The Creative Soul

Creativity became the topic de jour in a conversation with a friend this past week and yet again we echoed that same refrain about how we’ll do almost anything to avoid getting started on creative projects, because we have so much resistance to engaging ourselves at that deeper level. Personally, I believe this is because creative work is soul work. To be creative you have no choice but to go within and wrestle with your own demons to try to forge new meaning and connections. Other kinds of work you may be able to sleepwalk through, but with creative work you have to be totally present or it shows.

It’s like the difference between the factual reporting of events or talking in depth to someone who’s experienced them. The first will give you a sense of what happened, but the second may change your life forever. To be able to connect intimately with the way another person has sensed or felt about something, and to then feel our own connectedness as souls is the real gift of art and creativity. It reminds us who we are and why we are here.

The yearning for that sense of connection lies at the heart of Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s latest book, What We Ache For. In the opening lines, she writes “We ache to touch intimately what is real, to find the marriage of meaning and matter in our lives and in the world. We ache to feel and express the fire of being fully alive. When we cultivate and refuse to separate those essential expressions of a human soul – our spirituality, sexuality and creativity – we feed the fire of our being, we find that place where the soul and the sensuous meet, we unfold. Willing to do our creative work and refusing to separate it from our sexuality and our spirituality, we add a life-sustaining breath to the world.”

What she has touched upon is so poignantly are the myriad ways in which we compromise ourselves, lose touch with our essence and deny parts of ourselves in order to do what we think will keep us functioning in the world. And yet, that self-alienation can only inevitably lead to some form of breakdown – which is really a form of breakout – where we lose exactly the things or people we’ve been trying to maintain at all costs. Failing to honour the full depth of who we are comes at a very high price.

I’m finding it hard to think of a single person I know at the minute who isn’t going through some kind of deep transformation, where the values of the past don’t seem to hold the same kind of sway or where life changes have thrown them into freefall. These times are precisely the times when we need to shift our focus from the events that are clamouring for our attention to move into a deeper sense of what is at work in our lives.

The three aspects in the passage from What We Ache For can be a pretty useful start. For sexuality read passion and life force: what do you feel passionate about and what makes you feel truly alive? For spirituality think of the need to find your own sense of the sacred, to feel that your life has purpose: what makes you feel connected to something greater than yourself? For creativity, ask yourself what is it that you came here to do, that fully expresses a deeper part of yourself – what is it that you do that makes you feel totally and completely you?

The trouble with the life of the soul is that there is no roadmap – by its nature it demands that you make it up as you go along. You have to learn to be comfortable with not-knowing and feeling your way instinctively. If you like to nail life down with a five-year plan, then the soul-infused perspective will definitely be a challenge. It calls for intuition, faith and a deep trust in meaning and purpose to all things. It’s not a blind faith, though, as spiritual guidance and support can be found along the way.

Thomas Moore, a former priest and author of Care Of The Soul, has spoken of his vision of a time when the spiritual aspects of life are so honoured that “one day, instead of going to a therapist, troubled or searching people will pay a call to their theologian to consider the mysteries that have befallen them”. Thankfully, that time is not far off. Already, here in the UK, The Interfaith Seminary ordains more than 50 new interfaith ministers and spiritual counsellors each year, to serve the needs of people of all faiths and of none. The Seminary describes its work as training “open-hearted men and women to become non-denominational ministers and counsellors, to support individuals, families and communities in living a direct, authentic spirituality that is relevant and helpful to our modern world.”

In a time when many religions are failing to keep pace with the spiritual challenges of 21st century life, spiritual counselling can be a rare lifeline to the world of the sacred that doesn’t demand adherence to any particular belief or credo. Having trained as a spiritual counsellor, I know how valuable it is to be capable of walking in both worlds, to embrace both our divinity and our humanity. That we can feel as comfortable in a cloister as in a chic boutique is by no means a contradiction, but an affirmation that life is to be lived as richly and deeply as possible.
Your life is a creative act, so how beautiful can you let it be? How many lost passions can you reclaim? How many limiting beliefs about what’s possible for you can you shake off? How much of your true self can you re-embrace? Something creative in you wants to express itself – can you get past your own resistance and set it free?

Let this week be the one where there are no rules. If you feel like you need some, just make them up. Take a walk on the wild side. Be creative. Live with soul.

Coach Fabulous is updated every Thursday at http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. You can also use the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right. For alert emails on new postings, send a blank email to IAmFabulousCo@aol.com with 'Subscribe' in the title field. All material © 2006 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 5 Jun 06)