell me what she had learned. When the class ended, she purchased a mala for me made with lapis lazuli gemstones. I decided to follow the program that Melissa had been taught, which included a forty-day commitment to use the mala twice daily. I repeated the same Sanskrit abundance mantra I presented in the book: Om Shrim Maha Lakshmiyea Swaha. Let me just say that the results I gained have led me to continue using my mala today, nineteen years later.

I learned two lessons from this experience. The first is about creativity.

Bruce Lee said, “The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.” That makes sense in light of this story. I tried writing a new book for a year. I even attempted to force creativity. It couldn’t be done. I have a host of partially written books on my computer that I’d tried to write during this uninspired year. It wasn’t until Melissa gave me a birthday present (the keyboard) and I sat down to “play” with it that the magic happened.

I wasn’t trying to write for an audience. I never intended for anyone to read what I was writing. I was typing out a story as an act of playfulness. And what is surrender if not the mindset of playfulness? Synonyms include lightheartedness, spiritedness, and glee, and none of those words represent the process of being controlling or trying to make something happen.

The second lesson I learned is that anyone can tap into the sacred flow of creation. Once again, Bruce Lee explained how in the quote above. He suggests that you relinquish your need to control it. In other words, don’t have an expectation of what your creative expression should be or look like. If you’re writing, start writing words on the page. If you’re painting, dip your brush in paint and let it glide across the paper or canvas. If you prefer photography, point your camera and click the shutter.

I’ve heard people sing in this manner as well, allowing sounds to resonate on their vocal cords. The sounds don’t have to be words, and they don’t have to be planned. You can discover them as you sing.

I can’t help but believe that we’re tapping into an intelligent energy during this process. Perhaps it’s a consciousness of divinity, and this divine source breathes the experience of pure creative expression into us.

The best representation of this is portrayed in the Pink Floyd song, “The Great Gig in the Sky.” I read about the story behind that song. The band asked the singer, Clare Torry, to improvise wordless vocals as they played the music. This experiment resulted in a song that can make you weep just listening to it.

I’ll leave you to listen to the Pink Floyd song below (see video), sung by Clare Torry herself. I’d love to hear in the comments how you might have tapped into this source of creativity in your own life. Thanks for reading.

With love,
Bob

Bob Olson is the host of Afterlife TV, author of Answers About The Afterlife and The Magic Mala, and creator of the reputable directory of psychics, mediums, animal communicators, and intuitive practitioners, BestPsychicDirectory.com. This is Bob Olson Connect, where you can read his articles before they become books.

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