Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity: 10th Anniversary Edition

by David Lynch

Anger and depression and sorrow are beautiful things in a story, but they’re like poison to the filmmaker or artist. They’re like a vise grip on creativity. If you’re in that grip, you can hardly get out of bed, much less experience the flow of creativity and ideas. You must have clarity to create. You have to be able to catch ideas.

Robert Henri’s book The Art Spirit,

So the art life means a freedom to have time for the good things to happen. There’s not always a lot of time for other things.

Someone might say, I don’t understand music; but most people experience music emotionally and would agree that music is an abstraction. You don’t need to put music into words right away—you just listen.

You just do these things that

you fall in love with, and you never know what’s going to happen.

But if you can expand that consciousness, make it grow, then when you read that book, you’ll have more understanding; when you look out, more awareness; when you wake up, more wakefulness; and as you go about your day, more inner happiness.

It has to start from deep within, and grow and grow and grow. Then things really change. So transcend, experience the Self—pure consciousness—and watch what happens.

You can’t control any of what’s out there, outside yourself. But you can get inside and do the best you can do.

In order to create, you’ve got to have energy; you’ve got to have clarity. You’ve got to be able to catch ideas.

So what light can you turn on that removes negativity the way sunlight removes darkness? It’s the light of pure consciousness, the Self—the light of unity.

Every story has its own world, and its own feel, and its own mood. So you try to put together all these things—these little details—to create that sense of place. It has a lot to do with lighting and sound. The sounds that come into a room can help paint a world there and make it so much fuller.

It’s crucial to have a setup, so that, at any given moment, when you get an idea, you have the place and the tools to make it happen.

Softer than the flower where kindness is concerned, Stronger than the thunder where principles are at stake. VEDIC DESCRIPTION OF THE ENLIGHTENED

So compassion, appreciation for others, and the capacity to help others are enhanced when you meditate. You start diving down and experiencing this ocean of pure love, pure peace—you could say pure compassion. You experience that, and know it by being it. Then you go out into the world, and you can really do something for people.