The other night I went to the planetarium, where for an hour and a half I listened to a group called Sacred Sound Lab chant holy prayers in Sanskrit. All the while, shots of the cosmos (taken by the James Webb telescope) and 3D footage of sacred temple sites in India spiraled across the dome overhead.

To say the experience was surreal doesn’t give it justice.

A few of my friends there had taken psilocybin mushrooms, but even without taking the shrooms myself, I found myself in a seriously altered state just from sitting in the room. It helped the musical combination of Sheela Bringi and Brent Kuecker of Sacred Sound Lab was nothing short of miraculous. (Check them out here.)

But the reason I’m telling you this, other than the fact that it was just really fucking cool, is that when we finally left the space, I found myself reflecting on the words of one of my teachers, “Nick, don’t miss anything. Your kid’s baseball games, your friend’s parties, your nephew’s random event, don’t miss any of it.”

I’m used to getting lofty teachings about the Buddha dharma from this guy, so when I heard this I sort of brushed it off.

At the time it sounded like sappy advice from an overly sentimental old dude. Of course there were some things I was going to miss. I can damn well guarantee that sometimes writing is more interesting than whatever nonsense event I’ve been invited to.

But last night the teaching really sunk in.

As an introverted writer type, I can occasionally exhibit a tendency to pull back from the world. Often, I find it easier, and safer, to sit at home and bang on my keyboard, or work on a new project instead of getting out into the world and knock on the door of the muse. I know other artists and writers have similar experiences.

But that’s the thing about the muse, crafty as she is, she is seldom found in my study. Often, she’s not found within 5 miles of my house.

Sometimes I think this is just to spite me, but occasionally, on nights like the one at the planetarium, this turns out to be a tremendous gift.

Nearing the end of the show, they did something called a fly-out. Using the Astro cartography data collected from the University of Washington, the planetarium simulated what it would be like to fly away from earth, all the way to the edge of the known universe.

At some point, we got so far out, entire galaxy clusters were represented by tiny red dots and the dome was FULL of them. Hundreds of billions of galaxies stretched out overhead, and as the harp music faded I was reminded, quite clearly, that there is much more to life than the inside of my office.

I took this as a good reminder to keep hunting down the muse, wherever she may have gotten off to this time.

I hope it inspires you to do likewise.

With peace and (hopefully) a little bit of grace,

-Nick