The Soul of Creativity

Insights Into the Creative Process

Tona Pearce Myers, Tona Pearce Myers

• Editore: New World Library
• Anno: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781608681242
• Argomento: Développement personnel
• Categoria: Créativité

?There is no single definition of creativity. It is as wide-ranging as the people who seek it: writers, painters, musicians, actors — indeed anyone who desires a richer, more rewarding life. Many consider it inaccessible — limited to gifted artists and celebrities. But as the extraordinary contributors to this book show, it is really everyone's birthright, too often shoved to the recesses of our psyches by the demands of everyday life. From the vibrant naturalist and poet Diane Ackerman, to musical theorist Don Campbell, to inspirational author SARK, these talented contributors guide us through the creative process with clarity and insight. They remind us that inspiration is always available to those willing to realize the power and possibility of their true creative being.Contributors include: Diane Ackerman • Pat B. Allen • Christina Baldwin • Hal Zina Bennett • Echo Bodine • Jean Shinoda Bolen • Don Campbell • Lucia Capacchione • Michelle Cassou • Judith Cornell • Adriana Díaz • Riane Eisler • Linda Firestone • John Fox • Robert Fritz • Aviva Gold • Robert Grudin • Jean Liedloff • Ann Linnea • Shaun McNiff • Eric Maisel • Jill Mellick • Stephen Nachmanovitch • Kent Nerburn • Jan Phillips • SARK

Chapter 1

Brush with Inspiration

When I am, as it were, completely myself,

entirely alone, and of good cheer

— say, traveling in a carriage

or walking after a good meal —

it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best

and most abundantly.

— Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Inside the Heartbeat of Creation

MICHELLE CASSOU

I waited for spring recess, counting the days. The children would be off from school, and the painting studio would be closed. It would be deliciously empty. I would go in.

I had a project. My dream had become more and more pressing. I wanted to paint a painting as big as the studio, a painting that would cover the four walls, from floor to ceiling, and the door. I longed to be surrounded by my own creation, to be totally absorbed, to melt in it. I wanted to erase the line that separates creator and creation.

The studio, a small rectangular room maybe ten by twenty feet, has all its walls covered by soft boards where children pin their paper to paint on. The room has been multicolored by hundreds of painters when their brushes touched the borders of their paintings, leaving traces of colors. It has no windows except for one very small opening against the ceiling. It has no door, either, or so it seems, because the door is covered just like the walls, and when it is closed it seems to disappear. It is a sacred space. I was shocked one day to discover that fifteen years earlier it had been a meat freezer in the back of a butcher shop.

Life balances all extremes. Now it feels like a secret place, a womb where I can abandon myself, dive into my feelings with no fear or pressure from the world outside — as if it miraculously dissolved.

Empty and silent, the studio is pulling me into its vortex of creation. I feverishly cover the walls from top to bottom with large sheets of paper. I am getting ready to indulge in creation, to dive body and soul into its core, ready to answer the call of the mysterious unknown. I am going to paint the whole space around myself, to fill every inch of it with color and form.

I start to work on the right side and move from right to left, using ladders and stools, watching the images and colors reveal themselves under my passionate brush strokes. I have no plan. The miracle of spontaneity slips into the room and takes hold of me, guiding me. Exotic plants, multicolored birds, people of all colors — spirits are born, dancing with light and rhythm. My hand moves on its own. I watch with delight the fulfillment of my dream.

Time flies by. I paint for many days from morning till night, all by myself, inside my painting. I arrive just after dawn. It is always dark when I leave. I walk three blocks to the metro station, amazed at the world outside, mesmerized by Paris and its crowds of tired workers going home. The activity, the noise, the expressions on the faces fascinate me as the train carries me away, back to Charenton sur Seine, my home, where my young son is waiting for me. I know I won’t have strength left or the desire to eat. I will just take my baby to bed with me, and we will cuddle. I will wrap my arms around him, his feet touching my folded knees, and our breath will mix. He will feel completely enveloped by me, relax, and then gently fall asleep.

Now it is time to put the last stroke on the painting. I let myself slide all the way into it. I feel its full embrace. I stand in the most intimate fashion, in the closest possible way, at the center of my own passion. I am ecstatic. God’s beauty fills me. My soul is full. Hidden in Paris, in a former meat freezer, I feel the greatest, the fullest lover’s embrace.

That night as I walk out of the studio, my soul is drunk. I feel transparent as if the whole world could pass through me without touching me. Only an old instinct brings me home.

The next morning, pulled like a magnet I have to go back. I slowly and carefully open the door to the studio, holding my breath. The world of my painting is still standing in a vortex of energy. Joy and gratefulness burst in me. I softly walk to the center of the room, and suddenly I hear its heartbeat, the heartbeat of creation.

I stay there and listen. I do not know how much time has elapsed. But at a certain point, I wake back to the world and know that the next step is to take down the painting this very day and free the studio for the next painters.

Slowly, with great respect, I disassemble the immense painting and stack the sheets. The painting disappears, one piece at a time, eaten by the powerful force of the void. Creation breathes in and out, comes and goes.

Nobody has seen my painting. I never looked at it again. Done for its own glory, its gift is still in me. Creation does not need anything added to it, no reward, no approval, no praise. Creation is a moment filled with spirit, a moment when the soul reaches far and brings back God’s heart. Done for its own sake, it is free.

Life is movement, creation only a response. The pulse of existence goes on. In and out. No resistance. Creativity fills the moment. In and out. It is as sacred to take my work down as it is to let it unfold. In and out.

Born in Hyers, France, MICHELLE CASSOU started to draw and paint when she was five years old. Her childhood was filled with dreams of inventing and creating. She created art with every available method and material, while innately refusing to engage with traditional structures. At 18, however, she reversed the direction of her work, and enrolled in traditional Parisian art classes, hoping to increase her power of expression. When this approach threatened to destroy the connection between her work and her feelings, she escaped by joining a free expression studio for children. It was there, from the children, that she discovered the magical force of spontaneous painting.

She spent more than three years painting with children. By painting freely, away from all traditional rules and concepts about art, she soon understood the amazing life-changing potential of creation. She discovered for herself the basic principle of making art: unrestricted choice and spontaneity. She reached what she calls the “point of no return,” when creative expression moves to such a deepened level that one cannot imagine living without it.

This discovery immediately led to the desire to share it. Small groups soon gathered in her Paris home, where she transformed her bedroom into a painting studio. Through observation and experimentation, she started her lifelong search to understand the creative process.

In 1969, at the age of twenty-six, Michelle moved to Ottowa, Canada. She continued to paint while teaching her methods of “free expression” at the University of Ottowa. A few years later she moved to California, named her process the Painting Experience, and began teaching classes and workshops. Her art progressed intensely. She is now internationally known for her groundbreaking work of using painting as a tool for self-discovery, and for exploring the spiritual dimensions of the creative process.

Michelle has co-authored the book Life, Paint and Passion: Reclaiming the Magic of Spontaneous Expression out of her life’s work and the thousands of paintings she has created. She is currently writing her second book, Insights on the Creative Process, which includes her latest discoveries on painting and creation. It will be available next year.

Her new video chronicles her painting history. In it, she describes how she discovered the freedom to paint and how anyone can tap the deeper energies of creation. She continues to paint and teach in the San Francisco Bay area. Michelle Cassou can be reached at The Painting Experience, 369-B #279 Third Street, San Rafael, CA 94901, [phone]. E-mail: [email protected]; Website: www.thepaintingexperience.com.

Creativity and the Heart of Shamanism

HAL ZINA BENNETT, PH.D.

Some years ago my writing career had stalled. I’d sit down to write, but nothing would come. I was certain the well had run dry. It was disconcerting enough to experience a crumbling of my creative powers, but this was my livelihood. I had bills to pay, a family to support. How would we survive?

I consulted a psychotherapist, a psychic, and numerous friends. My therapist suggested I take a look at my relationships with my parents. My psychic explained I was transiting through a retrograde cycle. And my friends told me not to worry; things would work themselves out. No doubt there was some truth in all these answers, but being desperate I pursued a more radical counsel.

Throughout my adult life, I’ve had a spirit guide I call Awahakeewah. Being of good midwestern stock I tend to believe he is mostly the product of my consciousness, but I listen just the same, vacillating between trust and skepticism.

To contact Awahakeewah I simply visualize his presence. That day I instantly slipped into a blissful state. Awahakeewah immediately appeared in my mind’s eye, quite put out with me — which didn’t exactly raise my spirits. Nevertheless, I mentally asked him for guidance. Why was I so blocked? Would my creative abilities return?

Awahakeewah stared at me indifferently. As far as I could tell, my fate didn’t seem terribly important to him. But then he said, “Each of us has a piece of that same Creative Force that made the universe. You are the steward of this part, but you do not own it. So get the hell out of its way!”

Frankly, I had hoped for a little sympathy. But Awahakeewah sat before me, poker faced, unmoved by my whining. I knew that if I were to make the most of his advice I had to let his words swirl for a while in my consciousness.

The first insight to seep through was the realization that creativity is never in short supply. To regain the power of creativity, I had only to get out of my own way. It worked, and today I need only Awahakeewah’s gentle reminder to restore my abilities.

When I was in my twenties and thirties I read books about the creative process. Most argued that the creative person’s impulse came from a need to compensate for early deprivations or wounds. They pointed to the imagery used by painters, writers, and musicians as evidence that these artists are motivated by early traumas in their lives, evidence that creativity is an effort to purge fundamental conflicts. But is not such purging a universal human impulse? Certainly it doesn’t distinguish the creative person from the rest of humanity.

I’m convinced that the reason creative people draw from their own experiences is not just to purge their wounds but because their experiences are sources of compelling imagery and passion without which art would be vapid. Memories of wounds we’ve endured and ecstasies that have lifted our hearts are the very best resources we have for creating good stories, great paintings, and wonderful music that moves our very souls. We have only to think about Goya’s war etchings, or Picasso’s Guernica, or Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, or Charles Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities to find evidence for this. It is, after all, our own experiences that we know best and that offer us access to the greatest depth of emotion and the most vivid imagery. However, it is something beyond that, the promptings of a demiurge — Plato saw it as the creator of the world, Gnostic philosophers saw it is an assistant to the Supreme Being in the act of creation — greater than ourselves, that motivates us to transform the images of our lives into forms that would uplift the human soul.

In intuitive-based cultures, shamans and artists have always shared similar roles. They stand outside their societies, at the same time providing a unique service, that of transforming everyday perceptions so their communities may move beyond their own wounds and human limitations. There is a demiurge embodied by all living creatures, a drive that constantly causes us to reach beyond ourselves. It is expressed at the most basic levels as an impulse in certain members of a species to reach beyond its present environment and develop new physical or mental attributes to thrive in that new place. It is found in the shaman who reflects on the present psychological, physical, or spiritual mind-sets, forging new ways of seeing: a new hunting route, a new way for a couple to speak to each other, or a new way for the community to relate to its neighbors.

The artist embodies the demiurge of transformation and change in a way that is very similar to, if not the same as, the shaman. They both recognize that most human limitations are found not in universal limits but in the limits of human perception. The hunters of early communities learned one hunting path to follow, and they followed it until there was no more game to be found there. Even after the route was no longer productive they continued to follow it beca...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword by Angeles Arrien
• Introduction by Tona Pearce Myers
• Chapter One: Brush with Inspiration
• Chapter Two: The Creative Encounter
• Chapter Three: The Heart of Creativity
• Chapter Four: The Healing Force of Creativity
• Chapter Five: The Spiritual Practice
• Copyright Holders
• Permissions Acknowledgments
• Recommended Reading
• About the Editor