CREATIVITY COMES FROM BEYOND THE MIND
All the things that truly matter – beauty, love , creativity, joy, inner peace – arise from beyond the mind. – Eckhart Tolle
Once years ago when someone asked me what we did in my writing workshop I laughingly responded, “I’ll teach you to lose your mind.” I was delighted when they signed up on the spot. One of the reasons most people don’t think they are creative is that the mind doesn’t understand how creativity works.
I remember early in my writing life when one of my personal essays won a significant award, including a grant to support my work, I went into a bit of a panic because I wasn’t completely sure how I had written the piece. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to do it again and they would find out I was a fraud.
As I continued to write I realized that I had actually been practicing the craft of writing for years by showing up to write at least a page of some kind every day, reading the kind of writing I am drawn to write, playing with revision and evolving my own voice and style all from the place of the intuitive mind. I had a sense of how a piece wanted to come together and just keep playing with the weaving of words.
I eventually understood that this was how the creative process worked. If I kept showing up the inspiration would continue to meet me and I would have a sense of what to do with it. I also learned that not everything I started wanted to be finished. Sometimes it was part of the learning process that took me to the next step or the next level.
With more than twenty years experience of teaching the writing process and working as a creativity coach, I’ve seen the importance of actually giving people the experience of being creative. Helping them move beyond the mind so that they learn to let go and allow their hearts and the fires of imagination take them into the creative flow. That’s where the joy is, which provides the motivation to keep going. We discover that the act of being creative is its own reward. |