Today I would like to talk about creativity. This subject fascinates me, as I believe being creative can bring so much fun in our life and help us transform deeply.
I'm an art-addict. I was born in Paris and since I was a child, I was bathed into the creative scene of this charming city. I love writing, making music, dancing, painting, expressing myself in anyways. My heart needs different mediums to speak out and one art feeds another. When I paint, I may understand something that helps me refine my writing skills or I get some inspiration for my music and vice versa. But what I love about creativity is the process, the path that the mind and the heart walk together to show where my limits lie; the path they create to take me wherever they want me to go, to expand myself.
As I'm writing these lines for example, I have absolutely no clue of where this is going to lead me, but I trust that my being does know where it goes. Even if my mind starts to shout "But this is not going anywhere man! This makes no sense!” I just listen to it with compassion and I acknowledge any judgement that arises.
With judgment often come emotions, my belly starts to contract and I start to feel the heat of some profound impatience, and I observe it, attentively, quietly, patiently... I don’t let my mind stop my creative process anymore; I don’t let judgment block my imagination. Whatever it takes, I persevere, with strong determination. It feels like being a warrior but the trick is not to fight against the mind, as it will always win if you get angry at it... It is more about creating a deeper intimacy with anything the mind has to say during the creative process, and allowing it to have its ups and downs.
“What do you want to tell me, weird and beautiful mind? Ok, now we're going to be friends, I'm going to listen to you whatever it takes and I will give you all my support so that any judgement you may have, I will accept it, respect it, thank it and love it. Let me see where you want us to go.”
This it how true intimacy works. If my mind is being angry, impatient, judgmental, ignorant, stupid, greedy, childish or anything I could judge it for, why not accepting that my mind can be like that sometimes? Why would I take only the best of it and each time it does something I judge wrong, I run away from it and I say: "Hey, that's not me! I'm not this crazy mind!"...
The ego feels so good when it sees how intelligent the mind can be… and the ego feels so depressed when it sees how stupid the mind can be… So we don’t want to keep that depressing part… We just want to be intelligent, not stupid. But whose mind is not stupid sometimes? And who’s judging stupidity is bad or wrong? Why not accepting stupidity? Wouldn’t it be intelligent to love our own stupidity? How liberating would that be?
When the heart meets the mind, or when the mind meets the heart… This is the key to higher creativity. While I'm writing these words, I feel a great pain in my chest, a massive contraction like a big block of concrete. Some years before, I wouldn't even have written more than the 2 first lines, because sometimes my emotions and thoughts can get so strong while I'm creating that it could stop me straight away. But now I understand how it works, I understand these are just old wounds, old reactions popping up, struggling to be seen, like brain-spams. They don't stop me anymore. They show me the limits of my inner-sky, they are like road signs telling me that I’m actually on the right path, a path of expansion.
Creativity helps me to transcend and upgrade these old reactions; it helps me to replace them by something more efficient, more aligned with what my heart wants for me. If my heart desires something and I let my mind or my emotions take control, what happens then? I start to feel guilty of not following my heart's desires, I literally stab my heart, telling it: "listen buddy, I know you have really cool dreams but we can't get pass the mind and emotions, so let's remain stuck in the old way, let's forget about these dreams because it's too much pain and discomfort to reach them… I just can't handle that!"... and so when I let my mind and emotions win, just because I don't want to listen to them, respect them and love them, I basically stop myself from growing. How sad...
But each time I am willing to embrace my mind and emotions, each time I go over my own judgement, I get the rewards, I feel so much love for myself, insights are streaming in, joy starts to radiate in my being and I feel so proud of me because I just won a new battle, with love and compassion as my only weapons.
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