Creativity and Spirituality: the Enduring Path

What we yearn deeply to be, we already are.

Our birthright stirs in the beating of our heart. Our creative expression holds the key. We yearn, struggle, fear, flee and sometimes touch that birthright. Only to run again. Forget again. Forget our creative source, our creative being.

The deeper journey of our creative endeavors is about remembering... about touching with love the deeper creativity that takes us home. What that deeper creativity is holds potential beyond our mind’s ability to conceive.

What is the source of your creativity?

What is your vision of home?

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

Everyone has a shadow, much of which was created in childhood when our need for love and protection caused us to reject parts of us deemed shameful, unworthy or dangerous by family, teachers, religious leaders, friends and even our enemies. These disowned parts of us were exiled to the darkest depth of our unconscious, hidden from the world and often from ourselves.

This is a huge problem, for the shadow is a powerful part of us. We cannot will it away or think that it remains subdued just because we have forgotten its existence.

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.

I receive Daily Meditations from Richard Rohr and this is one that I particularly like, and so I am sharing. It changes the word "prayer" in a dramatic and life-giving way. This is for anyone who is consciously on the journey of inner change, simplicity and peace.

The word prayer has been trivialized
"The word “prayer” has often been trivialized by making it into a way of getting what we want. But I use “prayer” as the umbrella word for any interior journeys or practices that allow you to experience faith, hope, and love within yourself. It is not a technique for getting things, a pious exercise that somehow makes God happy, or a requirement for entry into heaven. It is much more like practicing heaven now.

Such prayer, such seeing, takes away your anxiety for figuring it all out fully for yourself, or needing to be right about your formulations. At this point, God becomes more a verb than a noun, more a process than a conclusion, more an experience than a dogma, more a personal relationship than an idea. There is Someone dancing with you, and you are not afraid of making mistakes."

From The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See.



Art by Daniel B. Holeman  http://www.awakenvisions.com/

The Inner Journey demands the bravery of the Spiritual Warrior
The inner journey is not for the faint of heart and it demands the bravery of the spiritual warriors who, as the 14th century Persian mystic, Haifiz, said, “tame the beasts in their pasts so that the knights hoofs can no longer break the jeweled vision in the heart.”

Imagine if we saw our journey through life as
one that protected “the jeweled vision of the heart.”

The Erotic Embrace...

by Patresa Rollinger
She called. And like a child runs to its mother, I came. “I have to go down to the lake.” I blurted as I pushed away from the dinner table. The urgency in my voice told my husband more than he wanted to know: that he would be packing alone for our impending move until I got back.

I grabbed my coat and hat as I ran out the door, across the deck, down the stairs and onto the trail that led downhill, between Manzanita bushes and newly budding oak trees, to the lake that bordered our property.

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...

 

Deep within my being,
free and safe,
is a light
leading to a portal
opening to me …
Me waiting so patiently
for my return.