A New Year's Leap of Faith

If you follow me on Facebook, you will know that I am in the midst of preparing to leave the Southwest (where I have spent most of my time in the US) to move to the Pacific Northwest. As I have done so many times in the past (and have documented in my Acts of Surrender memoir), I am leaving with very little as I once again launch a new life for myself in a new place.

I don’t know what awaits me in Portland. All I know is that the call to move from the stark, monastic beauty of the high desert to the lush luxuriance of river and forest is one that I cannot ignore...even as it requires me to take what feels to be the greatest leap of faith I have ever taken. And I have taken many!

From the first big one, more than three decades ago when I left my hometown, until the one that returned me to Albuquerque from Southern California seven years ago, each major leap has required more courage than the one before.

Courage, of course, is not the absence of fear. It is the ability to move forward in spite of fear. When in my first novel, The MoonQuest, Toshar is called to feel his fear, then pass through it to the other side where his destiny awaits, his fear-to-destiny journey was mine. 

With each of my leaps into the unknown, the "destiny" that has awaited me has been nothing that I could have (consciously) imagined. A new life in a new country? I never (consciously) wanted to live in the United States. A wife and daughter? I was a gay man with no (conscious) interest in parenthood. A teacher, speaker and coach? Not (consciously) interested. Fifteen books (and counting)? Hell, back in my teens, writing was the last pursuit I would have (consciously) chosen!

This next leap, my move to Portland, will be no different. As my stories do in the writing of them, my new life there will reveal itself to me in the living of it. As with my books and stories, I have no outline or game plan for Portland. I have a place to land – for a month, at any rate – and the rest will make itself known in the same magical, miraculous, synchronistic way that my life and stories have always unfolded.

Yet even as I surrender into the unknowingness and unknowable of what lies ahead, I still enter 2018 with certain hopes, desires and intentions (in as detached a way as I can manage!). On a professional front, these mostly revolve around both my own storytelling and my work helping others with theirs...helping you with yours – as a teacher, facilitator, coach, mentor and catalyst.

These are my passions, and I look to 2018 and my presence in Portland to fire them up, express them and get them out into the world – to you – in new and exciting ways.

By the way, "stories" can take many forms. If the written form is the most literal, it's not the only one. A story can express itself on an artist's canvas, on a potter's wheel, on a composer's notation paper, through a photographer's viewfinder or on a filmmaker's reel. It can express itself on a stage, on a screen or in a studio. It can also express itself in a kitchen or garden, or in a workshop or machine shop. More than that, even, it expresses itself every day as the story of your life.

How it will express itself in my life as I take my leap of faith into this next phase of my journey remains to be seen, even as I have little doubt that continuing to tell my stories and to work with you to help you tell and/or live yours will remain an integral part of it. However it plays out, I hope that you will remain an integral part of my story and that I will also remain an integral part of yours!

The year just ended was a challenging one for many. May this new one usher in an end to fear, dread and struggle. May it be a year of renewed hope, rekindled optimism and an abundance of joy, laughter and the fullest expression of your heart’s desire! Happy 2018!!!

Encounters with My Wisest Self

Just over a month ago, a UK fan of my Acts of Surrender memoir sent me a note on Facebook: “You mention Dialogues with the Divine in your memoir,” she wrote, “but I can’t find it anywhere. Where can I get a copy?”

“Unpublished,” I wrote back, “and likely to remain so.” Even as I hit SEND, though, I began to suspect that this reader had been channeling my Muse and that it might finally be time to dust off Dialogues with the Divine. To be honest, I wasn’t initially keen on resuscitating a manuscript that was even more personally raw than Acts of Surrender had been. Then I reread my original Foreword, and I was hooked. Several intense weeks of editing later, Dialogues with the Divine: Encounters with My Wisest Self is out! Here's an excerpt from that Foreword, altered little since I wrote it in 2000.

The “dialogues” that make up my newest book — which is also one of my oldest — emerged from the silence and solitude of a fiery autumn and frozen winter. It was October 1, 1996 and I had just moved a hundred miles north from Toronto to Penetanguishene, a summer-resort town on the shores of Lake Huron. For the fifth time in two years, I had packed my few belongings and followed my heart along the asphalt road of my soul’s journey.

Why was I there? If I needed a reason for the world, it was to work on The MoonQuest. Whatever else materialized, I hoped that a fourth draft would. After all, my novel's earlier drafts had been largely written during just such a time of retreat.

Although The MoonQuest was a constant theme during those five months, I made little progress on it. Instead, even as I struggled to move the novel forward, other words came, and I soon found myself being propelled on an unexpected journey of healing through writing.

Mine was a heart-sickness — neither physical- nor life-threatening. But it was soul- and spirit-threatening. For without trusting that it was safe to let the world more fully into my heart and my heart more fully into my words, I could never take my writing and life to deeper levels, never fully live the precepts I taught in my seminars and workshops.

If you have followed my words here and elsewhere, you know that I have always believed that creative writing is a metaphor for creative living, that the principles that work for one unfailingly work for the other: faith, trust, surrender and openheartedness; vulnerability, truthfulness and flow. And, of course, being in the moment.

Opposing all of these is fear.

If fear no longer paralyzes me, as it once did, it still occasionally slows me down. It’s the core issue of our time, triggering everything from writer’s block to war. It’s the only barrier to flow — of words, of abundance, of life, of love.

Many layers of fear had dissolved for me by the time I installed myself at 296 Champlain Road two days before my 42nd birthday. But more healing awaited, as it always does.

Opportunities for growth arise out of every breath when we are open to them. Often they arise most clearly when we step into the stillness. For me, this place of stillness was a sparsely furnished one-bedroom flat across the road from the spirit-filled waters of Georgian Bay. Sharing my rear wall was a larger house, home to Angela and Jim Emery and their nine-year-old son, Jeremy. Jeremy instantly adopted me, and and his outpouring of unconditional love was among the first challenges — and opportunities — of this journey. Others followed in rapid succession, relating as much to my life as to my writing.

Meditative or inner dialogue is a technique I have often taught in my workshops. Once in a meditative state, you ask a question and then allow the answers to emerge through what I call “writing on the Muse Stream” — letting the words flow through you onto the page, without stopping for judgment, censorship, editing, correction or second thoughts. Whether you believe the answers come from God, your Muse or a deeper part of yourself, they do come…when you let them.

My first written words of that five-month retreat came as inner dialogue, though not one that my conscious mind had initiated. Instead, as I sat in meditation one morning, I heard the words, “I just want to say something.” It was an echo of a recent nightmare and when I engaged it in conversation, I discovered a part of me that I had unwittingly denied.

By mid-January, these occasional dialogues were surging out of me, sometimes two or three times a day, and “dialogue with the divine” had replaced “inner dialogue” as the heading in my journal.

Generally, the first words of dialogue came the moment I closed my eyes. When that happened, I reached for my pad and, eyes still shut, recorded what I heard, sensed, experienced. More often than not, the power of the words evaded me. At times I resented them. In that respect, I was no different from my writing-workshop participants who, when writing for the first time from a place of heart and truth, often reject their work as meaningless or pedestrian. It wasn’t until later, as I typed and read over the day’s writing, that I began to sense its transformative power.

Through this ongoing dialogue and the experiences that sparked it, I began to open my heart wider and wider still, to trust deeply and more deeply still, to surrender more and more completely to a wisdom and divinity I had never before acknowledged. Through them I began to embrace more fully my vision, my power, my strength and my truth. Through them I began to discover new ways to write, new ways to teach, new ways to live, new ways to be.

I had set out to write a different book. I tried to write that other book. Instead, Dialogues with the Divine appeared — not initially as a book, but simply as an outlet for all that floated into consciousness.

Who is the Divine? What was the presence I engaged when this book spilled out of me? It is the presence that resides in all of us…the light that shines in and through each of us…the presence that infuses everything and everyone at all times and in all ways. There are many names for it: Muse, God/Goddess, Infinite Mind, Great Spirit, Higher Self or, as I put it in this book’s subtitle, Wisest Self. In short, it is the Divine, part each of us and all of us, yet, at the same time, something of which we are all part.

Who was I speaking to? Who was speaking to me? That still small voice that is not really small at all. It is the largest, deepest, truest part of ourselves, if we but open to it. It is the divinity we all share, the divinity we can all touch as we write and live.

My dialogues with the Divine began out of need — not the need to write a book, but the need to reconnect with my heart. I share them with you now, knowing that my words are your words, my fears are your fears, my strength and courage are yours, as is my love and wisdom. For we are all one beneath the skin of individuality. We are all one in the divinity and divine presence of love.

Who is the Divine? It is you, me, God, the flowers in your garden, the trees in your yard, the kitten that cuddles on your lap as you read these words. It is the very words themselves. May they move, guide and inspire you as they did and still do me. And may you move from them to your own direct links with your own divinity.

Adapted from Dialogues with the Divine: Encounters with My Wisest Self 

© 2014 Mark David Gerson

Get Dialogues with the Divine today

– along with Acts of Surrender, 

The MoonQuest and my other books – 

on most Amazon sites and in all major ebook-stores

Photo: The house at 296 Champlain Road in Penetanguishene, Ontario where Dialogues with the Divine was born. I lived in the front granny flat, which was originally built as a country store.

A Legacy of Trust

"You either trust or you do not. There is no halfway in between."
~ The Q'ntana Trilogy of fantasy novels and films

My laptop is amazing. At six years and two months old, and now considered a "legacy machine" by the folks at Apple, it's still chugging along, if a little limpingly: Its DVD drive no longer drives (although it does still consent to play the occasional CD); its screen is missing a small cluster of pixels (conveniently located off-center) and, unless I tilt the screen just so, a line of color (conveniently located two-thirds of the way down); most of its letters have rubbed off the keyboard (I must have acidic fingertips as this happens to all my computers: Thank God for Grade 9 touch-typing with Miss Stolow!); I can no longer shift-T with its left shift key (though I can with its cap-lock and right shift keys); and its processing speed can best be described as "sitting-on-the-front-porch-sipping-a-mint-julep leisurely."

But it must know that I haven't been in a position to replace it because it soldiers on, allowing me to finalize my three scripts for The Q'ntana Trilogy Movies (complete) and to finalize my novel manuscripts (currently in process) for The StarQuest and The SunQuest, Books II and III of the Q'ntana series.

It hasn't always been easy to trust my journey in the midst of these handicaps (and a handful of others -- all minor in the greater life-scheme of things...if nonetheless frustrating). But trust I must, or I risk betraying one of my trilogy's themes, as expressed in lines that appear in all three Q'ntana stories: "You either trust or you do not. There is no halfway in between."

Letting go (surrendering) and trusting in a higher wisdom that is, most always, beyond both my human mind's capacity to understand and my human hands' capacity to affect, is much of what my journey has been about, and what it remains about. So, like my miracle "legacy laptop," I soldier on, trusting that all is well because, despite external appearances, all always is.

And so I say, Thank you, MacBook Pro (early 2007 issue), for reminding me every day that my life is an ongoing act of surrender -- one supported by trust and buttressed by faith. That's a pretty awesome legacy for a legacy laptop!

Photo Credits: #1 Hipstamatic's vintage view of my legacy laptop; #2 source unknown

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Reach for the Stars...and Touch Them

I've traveled many miles and lived through many lifetimes since I wrote this piece four years ago. But the story it tells and the message it imparts remain as relevant to me today as they were back in September 2008. 

"With all there is

Why settle for just a piece of sky?"

~ from the score of the film Yentl

Thursday, Sept. 25, 2008 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

I'm walking on a nature trail in Albuquerque's Sandia Mountain foothills, the late-day sun gilding the granite outcroppings and illuminating the sage, cactus and juniper.

This is one of my final farewell walks in a landscape that has so nurtured and inspired me.

You see, in five days I will be gone from here, launched yet again on an open-ended, Spirit-directed odyssey into the unknown and unimagined -- my third such journey of faith in the past 11 years.

My first, in 1997, opened me to marriage, parenthood and life in a new country. The second, which spanned 30 months and was sparked by the end of that marriage, led to my first two books and CD and kindled for me a more empowered professionalism. Both journeys pushed and expanded me, challenging me to surrender more fully to the divine imperative that directs and prospers me -- when I let it.

In each case, I knew nothing of what lay head. I simply stepped off the cliff of my certainty and into the void from which all creation emerges.

Was I afraid? Sometimes.

Did I allow that fear to stand in my way? Rarely, and never for long.

As I think ahead to what's next, this lyric from Osibisa's song "Woyaya" plays in my head:

We are going
Heaven knows where we are going
We'll know we're there
We will get there
Heaven knows how we will get there
We know we will

I'm also reminded of the scene in The MoonQuest where Toshar and his three companions must step through an opening that will carry them "beyond the end of the known world."

Dense smoke chokes them where they stand as the jungle through which they have trekked burns up. There is no way back.

The only way is forward -- into the unknown, with its challenges and opportunities. With its secrets and mysteries. With gifts more wondrous and miracle-filled than any they could imagine.

When I left Toronto in 1997, the only direction I had from my GPS (God Positioning System) was to head west. Ultimately, it landed me in a new life in Sedona, Arizona.

When I left Sedona seven years and a Hawaii sojourn later, my GPS also sent me west -- at first. In the many months of cross-country travel that followed, I always managed to find my way back to the New Mexico that has been my full-time home for the past year.

Now, as I prepare to leave Albuquerque, my divine compass points eastward, directing me to the McDonald Observatory near Fort Davis, Texas.

I've felt pulled toward the home of National Public Radio's StarDate since August, when I knew I would be returning to the road.

It was a mystifying pull because, as stunning as is the observatory's setting and as fascinating as is its planetarium show, I've been there -- twice -- and never experienced any life-altering epiphanies.

At a conscious level, at least, it was a fun place to visit. Nothing more.

Yet if I've learned anything through my years of personal and spiritual growth, it's the importance of surrendering to the highest imperative I can access in any given moment. (There's a reason why the word "surrender" appears 67 times in The Voice of the Muse!) Like Toshar and his friends, I too must surrender to whatever lies beyond the end of my known world and be open to all the wonders that await me on the other side.

And so, if that highest imperative is sending me back to southwest Texas, I'll go -- whatever it means.

I've asked what it means countless times in recent weeks. Today, on my Sandia walk, I ask again.

For the first time, I hear an answer: "To remind you to reach for the stars."

Now, as I write these words, that same inner voice adds: "Reach for the stars...and touch them."

We all need reminders to reach for the stars, that potent metaphor for our highest, most divine potential. In these challenging, turbulent times, we also need to be reminded that those stars are not beyond our grasp. We can touch them. All it takes is a hand, outstretched to the infinite...the infinite we already are.


• Discover how this journey (and many others) unfolded in my new memoir, Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir, available exclusively for Kindle, Nook, Kobo and iBook

"Reach for the Stars...and Touch Them" originally appeared on my now-dormant New Earth Chronicles blog. Click here to read the original post and its comments

Image Credits: Detail from the working poster for The StarQuest Movie by Richard Crookes. Photos by Mark David Gerson: #1 Sandia Foothills, Albuquerque, NM; #2 From the McDonald Observatory, near Fort Davis, TX

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The Path That Is Yours Alone to Travel

There's nothing wrong with formal training and credentials. At the same time (unless you're planning a career in brain surgery), they're not always necessary. If you do your homework (inner and outer) commit to your passion, surrender to its demands and find the heart-centered discipline that keeps you moving forward, you will discover gifts, talents and resources (inner and outer) that you never suspected were available to you.

Take my situation: Nothing I have ever done and succeeded at (and made money at) have I gone into with any formal experience or training. In most cases, I didn't even know that were passions until they came knocking at my door!

In conventional terms, I knew nothing about novel-writing when I wrote The MoonQuest, my first novel (now an award-winner), nothing about memoir-writing when I wrote Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir and nothing about screenwriting when I wrote my first screenplay, an adaptation of The MoonQuest, which is in early preproduction as part of The Q'ntana Trilogy Movies.

I have no art training, yet have sold my drawings. I have no photography training, yet two of my photos were published in Toronto's The Globe and Mail newspaper, and I have sold several others. I have no formal training to teach, coach or speak, yet have been in demand in all three areas and wrote an award-winning book on writing and creativity, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write.

Now, I'm launching into the daunting world of filmmaking as director of an epic fantasy trilogy with no directing experience. Am I scared? Absolutely. Will I let my fear get in the way? No way! I spent too many years letting my terror hold me back to relapse into that old pattern.

Bottom line: You do what you feel called to do, you move forward as honestly and confidently as you can, and you know that if you have been called to the task, you have all the support you need. Whatever your passion is, forge ahead....on the path that is yours alone to travel!

• Photo: "The Path" (c) +Mark David Gerson

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Just Start...and Trust Your Inner Vision

Old Toshar: How do I start? This story has so many beginnings and no clear ending.
Na’an: Where all stories begin... Once upon a time.
~ The MoonQuest


Just start, and trust your inner vision.

Just start, and know that the words that long to pour from your heart will find their way onto the page — thought by thought, word by word, breath by breath.

For the words are there. The story is there. It exists already — in another dimension, a parallel reality. It exists with a life and an imperative of its own.

Just start, and know the words will flow. Know they will flow without having to know what they are or where they will carry you when you free your story to unfold onto the page.

See the words appear as magically as the lemon-juice ink we used as children to create invisible writing. Hold your page to the light — the light of your heart and the light of your truth — and let your words take shape.

Watch the letters form on the page. See them combine into words, the words join into sentences, the sentences unite into paragraphs and the paragraphs flow from page to page to page until the story is done, until the work is complete and you, who started with nothing but a blank page and faith in the power of your inner vision, are amazed and awestruck by the power of your pen.


• You'll find additional tips and inspiration on my website, where you can read my "Rules for Writing," sign up for my mailing list and read/hear free excerpts from The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write, from which this piece was adapted.



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Trust Unlimited

“You either trust or you do not,” M’nor [the moon] stated. “There is no halfway in between.”
~ The MoonQuest: A True Fantasy

That line, originally from The MoonQuest book and now also part of The MoonQuest screenplay, is both my most loved and hated one in the story. I love it and hate it for the same reason: It is one of the deepest truths I know and, after having lived many years of not trusting much of anything, profound and unconditional trust is the only way I now know to live my life...and, sometimes, the scariest.

Trust in what? In both The MoonQuest and my life, it's trust in that wiser, infinite power that's greater than what we know to be the human mind and body in its physical form. It's trust in an inner knowingness that, although innate, must still be awakened, fostered, nurtured and cultivated. Whether you call it God, Buddha, Allah, Infinite Source, Higher Self, Muse or the voice of your heart, we can all access it, because it lies within each of us -- a soul potential waiting to be sparked into passionate expression.

In The MoonQuest, that intuitive power is all that the main character has to guide him on his journey to bring storytelling back to a silenced land and light back to a darkened moon.

It's no different in life. Whatever rules, structures, systems, ruts and routines we're encouraged to adhere to -- by parents, education, culture, media or fear -- the right path is always the one that, in the end, can rely only on what we know in our hearts to be true.

"I am Tikkan Dreamwalker," Na'an said. "I speak only what you know in your heart to be true."

It's also no different in writing, or in any creative pursuit. There can be no hard-and-fast rules in art...or it's not art. It's a poor imitation of someone else's innovation.

“Ride north one league at a time," O'ric tells Toshar as the young man embarks on his MoonQuest. "The North Star will guide you at night. A path between the suns will guide you in the day. Your heart will guide you always.”

Our hearts do guide us always...when we're open enough to listen, still enough to hear and trusting enough to follow its path.

In the moment of choice, though, trust is rarely the most comfortable option. Often, it's downright terrifying because it seems to make no conventional sense. In the past, that terror paralyzed me, held me back from the hard choices...the trusting choices.

“You do not trust,” M’nor said. Disappointment shaded her voice. “You must either trust or abandon the quest. The choice is yours."

Had Toshar relied on a "common sense" that ignores the non-physical senses and on a "conventional" wisdom that is so rarely wise, he would never have completed the MoonQuest. Had I relied on those limited and limiting tools, there would have been no Toshar, nor would I now be engaged in one of the most exciting endeavors of my life so far: getting The MoonQuest onto the big screen.

Nothing about this film project makes any sense. Yet, here I am. Nothing about my life right now makes any sense. Yet, here I am. As difficult and frightening as the choice for non-sense can be, trusting enough to make that choice has always proven to be the most satisfying, gratifying and rewarding path for me. And so that is the path I continue to take.

You can't half trust any more than you can be half pregnant. You either trust or you do not. Truly, there is no halfway in between.

All quotes from The MoonQuest, book or screenplay (c) 2008, 2010 Mark David Gerson. All rights reserved.

Birth of a Book

You don't have to know how your story will end before you begin. You don't even have to know how it will start. All you need to do is begin. All you need to do is place one word after the other...and trust...

It's March 1994. I see The Celtic Tarot in Toronto's Omega Centre bookstore and it so seduces me that I can't not buy it. Days later, I use the deck in a writing class I'm teaching: With eyes closed, each student draws one of the major arcana cards and then, with eyes open to the chosen card, is led through a guided visualization into writing.

Generally when I teach, I don't write. I watch the students and hold space for them.

But this night's group is different. These five women are a subset of a larger University of Toronto class that I have just led through ten weeks of creative awakening. They don't require my usual overseeing and so, once they're settled into writing, some inner imperative has me draw a card of my own: The Chariot.

That same imperative has me pick up a pen and push it across the blank page. What emerges is a surprise: the tale of an odd-looking man in an even odder-looking coach that is pulled by two odd-colored horses. I know nothing about this man and his horses. I know nothing about this story. All I know is what emerges, word by word, onto the page.

Next morning, I'm drawn back to the story. I add to it. I keep adding to it daily, almost obsessively, rarely knowing from one day to the next (some days from one word to the next) what the story is about or where it is carrying me. A year later in Amirault's Hill, Nova Scotia, on the anniversary of that Toronto class, I complete my first draft of The MoonQuest.

It's May 2007, many drafts and years later. I'm in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a few weeks from seeing the first printed copies of The MoonQuest in book form.

I open my email to a message and image from Courtney Davis, the British artist who created the Celtic Tarot deck, now sadly out-of-print. The image is The Chariot card, which I haven't seen since I gave away my copy of the tarot deck in 1997. Davis has sent me the image so that I can write a caption for an upcoming retrospective of his art.

When I see The Chariot for the first time in a decade, I'm startled. Even though the cover designer never saw the tarot card and knows nothing of The Celtic Tarot or how it inspired me, there's a definite connection between the two. Not only are the horses identically colored, they are identically placed. There's even a tiny chalice just above the wording on the card. Apart from that, the two images just feel the same.

Today, The MoonQuest is an award-winning book on its way to becoming a movie. And although the story's opening has changed since that 1994 writing class and although the odd-looking man has been superseded in importance by other characters, The Chariot's inspiration is still evident throughout The MoonQuest's story -- a story that knew itself far better than I did...a story that knew me better than I knew myself...a story that insisted I trust it to reveal itself to me, moment by moment, word by word...a story that never let me down.

• How can you trust your stories to reveal themselves to you?

• How can you surrender to the mystery of the blank page? Can you do as author Ray Bradbury suggests: jump of the cliff and trust that you'll sprout wings on the way down?

• Can you write the story that wants to be written by you, even if you don't yet know what it is?

• Can you start? Now?

Art Credits: The Chariot tarot card by Courtney Davis; The MoonQuest cover by Angela Farley.

A Different Kind of April Fool

Legendary sci-fi author Ray Bradbury says that writing is about leaping off cliffs and trusting that you'll sprout wings on the way down. It's the way of the Fool in the Tarot: that surrendered leap of faith into the void that alchemically transforms something that, in the moment, appears to make no sense into art.

Life is like that, too. And why wouldn't it be when the precepts of one apply equally to the other, when the first rule of both is that there are no rules.

Not only do I do my best to write that way, I do my best to live that way. It's scary, but ultimately satisfying. And even though it means living and writing without a net, those wings Bradbury talks about have never failed to appear.

They first showed themselves to me in a dream I had nearly 20 years ago. In it, I was clinging to the roof ledge of a 1950s-style office building while an inner voice kept urging me to jump. I didn't...I couldn't. And I woke up scared and upset.

In the days that followed, I took that dream image into meditation. In each of three sessions, I tried to let go of that old structure and failed. By the fourth, I was so uncomfortable and so annoyed with the process that I just did it. I unhooked my fingers from the stonework and fully expected to plummet down to the pavement in a messy splat.

Instead, I found myself floating gently, feather-like, until I landed in what I can only describe as the arms of God.

I'm in that space today, as I feel a powerful pull to leave the embracing support of Albuquerque's Sandia Mountains and move to Los Angeles...to let got the comfort of the known for the shifting tectonic plates of the unimaginable. Nothing about such a move makes conventional sense. And there are plenty of people who have been happy to remind me of that. In this moment, I can't even see how it's possible.

Yet I'm reminded of a recent interview Apple's Steve Jobs gave, in which he said, "You have to trust in something -- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

He's right. It's never let me down. I've made many moves and done many risky things that defy logic and convention. And although I've experienced discomfort along the way, the ultimate rewards have far outweighed the fallout.

I wouldn't be in Albuquerque right now -- or even in the U.S. -- had I not honored a call, back in 1997, to leave Toronto with everything I owned in the back of a minivan and just hit the road. Three months of seemingly random journeying landed me in Sedona, AZ and gifted with a new country, a new daughter and a new life. A similar if tenfold-longer journey brought me to New Mexico and allowed me to gift the world with two new books.

I've discovered that once I commit to the highest possible path and purpose, a trinity of principles is always at play:
1) Trust
2) Let Go
3) Leap

First, I trust the voice of my deepest heart, which is also the voice of my divinity, my god-self, my muse, my highest imperative. Next, I let go of all resistance, all clinging and all clutching (which doesn't mean I'm not afraid and which also doesn't mean I have to know how it's possible). Finally, I leap into the void -- just like that Fool in the Tarot.

Of course, I'm not always without resistance. "You want me to do what!?" I've been known to exclaim when presented with a next step. That happened a few years ago, when an inner voice interrupted my on-the-road reveries and urged me to refresh, revise and overhaul my modest Voice of the Muse eBook into the expanded and published form that's now won two awards.

Yet once the initial shock dissipated (my novel, The MoonQuest, had been out barely a month at that point), I surrendered to the higher imperative. I trusted, let go and leapt...and watched all the requisite resources begin to fall into place, often miraculously.

Miracles are present in every moment of our lives. It's our limited vision that prevents us from seeing them. It's our limited sense of what's possible that prevents us from believing in them. It's our fear that prevents us from embracing them.

Those miracles are available to us equally magnificently in our writing and in our lives. What else would you call the logic-defying cohesion of The MoonQuest, written with no conscious notion of its story, except as the words of that story moved through me onto the page? That same miracle is repeating itself in The MoonQuest's sequel, The StarQuest, whose first draft miraculously displayed the same coherence when, once again, the story had only revealed itself word-by-word.

As I move into my California countdown (I expect to be living there in time for my keynote talk at San Diego's Body Mind Spirit Expo in October, on my birthday weekend), I know that the miracles required to make the move possible, graceful and prosperous will show themselves to me -- as I trust, let go and, always playing the Fool, take that surrendered leap of faith into the void.

Trust. Let Go. Leap. It's now a chapter in The Voice of the Muse. It's the only way I know how to live.

In my writing as in my life, it always works.

• Image of The Fool card from the Osho Zen Tarot, published by St. Martin's Press. Illustrated by Ma Deva Padma

• I encountered the car with the Beverly Hills front plate in a Target parking lot, one of many signs validating my leap of faith

MY FINAL NEW MEXICO EVENTS

Because of my planned move to California, my spring series of Albuquerque writing events is my last. Coming up in April and May is

• a 5-week Voice of the Muse Coaching Group, launching on April 13 (with April 4 the deadline to save on the registration fee), and

• a series of full and half-day workshops covering memoir-writing, character development, editing/revision and birthing your book.

More information on all Albuquerque events, along with discount options and registration details, is on my web site.

• I'll also be giving two seminars at the Screenwriting Conference in Santa Fe on June 3 and 4 (free with conference registration).

BEYOND NEW MEXICO (APRIL / MAY)

If you can't make it to New Mexico, join a separate 5-week Voice of the Muse Coaching Group, which I'm offering over the phone via conference call, starting Sunday, April 11. All you need to participate is a telephone with long-distance access.

More information on the conference-call coaching group, along with discount options and registration details, is on my web site.

A Writer's Creed

"Speak from that place in your heart where you are most yourself. Speak directly, simply, lovingly, gently and without any apologies. Tell us what you see and want us to see; tell us what you hear and want us to hear....Trust your own heart. The words will come. There is nothing to fear...."
~ Henri J.M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World

• Where in your writing and your life can you speak more heartfully, directly and unapologetically?

• How, in your writing and your life, can you share what you see and hear in ways that are more trusting -- of yourself and others?

• Why are you waiting to express your potential and potential to a world so hungry for your wisdom and creativity?

• Isn't it time let your words express the truth of your heart?

What are you waiting for? Do it now. Write it now. Be it now.

Dare to Create. Dare to Write.

"Boldly go where no one has gone before."
~ Star Trek


Creative artists are innovators. Creative artists are trailblazers. Creative artists go where others dare not go.

Your job as a creative artist is to write what yearns to be released from you onto the page. Not as others have done it in the past. Not as others tell you to do it. But as only you can: with your unique history, style and voice.

Don't write what you think you should. Write what you must. Write it as only it can be written. Write it now!

How can you be more daring your writing today?
How can you be more daring in your life today?
How can you blaze new trails and go where no one has dared to go -- in your writing and in your life?

• Read/listen to more writing inspiration from Mark David in The Voice of the Muse book and companion CD or on one of his radio or in-person appearances

• Work with Mark David directly, one-on-one or in a writing class or workshop

Trust. Let Go. Leap.

I'm fond of saying that there's no difference between creativity and life, that the precepts of one apply equally to the other, that the first rule of both is that there are no rules.

Yet I've discovered that once you commit to the highest possible path and purpose, there's a trinity of principles that's always at play:

1) Trust
2) Let Go
3) Leap

First, you trust the voice of your deepest heart, which is also the voice of your divinity, your god-self, your muse, your highest imperative. Next, you let go of all resistance, all clinging and all clutching (which doesn't mean you're not afraid). Finally, you leap into the void -- just like the Fool in the tarot.

Legendary sci-fi author Ray Bradbury says about writing that you must leap off cliffs and trust that you'll sprout wings on the way down.

Not only do I do my best to write that way, I do my best to live that way. It's scary, but ultimately satisfying. And even though it means living and writing without a net, those wings Bradbury talks about have never failed to appear.

Of course, I'm not always without resistance. "You want me to do what!?" I have been known to exclaim when presented with my next step.

That's what happened 11 months ago, when an inner voice interrupted my on-the-road reveries and urged me to refresh, revise and overhaul my modest Voice of the Muse eBook into an expanded and published form.

Yet once the initial shock dissipated (my novel, The MoonQuest, had been out barely a month at that point), I surrendered to the higher imperative.

I trusted, let go and leapt...and watched all the requisite resources begin to fall into place, often miraculously.

Now, not only have my wings sprouted, they're lifting me higher and higher and higher. The Voice of the Muse is selling well (and helping to sell The MoonQuest), and the book and its companion meditation CD have received great reviews and hyper-enthusiastic reader testimonials.

Trust. Let Go. Leap. It's a chapter in The Voice of the Muse. It's the only way I know how to live.

In writing as in life, it always works.

Read "13 Rules for Birthing Your Book" from The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write.

Order your Amazon copy of The Voice of the Muse book and/or CD . For a signed copy, order directly from the publisher.

Image of The Fool card from the Osho Zen Tarot, published by St. Martin's Press. Illustrated by Ma Deva Padma.