Thank you for continuing this discussion. I missed the meeting but I was very interested.
I had an interesting experience with my the Awen and my daughter yesterday morning. Actually, it was her Awen and my teaching her.
I asked her what she was drawing as we lounged in the shade with the birds.
She said “I don’t know.” I left her to it thinking she didn’t want to tell me. It is a rare privelige to see her artwork, especially now that she is 13. A Few seconds later she was drawing and absently told me that a dragonfly flew by right as she said she didn’t know, and she decided to learn to draw it’s wings.
I was in the middle of reading an article by @DanaD in the Touchstone that arrived the previous day. The article talks about bardic Awen. Sensing a potential sign and likely coincidence, I put down the article and explained to my daughter that is how Awen works, as I understand it. Nature shares inspiration.
I told her a story about stones. When I find a stone in the desert, I know when it is meant for me and when it is not. I have left beautiful specimens in the desert simply because I didn’t “feel right” taking it, other times, I have put stones back and felt a tugging for me to pick it back up. My daughter thought it was because I didn’t want to carry them and sometimes changed my mind.
When I cut a stone, I feel what it wants, I look inside from inside myself. I was demonstrating cutting a geode for one of my close friends a few months ago and as I made the cut, I suddenly felt like I needed to change the angle of the cut. Normally a Geode is cut through the center, I had a strong feeling I needed to slice a “window” on this particular stone. I restarted the cut and revealed a large cluster of crystals in the center of the geode. The blade had been aimed at it with the cut I abandoned and the new cut missed it so that some of the crystals extend beyond the cut in the air. It looks impossible, but I turned the stone to cut it so the blade never went very deep.
I felt it and can’t explain how or what it feels like. It is just a knowing when it happens. Ironically, I was sharing mugs of meade from Ireland that night I made that cut. It must have had a drop of the Meade of poetry in it.
When we allow the natural world work through us, I think we are channeling Awen. When we forget what we want and listen to what other spirits want, we flow in the system, and I think that is when the Awen flows through us.
The dragonfly was my daughter’s faerie spirit inspiring her to create an image of nature as an act of love. My daughter’s next words, after telling me what she was drawing, were “I love dragonflies and it flew right by like it wanted me to draw it”. It inspired her to create from love, which, I think, allowed the Awen to flow through her.
I gave her the article to read after telling a very condensed version of the Taliesin and the Awen and of Odin and the Meade of poetry. Later that day she asked if the Awen comes from a different place for everyone…I thought about the wisdom of the question and replied with a resolutely unsure “Yes?”
I am not everyone, but I bet every cultural history has a story of the flow of creativity and how humans came about creativity and innovation. The engineer who designs builds, and launches a rocket, took natural materials from the earth and created something new that solves a problem It is beautiful and awe-inspiring to many, and humans turn to to both good and bad.
The scientist channeled Awen to create something. The scientist just doesn’t know it’s the Awen, they might call it something mundane like an Aha! moment.
I never had the ability to explain how I knew how to cut a stone before I had the knowledge of Awen. Now, I can say it’s the Awen, and hope I can someday understand it fully enough to explain it
I believe the Awen is like water, it flows where it flows and it flows where it can, not where people might want it. It can be blocked without harming it, but it will eventually flow over, through, or around the blockage. We must work hard to change it’s flow and even then we must maintain the new pathways, because it will create its own and continue to flow where it flows.
I think it flows best for many in the morning because of the silence of the body and the freeing of the mind that occurs during sleep. The previous observation about the quieting of the mind leads me to this hypothesis.
I think we can maintain our canals for the Awen through meditation; and the rested mind is probably more open and less blocking. I know stress is a blockage for me, but meditating and playing music reduces that stress and allows me to work better and to be more creative in anything I do.
The observation that the Awen flows best on the morning for many others is very revealing for me. The wealth of knowledge being constructed by this community in relation to esoteric sciences is invaluable to the contemporary world. The work being done here at the intersection of esoteric and natural sciences is particularly valuable to the greater circle of humankind.
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