Rumi writes:
What in your life is a calling you,
When all the noise is silenced,
The meetings adjourned…
The lists laid aside.
And the Wild Iris blooms
By itself
In the dark forest…
What still pulls on your soul?
From school-aged time forward, (if not before) we are told what to do, and how to do it. Learning begins through the hopefully well intended guidance of the adults around us. How did you learn? Do you remember? Did you follow instructions exactly? Did you make mistakes and try your own way, and then follow what was told? Did you not-try, give up, get frustrated, and then do a mediocre job just to get by? How do you learn something new now? I imagine it might show up in the way that you read ahead here in this entry, because I do feel like I have something to teach. And your reaction to it is interesting to me.
The way that we organize around the process of learning paves a well lit path for our nervous system along the way toward how we are in relationship with,for example, our own creativity. Creativity is something of a making, something that is formed from the unformed, like a painting is made on a canvas. Though, we are already formed from various experiences, relationships, ways of learning, and thoughts that are ways of organizing our lives. We believe this, we can do this or that, we don’t believe that works, we are willing to try that. All of the ways that we are formed effect our ability to allow our own creativity. What is possible though, is to create a relationship with these ways, creating a new perspective, building a knowing (or awareness) of what you do, how you do it, and then moving from there with curiosity. This curiosity breeds more creativity, because the creative usually sparks from a relationship between what is known (the canvas), and what is unknown (the painting). Without curiosity, we are acting and moving within the same set of actions: the worst being walking in circles, the best being that we are fortunate to have a set way that really works and is satisfying to us. We must be curious in order to be creative. To be curious means we are making space for what is not known to us yet. And there are infinate amounts of colors, shapes, designs, actions, movements, thoughts, and angles to live life by that are not known to us, because we live in a set of patterns which help us funcion. Whether we function with wellness, ease, and life-moving creativity is a worthy question.
Looking at this subject, my intention is to offer some possibilities for therapeutic encounters that might help free what feels stuck, some flexibility where there is a set feeling of “only this way, I have to do it this way,” or on the other side of the bodies functioning, some form and shape to creativity where it otherwise feels flaccid, weak, formless, like a cloud so thin that you think the creative in you is out there but you just can’t touch it yet. It is like a calling from afar, but has not yet blossomed. Do you know why or how that is in your experience? In what ways you are in a set way of doing things that works (or doesn’t work) for you? How is that? Is there a slight feeling, something that if you found it, it would be like the Iris in the Forest, a blooming with effortless effort?
“What still pulls your soul?” Rumi asks
“Mobilizing creativity:” To be mobile means that you can move toward, that the impulse that you have, as an electronic firing of “move now;” an instinctual call as easy as it is to get a glass of water when thirsty. This firing, the flame of creation, is able to be active, to mobilize, and perhaps, with your breath, may spread within your body in a graceful effort. Mobilizing isn’t always easy, however. We can all get handicapped on the way to what moves us. Our hand want to reach toward what we want, but the movement is stunted, pulled back, nonactive, shy, or spastic in a way that stresses and disorganizes the well intended effort.
To be creative may be to unlearn ways of stopping ourselves in our tracks or moving in a stressful way: both of which are muscular actions. How do you put a stop to yourself? What do you tell yourself? What else is more important that what you thought you might want to do? How do you convince yourself away from your own movement, and at what cost? Do you push forward past gut feelings, override your own caution, and then find later that you acted too fast, and now carry the stress of that movement?
How do you embody freedom? What in your life is calling you?
I invite you for an introductory session where we might define for you what is in the way to your freedom or explore how you are living creatively and how to move with some volition, or creative action within all of your relations. We can discuss (and practice) how to form what feels out of reach into an action at a pace that works for you. We can also find form to what feels formless, or find some ease, a widening (as opposed to a tightening) in the way that you move through your life and what you want to create for yourself.
What would it take, or what would you have to do, to extend to me in this moment? I welcome your questions.