The Silence

Life is born of silence.
Without silence we would not
hear the song.
Silence is the life-giving womb.
Silence is the beat of the heart.
Wear her like a crown.
Wear her like a cape.
Wear silence in the midst of laughter,
sorrow, joy and pain.
Enter her womb,
there sound is born.

The Nurturing Power of Destruction

I am only beginning to understand the nurturing power of destruction. For so long I destroyed without knowing the cycles. Why are ants and bees more wise than me? The rose bush is a master teacher, knowing when to bloom and when to simply be. Yesterday,I cut back her dead blooms. She did not argue. There was nothing to protest. It was time to let go. And bloom again.
Thank you, I said, holding her wisdom in my heart.

Series Begins on Thursday, December 11 For 35,000 years—millennia before Yahweh, Christ, Buddha or Mohammed appeared on the scene—the Goddess was worshipped as the primary divinity. She was everywhere: in the seasons, the tides, the sun and the moon, and the birth and death cycles of all living things. During the time of the Goddess, scripture was Nature and Nature was feminine. As we move into the dark time of the year and the promise of rebirth offered by the Winter Solstice and the holidays of hope and light, the Divine Feminine, our most ancient divinity is calling us to remember and return. It was sometime between 3500 and 2000 BCE when the warrior tribes with their masculine gods and patriarchal societies descended on the rich lands of the Fertile Crescent where Inanna was the reigning Goddess. These patriarchal tribes first challenged, then attacked and finally crushed the Goddess, her beliefs and the ways of those who worshipped her. At best, women were stripped of their influence at spiritual and cultural levels; at worst, they were enslaved and demonized.(read about etymology of word "hag".) Today more and more women, and men, are questioning traditional biblical teaching about deity. Although many people assert that God is beyond gender, long centuries of referring to "Him" as masculine and addressing Him as Lord, King, Father, etc have been a strong conditioning factor in our lives, whether we are "religious" or not. Sacred duties and religious rituals have been largely in the hands of men, and a priestly hierarchy. Because history is written by the victors—the patriarchy—this image of a masculine God and his earthly spokesmen is presented as one prevailing since time immemorial; it is "natural" and enshrined in both Holy Writ and religious tradition. Nothing could be further from the truth! Without the Divine Feminine as an integral part of our psyches, our hearts and minds, we are a world out of dangerously out of balance. For without the feminine to balance the masculine, the patriarchy has become a twisted task master who sees itself as the center of all life instead of living in partnership with the others, the earth and the cosmos. This world view, as we now know, has created disastrous affects on the earth itself and has led to almost constant warfare. Without the feminine, the masculine has no womb. Without the womb, there is little hope for compassion and creativity to take their place as two of the great triumphs of human history. Over the next six months, I will be running a series of TeleSeminars on the Divine Feminine. Join me in this first in the series. How has the loss of a Divine Feminine affected your life? How would you be different if you had been brought up knowing that the divine has a feminine face whose loving arms protect you? How might your life have been different if you were taught that the Divine Feminine promises joy, passion as well as compassion. How might your life have been different if you knew that the constant changing rhythms of life and the flow of one form into another is what gives life its challenge, its fierceness and its beauty. And that this flow is divinely feminine. "The Goddess in all her manifestations was a symbol of the unity of all life in Nature. Her power was in water and stone, in tomb and cave, in animals and birds, snakes and fish, hill, trees, and flowers. Hence a holistic and mythopoetic perception of the sacredness and mystery of all there is on earth." ~ Marija Gimbutas, archeologist Read about Marija Gimbutas Registration: All sessions are recorded. If you can't attend in person, you will receive the download. Sign up for all six session and receive a 30% discount. 6 sessions: $84. CDs are $10 extra per session. Each session: $20 with audio download,$30 with a CD Read about Emily Hanlon www.creativesoulworks.com emily@emilyhanlon.com

I Am Not I

There is a very particular risk inherent in the creative process: when you take the journey inward, you discover that you are not who you think you are, or you are more than who you think you are. But sometimes these images reflected through the inner mirrors are so alien to our ego that they cause us to run. The trick is not to run, but to persevere. The image will shift, the fear will dissolve and the stranger seen through the creative mirror will become familiar and quite wonderful. These unknown parts of us will guide us through unseen doors, into unexpected landscapes.

A poem by Juan Ramon Jimenez speaks wonderfully to this point.

I Am Not I

I am not I.
I am walking beside me
whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit
and at other times manage to forget.
The one who forgives sweet when I hate,
the one who takes a walk when I am indoors,
the one who remains silent when I talk,
and the one who will remain when I die.

How do we discover these who walk beside us and tend to be who we are not? How do we learn to lift the smoke screen?

First of all, I'd like to suggest that these ones do not walk beside us, but these unseen, unexplored voices live inside us.

There are different ways of exploring these inner selves, whom some call the dark or shadow side, hidden self or true self. Whatever the name, these are parts of self that have been secluded, usually in childhood or adolescence, when it seemed somehow dangerous to put them out into the world. We learn very early in life to pass judgments on those parts of self that don't meet with acceptance; in so doing, we doom our self to live through a small part of the totality of self while casting other parts into the shadows, where we keep them hidden and silent.

Carl Jung said that the unconscious is a great friend, guide and advisor to the conscious and that psychic wholeness comes from bringing the unconscious and the conscious into balance. He believed the primary way of doing this is through dreams. I believe that this communication is also part and parcel of the creative journey. The trick is in breaking through the stranglehold that the rational, conscious mind, the "I" we think we are, has on us.

As far as I am concerned, this is the most difficult part of the journey, quieting the inner critic so that we can go unfettered, without judgment and criticism, into the great sea of the unconscious. This breaking through is also the hook -- or perhaps it is more accurate to say that when we finally break through into the creative unconscious, we are hooked. For there we find the hidden selves who hold so much of our deep yearnings and explosive drive. They hold talents, wisdom and knowledge we never dreamed we had. For the fiction writer, our hidden, disowned selves often come through as powerhouse characters -- if we let them! In so many ways, these hidden selves are partners in the dance of creativity.

The Skeleton in Your Closet: Embracing Your Darkside

I sent my Soul through the Invisible

Some Letter of that After-Life to spell

And by and by my Soul returned to me

And answer’d ‘I myself am Heav’n and Hell.’

—Omar Khayyam, Sufi poet

As the poem by Omar Khayyam suggests, our power as human beings comes from the blending of the light and dark, the gentle and powerful. Power can be used to create or destroy. Destruction can be seen as positive or negative. Darkness can be terrifying or magnificent.

Your deeper self knows that creating is a constant dance between heaven and hell, yin and yang, intuitive and rational, head and gut and heart, and in that dance there is no right and wrong, no like and dislike; there is simply being and dancing the passionate dance. It is this shadow world of the human psyche that becomes the grist for the artist’s mill.

The Task of the Artist Is to Bring the Dark into the Light

If you have doubts, go to an art museum and look at the great works of art. The image of the brutally beaten, crucified Christ has captured artists’ imaginations for two thousand years. There is the severed head of John the Baptist and the agonies of the saints. There is great secular art: Poussin’s Rape of the Sabine Women, Goya’s Disasters of War, and Picasso’s Guernica are but a few that come to mind. Turn to literature: Macbeth is probably one of the bloodiest plays written. If you haven’t seen Roman Polanski’s movie version, rent it and have yourself a walk on the darkside equal to any Stephen King movie. Oedipus gouges out his eyes. Othello murders Desdemona and then commits suicide. Raskolnikov splits open his landlady’s head with an axe. War and Peace—the very title combines the polar opposites that must unite in the dance.

Myths and Fairy Tales Are Mirrors for Life’s Journeys

Turn to fairy tales and myths where the dark, fertile, churning underworld of the unconscious drives the stories and is home to its heroes and heroines; this is the archetypal Wonderland where all is birth, death and rebirth and the impossible is always possible. In the myth of Persephone, for example, Persephone is the young girl whom Clarissa Estes compares to our uninitiated creative self. Persephone must, if her creativity is to go beyond innocence, descend to the Underworld. In the myth, she is picking daisies and the earth literally opens and she is stolen by Hades, King of the Underworld, who is entranced by her beauty. Hades is the darkside rising up to give passion to the innocence of creativity itself.

Demeter, earth mother, Persephone’s mother and a powerful goddess in her own right, goes to Zeus and begs him to get her daughter back. Zeus says yes, but there’s a catch: If Persephone has not eaten anything in the Underworld, she can return to her mother. By mistake, however, Persephone eats three pomegranate seeds. Mistake? Let’s put it this way—would you want to go back to mamma’s house once you’ve tasted the joys of passion and reigned as Queen of the Underworld?

It is important to the understanding of this story not to mistake the mythical underworld for the Christian hell. The Underworld is not a place of retribution, and Hades is not a fallen angel. Rather he is God of the Underworld, the powerful place of death and birth. But Hades needs a queen; he needs the moist power of the creative feminine. So Persephone “mistakenly” eats three pomegranate seeds and must return to Hades for six months out of the year. Although Demeter mourns and the earth falls into the cold, barren days of winter, you can bet there are all kinds of happenings going on in the inner core of the earth where Persephone reigns as queen beside her dark, seductive lover. Need proof? Just look at the wild fertility of Spring, the product of their months together.

Explore Emily's Book, The Art of Fiction Writing

Your Darkside Is a Powerful Part of Your Creativity

Darkside has nothing to do with evil or morality. It has nothing to do with ethics or lack thereof. Darkside is a label attached to psychological material that lies in the shadows of consciousness and even deeper, buried in the unconscious. Your darkside material holds some of the most fertile ground for your creative expression.

You can call the darkside by a variety of names, including shadow material or disowned material, which means those parts of self that the Inner Critic, deeming them unsuitable for the face that you show to the world, has shunted off into the shadows. In so doing, the Inner Critic has forced you to “disown” what could be the truest part of you. For your disowned, shadow or dark side holds some of the most vital parts of what makes you you. In this light, then, you might call your darkside or shadow material your True Self.

This True Self holds a lot of your instinctive, primal material; it is the part of you that Clarissa Estes says has been “starched out.” It is the part of you that knows your creativity is the most passionate part of yourself. It is the part of you that knows how to get down and dirty, the part that has no interest in merely surviving but instead wants you to flourish like a rose bush flowering with mad abandon. It is the part of you that isn’t afraid to claim your body and the passions that lie within.

"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious."

~ Carl Jung

Message from the Muse

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious.

—Carl Jung

The Destroyer Within

Artists are destroyers of nicely ordered systems.
—Picasso

Ever since I started collecting quotes on writing and creativity, the one by Picasso has remained the most provocative and, for a long time, the most confounding. Until one day it hit me: The nicely ordered system that the artist must destroy is his own. He must destroy the image of self given the stamp of approval by the Inner Critic. He must destroy the image created by dutiful obedience to the lists of Shalts and Shalt Nots. He must own his disowned material. He must walk into the shadows and embrace his darkside.

The Enemy Within

If you are a Trekkie, you might remember the very early “Star Trek” episode (#5) entitled “The Enemy Within.” Although dated—it was aired on October 6, 1966 (Stardate 1672.1)—it is a perfect example of Picasso’s quote and the core work of this book. I quote from the video jacket:

A transporter malfunction causes Kirk to be split into separate beings: one compassionate, the other savage. Spock and McCoy suffer along with their friend as Kirk confronts a side of his nature no man should see. His only hope for survival is to reunite his two selves.

Kirk’s savage or what I would call primal self gets split off. This is the enemy or beast within. This is the side of us the Inner Critic doesn’t want to let out. This side of Kirk is lustful, greedy, murderous; he incarnates all the deadly sins. But without his primal self, the “compassionate” side of Kirk begins to wither on the vine. He loses his ability to make a decision much less be in command of the Enterprise and, because of his indecisiveness, some of his crew are threatened with death. The compassionate side of Kirk, the Captain in Kirk, cannot function without his primal self. And the primal self, while at first roaming the ship and leaving havoc in his wake, also begins to weaken and soon is close to death.

While Kirk would like to let this side of him die, Dr. Spock points out that he cannot. He needs this part of him if he is to survive. It is this part of him, tempered with compassion and intellect, that makes him a leader. In a very touching finale, the two sides of Kirk not only unite but embrace one another, and the compassionate side of Kirk accepts his darkside with love. Only then can the real Captain Kirk step forward and take control of the ship once more. In essence, Kirk has to destroy his image of himself as a “good” man if he is to survive. He has to let his crew see that he, like all humans, has this self seething with all the primal instincts, and more importantly, he has to embrace, to love this primal self.

Let the Gypsy in You Dance!

You cannot be truly creative until the gypsy in you dances.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Imagining your creative desires is the first step on the journey to getting them. The pursuit is not an easy one. Creativity doesn’t just happen. Wildly creative people aren’t the beloved children of the Fates. creativity is hard work. It is risky business. Creativity is something we must choose every day of our lives.

Creativity is active and passionate. Creativity is about doing and feeling. The rich fertile ground where creativity is born and nurtured lies in the heart and the gut. Creativity rises from the unknown, the unseen, the forgotten. Creativity laughs and cries, it dances and sings, it creates and destroys.

Labyrinth as a Metaphor for the Journey

In the ancient myth of Ariadne, her half brother, the Minotaur, half-man, half-beast, is imprisoned at the heart of the labyrinth and fed the brightest and most promising youth of Athens in sacrifice each year. It is Ariadne, muse and guide to truth, who gives Theseus the golden thread that leads into the labyrinth, where he slays the Minotaur and then follows the golden thread back into the light.

Each of us has a Minotaur caged inside us. We, too, feed this beast the best and brightest of our creativity. In the workshop, we will use writing and other creative methods as Ariadne's golden thread!

Using the image of the labyrinth is a bridge into the deeper mystery of self is a powerful creative experience that shifts our relationship to self and allows us to hear our true voice.

"Back into the labyrinth, where we are found or lost forever."
W.B. Yeats

Writings from the Sunday Creativity Circle, March 10, 2008

Where I am now in my wet, moist and juicy world

by Louise Easton

I am floating down the river, its dark bottom laden with my years of thoughts, burdens and yearnings. I leave some of them as mulch to nurture those who follow this path, but I carry above with me the parts that have broken off, longing to bring their newness to the surface, to have them nourished by light and sun. Thus the wisdom that was the wisdom that will be merge in the wet, juicy and moist being that is the core of who I am.

Writings from the Sunday Creativity Circle, March 10, 2008

by Joy Weisman

Beauty within
Beauty inside me
Flowing and increasing
Alongside me
I am my own friend
Giving to myself
My love
Respect
My joy that I so deserve
Makes me happy
And makes me whole.
I am me.

When the Soul Speaks....

I had a fight with my husband last night. I slept in the guest room and come morning, I was still angry and hurt. So I decided to meditate on how to handle these feelings. This was the intention of the meditation, but soon I found myself considering the question of my truth. Not the truth in terms of my version of the fight. That I was right, of course, and he was wrong-- and would never admit it much less apologize. My meditation had taken me to my Truth with a capital T. I was aware, too, that the voice who was considering this Truth was not my own. That the thoughts in my head were not my own.

I wasn’t, however, taken aback by the fact there was this other voice talking to me. I often have conversations with my guides. Over the years, perhaps because I write fiction, perhaps because of my proclivity to imagine, or perhaps because my father, a great lover of Shakespeare, was fond of quoting Hamlet, saying: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophies” — perhaps because of these influences and predilections, I have become an ardent believer that imagination holds the deeper, truer reality.

So, hearing this other voice was comfortable. What she said, however, took me by surprise. Here I was, ruminating over this fight I had had with my husband and, suddenly, I am given the answer to questions I have been asking for a very long time:

What is the truth of my life?

Why am I here?

What is my path?

I had always thought that if and when I knew the answers to these questions, my work, the meaning of my life would become clear. So the answer I was given surprised me. I was told this: The truth of who you are is simply this: you are one with God. You are safe in the light. Nothing can harm you.

I have heard this before. In fact, I have sucked on such thoughts as a child sucks on a hard candy. Intently. In the end, however, such beliefs—although nice—seemed just too… I’m not sure… Perhaps they didn’t sufficiently meet my work ethic, my need to be busy and to have meaningful work. So believing that the truth of my life is that I am one with God, that I am safe in the light, that nothing can harm me… simply wasn’t sufficient. I needed something more proactive. Something that would really do IT for me.

This morning, to my surprise, the words did IT for me. They impacted me like the greatest ah-ha of my life. I felt them in a way that words cannot describe. The image of a rainbow comes to mind. One can talk about the beauty of a rainbow but talk is only talk until once the rainbow appears. Another image is the joy of making eye contact with a small child whose eyes do not wander off of mine, but draw me in with innocence and immediacy. I smile. The child smiles. It is a smile of sheer simplicity. It is a smile that feels like, well, the rainbow.

Ach, pedestrian! my mind thinks. Rainbows and baby’s smiles. Come on, Emily, you’re a writer. You can come up with something better than that. But I can’t. For in the end, even these images pale before the experience.

I hear the words: The truth of who you are is simply this: you are one with God. You are safe in the light. Nothing can harm you.

The voice goes on. It says, “This is what your soul wants you to know.”

I think, “My God, a moment of soul-speak!” My heart pounds in anticipation. This is a dream I tell myself. But I am awake.

The voice goes on. It says, quoting me, “ ‘Who am I?’ you ask. 'You are light."

I listen very carefully.

“ ‘Who am I?’ you ask. You are the flame of God and creation.

“‘Who am I?’ you ask. You are a being of light.

“There is nothing to fear.

“You say that you do not know who you are inside you own skin. (Indeed this is a feeling I have had a lot of late.) The voice continues, “This is because you are searching for me. I am always here. Waiting. Waiting. For you to see. I have no fear. Only a longing for you, in this incarnation, to return to me. It is I who lives inside your skin. It is I who breathes the light as you breath air. I am light only. I seek the light and union with you. I am only half.

“You long for a twin. I know this. You have longed for a twin since you were a child, for someone who knows you because she is you. For someone who loves you because you have been together since the beginning. Someone who will never stop loving you, no matter what. I tell you this, beloved, you feel this hunger because you have a twin, one you have forgotten. Me. Your Soul. I am incomplete without you. You are incomplete without me.

“You feel sadness in this life, great uncertainty, what you call depression. You feel anger, even rage. These are not outward things or imagined hurts. Walking the path of an incarnate being is difficult and often feels impossible. You lash out at others or yourself. Why? Because you, the incarnate being, forgets the twin who is the soul, forgets that you are never and could never be alone.

“To walk in partnership with me is to truly embrace the journey of life. For I am here to remind you with each and every breath that in our oneness you are a being of light. You are a child of God. You cannot die because I cannot die. We transform, shapeshift if you will. Birth itself is the great shapeshifter.

“Matter, this stuff of the flesh is heavy. We, you and I, we choose the journey of flesh in joy and expectation. Promising always that the body will not forget the soul. And yet, you do. To remember and reunite with me is the greatest dance of life. The never ending dance that takes you through the veils and allows you to journey back to your true birthright. Where there is no anger, no depression, fear or meanness. Where there is only light and God and being and acceptance.

“To remember me is a great task of this life for you. So this moment is one of celebration. Remember Dear One, no one can hurt you. No one can demean you. From this moment on, when you feel anger, rage, depression, emptiness, know that you walk hand in hand with the twin for whom your heart yearns.”

The moment passed, the joy did not sustain itself. Life got in the way. And I forgot. But not ever entirely again. I hold the feeling of this conversation in my heart, in my mind’s eye, in every core of my being. And should I forget for long, one part of me will remember and remind me. I have nothing to fear. I am one with God. I am safe in the light. I am not alone.

And, the fight with my husband...my need to prove I was right and he was wrong... simply didn't matter anymore. It was forgotten and we embraced.