Thank you for my Book of Creative DARMA and for my ‘Today’s Creations’ bedside notebook and phone photo album. I am loving the emphasis on CREATION. It is calming, centring, fulfilling and reassuring to be centre-staging creativity. I realise I’d seen creativity as a luxury to be dabbled in after everyone else had been reacted/responded to. What a GIFT to be consciously, gently, flipping that paradigm.
Let’s go and read and meditate and come back with Today’s Creative Impulse.
Whatcha reading?
You’re kind of Texan this week in my head! Well, funny you should ask. The next Michael Brown book, Alchemy of the Heart, arrived yesterday. So I’m starting that this morning. But this Project is light on accompanying text right? So this book will just be background inspiration. That said..! Yesterday I did the Qigong Five Element Personality test and came out as a strong FIRE. And what is the organ associated with FIRE? The heart. So this feels all just right. The FIRE personality is enthusiastic and emotional. If I can temper my heart’s FIRE, and channel its energy, that will be really good for me in terms of balance and inner battery power. And I guess the term for that kind of tempering and transformation is ‘alchemy’. So, AMEN to this book. Ty MB!
***Reading AOTH and 10mins entering PMA (present moment awreness) for breathing practice with Insight Timer in the background. (Meditation music and chimes every minute.) ***
Today’s Creative Impulse: To finish up the Presence Project (add the illustrations I did in my notebook + write the intro/welcome) and send it to MB with a thank you letter, for seeing me through 2020.
Ok so. Let’s talk about this kind of Creative Impulse…
That could make you weep, or run away?
Yes. Exactly.
That makes you feel like you are giving and yet taking?
Yes. I feel like I’d be forcing myself on him, and seeking his approval, attention… and action? And that I’d be sad, rejected and dismayed if I didn’t get those reactions! It’s really the worst combo…
Let’s pause here. And we can discuss this exact, wonderful conundrum tomorrow.
***Next Day – rather late – I slept in! But nonetheless shall keep to the Daily Pattern***
Do you know that authors love to receive signs from their readers that their work has moved them profoundly, and been useful? We all want to be useful, right? None more so than authors who have taken their heart’s most perfect peacock feathers and put them on display as a gift to the world.
One of the most important things for you to realise is that creations are merely gifts. They are not bartering tools for love, attention, rewards, awards or approval – although they may attract all those very very things! Creations are gifts. We live to be able to give and receive the gifts of creation in order to serve the divine purpose of Creation…. which is the glorious expansion of consciousness through the imagination and actions of human beings. What purpose is there for the magnificent creative Mind if not to create ‘something new’?
I guess the Mind sometimes gets sidetracked into ‘protecting’ us from danger.
Absolutely. Go back to your polyvagal theory and see how system 1 (Social Mobilisation) is creative, whereas system 2/3 (F&F, and Freeze) has much less scope for creativity.
[Weirdly… the apps swapped on the desktop and the The Way of Liberation pdf popped up…]
May we suggest that tomorrow you return to Adyashanti’s text for some background guidance here?
Yes.
And for today, work with this concept: You are invited to explore ‘gifting’ your creations, using Marshal Rosenberg’s distinction re. stating our needs to others as if we were bringing them a gift. He says to bring a ‘Santa Claus Attitude’ (“Hohoho, I have a gift for you!”), not a ‘Kick-Me Attitude’ (“Ergh, I’m so sorry..!”). Consider the difference it will make to your willingness to hand things over, and let them go…. however they are in their final state.
I can take inspiration from my beloved Mum here – she just gave and gave and gave her photography. People saw themselves through her eyes, loved and joyous and beautiful. What a gift! No wonder people loved her!
I am gifting my creations
PS. Creative Impulse 2: Buy a collapsable box/footrest I can put my legs on (my hip is hurting from always sitting on the sofa with crossed legs because my legs don’t reach the floor) and I can put my QT materials in (because the space by the wall is so cold it drains the laptop battery).