Inspired Writing

Where Spirit and Matter Hold Out Their Arms Towards Each Other

By Naomi Rose | Updated November 11, 2018

There is a way in which inspired writing is the child of the inspired mind reaching down towards earth, and the concrete, enfleshed experience reaching up for pure blue sky. You may be constituted to begin from one realm or from the other. No matter: you are still seeking completion, the marriage of above and below. And whichever side you begin from, you will naturally — if you don't interfere with this impulse — seek to encounter the other.

So those people who like to begin with outlines, the scaffold of ideas that put things logically in their place, must at some point encounter the vivifying enfleshment of those ideas — what poet T. S. Eliot called "the objective correlative," the concrete detail that illuminates the more abstract idea. And those who begin with the detail only, the slant of light on the roof in morning, must at some point contextualize the detail within a larger frame of meaning.

Where one starts from is a matter of personal constitution; but while the requirement to reach up, or down, to the other side for completion may initially involve some perspiration, it is the innate drive for wholeness that spurs that movement. In crossing the "line" to the missing realm, an ecstatic union takes place, and the writer is inspired not only by the writing itself coming through, but also by that crossing, that fullness of being the initial setting off on the writing journey has made possible.

Receiving Your Writing with Gratitude

If you have truly experienced inspiration while writing, when you are done you are likely to feel pride, a creator's adoration of the creation — and gratitude. It is the presence of gratitude that alerts you to the presence of the Divine. Otherwise, you might say, "Well, that's pretty good," or "Ugh, that's awful, forget it, stuff it in a drawer," or any of a number of things that have to do with the false self taking over and obscuring your light.

But the feeling of gratitude, that warm radiance of the heart that comes when you know that Something has taken the reins and given you more insight, beauty, compassion, and other priceless qualities than your ordinary consciousness would have known to even seek, is unmistakable. It is a bowing before the altar of Being that you have set up in your own heart, inviting the breath of God to enter. In thanking God for what you have been given in the way of inspired writing, you are thanking yourself for being who you truly are. And this in turn can inspire you to more inspired writing.

Inspired writing is not apart from you, but is of the very essence of you. It is not something reserved only for the greats of literature — and even they, when they first began, did not usually see themselves in that way but were like you, grappling with the wish to bring something forth that was larger than just their individual selves.

If you first find your wish to reach out for the Beloved and then prepare yourself to receive the Divine breath through some of the ways I have suggested above, you are certain to succeed. And you will know this not so much by the number of copies your books and articles sell (gratifying as that is), as by the experience in the moment of writing inspiredly, traveling into your true nature on the clear, gifting breath of God.

Next: Your Book Can Heal the World

More with Naomi Rose

Naomi Rose, Book Developer and Writing Coach, has successfully used her "Writing from the Deeper Self" approach to help people with an inner-directed focus write the books of their hearts. ...