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Birthing Creative Will

"The truth of the matter is many of us are not very strong. We are
often timid, fearful and apprehensive - quivering in the shadow of
life's pressures, or cowering before those who abuse us.

Because of our psychological weakness, we are unable to cope with
life's circumstances, which prevents us from moving forward and
finding our true potential. As a result we become world weary and
fatalistic believing we are helpless victims of an existence that
is determined to crush us."  Roy Posner

I did this drawing several years ago and I thought it was about
anger but some of my readers thought this drawing displayed a
beautiful strength of will. I must say I would now agree. This
drawing very much illustrates how I feel these days. It is as
though I have a fiery strong creative will birthing in my being.

The Creativity of the Light and the Dark

I feel very connected and trusting these days to the creative
interplay of dark and light energies  and the enormity of how we
all have everything inside of us. We are all part of the grand
interplay of light and dark. Anything that is left unaccepted
inside will be experienced "out there" in the world.

This summer I have been reading an excellent book on creativity by
Peter Clothier called Persist. He writes about "the survival of the
creative spirit that rewards only a lucky few." I am quite lucky in
that my "day job" is quite creative. Yet for the past few years I
have been dealing with an intense workplace bully who judged and
criticized my work on a regular basis.

In the past I would have just quit at the slightest provocation,
but my work has felt meaningful to me on many levels. I work in one
of the few fully equipped and government funded art studios for the
elderly in Canada. My work environment is bright and visually
beautiful. As much as I dislike the rigors of a unionized hospital
environment, it is one of the good places in the world.

When I first started coming up against the criticism I felt
defensive, angry and victimized and I could not see myself in the
interaction. At first the criticism all seemed so unfair and wrong.
But something else was at play. There was something infinitely more
creative and much deeper to look at.

I took the time to see how my inner life corresponded to my outer
life. I realized with great surprise at how hard I was on myself
internally. I found that I was easily shamed. I found that I was
highly sensitive to criticism. It devastated me. I found that I
bowed and bended to the winds of opinion and that I cared way too
much about what other people thought of me.

As hard as it was to face my inner voices, my goal was to heal this
pattern of judgment and criticism within me and without me so I
could rightfully move forward in my life. As I integrated my inner
life with my outer life I asked the same question again and again -
"What part do I play in this drama?" Approaching any situation in
life with such creativity and accountability is always an act of
perseverance and dedication.

Persisting with Purpose

Peter Clothier writes, "Of all the disciplines involved, I think
persistence is the most important and possibly the most difficult.
There will inevitably be many distractions and many disappointments
as I work, any which can weaken my resolve. Persistence is a
rejection of distraction and and excuse that comes along and a
return of my attention to the task at hand. It's a refusal to be
deterred from the purpose I have set for myself. It is a quiet
insistence on the pursuit of this particular goal."

Because I have erred on the side of trying to please everyone and
have spent too much time worrying about what people think of me, I
tend to have run-ins with bullying people in my creative and
working life sometimes. As much as I wish everyone would like me,
as a creative expressive person, I know this is humanly impossible.
The more I become my strong creative self - the more I stand out
for my efforts in the world and the more I become involved with a
wide variety of people - the more I can incur criticism.

I try to get along with everyone and focus on the light I see in
them - but some people are just plain unkind and unwilling to look
at their part in things. I have in an over-idealistic way of
spiritual seeking tried to see only the light in everyone and tried
to unrealistically ignore the "dark" in hopes that it would just
magically "disappear".

But as Ray Posner puts it, " The reality is that there are
individuals who are ready to abuse you, and take advantage of your
good nature. For example, it would particularly foolish to be
self-giving towards those who harbor ill will towards you, or
secretly hope to tear you down. If you extend yourself to such
undeserved people, you will be surely inviting trouble."

After much writhing and resisting and railing about the interplay
in my life of dark and light I have come to just meditate on why
people do unkind or cruel things. Mostly it is because they refuse
to look at themselves honestly and they then project their own
unprocessed darkness out onto others. I have also realized that
when I stand up and stand out I have to be willing to take some
blows. I have come to see this a gift of learning how to build
psychological strength.

Recently I have had a dream that indicated I have a part inside of
me that just wants to drop out of my creative life and disappear
when the going gets rough. In my dream I had mouse colored hair! I
was very meek and withdrawn. I had stopped creating and had taken a
shy teenage level babysitting gig. In my dream, I was happy to
disappear and not have a self.

The Urge to Create or Not Create

I realized from the dream that as much as I cultivate my goals
around persisting forward with my strong expressive and creative
self - I also have an equal and opposite urge to not have an
expressive creative self in the world. In my humanness, I get
afraid. I hurt deeply. I lose my motivation. Sometimes I long to
dive into the milky comfort of disappearing - of having no one know
who I really am - so that I will draw no notice or contention from
anyone.

Yet my soul does not want me to have mouse colored hair! As I slept
last night I felt a defining movement in my soul that felt like the
deepest level of persistence. It is hard to describe these
movements of the soul except to say they are utterly involuntary.
It felt as though the Larger Life was acting upon me - and that I
could let go of control - because the movement was benevolent.

The Reconciliation of the Light and Dark Within

I "watched" the movement between the light and dark of myself all
night long. I felt the battle between my two opposite pulls - the
pull of my core creative strength - and the pull of the weak parts
of my personality that just want to give up and disappear. All
night long I felt the pull to give up and disappear and then an
opposite and powerful persistent psychological power would rise up
within my core to continue to strongly express myself. It was a
profoundly curious feeling in my body. I was pulled back and forth
between the two polarities all night long as though on a seesaw.

James Twyman explains this spiritual back and forth movement so
well:

"So the question we must ask ourselves is:What needs to
reconciled?Is it the way we separate ourselves from our shadows?
Perhaps it's how we hide from our light. It's like a teeter totter
that moves back and forth, up and down, until the reordering is
complete. But in order to complete the process, we need to relax
into areas of imbalance, darkness and trauma in our lives. We have
to see it as a natural part of our evolution - an essential step of
maturing into a whole new being where oneness is fully integrated.
And to do so we need to reconcile all those diverging paths and all
those seeming difficulties that make us believe we are not enough,
we are not whole, or we are not loved by God."

Peter Clothier reminded me of a quote from Rumi: "Keep your eyes on
the bandaged place. That's where the light enters you." In this
quote, I can thank the dark and unconscious energies inside of
other people that have pierced me to my core. They have helped me
to heal my own darkness. In my fear of criticism I have been
reticent to play the game of life. I have been afraid to take risks
and to express the "wrong things". I have been afraid to live in my
creative magnitude and to persist in my purpose. As I drove home
from work tonight I felt a sense of reconciliation in my soul. My
own internal critical voices have quieted immeasurably. I felt the
quiet roar of my core strength and a deep willingness to move
forward in my life.
 
Love to you,
Shelley
 

Featured Book

Persist

In Praise of the Creative Spirit in a World Gone Mad with Commerce
 
By Peter Clothier

"Earning a living with art is a fanciful expectation for the vast
majority of those we certify as artists with the award of a college
degree, thanks largely to a self-supporting, self-perpetuating
system that provides teaching jobs for the otherwise unemployable
artists.
 
What results is a disconnect between what students have been led to
expect and the realities that await them...and there is an army of
the walking wounded out there to prove this point.
 
I write about survival of the creative spirit in such a cultural
context because I myself have needed to develop strategies and
mind-sets to that enable me to persevere with a sense of
dedication, self-respect and persistence that might otherwise seem
foolishly quixotic. 
 
These essays are written to remind myself, at moments of
discouragement, that I am, first and foremost, and always, a writer
- if only because it is what I have been given to do."