The Widening Steam By David Ulrich

The 7 Stages of Creativity

Discovery & Encounter
Passion & Commitment
Crisis & Creative Frustration
Retreat & Withdrawal
Epiphany & Insight
Discipline & Completion
Responsibility & Release

The Widening Steam By David Ulrich explains, The urge to create—to use our minds, hearts, and hands in unison; to work with materials; to express ourselves and our observations, our deepest longings, our greatest aspirations, our joys, and sorrows—is one of the basic human impulses. Every person holds the potential to enter the stream of discovery and invention. Each of us contains a vast wealth of inner resources that invite us to participate in the process of creation.

2 Passion and Commitment

RIDING THE RAPIDS

Passion and creative work are inseparable. Artists tend to be obsessed with their subjects and themes. They care deeply and passionately, beyond the dictates and limitations of reason; their interests or enthusiasms often burn with a focused intensity. To use a distinctly Hawaiian analogy, it’s like surfing: we either ride the wave skillfully and gracefully, or wipe out in the face of the ocean’s great and formidable force. As in creative work, a wave begins with a surge, gathers momentum and speed, takes shape and flows freely before it breaks, returning the surfer to the unformed mass of white water near the shore. The surfer then paddles back out to catch another, and then another wave, riding each of them until its energy subsidies. The creative impulse builds momentum in the same way, with growing intensity, until energy flows freely and the artist is entirely absorbed in the work at hand.
A reciprocal process between our initiative and our sensitivity begins to take hold, and we become increasingly receptive to the work itself. We work, play, guide, struggle, and take delight in the process, all at the same time.
Many artists describe this condition as being “swept up” into the current or “seized” by an overwhelming passion for the process. New connections with ourselves and the work are being established, often for the first time, that call forth a deepened interest and a heightened awareness. The energy we derive from forming these early connections generously fuels our passage through the foothills and slopes of the ascent toward full creative expression. These moments of deeper participation with the work and ourselves can be best described as hints of awakening, a taste of greater consciousness.

The Courage to Create by Rollo May, who writes: This leads us to the second element in the creative act—namely the intensity of the encounter. Absorption, being caught up in, wholly involved, and so on, are used commonly to describe the state of the artist or scientist when creating or even the child at play. By whatever name one calls it, genuine creativity is characterized by an intensity of awareness, a heightened consciousness.
We begin to serve the process. If we are able to listen and pay close attention, with sensitivity and awareness, the work itself will suggest the next step … and the next … and the next. Many artists and creative individuals have rightly observed what we need here: to get out of the way, to become transparent.
This is the condition of creative work that many artists aspire to experience—and once experienced, strive to return to, again and again. At this point, we feel compelled to continue, often in the face of difficulty, economic hardship, lack of public acknowledgment of our work, or pressure from our friends and loved ones to get out of the studio and “get a life.” Despite these obstacles, we proceed, fueled by the discovery of the place in which great energy resides, where we feel we have transcended our limited natures and are participants in a greater whole, where we are truly co-creators with a deeper order of things.

The only answer that I can honestly provide is simple: Why do you fall in love with this person and not that one? It grows naturally out of our being. Or, as Alfred Stieglitz observed: “If what one makes is not created with a sense of sacredness, a sense of wonder; if it is not a form of love-making; if it is not created with the same passion as the first kiss, it has no right to be called a work of art.”

After making a particularly salient point and witnessing a crow flying over at that very moment, don Juan said to Carlos Castaneda: “See, the world agrees with me.”

One of the defining characteristics of this stage of the process is a proliferation of moments of synchronicity, when it seems that all elements are conspiring to help us; unforeseen discoveries are made, and unexpected gifts are revealed. We feel that we are in the right place, at the right time, and doing what we need to be doing.
We view the work—rightly—as an extension of ourselves. Yet we cannot become the work. We must maintain a critical distance, and be capable of a more objective relationship with the content of our efforts. This detachment is a form of freedom: we enter into a real dialogue with our materials and ideas, rather than a fragile and trembling codependency with the natural results of our efforts. The work comes from us, or through us; it is not of us. This is an important distinction to recognize if we hope to continue on the creative path.
A consistent factor found in moments of genuine creativity is a kind of “tuning in,” in which we come simultaneously into accord with three participating elements:
- Ourselves
- the work
- our relationship to the process.

Passion

I have come to the conclusion that passion cannot be simply willed into being. It grows out of our compelling interests, our most vital responses, and our unique experiences. It grows out of interaction, and in this sense can be encouraged. Thriving in a climate of deep relatedness, passion is realized and furthered through an abiding commitment to our chosen path and a heightened awareness of ourselves and the surrounding world.
To find passion, all we really need to do is observe. The world is interesting and becomes far more so as we closely observe things, people (including ourselves), and events, and contemplate their significance. Once again, heightened awareness becomes a transforming agent for ourselves and our work. Through the action of directing our attention, we revel in the commonplace; the ordinary becomes extraordinary.
Look around. Take the time to see and feel. Go beneath the surface. Everything has meaning. Everything is a reflection of the ultimate cause, an unseen esoteric reality that is the source of creation itself.

It is in the nature of the creative process that we strive to nurture and support our own efforts toward creative expression with kindness, compassion, and the proper inner and outer conditions. Yet that is not enough. For our creative energies to fully emerge, we must continually challenge our ego and false personalities.

Ken Wilber makes a qualitative distinction between real compassion and “idiot” compassion when he states: “What most people mean by ‘compassion’ is: please be nice to my ego. Well, your ego is your own worst enemy, and anybody being nice to it is not being compassionate to you.” We need to be ruthless and push beyond our own perceived boundaries of our limited understandings, abilities, and tendencies—not to indulge our sly personal demons. Genuine creativity unambiguously asks that we staunchly resist the ego’s insistent voices, which manifest as influences that are self-calming (“this is good enough”), self-adulating (“what a great artist I am”), or self-loathing (“this is no good”). We must embrace hard work, cultivate discipline, and joyfully accept the value of creative frustration—discovering the ability to work things through, no matter what the level of difficulty. In the words of Alfred Stieglitz: to grow more tolerant toward others, stricter with oneself.

Persistent Effort

There is no mystery to this. Persistent efforts, day in and day out, are the means by we which we grow and evolve. Incremental progress, barely observable, and measured in months, years, and even decades, may not be exciting or instantly gratifying but will give rise to verifiable results. It is an organic process.
The fact is, as we near our authenticity and begin to discover our original face, our unique source of passion, our creative work opens into a joyful engagement. Our work with materials and our cultivation of the seeds of meaning in our expression evolves into a highly satisfying quest for both understanding and excellence. Commitment, then, compels us forward into the uncharted realms of realization and mastery.
Nourished by caring attention, tempered through challenge, and fueled by passionate striving, an inner change occurs. We ripen and unfold, become open and permeable. With practice and discipline, experimentation and play, our work is refined to a distilled essence, a blend of inborn talent and sustained effort.

Constance Hale, in Sin and Syntax, encourages writers to “be simple, but go deep.” She explains: “The exquisite ‘cutouts’ of Matisse and elegant line drawings of Picasso came late in long careers of painstaking work and wild experimentation. In writing as in painting, simplicity often follows considerable torment.”

Creativity Transforms Us

Creativity is a transformative discipline. The refinement that many artists seek takes place within the context of a contributory life’s work, not through the romantic, self-destructive, and highly illusionary attitude that one must suffer in order to create art. It is another one of creativity’s many paradoxes: a subtle, but joyful torment naturally arises as we perceive the truth. The recognition of our ignorance, the awe-inspiring glimpses of our potential, our place on the path of learning, and a broad acceptance of the reality of our current condition is enlivening and disconcerting in equal measures. This is the path of the artist that leads to illuminating breakthroughs and deep inner growth.

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Rilke writes: Ah, poems amount to so little when you write them too early in your life. You ought to wait and gather sense and sweetness for a whole lifetime, and a long one if possible, and then, at the very end, you might perhaps be able to write ten good lines. For poems are not, as people think, simply emotions (one has emotions early enough)—they are experiences.

Real Understanding

If we see and feel deeply, in time our experiences will inform our efforts, and our creative expression will arise with a collected force, where something comes forth and is born through the very core of our being.
The body, the mind, the feelings—each requires its own form of nourishment and each offers its own kind of intelligence. The creative act arises from an intentional relationship with this triad. When we bring attention from the mind into the body, and locate ourselves in our physical being, in our center, then we are here in this moment.
From this intentional action, a new quality of feeling arises; not the emotional distraction that dominates our everyday lives, but a subtle taste of understanding, of the feelings as a doorway to new worlds and as a sensitive instrument of discovery. We feel our way. All of this seems true. Yet as we are, we are not enough. It is only in opening to another influence, by which something is born into this world through us, not

When we realize the role of creative individuals as conduits for life itself, it cannot help but engender deep humility. We are nothing, a grain of sand; yet we are everything, the spark of divinity lives within us.

To explore, to challenge, to take risks, to try in spite of our limitations, to embrace the evolving process, to bear the glorious discomfort of not-knowing, to knowingly step into the unknown—these are the things a body likes, a soul strives for, and an artist or creative individual joyfully requires.

CREATIVE PRACTICE

Questions

Make a list—a top-ten list—of your passions, obsessions, and deep interests. What abiding passion (in contrast to mere passing desires) do you embody, which you can transfer to your work? Is there a thread, a connecting factor among your top ten interests? What gives your life richness and dimension? What could you not live without?
Stop, look, and listen. Take nothing for granted, make no assumptions: look at everything as if for the first time. Explore the material of your own life. Discriminate. What do you keep returning to? What do you want? What nourishes you? Where are you capable of making a real commitment? What would you edit from your life if given the chance? What role is expected of you by others, representing a duty, an obligation, that does not arise from the core of your being? What infuses your life with meaning, joy, direction, and the feeling of making a real contribution? What are you most proud of amongst your accomplishments? What do you really love to do?

Tools and Exercises

Your response to the works of another represents a key, a clue, to your own passions and commitments. What do you admire and emulate in the work of others? What influences you? Very often, by examining the creative efforts of others, we discover something of our own path. Keep a collection of quotes, images, and objects that inspire, incite, bring “fire” to your belly. From time to time, examine them and search for unifying threads and connections. Continue this as an ongoing activity. Keep it private, for yourself alone, your own treasure chest of impressions and ideas.
As Bonnie Friedman writes: “Things are saturated with significance…. Things themselves are translucent with meaning.” What happens within your body, emotions, and mind as you observe life? What are you curious about, what interests you, what grows within you from this observation?
he would consistently raise the question: And what else? Our understanding of our work or of life itself is always incomplete.
- One of the conditions of human nature is that we are subjective and limited; we seek to know and understand with greater clarity. With this simple, unassuming, yet elegant question, Nicholas reminded us that greater depths of understanding and creative response are always possible. To answer a question with finality is stagnation—to keep it open to further exploration is life itself. There is always more around the next corner.

3 Crisis & Creative Frustration

Creative practice evokes the sharp clarity of seeing things as they really are—if our pride is willing to accept the consequences. Our work is the measure of ourselves. It reveals the true nature of our passions, interests, and experiences, as well as reflects the unique shape of our obstacles and limitations. The challenge is to risk seeing our work and ourselves, in the moment, without fear or judgment, and with as much impartiality as we can bear.
By staying with it, you will discover new conditions that bring fresh energy to the process. Zen philosophy teaches that we cannot force anything—but we cannot afford not to try.
As painter Ad Reinhardt observes: “art cannot exist without the permanent condition of being put into question.” We must risk the known for the sake of the unknown, for new discovery.
Creativity and innovation arise from stepping off the bridge of what we know, where we are comfortable, into unsettled lands and untested territory, taking calculated risks for the sake of discovery.
Resistance is natural. It is part of life and a necessary part of the process of growth. The Grand Canyon was formed by millions of years of water and wind working against the firmness of rocks. A plant pushes up within and against the earth. The very substance that provides resistance is also one of the primary sources of nourishment and life. Fire is created by friction; mastery of ourselves and our medium will only come through meeting resistance honorably and willingly. We try to live, in don Juan’s words, the warrior’s path. Remember his quiet admonition, reported by Carlos Castaneda: “You indulge too much.”
Though in exile for most of his life, the Dalai Lama radiates joy, kindness, and great compassion, which he directly attributes to the Buddhist teachings on training the mind “to transform adverse circumstances into favorable ones.”

Jacques Lusseyran, French writer and teacher, lost the use of both eyes in a schoolyard accident at the age of eight. In his autobiography, Let There Be Light, he relates the experience of overcoming the obstacles of his blindness and learning to see again, through the act of being attentive to inner and outer conditions. Lusseyran describes a momentous discovery made shortly after the injury. Though he had lost the sight of his eyes, he could still experience the pervasive illumination of light. “I found it in myself and what a miracle!—it was intact.” He realized that it was contingent upon his inner condition—his attention—and his emotional state. “There was only one way to see the inner light, and that was to love.”

Lusseyran describes the great efforts he was compelled to make as being much more than simply efforts: they were also discoveries. When he was attentive to his inner condition—to himself—he could see and describe people, objects, colors, and shapes. He could directly perceive the tangible traits and intangible “presence” of the object of his attention. He felt an “effluvium” emanating from all things, a pressure, a field of vibration. He could hear the sounds emitted by objects or people, which likewise revealed their essential characteristics. “Finally,” he said, “even thoughts take on weight and direction.” During World War II, as part of the French Resistance, he was responsible for interviewing prospective members because of his remarkable ability to see and sense motives and character.

Using resistance as a tool, embracing the difficult as well as the easy, learning to navigate skillfully through rapidly changing conditions: these constitute the path of the artist.

As an artist friend once told me, “Our real gold as artists comes from our wounds.”

Paradoxically, our wounds become a rich opportunity for gaining self-knowledge, cultivating authentic expression, and lending grace and power to our creative efforts. And—in true bodhisattva fashion—we cannot ignore the far-reaching value of our experiences in helping others. Artists often use their own wounds to create inspiring and challenging works that serve to assist the reader or viewer in overcoming their own similar challenges.

Self Observation

To be creative, we need to be open—to ourselves and to the world, fully and deeply. Just as the first step toward awakening is the recognition of our ignorance, so the first step toward an open awareness is the development of the capacity for self-observation, through which we recognize our rigidity and mechanical habits. We begin to understand what prevents us from truly being open, from being touched by joy and sadness, from having a fresh and spontaneous response to life.
Most of us will soon recognize that the chief culprit is ourselves: our ego, our petty preoccupations, our pride and our distorted view of who we are. Genuine creativity throws the ego into relief, places it at risk, presents grave peril to its false authority. The ego resists relinquishing control and assuming its rightful place—that of serving our real selves and our real impulses. There is no question that this is often the heart of the crisis.
Real freedom grows in a climate of surrender and letting go. The creative spontaneity that we seek implies a simultaneous liberation from ourselves, from our ego and mundane attachments, with a growing receptivity to the deeper, more essential parts of our nature. We learn to place our trust in our integrity, our genuine impulses. This may take place gradually or, for some, in one decisive, shining event.

CREATIVE PRACTICE Questions

Be true to yourself. Look at the challenges presented by your greatest obstacles and your deepest wounds. Ask yourself: What is your response to adversity? Could it be different? Could you be more courageous or accepting? How can you use your deepest fears, unhealed wounds, and persistent difficulties? What are they teaching you? Have you observed, over time, a transformative growth of being as you rise to their challenges? Have you helped—or can you help—others, through the value of your experience? Can the work of healing become source material for your creative expression? Conversely, can creativity assist your growth and healing? Are your experiences and their resulting expression a source of learning and inspiration for others?
Where can you be more persistent? Where do you have a tendency to retreat, to give up the battle? Can you believe in yourself and your ability to continue, in spite of fear or despair? Can you simply try, continue the effort, and gradually gain the confidence of knowing what is possible? Be brave. Be true to your deeper self. Can you honor its expression, no matter what it takes?

In cultures both traditional and modern, in different ways, it is said that in healing ourselves, we heal the planet, and in healing the planet, we heal ourselves. In this respect, the world needs our inner work and creative efforts. The more deeply we delve into ourselves and our own unique circumstances in the creation of art, the stronger and more authentic our work becomes. Yet, the more deeply we penetrate through the masks that hide us from ourselves, the more universal the work becomes in its meaning.

4 Retreat & Withdraw

Although we may at times be blessed naturally with a state of inner clarity and quiet, the only reliable method of reaching it comes through our intent, making a conscious choice to step back from the work and our urgent concerns. Listening, waiting, ripening, and embracing “not-doing” engenders a fuller realization of our work at this stage.
Returning to the banks of the river, moving out of the direct current, and resting or lying in the sun is not an idle activity. It is a highly necessary means of incubation, of reflection, of allowing the process to find its own shape and momentum, and of giving room for the unexpected insight and the on-the-edge-of-consciousness discovery.
We have all but forgotten the lost art of porch-sitting, the art of leisure—of leaving a wide margin in our lives. Clarity is restored through relaxation and quiet, by sensitively moving our attention into the body, letting the dust settle, becoming aware of the silence within—and leaving behind our tightly focused mind or urgent emotions. Some of us go for a walk; others may go for a drive, yet others may engage in simple and enjoyable activities that renew and refresh. Leaving space within ourselves to allow for a regathering of energy and gestation in the womb of our being is necessary to organically deepen creative growth.
Our culture values achievement over reflection, and production over incubation. Yet both are necessary and are integral to the creative process.
Our lives are governed by the tyranny of the urgent. We leave precious little space for reflection, for ripening and maturation. We are living in a “time famine,” and it might do us well to slow things down—to give our creative work the broad canvas it needs to organically unfold and develop in accordance with its own kernel of potentiality.

There is no measuring with time, a year doesn’t matter, and ten years is nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and standing confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient … I learn it every day of my life, learn it with the pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!

When we have taken in enough nourishment, gathered enough material, when our impressions and experiences fill the well within, the creative expression will come about naturally.
Our conscious, purposeful efforts do not always reveal our larger mission, that which is ours to contribute. One of the principal maladies of modern Western life is that we do not easily find our place. Those of us with complex interests and talents often spend half a life merely in the discovery phase, seeking our calling, striving toward integration.
Awakening to other ways of knowing and connecting with our inner sources is vital to the process of creative growth and individuation. The vast recesses of the unconscious hold many secrets to our future development as artists and individuals. Active stillness is the means through which these mysteries are revealed.

CREATIVE PRACTICE Questions

We need time. It is one of our most precious commodities. Ask these questions of your own life: What can wait? What really does demand your attention and response now—and what needs to be digested and integrated before responding? What does the “tyranny of the urgent” steal from our lives? What demands can we turn a blind eye toward, to allow room for creative projects and for the necessary unconscious insights to emerge? What can we edit from our lives, what activities are habit-driven and have outlived their usefulness? What anxieties must we let go of to realize our projects and creative interactions, allowing them to unfold organically, rather than trying to hasten their completion?

5 Epiphany & Insight

Genuine creative growth often entails choosing the larger aim over lesser attachments, dismantling our egos, suspending the tight focus on our petty preoccupations, and opening to the mysterious fabric of internal order. When we make that choice, that internal commitment, inwardly leaning toward our own integrity, the barriers dissolve and unexpected currents of epiphanal insight can make their welcome appearance.
The insights come as a result of this past work. All the efforts that we make provide their reward, not always in the moment of making the effort, and maybe not in direct relationship to what we desire—but we are given help when we continue to strive forward sincerely, with energy and passion.
Our invisible means of support may come from an unknown source, but it is our work, our persistence, our conscious attempt to align with our “bliss,” that unlock the power of these sudden bursts of realization.
When we are deeply engaged in our work but unattached to the final result; when we open to our passion while maintaining a detached inner witness; when we balance vital action with not-doing and leaving space within; we create the conditions for guiding lights to appear on the horizon. And we must remember that their source is always present, at least in potential, but is veiled and hidden from conscious view until we are ready until we have done the work and earned entrance to this mysterious world of greater knowledge and illuminating insight.

Awakening to Sources

Among artists and psychologists who have studied this phenomenon, it is generally agreed that the central source of such illuminating moments is the unconscious mind, working in the background of our conscious efforts. In this sense, however, I prefer the phrase “depth consciousness” to the term “unconscious.” While we may not know precisely where this greater knowledge comes from, we do know with certainty that when something forcefully breaks through the crack between the worlds, we experience a moment of greater consciousness.
We tend to seek this capacity in distant lands—that is, outwardly. We read the latest book on self-improvement and spirituality. We take workshops on various forms of inner growth and development. We follow the newest trends or the wisdom of our favorite teacher. Yet the real treasure is within. It lies buried beneath our daily concerns, our ordinary mind and our opinions, our emotional reactions, and our fragmented energies. All we need do is unearth it. Behind the dam of our ignorance lies the ever-flowing river of knowledge and heightened awareness.

The Crack Between Worlds

Sunrise and sunset. The alternation of rest and activity is a key component of the creative act. Don Juan speaks of the “crack between worlds” available at these special times of transition when day and night coexist when a sorcerer’s seeing can peer into the subtle realms. The moment in-between. The silence beneath the audible. The experience of living stillness, radiance within phenomena.

Balance of Initiative and Receptivity

The essential balance that we must seek, then, is between initiative and receptivity. There is a time for hard and sustained work, and there is a time for letting go, for hanging out, for simply being quiet. Another order of experience that is absolutely essential for the creative process—time to be alone, time to be with oneself.
We sit, facing the abyss, waiting; in touch with the sensations of the body. They are a useful, necessary anchor. To enter the crack between worlds, we must make the great leap into the unknown—as Harrison Ford does as Indiana Jones when he possesses the map of the cup of eternal life and must go through a series of trials and riddles to reach its sacred location. The final test of faith, the ultimate proof of his commitment, is to step into the chasm where certain death will result if something or someone does not appear to save him. He takes the step, and instantly help appears in the form of a tenuous bridge between the worlds. Of course, he reaches the inner sanctum, the location of the world’s presumably greatest treasure.
Creativity requires that we enter the region of risk, not depending on what we know or leaning on our comforting habits or past formulas. Seeking a creative response, we sit quietly in front of ourselves and the task at hand, waiting but not waiting… taking the risk of just being. Sometimes we experiment and play; sometimes we do nothing. Eventually, something wells up from within, a new impulse, a fresh response that can help and guide us. If we alternate doing with not-doing, activity with rest, insights will come in response to our deepest questions and most perplexing problems. And it does work. All we must do is try.

The Wings of Feeling

In our efforts toward awakening, the heart is both a reliable guide and a medium. Our moments of deeper awareness are carried on the wings of feeling. This is not to be confused with ordinary emotions, which are often mere reactions to the experiences of everyday life; No, we seek real feeling, our true source of hope, faith, and love. A lawful, predictable process ensues as we attempt to contact the inner source of our creative impulses. When the mind and body are in accord, a new quality of feeling arises, one that is lighter, quicker, finer, and brings a subtle taste of joy.
The higher chakras are the source of true creativity, intuition, and consciousness. Through feeling, we unlock our most distinctive human characteristics. At this level, creativity becomes a catalyst for our potential wholeness. Through the work of the mind and body coming together in the creative act, we attract a quality of feeling that is integral to our inner transformation.
By “remarkable,” I mean those individuals of genuine accomplishment or those who have traveled diligently on the path of awakening or have successfully overcome great hardship or trauma, or simply those who strive to be in contact with their conscience and integrity. These people can be found in all walks of life. Clearly, we experience an exchange of energy. Something in us is brought to life through their very presence: by being in the same room, hearing their voices, or simply being within their energy field. We experience a resonance between their emanations and a special quality in ourselves. It is another form of awakening, in which we see what is possible for us through our own efforts. We receive their energy, take in something of their presence, and we experience, perhaps only for a moment, an expanded sense of being and consciousness, one that inspires and nourishes our creative spirit.
Jung writes: “Now my task was clear: I had to try to understand what had happened and to what extent my own experience coincided with that of mankind in general. Therefore my first obligation was to probe the depths of my own psyche…. This work took precedence over everything else.” Through his intensely personal work, Jung discovered and expressed transpersonal truths and collective conditions. His unconscious not only provided the material for his personal growth but provided a foretaste of the world’s future as well.

“The alarming fact is that any realization of depth carries a terrible burden: Those who are allowed to see are simultaneously saddled with the obligation to communicate that vision in no uncertain terms: that is the bargain. You were allowed to see the truth under the agreement that you would communicate it to others… And therefore, if you have seen, you simply must speak out. Speak with compassion, or speak out with angry wisdom, or speak out with skillful means, but speak out you must.” —Ken Wilber, One Taste

Becoming an Artist

From the Vietnam War and the Kent State incident, I learned something about the frailty and the value of human life and gained a sense of our mortality. And I understood something about the absolute stupidity and ineffectiveness of violence and saw its effects demonstrated in these events and in the graphic television broadcasts of the war that came nightly into my home. In this context, I had the first of several revelations that were to forever alter the course of my life.
I don’t know how or why—I had never before thought of myself as a potential artist—but, in a moment of revelation, I knew with inner certainty and utter conviction that I must become an artist.
Minor and Nick -Most importantly, I saw that both men were striving toward deeper contact with themselves and the world surrounding them. They were attempting to open toward deeper layers of consciousness by working on themselves, such that they emanated an inner presence, calm, and strength.
As I witnessed their creative process, at times I felt something come through them: teaching, a force that encouraged my own heightened awareness. And I felt some unknown process in me begin to open. It was highly infectious.
I started a daily practice of sitting quietly—I wouldn’t even call it meditation—just sensing my body, watching my feelings, and trying to quiet the ordinary mind. I also began to study my dreams and the guidance they provided as I observed their patterns and contemplated the symbols that arose from my unconscious.
One afternoon, several months later, I was resting on my couch, sensing my body, and observing the dream images arising from my relaxed state of near-sleep. Suddenly, a series of lucid visions, absolutely complete pictures, arose in my mind like a movie in living color, accompanied by an inner voice, which spoke with a force that physically reverberated in my head. I “saw” images, clear symbolic mirrors of my state of being, and was given a deep insight into my present and future life.
This type of experience happened repeatedly over the next few months, usually as I sat quietly, or before going to sleep. Clear visions and distinct voices forcefully entered my consciousness, following a definite progression of energy, arising from my sex center, into my navel, up to my spine, and into the crown of my head. My entire life became motivated, driven by an inner necessity, captured by this compelling “daimon” of creativity, as Carl Jung would put it. I had no choice but to respond and follow its dictates.
I recorded these sometimes mysterious revelations and insights in a notebook. My daimon told me everything about my life, urging me into new creative directions and new relationships. Nothing was off-limits to this source of knowledge. It guided me cleanly and directly to a new body of photographic work and a new way of seeing.
When the sensations in my body would reach the heart region, I would experience a subtle taste of radiant joy, an all-encompassing love. For moments, I was wholly present. I felt a greater sense of acceptance and forbearance toward myself and those around me. And I often observed that this higher quality of feeling seemed somehow to be the entryway to this new world of resonating insight. It was as if an inner teacher or guide was present and available to me at those times. But I sensed that it did not come from outside myself. It was something in me that could be called forth through this type of inner work.

CREATIVE PRACTICE Questions

Observe. What obstructs the clear stream of your mind’s awareness? What fills you? What kinds of automatic thoughts, emotions, and impulses impede your potential emptiness, your receptivity to moments of illumination? When spontaneous insights have occurred, what encouraged them to arise? Look and examine. What kind of activities were you engaged in? Very often, simple activities that engage the body and leave the mind free help open us to these moments of insight.
Review. What nourishes you? What kinds of impressions awaken thought and open you to the deeper contents of your mind? Books? What kind? Films? What genre?
Conversely, what impedes your wakefulness? What kind of impressions is difficult for you, are poisonous, cause indigestion, or stimulate your fragmentation and lack of inner presence?

Tools and Exercises

Keep a journal. Record your dreams immediately upon awakening. The very exercise of writing them down will help you to remember their mysterious content. Be a scribe. Do not comment or embellish; simply record. Over time, certain patterns, scenes, and symbols will appear and reappear—and likely change and evolve. Observe the content, people, and events that emerge. Use your associations and experiences as a means of interpreting the hidden meaning of their symbolic language. It is your unconscious that has generated the messages; the keys to understanding your dreams lie within yourself.
Keep an idea notebook—not a journal, but a sketchbook to note your ideas, fragments of insights, stray observations, unformed impressions, and incomplete realizations. Let it evolve. Themes will emerge. This is a process of distillation, of separating the fine from the coarse. It is true alchemy, and yet another path toward inspiration if approached with initiative, an attitude of questioning, and open attention to the deeper contents of your mind.

Allow words and images to arise. Do not try to interpret them with your ordinary mind. Let them be. Let them act on you. Keep them insight in the back of your mind. Over time, observe how they relate to your life or your creative work. Be childlike. Learn to think in images and with symbols or metaphors. Remember looking at cloud shapes as a child? Remember the rich content of your imagination when young? What have you lost in growing up? Can you reawaken this essential form of knowing?

6 Discipline & Contemplation

Humility and right action are inseparable at this stage. The accumulated knowledge and skill obtained through the preceding stages can now be employed with clear focus, grace, and detachment. If we remain mired in the ego’s persistent desire to dominate the process, the work will suffer—as will we—and it may not thrive to a natural fulfillment.

Serving the process, obeying our higher impulses, is anathema to the ego, yet that is the very thing required. Tight determination and forced, self-willed efforts will exhaust us and our resources very quickly. Letting go into the mystery of the unfolding creation will, in its own time, bring the work organically to fruition.
Here lies another of the central paradoxes of the creative process. We wish to be spontaneous; we wish to be free and even joyful in our creative expression. Yet, the greatest freedom comes through discipline, a rigorous approach to one’s work. Only after learning the mechanics of the craft and fully engaging the process of our work with our bodies, hearts, and minds, can we hope to be truly creative.
Children are marvelously creative and imaginative, approaching their projects with an effusive, innocent, and highly spontaneous energy. However, their work lacks rigor, technical mastery, and conceptual strength. Experienced adults, on the other hand, cultivate critical discernment and a mastery of their medium, learning to appreciate the benefits of sustained effort over the long term. Ideally, when an adult can integrate the spontaneity and unselfconscious expression of the child’s mind with the discipline, wisdom, and depth of the adult personality, a true fullness of expression may be achieved.
We dedicate ourselves not only to a quest for excellence and quality in our chosen medium but to the cultivation of those same qualities in ourselves. For this lifelong effort, we seek a “path with heart.” We need the motivating force and participation of what I call our “feeling nature.” This is our emotional center, combining the breaking crest of the emotions with the wisdom of the heart, the gateway to higher centers. Without it, our work becomes drudgery and we may find it difficult to continue and complete the process.

How do we achieve mastery of what writer Katherine Mansfield called the “terrific hard gardening” that this stage requires?

Now, we need to look at the work as a whole, as a nearly completed piece. Seeking a global vision, we look at the entire scope of the project in a single glance, with less attention to the parts. This is the time for revision and review, to see and feel with clarity what the work needs; not only to finish it but to make certain that it communicates what we intend.
Having a structure, a means of organizing one’s time makes a definite difference. Very often, when I am close to the finish line and need that extra spurt of energy to finish a project, I will create an external deadline by scheduling an exhibition or promising a manuscript to my agent by a certain date. So, show your work; gather responses; allow yourself to benefit from numerous hearts and minds. My experience has been that in spite of people’s subjectivity, a pattern of similar responses will emerge when we show the work to enough people, and to the right people.
Listen to others. Let everyone be your teacher.

No matter how inspired our insights, unless manifested in the physical world our ideas remain intangible, invisible. Our work must exist in physical form if it is to communicate with others and evoke what we intend.

All art—indeed, all expression—contains a balance between the intent of the artist and the reception of meaning by the viewer. Art may not always be about making objects (witness performance art, theatre, dance, and so on), but it cannot be divorced from some form of physical expression.
One of the most beautiful book titles that have ever crossed my path is Jean Giono’s The Joy of Man’s Desiring. Say these words out loud. Feel their clarity as they roll off your tongue, feel their sheer poetry, their resonant meaning, and what they evoke. The sharp poignancy of our passion and longing. The beauty of human striving. The impeccable ardor of knowing what we truly want, what we aim for, arising from deep within. The force of our wish.
Craft is a living exchange. We breathe a refined life into the materials of our medium, and the demands presented by the nature of the materials themselves call forth our genuine interest, a sharpened attentiveness to our movements and perceptions, and invite our most sensitized responses of feeling. Craft must be put into the service of our vision. I relate it to the use of our bodies, minds, and hearts, and extending them through our work with physical materials. It is self-evident: the camera is an extension of the eye, the paintbrush, and pen an extension of the hand and arm, the potter’s wheel an extension of the central presence of the human body.
As we seek the perfection of a craft, or of any activity we engage in, we move closer to our own maturation and perfection. It is nothing other than a form of alchemy: to refine and transform materials is to refine and transform oneself. The process of creativity involves, as one of its highest and best purposes, the exchange and transformation of energies between oneself and an object, and addresses the circulation of energies and forces within ourselves. The work is the measure of the man or woman. We see our states of mind and feeling, our limitations and obstacles, and our potentials and gifts reflected in the work, whether we care to admit it or not.

To study a craft is to study ourselves. In desiring the fullness of expression, we are, in reality, seeking inner wholeness. Something in me is called on: as a human being, I am invited to take part in my own formation.

“The only man who adds to the spiritual wealth of humanity is the one who has the force to become what he is.”

Sustaining The Journey

Everything visible in this world has a life span: our selves, our relationships, our interests and passions, our works, and our journeys. What form of creative endeavor can offer the longest, most joyous and challenging journey?
To maintain a sustained commitment, we need a larger vision, a broader purpose, an ideal—our own guiding light.
If our work derives strictly from the ego or our petty selves, the energy will eventually diminish and we will run out of steam. Ego cannot sustain the kind of energy and commitment that we need for our most significant work and contributions. What does it take to give something our best energies and efforts, often for years, without external rewards or public recognition?
Many things are beyond our control, but one source of energy that is readily available to us lies with our psychic nourishment. We are what we eat. We choose what we follow.
- The first priority, then, for discipline and staying the course is finding something that can serve as a lifelong aim and ignite our interest. Once our deepest interest is activated, we simply will do what it takes to manifest our ideas and concerns.
- After establishing the foundation of honoring our deepest inclinations, we can then cultivate strategies for developing discipline and good work habits. What is our aim, what is it that we search for, that gives us a sense of hope and promise? What is our guiding ideal, which can deepen and inform our efforts, provide us with the commitment and discipline that we need to continue, and offer us the energy and force that we need to approach our lifelong work?

In the creative act, we navigate between the inevitable voices of yes and no, affirmation and denial, moments of clear sailing and doldrums. Creativity often reminds me of wayfinding, in which we seek to define the most effective strategies and find the clearest path for our passage through unknown waters.

Good Work Habits

Cultivating a sensitive awareness of one’s “body clock” and discovering one’s most effective working rhythms can lead to fruitful work habits that enliven the flow of creativity.
The cultivation of discipline depends on the reconciliation of our conflicting impulses. We must feed the beast: our desires, our cravings, our ego. We give these things the room to have their say; otherwise, they will get in the way and assume a dominant role. For most of us, forced discipline doesn’t work. We cannot put an end to our restlessness and our desire to be doing something else. So, we might tell ourselves that if we write for several hours, or work in a concentrated manner in the studio each morning, we’ll treat ourselves to lunch, or ice cream, or whatever it is that we desire. My own strategy is to work hard in the morning and allow myself a swim at lunch. I then work hard again for several hours, and with great regularity treat myself to a late-afternoon cappuccino. We are what we are, and we must acknowledge and tolerate with compassion our idiosyncrasies, and even reward them by giving them room to breathe. In this respect, creativity can encourage recognition and deep sense of acceptance of oneself. We may find a new quality of empathy and compassion that we bring to ourselves and our own particular brand of behavior. Real change and transformation will never come through violence—through forcing ourselves, and whipping the “beast” into submission. It is only through slow, patient work governed by taking care of ourselves that we may work toward the discovery and expression of our highest and best nature.
Effective working methods grow directly from the moment. The sheer enjoyment of the process, a sense of satisfaction, and just plain having fun are important. Make changes in your habits to keep things fresh. Vary your activities when the routine becomes dull and begins to feel like drudgery. Doing what feels good sounds elementary, but is not always something we allow ourselves.
Discipline, in the highest sense of the word, means following a transformative practice. What is a discipline, or practice—and how does it help? What can serve to bring us back to ourselves, toward our most essential energies, and to a state of inner attentiveness? Krishna teaches Arjuna in the Bhavagad Gita: “If you want to be truly free, perform all actions as worship … It is better to do your own duty badly than to perfectly do another’s; you are safe from harm when you do what you should be doing.”
Self-knowledge offers the deepest well of energy for disciplined follow-through and responsible completion. Recognize the worth and importance of what you genuinely have to offer. When we recognize our true mission, our real place in this intricately interconnected world, energy for proceeding, for doing what we do, comes literally flooding in to inform and enliven our efforts. This realization goes far beyond the mere development of self-esteem. This source of energy comes from seeing the whole, and perceiving our place in it; it grows from the profound realization that the world might not be the same without the role that we are called to assume. This is not ego or inflated self-importance, but the recognition of our essential nature and its great potential value to others.

CREATIVE PRACTICE Questions

Review. What are your working rhythms? Your body clock? When do you feel the most alert and the most energetic? What is your particular predilection? Are you disciplined, comfortable with rigor and perseverance? Or are you more comfortable with spontaneity, responding freely to the moment? Which side of the axis must you work to develop, knowing that both qualities are essential to the creative act?
Do you have a guiding star? Something that functions as a larger goal or an abiding aim, that you can commit to, that can see you through your uninspired moments and assist in bringing your creative efforts to a natural completion?

Tools and Exercises

Develop your discipline. What is it that you really want? Choose an activity in your life that is unfulfilled, incomplete and representative of your unrealized aims.
Discover your true genius. Do you have an activity in which you truly excel, in which you might be considered a “master”? How did this mastery come about? It is likely that you have achieved this distinction through the combination of several conditions: an innate love and inborn capacity, years of practice, and the knowledge derived from an ongoing, intimate relationship with the activity. It is said that in order to do many things well, we must learn to do one thing well, to master it as fully as possible. Use your knowledge of the forces and energies required for the pursuit in which you genuinely excel, to learn something else, perhaps art or a craft.

7 Responsibility & Release

Our knowledge, skill, and insights must be passed on—to others, and eventually to future generations—if we wish to assume our place in the ongoing flow of life. This is true of artists in any sphere of activity.

The word kuleana expresses “my privilege, my honor, my duty, my responsibility”—my place. In Western thinking, responsibility or duty is often viewed as an obligation, which is quite opposed to a privilege and an honor. In Hawaiian sensitivity and thought, this concept represents a reconciliation of these opposites into a wholly unified function.
We are in debt to the society and the people who have informed us, shaped us, given our lives meaning and direction, and provided us with conditions that we must stand for or struggle against. The model of the artist as a solitary hero, living in romantic exile, is long obsolete.
While we can easily see how our world shapes us and, in some ways, defines who we are, it is much more difficult to see our own contradictions and to see that we in fact also shape our world. It is our attitudes, our biases, our greed, and our lack of awareness of ourselves, each other, and our environment that we see reflected in the world around us. Our culture is a product of what we ourselves are. Sadly, it is our own creation.
There is one fundamental necessity, the bedrock upon which all else rests: to see and know ourselves, to become more conscious and more aware of our deeper possibilities, as well as of our own contradictions, attitudes, hypocrisies, and inconsistencies. We can only understand the world and its people to the degree that we can understand ourselves.
To begin to see in this way is one of the great, humbling experiences of being human. It can be a source of real anguish, and the beginning of what we might call productive suffering, for it brings with it the possibility of real compassion and genuine empathy, toward ourselves and each other, toward our societal conditions, toward our upbringing, and toward the state of the planet.

Archetypal Roles

The Visionary

As Kandinsky observed in Concerning the Spiritual in Art, the artist can be likened to a ship, pushing back new layers of experience and insight as the bow cuts through the sea, in advance of the culture at large.
Artists are typically among those attuned to the more subtle energies, who carry a vision for their world, and who bring an intuitive perception to the awareness of their culture. Artists reveal the culture to itself, release insights necessary for their times, and see more, with greater clarity and with occasional glimpses of prophetic awareness.
A world without art could be likened to a world without mirrors: without the capacity to see our own reflection, both metaphorically and literally, and lacking in the subtle foretaste of the future.

The Midwife

Artists may function as midwives for what is born through them into the world. Artists have their antennae up and are sensitive to the new dimensions of experience and insight that the culture fundamentally needs. They may act as a conduit for forces to pass through, stemming from a source beyond their knowing. The

The Wounded Healer

The personal experiences of the artist—the particular nature of their joys or struggles, their unhealed wounds, their search for inner completeness and a more comprehensive relatedness with life, their spiritual strivings, their deeply felt contact with nature and with others, their agonies and ecstasies—all of these become grist for the mill. It could be said that one of the primary roles of the artist is to universalize their personal experiences, to place them in a language and form that communicates these intimate, private stories in a way that is meaningful to others.
Countless times in my own life I have been helped immeasurably by reading literature, viewing works of art, and hearing songs or musical compositions that serve to expand my experience and affirm my own processes of growth and discovery. When we see our joys, our challenges, our strivings, or our suffering reflected in the work of another, we feel a sense of release and a profound kinship with others, an affirmation of our shared humanity. We need each other. None of us can do this alone.
In this sense, art represents the potential of a profound healing force, an impetus toward true awakening of our highest and best natures, and a means towards genuine self-knowledge and insight.

The Magician

We take delight in discovery. The unexpected juxtapositions of form and language, the startling quality of new observations, and the uniquely individual solution found or created can be a shock to our senses, an awakening.
Samvega is a Sanskrit word that refers to this aesthetic shock of awakening, which we may encounter in a work of art when a heightened sense of being is invoked or nourished. “Astonish me!”

The Seeker

Art is an expression of the consciousness of its makers. As they have through the ages, artists continue to occupy the integral roles of the seeker, mountain-climber, and high-altitude guide. Artists reach deeply into themselves to find a connectedness to the entire range of human experience. Many seek a relationship with the subtle energies that underlie all phenomena—the sacred dimension of life.
Works of art created through an artist’s search for the meaning of life often contain the embodiment of higher states of consciousness. This form of art stirs something deep within the viewer: the longing for consciousness. It awakens subtle intimations from within, a once-known but forgotten sense of being.
Art can reflect the world that our souls fervently ache for—one of inner unity and expanded awareness. In this sense, art reveals what can be, our future, and our highest potential.

Rainer Maria Rilke writes in Letters to a Young Poet about the seeking of confirmation of one’s creative work through external means:

Now (since you have said you want my advice), I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now… There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart… This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse.
If our work is to be authentic, it must arise from our deepest impulses; it must come solely from our own initiative. Yet, in some way, it must include an awareness of our audience, those with whom we are impelled to interact.
Perhaps the day will come, if it hasn’t already, when we have a real audience for our work, and our work will be meaningful to our community due to the potential for insight or nourishment that it provides. Seeking relatedness has been, and will always be, one of the primary aims of the artistic impulse. I believe that most artists, as they undergo their creative development, reach a stage in which they feel compelled to extend beyond their strictly personal domains.
John Updike describes his inner state while writing short stories: The material me, the social me, and the spiritual me are all lined up when I write, with a beauty and directness that obtains in few other areas of my life.

Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself: I celebrate myself and sing myself. And what I assume, you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

The I Ching again teaches us the proper attitude toward our work through the metaphor of water: “It flows on and on, and merely fills up all the places through which it flows; it does not shrink from any dangerous spot nor from any plunge, and nothing can make it lose its own essential nature. It remains true to itself under all conditions… The water reaches its goal by flowing continually.”

Your world is the place to begin. All else derives from what is nearest. Like a pebble thrown into a pond, the expanding ripples begin from the center, from what is closest, and move outward from there.
In our quest for what is real, when we are doing what we need to be doing, synchronicity can function as a measure of our success. When we are getting warm, closer to ourselves and our true estate, our genuine mission, our place where we can make a difference; this is when unexpected gifts, unforeseen opportunities, and surprising assistance arise from chance circumstances. Take a step forward and, in the words of Joseph Campbell, doors will open where you didn’t know they existed, where a “thousand unseen helping hands” issue to help and assist the process.
What in your call to be expressed and deserves to be born into this world? Where is the point of balance between personal integrity and collective responsibility that allows you to discover and express your most significant insights, richly giving to others, and at the same time contributing to your own success and enrichment? What is your way of passion and caring, of giving and receiving? What may you give and what may I give, so that we can move toward the future together, taking the journey both as individuals and as one people, one mind?

Part Two Wayfinding: Guiding Principles of the Creative Impulse

8 The First Principle: Creative Courage

We must replace fear and chauvinism, hate, timidity, and apathy, which flow in our national spinal column, with courage, sensitivity, perseverance, and, I even dare say, “love.” And by “love” I mean that condition in the human spirit is so profound it encourages us to develop courage. It is said that courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue with consistency. —Maya Angelou, Even the Stars Look Lonesome

Psychologist Rollo May outlines four distinctive kinds of courage. The first three—physical, moral, and social courage—are fundamental to our lives, shaping our growth and development as human beings in a society. The fourth—and the most important for our self-actualization—is creative courage: the capacity to risk what is known or familiar for the sake of discovering innovative solutions and authentic expression. Through creative courage, we may become who we are.
Human suffering is inevitable; it leaves no one untouched. If we can approach our challenges with humility and courage, suffering is a great teacher and often one of the chief motivating forces of the creative impulse. We are here to learn and grow. Creativity evinces the potential of alchemy, to transform adversity and setbacks into wisdom, compassion, and works of art.
Don Juan then explains that the individual will never become a man of knowledge if he runs away and allows fear to put an end to his journey. He will become defeated and unable to proceed. To overcome fear, he must defy it and continue in spite of himself. “He must be fully afraid, and yet he must not stop. That is the rule!” Only then comes the shining moment when fear retreats. The man feels more sure of himself, his intent becomes stronger, and he is able to proceed courageously on the path of learning. When Castaneda asks if defeat by any of these enemies is final, don Juan explains that it is only final when a man no longer tries and abandons himself.

Creative courage, then, implies only that we risk our easy answers and comfortable patterns for the sake of discovery.

Belief in Oneself

Belief in oneself implies a capacity to be open to discovery, to find the deeper sources of knowing within, and to maintain an unquenchable desire for learning. True self-esteem is intelligence and requires a deep recognition of what we are and what we are not. We cannot do or be everything; we have limits.
Belief in oneself means, at times, proceeding along the line of least resistance, and when needed, meeting the resistance head-on. But we do so with an attitude of intelligence—knowing where we may find smooth sailing and where we may run into gale-force winds. We measure our energies accordingly and give ourselves over to the process.

Unbending Intent

Intent follows our attitude. The intent is a directing, generating force that is the seed of genuine will and differs from the more general state of “having an intention,” which can come from any number of places, including the ego. Intent first cultivates, then is furthered through the work of gathering and collecting energy in the seat of our being.
True intent constitutes a force that can have an impact on the world and ourselves, allowing us to genuinely act. Setting a course, making the vow to grow, discovering our aim and striving toward it, is some of the chief characteristics of creative courage. Many things are beyond our control, but we can try to move forward in spite of obstacles, strive to realize our deepest possibilities, and grow beyond our perceived and self-imposed boundaries.

Opening to the Mystery

Placing our trust in a deeper order is a risk. We do not know what will happen or what plans are in store for us within this larger framework. We surrender to the mystery, give in to the unknowable fabric of a divine plan. When we stay with the not-knowing, we experience moments of synchronicity, in which we are given glimpses of implicit order, and unseen forces lend a helping hand. Courage invites a hint of the miraculous, the magic found through the opening to a larger perspective—and not through following our mundane selves or the forceful dictates of our ego.

True courage aligns us between intent and surrender.

It is blind to real dialogue, to the search for truth, and it does not allow itself to be influenced by the viewpoints of others.
It is closed to the insights that arise from deep within, often hiding to avoid the truth. And it is fragile and afraid, it cannot withstand disagreement with its own hastily formed conclusions. We need creative courage to direct the lamp of awareness, placing the ego in question and opening to the deeper sources of knowledge and inspiration within.

Striving to Live Within

Without the capacity to stay focused on ourselves and our tasks through attention and concentration, we cannot be fully creative. Increasingly, it seems that all of life conspires to pull us away from ourselves. Our culture promotes and encourages restless inattentiveness.
Staying focused on the point of intersection between the inner and outer worlds through our senses is the key to creative response. All of our responses to the world take place within us.
All too often, our attention is automatically attracted outward to the source of the impression, not inward to the slate or to the energy created at the intersection, behind our eyes, in our being. Clearly observing how impressions of the outer world strike us serves to deepen and inform our creative expression. What chords within us are sounded? The inner vibrations of these chords reverberate outward defining our deeds and shaping our works.

Cultivating Compassion

The courage to create depends upon the awakening of our feeling nature, an opening to the sensitivity of the heart—the discovery of our interrelatedness with life.

Through this form of humility, we are called to address the three primary concerns of the creative act:

1 to serve our own growth and evolution

2 to help and assist others on their journey

3 to contribute to society and the world

The truth is that we help others as we help ourselves in an ongoing reciprocal exchange. Whether we care to admit it or not, our growth and well-being often depend on our relationships with each other.

9 The Second Principle: Right Place, Right Time

In the creative act, when we are in the flow, all the elements of the process synchronize into what we experience as a unique sense of “rightness.” We are here, now, occupying the moment with all of ourselves. Our energies are fully engaged.
The quality of such moments depends on our focus, dedication, sensibility, and the accumulation of knowledge and skill that we have attained with our medium.
An essential ingredient of creativity is the discovery of suitable, supportive, and sometimes challenging conditions.
This second principle—right place, right time—refers to the need for coordinating our schedule and environment to correspond with the demands of the creative process. And, it refers back to Socrates’s great admonition: “Know thyself.” Here the creative process branches into many tributaries; we must find the circumstances that we need, our sources of sustenance and support, our own allies, and places of power.

The question is: What works for you? What conditions, challenges, and influences do you need, that brings you closer to an intimate relationship with the creative impulse? Certain features of our lifestyles make possible our artistic strivings and serve to awaken our creativity.

Impatience is one of the greatest traps of modern life—and a formidable enemy to the creative process.
The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell points this out: “This is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day… This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first, you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.”
Through the intensity and care we bring to our own efforts, we are helping others as well. In our individual efforts, attention breeds attention, and perseverance breeds perseverance. When we are present, working with focused awareness, we reflect and activate the same quality in others, as they do for us. We serve as reminders of each other’s search for wholeness of being. And if we wish to awaken our creativity, we must seek influences and people that challenge us, help us reach greater heights of expression, and guide us inward toward deeper layers of experience.

10 The Third Principle: Deepening Connections

ART AND SPIRITUAL PRACTICE

I firmly believe that there is a profound and ongoing relationship between the creative process and the traditional disciplines of the spiritual quest. Aren’t artists, first and foremost, seekers of the truth—of the world we live in, of culture and its influence, and of the multidimensional levels of existence, from the sacred to the profane?
From inner quiet, the right, true action arises—a genuine response. Through the field of silence, we hear the subtle voices of intuition, and are open to hints of conscience and moments of greater consciousness. We know what is right and true, and we see more clearly our actual condition, with all of its potential and contradictions. Ordinarily, our thoughts turn constantly, our bodies are rarely still, and our emotional nature distracts us from this moment and from our true purpose. The action of sitting quietly, sensing the body, and quieting the mind allows for the emergence of our true Selves and reveals the essential shape of our own mature form of creative expression.
Be courageous and discipline yourself… Submit to a daily practice Your loyalty to that is a ring on the door. Keep knocking, and the joy inside will eventually open a window and look out to see who’s there. —Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks. The principle of deepening connections is an action, an aim, not a definitive destination. The movement into ourselves, as reflected in the Rumi quote, is the means of potentially engaging the radiance and wonder of the All.
Art is, or can be, a genuine spiritual practice. It can function as a staircase to the Way, a pathway toward consciousness when it is aligned with the means and methods of genuine teachings.

A Way of Growth

Authentic creative expression is a way of encouraging our inner growth, and a means of mirroring the development that takes place. It is a reciprocal relationship. As we engage the creative process, we are thrown into relief and we encounter the particular shape of our psyche and inner energies. Our potential and our limitations reveal themselves. Our demons are called forth, often with a force that shakes loose our reluctance to acknowledge and intimately know them. We are challenged to stretch and grow. We attempt to integrate and transform, but not ignore, our shadow selves—and to move beyond the deep-seated habitual patterns that govern our automatic selves.
The practice of perfecting an art or craft is akin to the practice of perfecting ourselves. This work takes place through two equally important, but different forms of practice.
- The first is the division of attention between ourselves and the outer task, remembering to stay within, mindful of our own energies, and careful to not get swept along by the attractions and seductive draw of the outer world.
- The second form of practice is self-observation. Proceeding from a deeper level than ordinary, mind-based introspection (which is often the mind viewing the mind, or wishful seeing that lends strange colors to our vision), self-observation is impartial, objective, and simultaneous. We observe ourselves at the moment, without wishing to change what we see. Staying in touch with our awareness, we allow ourselves to be, and simply observe what we are. Paradoxically, the more we can stand above and genuinely see, the more we can truly live within, in touch with our genuine presence. The very act of seeing, of cultivating an inner witness that resides in the constant stream of clear awareness, sheds light on the dark places. From true self-observation, a new heightened perspective may arise that is deeply transformative.

What obstructs this work also arises from within us: our obstacles, unhealed wounds, and fragmented energies. Creativity may be allied with insanity because it opens us to the realm of darkness. But in turn, it ignites passion, engenders healing, and leads us toward integration. Experience bears out the truth: that creativity, unlike madness, provides a pathway for self-realization.
Our resulting works are mirrors of ourselves. Through examining our work, we encounter ourselves.

The Way of Balance

The means and methods of working with an art form are an outer measure of our own energies. Through creativity, we witness our own fragmentation and a particular form of imbalance. The body, mind, and feelings; each has their own intelligence and makes their unique contribution to the process.
Creativity calls us to become whole, and that often means attending to our weaknesses, the component parts of ourselves that are underdeveloped. Here we strive toward an inner balance, with all of our parts working in unison. Cultivating a broad, embracing awareness, we may connect the disparate pieces of the creative act: our tools, ourselves, and the process itself.
The body and the senses know proportion and balance and can sense where sounds, words, or colors resonate within its field of vibration. If we allow for its intelligence, the body often knows the actions necessary for the activity in front of us.
The mind, of course, is given the task of grappling with the implications of content, of analogy and symbol and sifting through options to bestow a living quality on our expression. The mind listens within, activates imagination and visualization (the capacity for storytelling and mythmaking), and opens to the contents that emerge from the unconscious. The mind focuses on our intent, assisting the body and the feelings in staying with the moment, allowing it to organically unfold.
Feelings are a unique instrument of discovery. Through feeling, we perceive nuances and the subtle energies underlying surface manifestation. We make relationships, we understand metaphor and allegory in a manner that extends beyond the mere information provided to the mind. Our feeling nature often provides the particular coloration to our works that makes them distinctively our own.
When the body, mind, and feelings are working in balanced synergy, with each doing the work it was intended for, a channel opens, a conduit appears for the voices of intuition and conscience—which are often the true guiding forces of our creative expression.

The Search for Self

Creative expression encourages the discovery of the Self and brings us closer to our essential nature, our original face. It is a means of discovering our place and our true calling. We strive to be open, to become transparent and receptive to the guiding impulses from within. Creative work is a discipline that calls forth the deeper parts of our nature. What we call inspiration or the muse—that which visits us when we are receptive and open- is a manifestation, a lawful result of our efforts with ourselves and our medium.
The lightness of being that arises through the creative act is simultaneously serious and playful. It requires discipline, yet calls forth innovation and risk-taking. The creative act is one of liberation, once that asks us to go beyond ourselves. When we try to work in this manner, to transcend our perceived boundaries, a new quality of feeling emerges: a joy, a clear sense of satisfaction, a sense of being right and true. When the heart opens in this way, we recognize the possibility of a new, heightened sense of being—one that is limited only by our deep-seated inner attitudes of habitual thinking and reactive emotions.
The rare, illuminating moments that reveal the unity of existence are attracted through our inner work, our creative practice, and our strivings toward consciousness. Ken Wilber calls this perception “One Taste,” the experiential recognition of the All.

A Way of Devotion

Unlike purely intellectual pursuits, creativity can be a transformative discipline. As we open to the larger mysteries of existence, resting in the stream of awareness, even for moments, we are transformed: stunningly, gratefully, unforgettably. We give up the dream that we are, take down our shields to the forces that surround us, realizing that the Creative in ourselves is ourselves. This begins the Way.
Creativity, then, becomes a path toward a great Way of transformation. It encourages us to stand in front of infinity, not-knowing, slowly simmering into radical openness through our everyday practice and inward efforts. It teaches nonattachment to the ego and non-identification with the final result.
All activities, when given our full attention, are analogous to the organic processes of growth and development. Through art, we learn about the laws of life and the possibilities inherent in being human.
The creative process unfolds in every moment—in nature, in the earth, in humanity as a whole, and in the cosmos—on a scale and dimension vastly larger than our personal expression. Yet we are not separate from these energies. Through creativity, we become participants in a greater whole; we are a part of it, and it is a part of us.
Through art, we make a vow to grow. Ananda Coomaraswamy, the great Oriental art scholar, found agreement with Stieglitz’s answer to the question of why he did not sign his work: “Is the sky signed?”
The heroic quest is nothing more, but nothing less, than the search for an authentic life, a life lived from within—and it is a holy task. The journey of the hero or the heroine in myth and legend is the role of the artist today. We need our artists. We need to be perpetually reminded of the possibility of a life lived authentically, of a life lived to transform and transmit those forces and energies that exist within us, pass between us, and come down to us from another source.-
Sing Through Me, O Muse
- The artist was merely the vehicle. “Sing through me O muse,” begins Homer in the Odyssey. What we call a miracle or an ecstatic creative vision is often the manifestation of the energies and laws of one realm descending into another.

At this higher level of the creative process, the artist can become a transparent vehicle for another order of intelligence to pass through fully formed.
The artist has prepared the ground, developed his or her craft with rigorous intent, and struggled with the question of content, often for years. It is through these conditions of a sustained commitment that something may clearly pass; from our unconscious, from a transcendent source, from our own deeper nature, or (as some are disposed to believe), from the energies that pass between us as human beings.
Now the creative currents use our talents, our efforts for their own mysterious purpose. Here the stream widens from receiving fragments of intuitive revelation to the potential of becoming a willing, gracious host for the transmission of forces and energies much larger than we are, originating from cultural, collective, transpersonal, or spiritual realms. I think Ken Wilber is absolutely right when he says: “Humans do not create Spirit, Spirit creates humans!”
The implications of this phenomenon are enormous. Simply stated: The gods speak to humanity through art. What has been called “conscious” art is a means of giving expression to the voices of the deeper realms for the purpose of transmitting collective or transpersonal truth.
The vibration of color and form, sound and light, and carefully crafted words have universal implications. The language of myth, allegory, and symbol can speak across the barriers of time and environmental conditioning.
A.R. Orage writes: “Minor art is concerned with self-expression. Major art is an effort at conveying certain ideas for the benefit of the beholder; not necessarily for the advantage of the artist.”
From this exploration, the artist then attempts to intentionally convey the truths that they have discovered, with great precision. The effects of this form of art are often designed to awaken higher states of consciousness, uncover the long-buried voice of conscience, and uplift the viewer into new realms of experience. In this context, art is a physical manifestation of energy and an expression of consciousness.
In this dance, the balance between these two forces, these two modes of expression—the genuine, authentic expression of the individual, and their embrace of the communal movement in which the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts—was sheer poetry. It provided a new model for my own understanding of the resonating potential of collaboration and partnership, in which each individual adds their own imprint to the evolving whole. When two or more are gathered together, so much more is possible—more energy is attracted than each individual could hope to find solely from his or her own initiative.
In Zen, it is said that the finger-pointing toward the moon should never be confused with the moon itself. Our aim is not to focus on or serve the finger, the path; it is to serve the luminance that creates the moon. In other words, we engage these practices in order to serve life, to serve the higher manifestations both within and without, to serve our real Selves, and to serve others.
Life does not exist to serve our egos, our social personalities, our residual childhood complexes, or our material aspirations. Nor do conscious forces exist to support our petty desires and earthbound selves. The higher should never be used to serve lower ends. The lower should always stand in service of the higher. This is a subtle but important distinction if we are to use artmaking in a respectful manner.

In our most profound moments—of beauty and radiance, of great pain or trauma, of love and awakening, of seeing and feeling the sublime—we also sense our mortality. Everything that is born must die. All the manifestations of life that we are privileged to experience are temporal and mortal and will pass from this earth. The Greeks have given us a word for this: pathos, which represents the duality present in rare moments of awareness, when joy is intertwined with sadness, and hope is tempered by reality.

Ultimately, the creative process is not about making objects. It is about the rediscovery of ourselves and the remaking of the world; about becoming an artist of the very act of living. The quest for genuine creativity, in whatever form, is none other than the search for the awakening of consciousness and the gradual uncovering of the long-buried voice of conscience.
Creativity, then, means simply standing out of the way, developing our skillful means, our craft, to allow the myriad energies of life to move through us, creating objects, genuinely responding to others, and offering our experiences and understandings back to life. A phrase given by Laura Sewall in Sight and Sensibility continues to reverberate in me. She claims that we are “receptacles, vessels, and transformers” of the vast energies (of life, nature, and culture) that surround us.