LOSING YOURSELF IN THE DIVINE: CREATIVITY AS A SPIRITUAL PRACTICE
by Lucia Capacchione, Ph.D., A.T.R.
www.luciac.com
When you create you lose yourself in your creation. Time seems to
stand still and all else is forgotten. You participate in the divine
play that is creativity. These moments offer a glimpse of who you really
are: a being fashioned in the image and likeness of God. Like the
source of all creation, you are a creator, too. It is your divine
birthright. The person who says "I'm not creative" is uttering
blasphemy. The truth is that you are the Creative Self expressing
through the human vessel of your body, emotions, mind, and soul.
Creativity flows through you as a universal life force, called by many
names throughout the ages: chi, prana, shakti, the Holy Spirit. It is
this energy of love flowing through you that also gives life to your
creations.
The medium in which you create is irrelevant. It doesn't matter
whether you write a business proposal, play a piano sonata, or prepare a
delicious meal. You may be seeking to resolve one of life's mundane
problems or express deep feelings and insights through poetry. Embrace
your creation as a lover and you can break through to another realm.
When you stick with it for better or for worse, your creation becomes
your guru (Sanskrit meaning "from darkness to light").
Losing yourself in the divine embrace of the creative process, you
disappear. Your ego or limited sense of separateness vanishes, and you
emerge into the vast ocean that is creativity. This is an altered state
of intuitive awareness in which you renounce control from your head
alone. Instead, you allow the Creative Self to flow through your heart,
your body, and your intuition. Then you are taken to places you can
never go in your ordinary waking state. This road leads eventually to
moments of divine bliss described by ecstatic poets like Rumi, Kabir,
and Lalli.
The desire to realize the natural high found in peak moments of
creativity is so basic that, if given no healthy outlet for this urge,
people turn to alcohol or drugs for a simulated version. These
counterfeit forms inevitably backfire, for they violate an essential
ingredient: the human vessel for containing the Creative Self. And that
vessel - physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual - can be shaped only
through hard work and awareness. We must harmonize these four aspects
of our being. For instance, the body and emotions need time to digest
flashes of inspiration the soul and mind receive. After participating in
laboratory controlled experiments with LSD many years ago, author Anaîs
Nin concluded that she didn't need drugs to get high. Her writing had
always taken her to a state of heightened awareness. Nin had kept a
journal since childhood, developing her craft every day of her life.
Regular writing practice was the cauldron in which Nin, the novelist and
essayist, was formed. Interestingly, it is her diaries (published in
several volumes) that are best known, even though she hadn't originally
intended them for publication.
To flourish, creativity needs our full attention and disciplined
focus on details. It is a way of life, a way of being and perceiving. It
is a form of meditation that leads out from the Creative Self and back
to it. The creative process rests on a foundation of attentiveness,
skill, and hard work. At her most inspired, the master pianist loses
herself in performance, transcending technique and dissolving into the
Creative Self. Her ego steps aside and the music plays her. This is
possible only because she has spent years rigorously developing her
God-given talent through loving practice. The enthusiastic entrepreneur
writes an inspired business plan because by acquiring skill, experience,
and knowledge he has also cultivated intuition, vision, and love of his
work. He's done his homework.
Any practice, spiritual or otherwise, involves making mistakes.
Millions of errors are made before the human vehicle is ready for the
Creative Self to freely flow through it. A good metaphor is in the
art-making process. For instance, in ceramics the clay must be wedged
(pounded vigorously to remove air bubbles) before the pot is formed. If
not, when the pot is baked in the kiln fire (which is where the
transformation occurs), the air pockets will cause the pot to explode.
In the creative process we are "wedged" by life, pounded vigorously to
remove the air bubbles of an inflated ego.
The yogis call this tapasya, the purification in which inner heat is
generated by friction between the mind and the heart. The ego dies hard.
When the ego is embarrassed by the revelations of our human foibles,
omissions, or transgressions, it experiences frustration, angry
explosions, or the slow inward boil of resentment. In the same way, the
creative process is humbling. It opens us to rejection and feelings of
failure, self-doubt, and unworthiness. That's why so many people avoid
it. Creativity's invisible fire burns up all that stands between us and
the integrity of our creation. When we serve the work, however, it
becomes our teacher. We shape the work, but at the same time the work
shapes us. The alchemists described this purification process as turning
base matter into gold, tests into mastery, crisis into wisdom.
In serving the work, truth is everything. For example, what we ignore
comes back to haunt us. Weak spots a writer glosses over in a
manuscript, baking soda the chef forgets to add to the cake mixture,
specifications the designer leaves out of an architectural blueprint
become teachers. The pot that cracks apart in the kiln was not wedged
properly in the first place. The results never lie.
There's nothing wrong with making mistakes. In fact, mistakes are
honorable. They are how we learn. But if we think we're above it all,
our egos will be burned in the fire of truth. Through embarrassment we
find we didn't know it all. We couldn't slide past the truth. What we
missed or chose to ignore inevitably trips us and grounds us again in
earthbound reality. Brought back to our senses and to the matter at
hand, we are reminded of our human being-ness. That is the vessel for
our divinity. Try to escape that fact and God or the Goddess has no
place to reside in us.
If you are devoted to the Creative Self, you will encounter the same
tests described in the writings of saints and mystics throughout the
ages. These include highs and lows, agonies and ecstasies, inspired
moments, and dark nights of the soul. Some periods feel charged with
"greening" (to use Hildegard of Bingen's term). Juicy and fertile, you
are full of aha" moments - breakthroughs and discoveries. Inspiration
gushes like a geyser.
At other times you feel dry, lost in an arid desert of disinterest,
depression, and barrenness. Emptiness prevails and you wonder if maybe
you haven't lost your talent and skill along with your connectedness to
the source of creation. You are haunted with questions like Will I ever
have another creative idea? Am I all dried up? Have I used all the
creativity rationed to me in this lifetime? A battle with the demons of
self-judgment rages within.
The literature of both art and mysticism abounds with descriptions of
this phenomenon, a black void that seems totally enveloping and
all-pervasive. Read the words of biblical figures like Job, poets like
Saint John of the Cross and Rainer Maria Rilke, spiritual leaders like
Saint Teresa of Avila, artists like Vincent Van Gogh. They all gave
voice to the darkness within where, paradoxically, the Creative Self is
to be found. Artist and recovered mental patient Mary Barnes once wrote,
"In order to come to the light, I have to germinate in the dark."
You don't have to go out of your way to find these experiences. We
all face our terrors at one time or another. It's part of the human
condition - losing a job, filing for divorce, going into bankruptcy,
having a serious accident, dealing with a life-threatening illness or
the aftermath of a natural disaster, surviving the death of a loved one
or the loss of a love. But if you see crisis as an opportunity, an
invitation to personal renewal, then life itself becomes a creative
process.
Those on the creative path who have journeyed fully into inner
darkness and have come back to tell the tale seem to be saying, "These
are the dues you have to pay. Life will pound you vigorously. Can you
stand up to it? Do you have the strength and tenacity? Do you trust the
creative process? Have faith in the source of creation."
Life's tests are the kiln fire that transforms us into conscious
vessels of the Creative Self. However, if we cannot embrace challenges
as teachers, our human clay can explode. Unable to handle the heat, some
cast themselves as victims and become bitter. They may become violent,
depressed, take refuge in addictions, resort to criminal behavior,
become irretrievably insane, or even commit suicide.
How can the human vessel contain the limitless divine Creative
Spirit? Like the birth of a baby, it's a mystery yet it happens every
minute. Here the discipline side of the creative process is essential.
It has been said that art is 5 percent inspiration and 95 percent
perspiration. The same can be said for the creative process of living.
You show up each day, do the work (whatever form it takes), follow where
your next inspiration leads, and pay attention as the challenges
unfold. This is as true in your occupation as it is in your personal
life. When you are committed to seeing your life as a work in progress -
as the creative process beckoning to you – then creativity becomes your
spiritual practice.
Day after day your devotion to creativity will enable you to merge
with your Creative Self. Your destiny will unfold from within. Your life
will become the unique work of art it was meant to be. An ancient
Chinese story tells of an old master ceramist developing a new glaze for
his vases. Each day he carefully regulated the heat in his kiln, worked
painstakingly with the chemistry of the glazes, and experimented with
them over and over. He labored devotedly day after day, yet the effect
he had envisioned continued to elude him. Having applied his vast store
of knowledge and skill and having exhausted his human power, the master
concluded that his life was over. He climbed into the kiln to be fired
along with his vases. When his apprentices opened the kiln, they beheld a
magnificent sight. All the glazes were sheer perfection, like nothing
their master had ever achieved. He had become one with his creation.
In embracing creativity as our spiritual practice, we commend
ourselves into the Creator's hands, knowing that our goal is to
disappear. And when we do, we become one with all creation. The divine
spirit dances with us, it plays its music through us. We become the
instrument through which the divine flows like a river to the sea. All
the pilgrimages, all the prayers and chants in all the temples and
churches of the world are meaningless unless we are devoted to living in
and through the Creative Self, to live as the image and likeness of
God.
If life force energies are not moving creatively, they will become
destructive (as so-called holy wars have taught us). Destructiveness is
the Creative Self turned upside down. Something has taken a wrong turn,
and, like cancer, it devours the source of its life. The cure is found
in creativity.
When your Creative Self calls, go with it. It is God speaking. Listen
to your Creative Conscience, the voice of the divine guiding you each
day. It resides in your heart. Go there and roam. That is your true
temple.
©Lucia Capacchione. All Rights Reserved. Excerpted from "The Soul of Creativity" published by New World Library.
"The
most significant thing I’ve discovered through this exercise is that my
worrying about time is really just a way to play small and not risk. My
Time Guide took the form of the Buddha. He put his arms around me and
said in soothing tones, ‘It’s okay to say no to things that don’t
serve you or make you happy. And when you say no, in doing so you will
hold a space for the right things to come into your life.’” — Violette Clark
