The Cycles of Creativity

by Emily Hanlon

Although at its core, creativity is a mystery, the creative process is knowable, and we can use it as a template for living a more fulfilling, aware, meaningful life. If allowed, the cycles of creativity become the enduring flow of our lives, bringing with them the freedom to live life sourced from your passions instead of your fears – from your life’s true purpose rather than from your ego’s vision of security and prosperity.

The Spark of Inspiration
The initial spark of inspiration is creativity’s calling card. It can be an idea for a poem, sculpture, dance or concerto, a new garden, business or invention, a Halloween costume, a party or a gift; it can be a vision of you in a new relationship to others and to Self. Inspiration is non-verbal; it is the life-enhancing “Wow!” moment when the vision of what can be –of who you can be – carries you into unchartered territory and the land of possibility.

The land of possibility is the womb of creativity; it is here that you swim on the sea of the unconscious; your spark of inspiration is thrust about by the surging waves of the chaos. This land is not unknown to you. In fact, you visit it every night in your dreams. What sometimes makes it a nightmare is that your mind cannot make sense of this non-verbal world. Which is why mind – with its language, thought and need to analyze – should not be allowed entry into the early stages of the creative process. The mind is also home of the ego, that busy-body who will surely bully his way in and put your spark of creativity under the microscope of judgment! Now, you feel confused. The image that made glorious sense a minute ago feels muddy, vague and stupid – just another one of your dumb ideas. Out it goes!

Gestation
That is why inspiration needs time to gestate unfettered in the unconscious, in the place of mystery, where there is only possibility, not definition....
To read the full article, go to:
http://www.creativesoulworks.com/index_creative_cycles_i-con.htm

Creative Success: What Does it Mean? How Do We Attain It?

I am offering a new TeleSeminar Series on the meaning of creative success. This is a four part series which begins on Thursday, April 2 and continues on the first Thursday of the month through July.
No matter how much the creative spirit calls and feeds us, we set impossible standard when it comes to measuring creative success.

Session One: You Cannot Be Truly Creative Until the Gypsy In You Dances!

Session one of Emily Hanlon's TeleSeminar Series on Creative Success is designed to challenge our definition of creative success. We will explore the pros and cons of outer world success and its seemingly constant companion, the beast named Failure. To this beast, no matter the accolades we receive, no matter the fame and fortune, enough is never enough. To this beast named Failure, there is always another mountain to climb.

After putting Failure in its place, we will explore creative success from the perspective of the fire in the belly and the hunger in the soul. Creativity laughs and cries, it dances and sings. It holds the power of the waves and sweetness of bird song. Join us in the creative dance!

The TeleSeminar comes with an E-Book: Calling Forth Your Gypsy, which will give you a different perspective on your relationship to creative passion even before we the TeleSeminar begins.

The teleSeminar begins at 1 pm, eastern time and runs for 75 minutes.

Explore Session One, The Gypsy Dances

Explore the Series

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

Writing from the Sunday Creativity Circle

We journeyed to our "source", asked for images and let the images speak. Barbara Livingston's image was a swirling yin/yang. This is what the image wrote:

swirling down

swirling up

the direction does not matter

it is one and the same

breathe deeply

the mist obscuring the path

trust in the journey

the destination is not your purpose

you are not a visitor here

participation is necessary

the stillness is your guide

the questions need not be asked

their answers already written

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.

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.

Risk: The Magic Ingredient

I once did a series of interviews with people who were successful with their creativity and there wasn’t a one who didn’t light up when I asked them about risk. It’s the fuel, the manna, the soul food. It’s also one of the most powerful components of life; without risking, we stagnate. Take a risk, no matter how small, and everything changes. If you’re so afraid of the risk you won’t take chances, you will never be creative. No way. It is impossible.

When I interviewed Nick Meglin, who has been the “idea man” for Mad magazine almost since its inception, I asked him where he thought risk comes into play in creativity. His answer was immediate and forceful:

“Right at the beginning and always, always. A blank page is always a risk. This is a very strong philosophy I have. You and I go to Las Vegas. And I buy ten one-hundred-dollar chips. That’s one thousand dollars. You buy ten one-dollar chips. That’s ten dollars. We go to the crap table. That man over there, we both bet with him. I put all my ten chips down that he’s going to win. You put down one one-dollar chip that he does. The man rolls a seven. I win one thousand dollars. You win one dollar. Who’s luckier?”

“You took a bigger risk,” I said. “You got more.”

“No, you were just as lucky because you bet for him to roll a seven and I bet for him to roll a seven. We’re equally lucky. What differs is what I was willing to lose—not happy to lose, but willing to lose for that risk. We both won on the same roll, the same number, the same bet, but I made a thousand dollars because I was going to risk losing a thousand.

“I tell this to my students—I taught drawing for twelve years—if you don’t want to be told you’re a lousy artist by someone out there who doesn’t know what he’s talking about, don’t draw. Don’t fill a white page with lines, because once you do it, you’re at risk. But if you are going to do it, put everything you can on that page, everything you are or what you feel, what you think, your perception, you alone, not what you’ve seen, not what you think you’d like to do. React to that model, be at one. You’re the only artist in the world drawing that model tonight that way, in your way. No one else can do it.

“Bet the whole roll and put yourself at risk. If not, you’ll never win. You may not lose, but you’ll never win. Go down swinging. Lose trying. But put yourself at risk. And that’s what creativity is.”

This was excerpted from The Art of Fiction Writing, by Emily Hanlon

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.

One of My New Favorite Poems

Saint Francis and the Sow

by Galway Kinnell


The bud

stands for all things,

even for those things that don’t flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;

as Saint Francis

put his hand on the creased forehead

of the sow, and told her in words and in touch

blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow

began remembering all down her thick length,

from the earthen snout all the way

through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,

from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine

down through the great broken heart

to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering

from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:

the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

Creativity as Mediator Between the Worlds

Creativity is a mysterious journey that connects us to the unseen worlds. There was a time when all people had access to the unseen worlds, although it was the shamans, story tellers and healers who mediated between the worlds as they journeyed into the Mystery and interpreted the images found there. Today we have our contemporary journeyers into the cosmic unseen worlds--many creative people are such journeyers--but as a culture we have lost the connection to our instinctual nature. With the development of the human brain and the march of history, the pendulum has swung so far that an overwhelming majority of people do not consider the journey into the unseen worlds a possibility, much less a necessity.

It has become trite to say that modern society has lost its soul, but in truth, that's just what has happened. Soul is something that cannot be experienced in the outer world. It cannot be understood, evaluated, judged. Soul is the groundswell of the inner world, and the eyes with which we view the outer world are blind when turned inward. It is only with the eyes of the heart--the instinctual nature of our deep internal knowing--that we traverse the inner landscape and find our way to soul.

If our outer eyes are perceptive, however, and guided by our inner knowing, we can see the outcome of mystery. This happens when, for example, the invisible becomes suddenly visible, or the impossible becomes suddenly possible in ways that cannot be explained by the rational mind. Such things often happen on both a small and large scale, but in Western culture we are quick to attribute them to coincidence; if coincidence isn't sufficient, then the doubting Thomas is convinced it can "figure out" a rational explanation of the mystery.

How much richer life can be when we are open Mystery. But to do this, we must be brave warriors of the spirit, with creativity both our fire and our sword.

Guidance for the Inner Critic

Here is a letter that Irene Kessler wrote to her Inner Critic. I was so moved, I asked if I could reprint her.

Dear Inner Critic,

What you have said to Irene is not reality and harsh and there is no reason to be harsh. The best things happen when you come from love. Love and honor yourself always and you will do fantastic work. You have it in you and you see that in bits and pieces of writing you have already done. Before you write, love yourself. Fill your being with compassion for yourself and the world. Shine a light on yourself and the universe. Know they are there to help and guide you and that is the strongest force there is. Nothing can override it. Go and write my child, and be happy.

The Inner Critic and the Creative Unconscious

The Inner Critic is terrified of the creative unconscious because it is the home of feelings, emotions, images and it is chaotic and unexpected. The Inner Critic likes order and loves the status quo, which is antithetical to the creative unconscious. That's why if you "fall down the rabbit hole" the Inner Critic won't follow you! Free of the Inner Critic, you have the possibility of experiencing real creative freedom and passionate stories awaits you. Only then can the true dance begin!