Curiosity leads to creativity
“Curiosity leads to creativity” Charles Eisenstein.
Creativity has always held a fascination for me: ….where does it come from? …what is it actually? I vividly remember as a child watching my hand draw and paint.. and even now I relish these moments of ‘giving over’ to creativity… letting my body move, dance, draw … because in truth I am not, absolutely NOT in control, but a witness to connection to something else and to creative flow. Ask dancers, musicians, inventors: great ‘a-ha’ moments or states of flow are not and cannot be planned.. they are places of not knowing.. and somehow there’s a magnificent grace in this.
On this journey that I am on to explore eco-villages I am consciously exploring how I bring my creativity out in the world and discovering what this means for me.
What has been coming up for me very strongly since my retreat in January in Eco-Dharma is a deep soul-yearning to develop greater compassion, for myself, for others and for life all around me. It’s a step-by-step incremental journey that is gradually revealing my ‘self’ to me, and in it, through it, come these moments in meditation that are the same as the creative flow I can feel while drawing/dancing..they are moments of connection to something more than me, they are moments of deep satisfaction, relaxation, gratitude, ease and acceptance of the world with a sense of space for something new.
What I do know from exploring my own creativity is that ‘it’:creativity, comes from a place of not knowing, it flows when I allow myself to accept what is in the present moment, it arises from a place or trusting and letting go of my need to figure it all out… it feels like standing at the edge of the void and taking a step into no-thing-ness.
How would it be if we could trust that the answers to our current problems lie, not in combat and conflict and fighting for whatever it is that we all believe we need to fight for.. but within our unique creative contributions and our innate interconnections?
I believe there is a profound link between our creativity and our capacity for compassion, our capacity for acceptance and grace for all of what life is..even the really difficult messy violent fucked up and ‘impossible to accept’ stuff. Accepting reality allows us to creatively respond to our situation rather than responding on some ingrained distracted autopilot. I don’t ‘know’ how to do this but I do feel in my body and heart that the answers do not lie in focusing on our differences and focusing on how bad ‘the other’ is, the answers lie in our collective creativity….and I have to believe that even in these times where our systems just feel so messed up that there are new ways of being that we can’t quite see …..yet…
I watched this piece by Charles Eisenstein this evening and he finds such eloquent words for the power of compassion, the possibility and space that exists when we stay with not knowing and accept what is. I feel a sense of calm when I listen to this.. and a great sense of hope for the more beautiful earth that my heart knows is possible.
Thank you Charles Eisenstein.
Empathy:Key to Effective action – https://vimeo.com/213533076
Charcoal sketch – combining dance and drawing – 2012
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