Honouring your muse
(Nimue)
Whether you consider inspiration to be something sacred, or not, how you treat it matters. When you walk the bard path, honouring your inspiration is an important part of the process. That also means honouring the sources of your inspiration.
We all have bills to pay and we all have to eat. Honouring your inspiration doesn’t mean you have to suffer or work in unsustainable ways. It does however raise questions about what your work is for, and what it serves.
If you betray your inspiration, you will damage your relationship with it. If inspiration is something you hold sacred, then the failure to treat it with respect is a kind of sacrilege. If you only think about it as something happening within you, then failing to respect the process will make it less available to you.
It’s important to feed your inspiration and nurture it. Be aware of what inspires you in the first place, and honour that, don’t take it for granted, exploit it, or use it unreasonably. Don’t deploy your inspiration for the sake of things you don’t believe in, or that are at odds with your values. If you feel that your creativity is being exploited, resist that and protect what is precious within you.
Creativity involves relationships. Between creator and audience, the creator and their tools, the creator and the ground beneath them. Everything we do happens n a context – social, physical and so forth. It is important that we know what is supporting us, whose giant shoulders we are standing on, and what keeps us going. Being respectful to all of that is part of what makes you a bard rather than simply someone trying to make money out of their ideas.
For me, inspiration is sacred, and the flow of it is intrinsically magical. I honour where that takes me, and I take it seriously. It’s important to me to acknowledge the people who inspire me and enable me to create. Creating feels like a sacred contract to me – and that’s down to the pledges I made when I initiated as a bard. I have promised to use my inspiration for the good of people and planet, as best I can. I’ve made other promises along the way about how to do that. When unexpected inspiration comes to me, I honour it by giving it form.
How your honour you muse, your awen, your flow of inspiration, will be entirely personal. What inspiration demands of you will be your alone. If you feel like you have an honourable relationship with your own creativity, then you’re doing fine. If the idea of honouring the source feels uneasy, take the time to ask why, and whether there is something you need to change. Invite your inspiration to guide you, and accept what it brings – that’s the essence of the path.
