Encouraging Your Inner Artist, Your Birthright Creativity
I picked up Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way again. This has been a constant companion since it was published in 1992. This time I clutch it to me as if it were the antidote to the bio-socio-political trauma surrounding me. Julia offers us 10 Basic Principles as a bedrock of creative recovery and discovery. At this moment they feel like a bedrock for resistance to hate and fear and a key to (re)connecting to our divinity, our creativity.
Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creative energy.
There is an underlying, in-dwelling creative force infusing all of life – including ourselves.
When we open ourselves to our creativity, we open ourselves to the creator’s creativity within us and our lives.
We are, ourselves, creations. And we, in turn, are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves.
Creativity is God’s gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God.
The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature.
When we open ourselves to exploring our creativity, we open ourselves to God: good orderly direction.
As we open our creative channel to the creator, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected.
It is safe to open ourselves up to greater and greater creativity.
Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our divinity. {Basic Principles, page 3}
Which of these principles come naturally for you right now? Which are you struggling with? Holding both of those, what is the invitation? What do you need from Spirit right now to live into your birthright creativity?
For the Artist at the Start of Day
by John O’Donohue
May morning be astir with the harvest of night; Your mind quickening to the eros of a new question, Your eyes seduced by some unintended glimpse That cut right through the surface to a source.
May this be a morning of innocent beginning, When the gift within you slips clear Of the sticky web of the personal With its hurt and its hauntings, And fixed fortress corners,
A Morning when you become a pure vessel For what wants to ascend from silence,
May your imagination know The grace of perfect danger,
To reach beyond imitation, And the wheel of repetition,
Deep into the call of all The unfinished and unsolved
Until the veil of the unknown yields And something original begins To stir toward your senses And grow stronger in your heart
In order to come to birth In a clean line of form, That claims from time A rhythm not yet heard, That calls space to A different shape.
May it be its own force field And dwell uniquely Between the heart and the light
To surprise the hungry eye By how deftly it fits About its secret loss.