Creativity and Spirituality: the Enduring Path

The Alchemy of Unattached Creativity

"What if you knew that the impulse to move in a way that creates beauty in the world will arise from deep within and guide you every time you simply pay attention and wait? How would this shape your stillness, your movement your willingness to follow the impulse to just let go and dance?" ~Oriah Mountain Dreamer

• Where is the unmanifested found?
• Where are seeds found?
• What gives birth to dawn?
• From where does the butterfly emerge? 
• What is the warm, encompassing darkness that gives birth to every living thing?

The answers are all around us.

True Self is your center, your stillness and the knower of mystery and wisdom.
True Self loves your humanity and the immensity of who you are — an immensity beyond the mind's reckoning. True Self waits for you, always. Through her, you find your passion, your purpose and your freedom.

Creativity is the Spiritual Warrior's torch-giving light.

Artwork by Rassouli

At home with your creativity...
Being at home with your creativity and your creative unconscious is like walking into a cosmic shopping mall where each shop offers a different persona for us to try on, actually a different way of being in relationship to ourselves and the world. The only means of exchange in this cosmic mall is exuberance, fearlessness and a desire to share and be shared.

Oh, and there’s a key to the mall, too. We all have it in our pocket when we arrive, even if we don’t know it’s there. The key is a desire to break out of the box of who we think we are, who our families think we should be. It is a desire to fly in a place that, as John O’Donohue says, “is full of the most melodious and nourishing and wild freedom. And everyone should go there, to the wild place, where there are no cages, where there are no tight rooms without windows and without doors, everyone should go to the free clearance places in their own hearts.”

The key to your creativity is always in your pocket!

When the mind-rage takes over
The other day I was in a meeting with my husband and son about a business we have been developing for a very long time. I was interested, listening, participating, and all of a sudden my mind took me to "fear." It shouted, "This is the same old, same old!" "This business will never open!"  "This so-called business is going to put us in the poor house."

Listening to my mind-raging fear scenario, I felt my anger rising at an exponential rate.. It was all I could do not to say something to my husband and son, something which would have been bitter and destructive. I didn't want to do that. And then I remembered "happiness."

Over the past thirty years, I have coached hundreds of women and men on a creative journey that led them to viscerally experience the creative process as a template for a living a more fulfilling, aware and meaningful life. This became the wellspring of my work as a Life Coach for creative women and men. Here I with people who sense the call of creativity and the spiritual journey. When relating to creativity, most people fall into three categories:

Right brain dominant people who actively express their creativity
Right brain dominant people who are not expressing their creativity. 
Left brain dominant people who yearn to express their creativity

Creativity is a path from which the journey of life is explored and its fullness embraced.
In all aspects of Creative Soul Works, whether it be through private coaching, workshops, teleSeminars or retreats, the template of the creative process becomes a unique structure for this journey. The fire of your creativity is its source.

"Working with Emily opened places inside of me I had not realized were still closed. Parts long hidden are now accessible and have an active role in my creative life. Emily's heart warming life affirming style comes through clearly though we are many hundreds of miles apart."
~ Patresa Rollinger

Explore Emily's Life Coaching Program. Call her at 014.962.4432
 

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 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 thr unchartered territory and the land of possibility.

Where does my creativity come from?
I don’t know how to speak about a lifelong pursuit of the creative writing life. I have been on this journey for many years, approximately 30. I have had many questions along this path, but the answer to a question that has always eluded me is this: how do I access more of my creativity? How can I become a better writer? It’s a mysterious question, granted, with probably a different answer for each writer who has ever written.

I want to know where to find my creativity and how to access more of it in order to write well. Where does my creative juice originate? Where can I tap into that flow? Is there a “creativity fountain” similar to the enigmatic (but nonexistent) fountain of youth located in a non-local, place? Once I find it, how can I revisit it and tap into its magic any time I want---forever?

Take a risk, no matter how small, and everything changes.
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:

I was aware, too, that the voice who was considering this Truth was not my own.
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...

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,

No matter that we, like Katherine Anne Porter, “yearn for that undistracted center of being where the will does not intrude,” it is often the hardest destination to reach, precisely because it requires an act of faith.