Living a New Life

Musings of the Day

Creativity Has No Clock

Hear this read aloud below

"Blue Wizard"

Created in the wee hours when magic was afoot…

Some artists work on a schedule, getting into the studio at an appointed time every day. I tried that and actually did a lot of work during that period, but I lost something important in the process. I was not creating at a rhythm that felt natural to me and I lost my creative flow. I lost the most important element in my creative process which is my spiritual connection to the messages that come through my hands when I paint. Those downloads from spirit have no clock and they are the source of all that I create. They move my hands and guide my choices, but only when I am in tune and listening to the faintest of whispers.

My paintings are a conversation between the unseen and myself, not the me that lives in my intellect, but the self that lies at the heart of who I am. They evolve over time, sometimes needing to be set aside for months or even years until they are ready to become what they are meant to become. I have attempted to work on a deadline, but that is like asking a flower to bloom when its convenient for me and not when it has had all of the sunlight, food and water that it needs to become the beautiful flower it was meant to be. Nature has its own rhythms, a clock of its own, which is in tune with something far greater than we are. My art works in a similar way, blooming when it is ready and not before. When I force it, I create mud. My mind takes over and my heart shuts down. I cannot think my paintings into being. They are a felt sense of something asking to be expressed which require that I put my own time table aside and work with a rhythm of a different sort.

"Concert of the Elements"

My days are often filled with the tasks of daily living, at times so much so that I have little to no space to process all of the input that comes at me. As someone who is highly sensitive to the energy around me, I need more space and quiet to digest that input than most other people do. My internal clock runs on a different schedule than the one we usually follow. I’m up in the middle of the night, oftentimes with a surge of creative energy, but just as often with a need for the peace and solitude that only comes when all around me are asleep.

I have adapted my way of life to rhythms which feel right to me, knowing full well that they will most likely change over time. I go to bed sometimes when there is still daylight out my window and I wake up when my body tells me I need to move. Though this is challenging for my family and social life, my commitment to my health and to my spiritual path is primary. My body is telling me that this is how I need to live. In following my body’s messages, I am hopeful that my health will improve and my overall well being will flourish.

As an artist designing my life, I am listening to the same whispers of guidance that I do when I paint. For now they are saying that I need to trust my own wisdom and follow what I know. They are showing me that my unique needs and challenges are not deficits, but openings into an expanded view of what my life can be. I am being lead to live more in harmony with my own nature, create in ways that feel natural to me, and let go of the need to fit into any design created by those who came before me. Trust is the key word here. In myself. In my guidance. In my own wisdom, which has been hard won over a long lifetime. "The Infinite Abundance of Mother Earth"

As the new year is beginning, consider these questions.

Do you trust yourself implicitly to know what is right for you? And are you willing to live true to that regardless of how it appears to others? Of how it will affect those around you? And regardless of how afraid you might be to follow the call of your heart? Are you willing to listen to the whispers that come to you in the moments between thoughts -the ones that are inconvenient and uncomfortable, but oh so true?

I would love to hear your thoughts.