People that are brilliant in one area are often absolutely ignorant in another. It's important to keep this in mind while deciding who to follow. We tend to let our discernment down after we've let someone in, and this can be disastrous. We automatically assume a movie star may know something about spirituality, for instance, or love.

I recently listened to A Wicked Company, a brilliant and inspiring book about the radicals of the French enlightenment. It was full of some of my favorite archetypes; imprisoned radicals, burned books, clever pseudonyms. While these geniuses (and they were arguably that) sat around a table, espousing some of the most radical views of the day, questioning every fundamental tenet of their culture (even Ben Franklin and David Hume visited D'Holbach's salons), the table was weighted down with foods (or non-foods) that will quickly and directly lead even the most stalwart constitution directly to ruin. Various rich meats, refined sugar, duck and goose pates, four courses of deserts, endless pastries, butter, coffee, etc. These brilliant men, in later years, all suffered diseases of excess; gout, heart troubles, obesity, etc. Somehow, though they could courageously question the nature of god, of politics, of life itself, they couldn't turn this discerning eye to something as fundamental as nourishment, and this glaring omission did them each in.

When someone comes to me with a creative block, I often suggest they do a cleanse or to fast. A block is a block, after all, and a block in the physical system manifests as a block in the life. Most of us walk around with congested heads, hearts, lungs, digestive tracts, lymphatic systems, etc.

I was listening to a very astute marketer marketer last week talk about the endless prescriptions drugs he had to take. This person is so effective at marketing precisely because he takes unconventional views and does things differently than anybody else. And yet again, he was unable to apply this same ingenuity to his own health, or to redirect his energies into discovering alternative strategies, instead falling into dangerous assumptions (such as putting too much faith in allopathic doctors).

In other words, let your brilliance spread like wildflower, into every facet of your life. Don't stop tearing up assumptions like weeds, until you're an open space, open like the sky.

In truth,

Steven Budden