My Journey with Jim Morrison

Chapter 4

Wake Up

“Wake up,” he said.

“I will,” I promised.

Being muse and guide, I knew Jim Morrison’s invitation held value for me. For over a year now, he’s been showing up in my non-ordinary states, his visits leading to various forms of transformation in my ordinary days.

So, when at the dawning of 2022 he called for another round of wake up, I listened.

I wondered where I was meant to expand my awareness next. I’d already done plenty of waking up.

But I was curious and willing to go within to search for a gem that was ready to be mined.

It was then the courageous creative within me was unveiled.

Upon reflection, I knew this archetype had already been dancing about the edges of my awareness, and I’d been looking for guidance and clarity around it.

Morrison was there to help. I knew he was the perfect mentor. He’d valued creativity, saw it as personal freedom. In his brief lifetime, he embodied the courageous creative. Through his own determined quest, he’d connected with this energy.

After graduating from film school, Jim, the poet, the seeker, took to a rooftop in Venice, California, where—reportedly with the help of psychedelics which were common in the day—he meditated, fasted, and waited, believing with his whole being that some deeper truth would be revealed to him. And it was. In the night. Under the stars. Next to candlelight. He came back down into the everyday world transformed. Inside him were the words, the music, and a knowing.

Not long after, the well-known ocean side meeting between Jim and Ray Manzarek—a fellow graduate of the UCLA film school—took place, and from there, the band The Doors was soon formed.

Back in the late 1960s and until his death in 1971, Jim Morrison was asking people to become aware of the truth of who they were, to discover this by going within. He gave this truth his all. He gave it from his heart and his soul. And so, from time to time, when he shouted Wake Up from on stage or composed poetry and lyrics that invited the same, he understood exactly what he was asking.

For me, the opportunity to meet up with and unleash the courageous creative within was welcomed. I’m well aware that creativity has unique powers for both the individual and the collective. It’s come to my rescue on more than one occasion. In fact, it’s often been my creative endeavors that have pulled me through a challenge, that have saved me.

I understood that Morrison had dropped by to nudge me to the next opening in my path. It’s no surprise in these shifting times that I would get the call to activate the courageous creative. Her particular kind of fearlessness and approach are needed just about everywhere. She’s here to boost creativity, to blend it with bravery in order to bring about positive change.

While psychedelics and free love were features of the counterculture movement of Jim’s day, those shouldn’t take away from the fact that it was a time for imagining a world that would better suit everyone. The push for change had started to kick open the doors to systems that needed transformed because they were not in service to the greater good.

The brakes were eventually put on the movement by the powers that be, by those who most benefited from the established narratives, supported by those who were afraid of change, finding it easier to shrink than expand.

But if you think about it, isn’t the life journey about movement?

We’re guided to grow our awareness, then take action based on it. It’s true that it’s not always comfortable. We get to one point, settle in, then we’re pushed on again.

But then, stagnation isn’t appealing.

It’s a death.

Visionaries like Morrison have been inviting us to remember the truth of our own powers since forever.

While the counterculture movement of Jim’s day was stopped, the doors that were forced open were never fully closed. Now, here we are these many years later with a chance to push them wide open, to create real and lasting change for the betterment of all. Morrison’s wake-up call is just as crucial today as it was back in his time. But today, the courageous creative, bursting with brilliant energy, has arrived to assist us.

The question is, will enough of us step into this energy, harness our creativity and bravely act from it?

“Wake up,” he said.

“I will,” I responded.

And from there, the courageous creative was unveiled.

Image by ColourPhotography at Pixabay