Showing posts with label creativity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label creativity. Show all posts

Thursday, January 24, 2013

I create therefore I can


I fell asleep last night with what felt like an insight on the relationship between creativity and ability to manifest the life you want.  Let's see if it can withstand the scrutiny of the light of day.  It's this:  the act of creativity is literally to create something from nothing.   Maybe I'm staring at a blank page or canvass, holding a guitar, sitting at a keyboard with no idea of what I'm going to write, paint or play.  Suddenly, something comes.  Out of "nowhere," it comes.  And I let it come.  I seize it (or it seizes me) and soon I have created a blog post, a book, a painting, a song.

This is my actual experience.  I fancy myself a writer, so not surprisingly I've had the experience with writing.  But the lesson is perhaps even more powerful when experimenting with artistic media in which I don't believe I have talent or ability.   I practically flunked kindergarten art yet I have sat in front of a blank canvass and been led to create a painting that I love.   Recently I was in a short songwriting workshop and I wrote a song out of nothing--I had never done that before (in all my years of singing and fooling around with satirical lyrics, I'd never written a song from scratch).

Now that experience of having created is a real, felt experience.  What could bolster my confidence so much as knowing that out of seemingly nothing, there is a place with me that connects with inspiration?  To repeat this experience is to build-up a sense of security more powerful than any other--out of nothing comes something--the nothingness is illusory.


Take this knowledge to the world of creating relationships, jobs and housing (and combine it with the miracle of the internet) to see its full application.  Because I've faced the blank paper and something has always come, I now trust that it will.  In the same way, I can truly trust that although I don't know where the right house, the right job or the right husband will come from, they exist and they will manifest.  And in my case, thank you, God.  They already have.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Day 13 -- Season for Nonviolence--Creativity

[From The Season for Nonviolence, 64 Ways in 64 Days pamphlet]
"Feb. 11 CREATIVITY Identify at least 5 ways in which you express your creativity every day. Today, allow something unpredictable and joyous to express through you."

I like that this is in the present tense. How do I already express my creativity every day--not another flippin' way that I need to change to be more something.

Let's see, 5 ways:
1) I blog
2) I make up weird songs to the kids in the car
3) I make up fun stories with the kids in the car and the dining table
4) I cook
5) I pray (this actually may be the most creative thing I do--when I am praying for someone else, I am often able to get out of the way and let God directly guide me in my words)

Today, I'm tempted to say I was fairly predictable and joyless, except that I picked my daughter and her friends unexpectedly up from school and I think that they loved it and it gave me joy to do it.