Epiphanies #1

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How many epiphanies do you have in a day?

"What counts as an epiphany?" you may wonder.

We often imagine epiphanies as dramatic "lightning bolt" moments. They can be jolting. Ancient and modern wisdom propose something more complex and generous.

A micro-realization like recognizing a pattern in your creative process is a subtle epiphany.

Small connections like "this pattern reminds me of the wallpaper in my first apartment", it may be trying to tell you something.

Revelations about everyday life like, 'This conversation with the grocery clerk is pure poetry'? Epiphany!

Epiphanies are the lifeblood of creators and they can occur multiple times daily. They are an ancient tool, a channel, if you will, to connect unseen source to inspired action.

In this issue, let’s go over one way (of many more to come) to catch an epiphany and then, take immediate action.

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Universal Spiritual Communication

Let's start with the Thunderbird.

In Indigenous lore, the Thunderbird is a spiritual force that spans the continent. Ojibwa of the Great Lakes, Tlingit of the Pacific Northwest, Pawnee, Sioux all document Thunderbird encounters.

The Thunderbird totem teaches us to hear spirit quickly and act immediately. It derives from its role as a powerful guardian spirit that is deeply connected to the natural world and often seen as a messenger or symbol of divine intervention.

Its power manifests as thunder and lightning, representing a sudden, decisive force that can strike quickly.

The lore reveals a universal pattern:

Indigenous elders have always known what neuroscience is just discovering.

The shamanic artists, the vision quest painters, the dreamtime creators- they all understood that spiritual insights arrive as fleeting whispers and must be honored immediately.

When the storm comes, it transforms the landscape instantly. Same idea behind an epiphany.

The Science Behind Epiphanies

Before we dive into a modern example, let's understand what's actually happening in your brain during these moments.

Dr. John Kounios, a neuroscientist at Drexel University, has spent decades mapping what actually happens in your brain during sudden creative breakthroughs.

He discovered that insights arrive as 300-millisecond bursts of gamma waves but these happen before we are consciously aware of them. The breakthrough is complete before we even know we've had one.

Flow State Studies by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi show that it's not when you're intensely concentrating, but when you're relaxed and letting your mind wander that the magic happens.

Your brain's background processing system activates during gentle, unfocused states like walking or showering. These states are fragile and returning to normal consciousness can erase the insight.

To preserve the download , you must take immediate action.

Memory Consolidation and Activation Energy

Here's what happens to un-captured insights: they fade rapidly because the brain treats sudden creative downloads as "dream-like" and discards them quickly. But writing or sketching them moves them to long-term memory.

Think of it like a chemical reaction. Creative insights need instantaneous "activation energy"- that initial push to get the reaction going.

Once you capture the inspiration, the creative energy released can be far greater than the initial effort required.

Miss that moment of activation, and the insight dissolves back into the unconscious like it never happened.

The Ancient Pattern Today

Now let's see this principle in action.

It's 2016. The air is bitter cold but the spirit of resistance burns bright.

Thousands of activists have converged at Standing Rock to join the Sioux in opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Somewhere in the middle of it all is Stephanie Big Eagle- tattoo artist and descendant of the Dakota and Lakota Sioux.

Not exactly your typical artist's retreat, right? But spirit doesn't wait for convenient circumstances.

Big Eagle received a vision of a tattoo to help the resistance. "My heart just poured into it," she recalls.*

She didn't sketch it out first or run it by anyone. She began tattooing immediately.

The Thunderbird had spoken, and she honored the whisper without hesitation.

The vision wasn't meant for her alone either. It demanded community action.

It was designed to serve the water protectors, to summon supernatural defense for something larger than herself.

Spirit speaks quickly, and sometimes it expects you to share it quickly.

That single tattoo vision became a global movement. Within weeks, the design had traveled from Arkansas to New Zealand. Tattoo artists around the globe offered the image, donating portions of each sale. The campaign raised over $153,000 and connected thousands of people to the sacred fight.

The world participated in an ancient pattern without even knowing it and honored a fleeting whisper before it could fade.

New rituals emerged. New practices of resistance. "More than a fundraiser, it was a summoning of supernatural defense," Big Eagle explains.* (*quote source)

This is how spiritual epiphanies work: they arrive as whispers or thunder, demand immediate action, and create transformation that serves the whole community.

The epiphany is already complete. You're just the vessel.

Spirit speaks quickly. Act quickly.

Don't tell yourself you will remember it later. Do it now. Seal the deal.

This is sacred practice. Indigenous traditions teach that delaying action diminishes the power of the insight.

And if all of that wasn’t enough to get your pencils and paintbrushes ready…

Motivational speaker, Mel Robbins, discovered something that aligns perfectly with indigenous wisdom: when you have an instinct to act on a creative impulse, you must take physical action within five seconds. If you hesitate longer, your brain kicks in with excuses, fears, and doubts.

Here's Why Mel Robbins' "5-Second Rule" Works:

Contemporary Creators ACT QUICKLY:

Miranda July - Carries index cards everywhere. "I write down every weird thoughtS immediately. Most are garbage, but the ones that aren't... those become my films."

Olafur Eliasson - Documents light observations during daily walks. His weather installations began as fleeting moments of noticing how shadows moved across Copenhagen streets.

Cheryl Strayed - Wild was born from a single walking epiphany on the Pacific Crest Trail: "I was strong enough to carry my own pack." She stopped hiking immediately to write it down.

David Lynch - Keeps a digital recorder with him at all times. "Ideas are like fish. You have to catch them when they swim by, or they're gone forever."

Epiphanies = Action. It's movement, not stagnation.

Quick Fix: The "Spirit Speaks Quickly" Protocol

High Amp Fix: The Daily Download Practice

Walking creates porous boundaries between conscious and unconscious. Walk every day and listen to your inner voice and capture those downloads.

Carry a small notebook as your "spirit vessel." Field Notes notebooks are small, compact and easy to use.

When insight arrives, immediately write/sketch without editing.

You can use the notes app in your phone too, but writing and sketching are BETTER.

Henry David Thoreau: Walking,The original guide to walking as spiritual practice and creative fuel.

Elizabeth Gilbert: “Big Magic will resonate with writers and artists who find the process of producing work to be particularly painful…Through anecdotes about her creative failures and resourcefulness, as well as those other artists, Gilbert encourages readers to pursue a creative life ‘that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.”-Daily Beast

Mel Robbins: The 5 Second Rule, How to enrich your life and destroy doubt in 5 seconds. 

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, “The insightful analyst Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi argues that the key to gratification is completely absorbing work—he calls it ‘flow.”-Salon.com

Cheryl Strayed: Wild, “Pretty much obliterated me. I was reduced, during the book’s final third, to puddle-eyed cretinism. . . . As loose and sexy and dark as an early Lucinda Williams song. It’s got a punk spirit and makes an earthy and American sound. . . . The cumulative welling up I experienced during Wild was partly a response to that too infrequent sight: that of a writer finding her voice, and sustaining it, right in front of your eyes.” -Dwight Garner, The New York Times

Julia Cameron: The Artist’s Way, “Without The Artist's Way, there would have been no Eat, Pray, Love.” - Elizabeth Gilbert

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