Creativity – in the Wilderness
Beyond the walls of convention
When the time is right – unsheathe the sword
The anguish in creativity
Where does creativity come from?
A story: A Blessing before Dying
Creativity – in the Wilderness
Artists, prophets, and visionaries journey into the wilderness away from the comforts and compromises of the norm to tangle with raw psychic forces -- and imagine the new. After surviving and subduing dark forces, the visionary returns deepened with potent discoveries to inspire the conventional world.
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Beyond the walls of convention
Creativity is a gift from life that flourishes in any, whose spirit is free. Those who live outside the norm and use the opportunity as outsider and outcast to free their spirits from the shackles of custom, the confines of the family, and the censure of unconscious, introjected voices, will exceed in originality, authenticity, and creativity.
Creativity happens beyond the walls of convention – in the wilderness. This is where free spirits live. Any who dare break from the norm, have access to creativity in all its forms. Original art, visionary ideas of science, mind, and soul, holistic healing and depth psychotherapy are the domain of people who live beyond the boundaries of the known and the limits of the family.
Also, wounded people, as many outcasts are, have another edge on creative potential. If we heal our traumatic past, we deepen our souls. Integrating a shattered self, we become whole. We align with our true self, apart from cultural and familial definitions, in order to survive. As we heal, we put the shattered pieces of our selves, back together into an authentic person -- honest and original, embracing the complexity of identity. Perhaps this integration into authenticity is only possible for the shattered since originality and creativity are difficult for the conventionally comfortable. The average person who remains unaware of the compromises of the norm, is predestined to play out prescribed roles and ways of being – and creating. TIt is the healed outcast who has an opportunity to see and live in an original way.
Another advantage for the outcast is in abstaining from non-reflective marriage, childbearing, and the subsequent replication of the family’s values and corruption in childrearing. New thought and creativity have a chance to be born, when we’re not wed to the family’s system of denied emotional realities which we all too easily replicate in the blind obligations of parenting and raising children. A profusion of art and ideas are the “inspired children" of people who birth the true self, and forgo the all-consuming focus and diversion in marriage and childrearing – compounded by the clan’s aversion to self-knowing
When a person is freed from the prison of convention and the tribe’s repression of authentic emotional reality, creativity is possible. With a true self in place, we can see things originally, as God would have us see them. One blessing of being an outsider is freedom -- for our allegiance can shift from worshipping social convention and the family’s emotional dissociation to aligning with our sacred selves, and God, the source of all creativity.
As outcasts and outsiders, we see the world with an original eye and creativity flows.
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When the time is right – unsheathe the sword
When the time is right, we unsheathe the sword and create something new. When the time is right, we come out and live our truth -- no matter the consequences. We emerge into the open with our new creation be it a painting, a play, an innovative idea, a scientific hypothesis -- or most importantly, a new, more real way of being true.
We may succumb to fear. When the idea we hold is too revolutionary, too unsettling for the family or tribe to accept, we fear reprisals. We know the consequences of familial or social ostracism is painful to bear. We fear giving birth to the idea that tells the truth – we have been banished before for being honest when we were very young. We may let the our inspired new idea die within us; this new life is stillborn causing no disturbance to the status quo. Then, what we present to the world is a castrated, faint echo of the potent truth that had gestated within us. With this shadow of truth, no conscience is challenged, no mind is forced to question, or no moral dilemma is instigated. The entrenched position of the norm remains safe and unchallenged -- and we hide within the walls of conformity, a deviant, creative member hoping to stay below the radar, not to be discovered for the truth we carry. The sword of truth remains hidden in its deviant sheathe.
But there comes a time, when we are strong enough, when we realize – now is the time. Do or die! Critical mass is reached. We either express the potent seeds of creativity that are within us or we die, literally through disease or accident, or slowly through depression or addiction. We rally our forces and choose to honor the life and creativity that teems within us. Do or die, we will be honest. We will dare to live openly with our new creation exposed, refusing to die to protect the lies of the family and culture. We are willing at last to suffer their rejection if necessary.
The demons we faced when we came out are the same demons any one faces when we create something new. In creativity, we dare to express the forbidden truth by unraveling the tangle of repressed energy that trauma induced. By creating, we confront the cultural and familial resistance to knowing itself and its secrets. As we create, we unleash the transforming power of innovation and truth in the face of familial threats of banishment and annihilation.
There comes a time when withholding the truth to protect our place in a restrictive family and society is no longer a compromise worth living. No matter the consequences, we stand tall and create and live the truth.
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The anguish in creativity
To be original is to be alone with God -- and ravaged. When we create the authentic, God strips away all artifice; we are left naked and vulnerable -- a channel for truth. Perhaps this is why creativity is so terrifying. We must leave the familiar, relinquish the comforts of family, friends, and social convention and enter a terrifying terrain, foreign, unexplored – a wilderness. And we must go alone.
To create something new, we must leave behind the masses of humanity, even our closest allies, and depart into parts unknown. We even abandon our limited versions of God and ourselves when we create. As we listen to the disturbing tones calling from our depths, we betray the constricted version of our identity and God as defined by our family and religion -- and expand into truth.
A river of spirit flows through us, gushing with terrifying force. Do we dare open the gates of all that is dammed up within, for this torrential gush of creative power will surely wash our identity clean of falsehood in its tempestuous swirl. Will we be destroyed? If we are gay, we are reminded of the terror we felt when we came out – how we feared for our lives when the implications of honest sexual passion flooded our being and swept us away from the norm.
We take the risk and open the gates. Our channel is strong. We withstand the onslaught. We hold tight to a self deeper than our fears and facade and go to a depth that is unfamiliar yet essential, a primal part of us beyond compromises. We cling to a core that knows the truth and will speak it no matter the consequences. A part of us that needs to rage the truth emerges, breaking apart the walls of family, society and religion that would strangle us. We stand alone -- and look upon the face of God. No wonder we are anxious -- and filled with awe!
As we face the blank page, the blank canvas, the empty studio, the open space of our psyches, the colors, blood, and passion of our originality gush forth. With the messiness of birth, a new creation emerges. Our pain becomes joy. Look! Here is the new reality before me. My originality is made manifest. I dared birth truth. The joy of mother is the joy of the artist, the writer, the visionary. What is born was never before -- and life has taken another step forward towards its fulfillment.
To be original, we quake, as God rages through us.
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Where does creativity come from?
Creativity, like love, is from life’s mystery. Creativity is the life force’s natural desire to evolve into more complex form and meaning – ultimately, into enlightened consciousness. We don’t create creativity. As we live true to our deepest nature and orientation, we invite creativity to flow through us.
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A story: A Blessing before Dying
He was a priest dying of AIDS. This would be my last visit. The elevator opened to the 6th floor, the AIDS unit of this New York City hospital. I walked past a gauntlet of rooms, four beds each, with wracked bodies of men dying of AIDS.
Gay priests never had it easy with damning religious authority breathing fire – even in more liberal denominations that allowed priests to marry and accepted gay clergy, like the one to which this priest belonged, gay life wasn’t trouble-free. But gay or not, this priest felt “called” to his vocation, and had served several congregations with care and inspiration. But the priesthood did not insulate this man from the traumas he had experienced in his own childhood. His troubled back-ground made him a compassionate pastor, but what remained unconscious led him to unfortunate, promiscuous sexual behavior, infection with HIV, and now AIDS and his final days.
I entered his room; his skeletal body was taking on the look of death. “I feel low today -- I ache. I can’t get comfortable and ... these pillows....” I tried to adjust his pillows, but there was no way to comfort him.
I had a thought and took the risk. “Would you bless me?” His body shifted as he considered my request. As he tried to summon energy from an atrophied capacity, his attempt seemed hopeless. Then grace took over and he said, “Give me your hand.”
I obeyed. His hand, a skeletal remnant, clumsily moved to make the sign of the cross on my palm. He dispensed with “In the name of the Father...” and simply said, “All love – all creativity -- comes from God.” Then he was exhausted.
I folded my hands around his. He said, “I feel better now that I’ve done what I’ve been called to do -- be a priest.”
I said goodbye; he died a few days later. But his blessing was seared on the palm of my hand forever. If love ever came into my life or if I would ever create anything new or of value, it would not be so much an act of will -- but a gift of grace.
All love and all creativity comes from God.
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