Creativity in the New Year

Creativity is one of my leadings: I’m always hungry to get to work on a project. I feel restless, anxious, and eager to make something- a painting, or embroidery, or anything- just to have busy hands and feel productive and creative. 

And I want to express myself, though that which I want to express is often a mystery- it’s the shadowy and bright life inside me; it’s the big truths and the fleeting feelings of the moment.

I want to be more attentive and intentional about my art-making process and my product; more devoted, thoughtful, open, real, original, and honest. And so I hush and wait for ideas. I hold my heart like an empty bowl, waiting for it to be filled. I let the need to create grow and become an obsession, let myself be anxious, and feel happy for this ravenous feeling! As Eric Maisel says, "Both creating and not creating make me anxious, and I choose the anxiety of creating." I choose to have the anxiety of wanting so badly to make art that I must do it every day.

Agenda Today:
1. Review the Divine Laws
2. Prayer candle ceremony
3. Read "The Creativity Book"
4. Brainstorm and simple project list

6. Practice visualization
7. Kitchen blessing

1. 

Review the Divine Laws:

At Soyal, I review the Divine Laws, as I see them. A Divine Law is anything that comes directly from God: a natural law, universal truth, principle, or a rule of conduct that is inherent and essential in human society.

Today I will review my testimony of 

Peace and Equanimity: Stay calm and patient with people and problems, not obsessed with any thought, and not acting with aggression or anger.

2. Prayer Candle ceremony:

I'm enjoying a daily prayer candle ceremony throughout Soyal, using small candles and candle ends and choosing a new candle to add each day.

Today I light a peach candle for peace, and ask the Spirits to bring the rain of loving care down upon the whole world.

3. Read "The Creativity Book":

A few years ago I started but didn't finish this book by Eric Maisel (one of my favorite writers). The subtitle is "A Year's Worth of Inspiration and Guidance." Who doesn't want that? 

I'm on Week 19: Incubate. "How do you incubate a creative project? ... paying attention to our budding ideas is rare."

Maisel compares it to fertilizing an egg - you need to swim towards your creative thoughts and ideas. You need to take time to wonder, post your ideas in plain view, and ask yourself often how your little egg of an idea is doing. You need to hold your idea close to your heart and let it grow - incubate it.

4. Simple project list:

I haven't really made a start on a big project yet, though I have some ideas. My plans for creativity this year sit in four areas:

• Explore "Active Hope" with abstract paintings and appliqué story pictures.
• Share fun seasonal pre-school art and nature projects with my grandsons. 
• Make fun things with my hands and play with art: Scrap fabric beads, a nature-theme mandala, and garden art. 
• Share Unity Art such as teaching garden signage and giveaway art that witnesses to earthcare.

In the fall I started using Leo Babauta's "Simple Projects List", with my top three projects only, which I need to finish before starting any others. (A "project" is something that has several steps, and takes only a week or two.)

"The top three projects on your Simple Projects List will be your entire focus until you finish all three ... This ensures that you aren't spreading your focus too thin, and that you are completing your projects." 

Tips: You can't actually do projects - you can only do tasks. Make a list of tasks for each project, and focus on doing one at a time. Each day, choose three tasks to complete.

My simple projects list this week:

1. Art: Story appliqué. (First task: Write and draw a plan.)
2. Kids: January painting and drawing  (First task: Clear craft cabinet and set up to paint.)
3. Play: Make some more fabric beads - during threshing session.
4. Unity Art: Incubate an idea.

5. Practice visualization:

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Every month, at the waxing gibbous moon (my last push for action), I call on the practice of visualization to help me to see the next steps towards bringing my goals to fruition. Today I shine a light on my new appliqué project.

Creative visualization is a technique that uses my imagination to create change. (Because of my visual and auditory sensitivity, this is the best process for knowing what I'm feeling.) It has these steps:

• First, set an intention: Say, "Today I call on the Spirit of Love to bring me clarity and open my eyes to expressing the story of Hope with appliqué."
• Center and relax each part of my body: With each breath, allow my awareness to deepen and become softer. No stress. No rush. I walk or float in an imaginary void. Open a connection to Spirit. Feel a soft warmth begin to grow and spread through me, until I am radiating quiet energy.
• Create a clear, detailed picture in my mind, as though the objective has been reached. Paint a vivid mental image of A Story of Hope, and put as much positive energy into the image as possible. 
• Lastly, affirm that this is what I want with a short positive phrase in the present tense: "Today I will take steps towards sewing A Story of Hope."
• Give thanks and return: Saying thanks out loud is how I acknowledge the reality of the gift of my vision.

The thought-image is like a signal-flare that guides the physical thing or deed to manifest in my life (and it's a good way to keep my intentions in my mind). I will carry the vision of the completed goal with me, and focus on it often during the day, in a gentle manner.

6. Kitchen blessing:

The Orthodox Church has a tradition of blessing homes within a few weeks after Epiphany. The family prepares by cleaning the house, and then a priest comes to sprinkle holy water and pray for each family member, living and dead.

So what is a blessing? The Church recognizes a blessing as a statement or prayer that invokes God’s favor and power, and prepares one to receive grace, or in the case of a house blessing, prepares the space and those within it.

My own understanding is that the act of cleaning itself is a blessing on the house, and that sitting still in a newly cleaned room is a good way to remember that we are each blessed, always and forever.

But I love a good ritual! My custom is to bless each room this month, first by cleaning it, then with a ritual, and then by remembering the blessings of life.

This week I've done the physical cleaning of my kitchen: sink, mold, woodwork, windows, and refrigerator, and I've tidied the shelves. But my house also holds emotional "dirt" that needs clearing, lingering psychic odors of angry words and melancholy thoughts, and the bad vibes of political debate heard on the TV.

For a simple house cleansing ritual, I use a twofold approach: Salt water and sage smoke.

Sea salt is an ingredient used in Christian holy water, and also in water used by Pagans for cleansing and blessing. I keep a small bottle of water with dissolved sea salt for this purpose. Sprinkling salt water is known as asperging. Salt water covers the elements of earth and water.  

 

Sage smoke is tied to the element of fire and air, and will scatter away negative vibes to the winds. I use the Old World culinary sage that my ancestor shamans may have used, and which I grow in my garden. I dry it in the fall and wrap it together with sewing thread.

1. Set the intention to clear out bad energy and invite in blessings.

2. Light a candle, and from that ignite the sage. Once it catches, blow it out so that it smolders. (Leave the candle lit, though.)

3. Walk around the room and waft the smoke into every corner. (In the kitchen, I even open the cabinets and drawers, and waft smoke inside.) As you walk, think about the intentions you set.

4. Pour a little salt water into a small bowl, dip your fingers in and lightly sprinkle it as you walk around the room a second time.

After the ritual, I'll sit quietly at the table with the lit candle, and savor the blessing of a clean kitchen. I may also say a short prayer to the Spirit of the hearth and home:

Blessed be this kitchen, the food, the herbs and spices, 

and the pots and pans used to prepare our meals.

Peace be to this house and to all who live here, 

and to all who visit.