Sitting in darkness helps. Far from the bruit and wail of the noisy world.
Be still and silent.
These are different things, and the source of all struggle.
Cultivate the cool black loam of the night, imagination’s soil. Dig deep, because you must summon something out of nothing.
You must focus to hear the slightest crackling.
These are the seeds of your soul.
It will emerge – a glint, a ghost. In silence, the faintest whisper. A cool breath. A wisp, stirring.
Seize it.
Be cast with doubt, fear, even imagine a sigh from the world and it will retreat back into the endless where from whence it came, into endlessness, into your imagination again.
Once seized, the seedling of a soul is raw, ginger, a vulnerable young tuber – ugly, timid, unlike anything you’ve ever seen.
And for that reason worth more than anything in your world.