Creativity Practice

Last Winter I started practicing creativity. I made a challenge for myself to do something creative every day and post the result on Instagram. The only rule about the “something creative” was that it had to be satisfying. Not pretty, “good,” or even intentional, just satisfying.

I posted flower arrangements, outfits I dressed in, drawings, projects I did with my kids, and once, me singing a song.

I did the project to get back into my creativity, which I had forgotten to some extent when I became a mom. I also did it to “find my thing,” to see if maybe I wanted to be a writer or painter or do something professionally that I just hadn’t discovered yet.

Well, I didn’t “find my thing.” Instead I found out that I don’t have a “thing.*” Me wanting to have “my thing” was me looking for acceptance, community, and a way to monetize my creative output. Not that those are bad things, but piling so many of my hopes and desires on some unknown “thing” that I would do actually stifled my creativity instead of stoking it.

But getting back into my creativity? My creative center? Yes. I did that. I do that, it is a constant re-balancing: leaving center, occasionally going to an extreme, then returning home. But these days I feel more grounded and creatively centered than I have since before my kids were born.

The biggest surprise of my creativity practice, however, wasn’t the “not finding my thing” nor was it the return to creative center. It was an opening to deeper spiritual aspects of who I am.

I have come to believe that when we open the door to our natural creativity, we open the door to the deepest aspects of who we are. The door leads to some scary things. Traumas we haven’t fully processed, lost loves, times we made ourselves wrong, shame, fear. But among/within those demons of fear and shame live our quiet triumphs, our true loves, our unexplainable intuitions and, as a teacher of mine says, a deep “felt wisdom.”

I’ve found things within myself that I want to share, but I’ve gotten caught up in the “why am I sharing?” question. Do I want to share for recognition? Love and admiration? To boost my ego? To get published? To invite criticism so that I can have a good reason to stop sharing? (<– mind games, anyone?)

Maybe maybe maybe all of those things. But also, the work wants to be shared. It wants to fly into the minds and bodies of others for the “benefit of all beings,” for the sake of creating a space of harmony. It wants to inspire others to open up to their own creative, sacred nature.

That’s a lofty purpose indeed. I’ll practice holding it lightly and coming from a place of balance and love.

xo,

 

Michelle

 

 

 

 

*Tee hee! Yes, I get that there’s a penis joke in here. I get almost all of them. Thank you, fellow tenors of the Michigan Marching Band 1997-2001 for making my dirty double-entendre detection skills razor sharp. Go blue.