Ask the Author: Lisa Smartt
Answered Questions (6)
Lisa Smartt
I find that being physically active really helps get the imagination and the Spirit moving. Dancing is the most inspiring form of movement for me as is swimming. These things help me a lot. Sometimes, I just need to let things gestate. Babies are not made in a day. It takes time often for things to jell. I find I go through cycles where there is just a flow of ideas and words and images. Many times those cycles are preceded by quiet restful times that seem on the surface to be unproductive--but in truth, they are not.
Lisa Smartt
Writing for me is how I connect to something larger than me. It is a kind of praying. When the writing goes well, I feel deeply humbled and deeply expanded. When that happens, it is worth everything.
Lisa Smartt
Trust yourself. Trust your imagination. Trust Spirit. And never give up.
Lisa Smartt
I am very interested in the notion of Divine Inspiration, especially after hearing the remarkable stories of people who have had near-death experiences. I am intrigued by people who had no musical, artistic or intuitive gifts before they died, but then after near-death experiences underwent profound creative development. For example, one physician became a concert pianist after his NDE although he never played the piano before dying; he experience a profound kind of inspiration when he died, and he brought it back with him to share with all of us. I am intrigued by people who are deeply inspired in their lives and follow that inspiration.
Lisa Smartt
I very much believe in the concept of the "muse." My ideas come from the same place from where my spiritual life emerges. Many times an idea captures me, and I feel obsessed by it. I trust that process. I left behind a good job and friends and family in California to move to Georgia to research final words under the guidance of Raymond Moody. When inspiration hits, I trust it.
Lisa Smartt
I studied linguistics at UC Berkeley and was trained to seek patterns in language, no matter how unintelligible the language is. So as my father was dying, and I noticed fascinating shifts in his language, I wrote down what he said and began to watch in wonder as patterns emerged.
My father was a vocal skeptic, so I was stunned when he described seeing angels as he was dying. One day he announced, “Enough…the angels say enough…only three days left.” Indeed, three days later he died. I noticed that he began to speak in highly metaphoric and nonsensical language, with unusual use of prepositions, saying things like, “I am crossing up. Help me get down from here,” and frequent non-referential language such as, “This is very interesting. I have never done this before.” My questions about my father’s final words led me to wonder if what I witnessed occurred in the language of others at the end of life, so I established the Final Words Project (www.finalwordsproject.org to find out.
My father was a vocal skeptic, so I was stunned when he described seeing angels as he was dying. One day he announced, “Enough…the angels say enough…only three days left.” Indeed, three days later he died. I noticed that he began to speak in highly metaphoric and nonsensical language, with unusual use of prepositions, saying things like, “I am crossing up. Help me get down from here,” and frequent non-referential language such as, “This is very interesting. I have never done this before.” My questions about my father’s final words led me to wonder if what I witnessed occurred in the language of others at the end of life, so I established the Final Words Project (www.finalwordsproject.org to find out.
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