Writing and the Cosmic Shopping Mall

Writing and the Cosmic Shopping Mall
by Emily Hanlon

Writing from the creative unconscious is like walking into a cosmic shopping mall where each shop offers a different persona for us to try on, actually a different way of being in relationship to ourselves and the world. The only means of exchange in this cosmic mall is exuberance, fearlessness and a desire to share and be shared. Oh, and there’s a key to the mall, too. We all have it in our pocket when we arrive, even if we don’t know it’s there. The key is a desire to break out of the box of who we think we are, who our families think we should be. It is a desire to fly in a place that, as John O’Donohue says, “is full of the most melodious and nourishing and wild freedom. And everyone should go there, to the wild place, where there are no cages, where there are no tight rooms without windows and without doors, everyone should go to the free clearance places in their own hearts.”

And so, with our keys, we enter the mall. There, in every window we see amazing costumes. Here there is a multi-colored cloak of the finest silks, feathers and gemstones. The price: a desire to shine. Here there is a hat that reaches the clouds and is made of glittering stars and moons floating in what seems to be space itself. The price: a desire to expand consciousness. There are shops with nothing but wings: dragon wings, fairy wings, butterfly wings, lace wings, velvet wings, silk wings in all colors known and unknown. The price: a desire to fly. The shops go on and on, for they are as cosmic as our creative potential. And what is even more amazing, is that just the perfect shops show themselves to you as you walk by.

I believe each time we return to this cosmic shopping mall, we find different shops… shops beyond persona, shops of beauty, depth and mystery that we weren’t ready to see when we first arrived. Our eyes and our hearts were not open enough. We were not ready to allow our spirits such freedom of expression and flight. But amazingly, as time passes and we integrate these new parts of self into who we are, we see that there was no shopping mall at all. That we never had to pick or choose – all that magnificence was inside us all along!

As creative women and men, we are at home in such mystery; we carry those rhythms, colors and songs inside ourselves. Once this becomes part of our consciousness, we are on a path from which there is no looking back.

© Copyright 2009 Emily Hanlon. All Rights Reserved.