The Way Up is the Way Down, by Ken Wilbur, Parabola Magazine

There are many of us who are driven by creative ambition. While creative expression is a labor of love all too often one can feel as if the emphasis is on the labor. The work is never good enough. As soon as we achieve a goal, we are already looking to the next. As a result we sometimes forget to celebrate what we know. We forget to experience the small victories along the moving target of our creative dreams. This forgetfulness can sometimes be a creativity killer. Evaluating our abilities or achievements is essential to growing as an artist. The challenge comes in remembering to look up from our task once in a while to reflect on the present and how far we have come.

• Completely involved, focused, concentrating - with this either due to innate curiosity or as the result of training
• Sense of ecstasy - of being outside everyday reality
• Great inner clarity - knowing what needs to be done and how well it is going
• Knowing the activity is doable - that the skills are adequate, and neither anxious or bored
• Sense of serenity - no worries about self, feeling of growing beyond the boundaries of ego - afterwards feeling of transcending ego in ways not thought possible
• Timeliness - thoroughly focused on present, don't notice time passing
• Intrinsic motivation - whatever produces "flow" becomes its own reward

The first time we have this experience we discover a level of reality that was previously unknown to us. We discover the beauty of our capacity to become one with the creation. We fall in love with the sound of one note, the color of a word or a brush stroke. Over time our drive to evolve as artists can become all consuming. We forget how it started. We forget to notice that the sound of one note is still beautiful.

This website is dedicated to documenting and celebrating the small victories. For me this is a personal matter. I hope eventually to produce creative work that I don't have to make excuses for. While I believe that day may be in sight, I also feel a need to share those aspects of the path that are behind me (and of course make the necessary excuses).

At the moment the site is only hosting my recent world percussion recordings. If you are an artist (poet, painter, musician, whatever )and are interested in having some of your work posted here under a creative commons license, please contact me.