Looking at the world differently is the first step to creation… Creation of anything.
This quote is from the mind of Henry Miller. He began a writing style of “stream of consciousness”. He has paragraphs pages long. That style takes the reader deep into the thoughts. With our 140 characters today we rarely allow someone to finish a full thought.
I reconsidered many things after I read the Tropic of Cancer. Namely how one writes and the letting go of ordinary in place of obsession. “… an idea or thought that continually preoccupies or intrudes on a person’s mind.” I love being preoccupied. I don’t love ideas that intrude. I often wonder if someone is throwing a big thought out to the collective consciousness and I picked up on that idea. I pick up on many ideas and then later read, “I was just thinking of that…” I wonder if those ideas are out “there” for others, sensitive others, to pick up on. Some do. Some don’t.
If an idea intrudes, I see it as lack of mental discipline on my part. I like to think I choose what to allow in my mind and if I think of the unseen or the possibility of magical beings… Well, I choose that. I call any intruding thoughts mind gremlins, which also come in the form of soap gremlins. 
Natalie Goldberg, who wrote Writing Down The Bones, calls mind gremlins, the monkey mind from her Buddhist studies; an undisciplined mind. I agree, the mind can be like group of unruly monkeys. “Look over here! Look over here! Smell my finger.” The best thing to do is observe them. They never tire, but can get bored.
Have you read Henry Miller’s work? Did it make you see the world differently?
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