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We are all creative. It is our natural and fundamental way of being.
In those moments of creative flow, we express our essence fully, without reservation. In those sacred moments, our Heart is open.
As artist and mystic, Howard Brodie, so beautifully puts it, we are here to fulfill our purpose to express our own unique "Sound," rather than to merely be an "echo" of the ideas, thoughts, beliefs or ideals indoctrinated in us by our parents, society, tribe or group. When we are expressing our own "song," we experience harmony, happiness, and fulfillment.
When we suppress our own sound, our own "sacred song," we are suppressing what we are here to express. Then we experience constriction, pretense and suffering.
PERMISSION TO BE CREATIVE:
SUPPRESSING THE CREATIVE FLOW:
SELECTIVE SUPPRESSION:
ACCESSING THE "CREATIVE ZONE:"
When we observe young children whose flow of creativity has not yet been stifled or suppressed by parental or societal conditioned fears, judgments, beliefs, ideals, or standards, we witness certain principles in action that in creative people continue into adulthood:
1. FREEDOM TO EXPERIMENT & WONDER: There is an openness, ease, curiosity, and wonder with which these children approach each situation. There is a lack of any concern or fear of failure as they do a drawing, paint a picture, build a sand castle, play music, and do a dance. They are able to leap forward to try out new things out without a flicker of fear or hesitancy. "I CAN" is fully present. "I CAN"T" is yet to be learned.
2. FREEDOM TO ENVISION BEYOND APPEARANCES: There is a fluidity of imaginative possibilities that they naturally bring to what presents itself. One of the best examples of this is the way they are able to transform a plain, large cardboard box into the best toy imaginable -- shape shifting it in a moment into a house, a fort, a rocket ship, a tank, a sled, etc.
3. FREEDOM TO ACT ON WHAT THEY CAN IMAGINE: There is a facility with children in which they easily slip into the game of "let's pretend," and with a flick of their imagination, become 100% fully what they are pretending to be in voice, manner, behavior and bearing --- a father, a mother, an artist, an astronaut, a superhero, a tiger, an eagle --- and then just as effortlessly able to slip out of that imagined world in time for dinner.
I remember the fall of the year when I was eleven and my brother, Chuck, was six, and we spent a windy afternoon riding herd on thousands upon thousands of dangerous uncontrollable long-horned cattle, crying out warnings to each other and diving into ditches to successfully avoid being trampled as the steers stampeded toward us again and again, their movements in complete alignment with the motion of the wind. We could smell the herd, and the dust that swirled up from the motion of thousands of legs clogged our nostrils, causing us to place our kerchiefs tighter around our faces. The thundering sound of their hooves and their squeals of panic almost drowned out the sound of our voices calling directions and warnings to each other. Of course, to my mother watching out the window, the view of her sons yelling, running, firing their cap pistols, and diving into ditches, as thousands of dried fall leaves swept back and forth across the large expanse of tree-covered lawn, may have looked curious and amusing. To us, it was real. It was high danger and adventure.
Consciously creative people stay open to this flow of imagination, and are able to create a dynamic synthesis of IMAGINATION, INTUITION and INTELLECT that they can powerfully implement as adults.
In that openness to the creative flow, remarkable unexplainable things can happen.
I recall a remarkable moment with my daughter, Stecia, when she was about 4 or 5 years old. We were sitting cross-legged on the rug in a small alcove off my bedroom, talking. I had a guitar on my lap, and picked it up, and played and sang a couple of songs to her. Stecia asked me if she could play the guitar. I said, "Sure," and handed it to her. Though she had never played before, she began to strum and sing, making up a song as she went along. Somehow, her tiny fingers knew where to go. Somehow, her guitar playing was in harmony with her singing. Somehow, she was singing verses of a song she was creating in the moment, each verse rhyming and fitting perfectly with the one before, the melody beautiful. As I listened, my eyes became wide with wonder and awe. My mind suddenly screamed at me to jump up and find a tape recorder to capture this magical, miraculous moment. But I dared not disturb the flow of what was arising, and chose to stay where I was, entranced by what I was witnessing, in gratitude for the gift of creation occurring. And then the song was over. Non-pulsed and devoid of any self-consciousness, Stecia handed the guitar back to me, and went off to play at something else. I had no outer record of this remarkable event, just an inner indelible mark of grace and love recorded in my heart.
CREATIVITY = LISTENING TO AND FOLLOWING YOUR INNER WISDOM:
Consciously creative people know how to silence the inherited inner critic and judge, and to listen instead to their inner wisdom as their compass and guide. They know how to ferret out and dissolve the fears and limiting beliefs that clog up the pipeline through which the infinite flow of creation expresses itself through them. They have learned how to shift from the indoctrinated powerlessness of "I can't," to the power and effectiveness of "I can," to the beingness of "I AM."
I've had the chance to express myself creatively in many roles over the years ---artist, author, actor, director, speaker, course leader, consultant, teacher, coach, hypnotherapist, father, friend, cook (I can make an imaginative omelete!)... the list continues. Make a list for yourself, and you may find your creativity has expressed itself in many ways that you had not even recalled.
Some people focus on one or two areas, some like myself, have played in many arenas. One way is no better than the other. In my commitment to support others to rekindle their own natural creative nature, my way was perfect for me. Through personal experience, I discovered that no matter what field people express their creativity in, the principles are the same. This knowledge has allowed me to support others to open up to their own unique song of creation.
During my first year of teaching life drawing at the Corcoran School of Art in the early 60's, I began to realize that my real contribution to my students, beyond their learning the technical skills required, was to encourage them to honestly and deeply inquire into the question, "Who Am I?"
When that question is grappled with honestly and rigorously, what we discover is that it is one thing to LOOK, but another thing entirely to SEE. The former is inherited, conditioned perception, the latter a function of capturing the essence of what is before us. To be an artist, or any Consciously Creative person begins by discovering HOW WE SEE the world. In the process of that unfolding, we realize that our way is one of many. Then a light goes on within, and what arises is understanding, appreciation and compassion for the multitude of realities being expressed in the world.
Simultaneously, there is an awareness of the deep, unbreakable connectedness we all have to the one unchanging reality that generates it all. In the gratitude, humility and wonder of that awareness, that we may be open to receive the gift of Grace, and know our true purpose --- to be a unique manifestation of the Love of Spirit in form. To BE. To SEE. To KNOW. To LOVE. To ACT.
-- Hal Isen
From Core Wisdom On-Line Number 32 - Jul. 2, 2003
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