In an interview with Steven Pressfield (author of The Legend of Bagger Vance and The War of Art) he shares advice he gave to a writer when he became stuck about 1/4 way through his screenplay:
"One of the first things I told him to do was to banish the self-censor. I could tell he was frozen, worrying, "Is this going to be good? Is this going to be perfect? So I told him, "Take the next five days and write for two hours everyday. I don’t care what else is in your life--banish it. When you write for those two hours, start on minute one and don’t think for one second all the way through until minute 120. Just write, don’t self censor. Don’t do anything." That really seemed to get him moving and gave him permission to not be paralyzed with seeking perfection."
The search for perfection occludes seeing the perfection that is already present. It's the mind's parlor trick to distance ours self from the infinite indivisible.... to separate ourselves from the whole (as if that were possible, but it can feel as if we have succeeded in our secession from the Union....)
The search for enlightenment occludes seeing enlightenment is here.
We spend so much of our energy seeking our image of perfection and our image of wholeness. What if instead of chasing after an image of perfection or attempting to fix our image of brokenness and other imaginary pursuits, we just allow what's unfolding its expression?
Screw "perfection." Accept whatever happens, however you are as perfect and immaculate and whole as is now--not sometime in the future when you have purified something or other.
I met an independent filmmaker on the bus back from UCLA's symposium on transmedia and Hollywood. He told me he gets so absorbed in his work, that his grandmother chides him, "You're frozen in time." She insists he is not living in the present. So he bristles at commands or demands to "be present." I looked at him quizzically, "What makes you think you aren't present when you are writing, or directing, or editing. Sure, you are present... you're doing that thing you do in the present." Actually anything that is that self-absorbing is pretty much losing yourself to your Self in the present. In the midst of being absorbed in a first take of a film, it's pretty difficult to be caught up in the regrets of the past or the anticipated hopes for a future.
So, again, I say screw "perfect". You are perfect just as you are. The Interpreter, the Censor, may have other opinions as it's pretty miffed it's not the Author of the whole she-bang, and keeps marking up the margins of the Book with annotation that say stuff like, "This sucks" or "I was stupid here" or "Gee, that was wrong." Sure, It's always going to be blathering a running commentary as if it were Judge and Jury of the world... so what? Ignore yourself.
So I shall grant you permission to forego delusions of perfectionism.... and just do it. Plus I give you permission to NOT do it (sometimes that is truest inclination and urge too, and it's just fine to Be... yep, you're granted permission to goof off and enjoy the process of Being too).
"The Infinite doesn't judge, it simply expresses." - Almine
p.s. Steve's new book, Do the Work, is available for free for the Kindle until May 20, 2011.
ART CREDITS: Burma Cyclone in the Art of War series by Kelly Anne Thomas' Picasso Dreams blog