Spirit Fire Radio: !Soften, Open, and Receive... Key Elements of the Creative Process

This week within The Practice Of Living Awareness we are meditating with Step # 4: Soften, Open, and Receive. This meditative tool calls the creative process to mind. Creativity requires a softening and opening to each and every experience in order to receive all that it has to offer in the way of fodder. Inspiration needs a permeable mind!

Here are a few sentences from our website that describe this step within our meditation teachings:

Step #4 teaches the process of receiving. We receive a new breath every few seconds... there are great teachings within this natural occurrence. Softening makes one receptive and magnetic to meditative experiences. Softening is necessary to experience union.

As this step permeates our living awareness, we begin to sense whether we are rigid or soft, closed-off or open, defensive or accepting. Examples from nature and common daily experience are offered to illustrate the necessity of this process. Exercises from this step can be practiced throughout your day. Softening, opening, and receiving are choices; and these choices create powerful shifts toward being fully present in the moment. From the present moment, the possibilities are endless.

As you can see, the correlations are all there; an artist is always looking to experience a sense of union with the moment - that really is the core of the creative spark. Often the process of softening allows for creative expression to reveal itself. What is inspiration if not softening the mind so as to allow the moment to unfold?

All of us at Spirit Fire love music. We often settle ourselves in the evening with a nice documentary and the subject matter often revolves around musicians. It Might Get Loud, Searching For Sugar Man, and Stop Making Sense have been in heavy rotation. This week’s show has us very excited as we will speak with award-winning guitarist, musician, and songwriter Tom Yoder. He is a master of the acoustic guitar! His latest CD, Twisted Circles and The Theory of Everything, honors symphonic music of the masters, such as Bach and Mozart, with all the parts arranged for and played on electric guitar and bass guitar. Here’s what David Hodge Of Guitar Noise said about this album, "What I find myself marveling at each time I listen to this is how much the “gimmick” of this disc – the playing of all the parts by guitars – makes me not think about guitars at all. Rather, I find myself totally caught up in the music itself. I’ve heard guitarists who have made me marvel at the guitar as an instrument and way too many whose music is all about putting the focus on the guitarist. With “Twisted Circles and the Theory of Everything,” Tom Yoder manages to put the music itself first and foremost. And the results are awe inspiring." Tom has given us a few new tracks to sample on air... they're awesome!

We look forward to speaking with Tom about all things creative… the softening and opening and receiving process, the business, making music in the digital age, and yes… what inspires him!

Tom Yoder has released four studio recordings: Eat This Itʼs Safe, The Moment the Apple Falls, Tomfoolery, and his fourth, Twisted Circles And The Theory Of Everything. His first effort, Eat This Itʼs Safe, was very well received. Tunes from the CD get plenty of airplay on regional public radio as well as NPRʼs daily program All Things Considered. Four songs from the CD did well in songwriting competitions: “Mashu Mashu” was a finalist in the 2002 Independent Music Awards and the UK Songwiting Competition as well as the Great American Song contest. “The Wedding”, “94 Letters” and “Jennah” were all finalists in the MOVA Arts Festival songwriting competition. The title track from “The Moment the Apple Falls” was the winner of the 2004 Independent Music Awards New Age category. He followed that up with another win in 2010 Independent Music Awards New Age category for the song “Locked In” from the Tomfoolery CD.

Tom has played a wide variety of music through the years. You can see him play loud, fast, electric guitar at www.tomyoder.com.