The Invisible Garden

In Rick Rubin’s book, The Creative Act, he discusses the power of seeds and the Invisible Hand. Seeds being our thoughts, not yet fully developed, shaped or nourished, but which have been planted. Seeds that we consciously or unconsciously come back to from time-to-time. Seeds that we write down as an unfinished song, an incomplete journal entry, or a sketch of an image in our mind. As we go about our daily lives we unknowingly nurture our seeds. We put on the gloves of a gardener, tending to our daily garden. We do this through conversation with other people, interactions at work, quiet drives on backcountry roads, or silent walks in nature. When we quiet our mind, in whatever way we do this, we allow our seeds to take shape, to reach deeper into our inner soil, connecting and learning from the environment and the roots of our community. Then suddenly, like a wildflower on a perfect Spring day, a seed blossoms with brilliant color, revealing itself perfectly as the product of the days, weeks, months, or years that passed. It becomes a piece of art that we bring into this world. When we see this, we begin to realize that we are meaningful actors in a beautiful and interconnected creative act—a way to express love.

As I learned in Rubin’s book, to fully take advantage of the creative act, first comes inspiration, then comes you, and last comes the audience. Staying with the inspired feeling as long as you can produces a quality of work you cannot recreate. It only visits once. For how long is unknown, and its original form is better than any future attempt to recreate it. Knowing that inspiration is the Invisible Hand working through you allows you to stay with the feeling longer. It makes the inspiration that is all around us more visible, and it turns all of life’s vicissitudes into the fertilizer that strengthens our Invisible Garden. When we learn to be inspired at a higher level, we find evidence of that inspiration in the wildflowers that grow alongside our own seeds. We see that we not only tend to our own gardens but that we are participants in the Invisible Gardens of others, and this gives us the power to create super blooms that bring more color and love into this world.