As a writer and a teacher of writing, I have come to respect the wisdom of the blank page. I guess that now we’d say blank screen, but the feeling is the same. Writers complain about the terror of the looming white space, but instead of paralyzing us with writer’s block, the blank page can motivate us by revealing our immense creative resource, and our infinite options. The page asks us to trust our power.

White is not the absence of color, but rather includes all colors, everything all-at-once. Similarly, the blank white page may overwhelm us, not because it is a void – representing nothing, but because it represents almost too much, containing everything. All our ideas – past, present, and future – speak to us at once from that seemingly empty page.

We freeze in response to all our potential! We may fear that by committing to any ONE idea, limiting it by expressing it in language, we forever cut off all those other creative thoughts. But maybe this is because we are self-conscious and fearful of our own infinite possibilities.

I suggest that we harness this awareness of our infinite potential to enhance our creativity. We can shift our perspective from fear to trust. We can begin by asking questions of our higher mind, asking which of the zillions of ideas would like to be revealed now. Then we let whatever comes up emerge and flow easily. We can stay relaxed and in the moment by reminding ourselves that we always have access to a limitless source of ideas. As we allow our creations to be born and take shape, some adjustments reveal themselves, and we can allow those as well, trusting that our creative power will not be exhausted or dry up if we change or delete or revise.

The lesson of the blank page extends to our whole life. We always create more when we can turn off our self-conscious fears and trust our voice and our power. We can trust that our inner wisdom expresses perfectly through us if we allow it, and there are no mistakes. That’s the wisdom of the blank page.