I’m seven days out of a six-week creative ritual of five.

Deeply grateful and wanting to share the golden nuggets.

Myself and four dear friends from Highden rented a house with the intention of creating. The whole journey was a living workshop. It was a temple. It was nothing I expected it would be.

The time was bookended, one ritual, one film about creativity – and, like a film, everything that happened had meaning, was deliberately placed. What came through us was not just our ‘creations’; everything was part of the creative process, but was also self-referencing, revealing something about the creative process.

And we all played out different “creativity characters”, or archetypes. What I mean by “archetypes” are the different tropes or patterns or hallmarks or behaviours that act out through humans (it’s helpful to think of them as beings in and of themselves that, we’ll say, move through us. Of course, there are many, but really, there aren’t THAT many – generally speaking, we’re not that fucking unique).

All of the feelings, experiences, joys, blocks, challenges, that we experienced as a group were related to creativity and expression. Everything was an instruction, a breadcrumb, a sign. Something to be shared.

So here are some things that I’ve taken, that have helped me understand my creativity better, and might help you, too.

Creative Blocks + Aids

The Unintegrated Masculine

Creativity and productivity are not the same thing. Creativity may birth realities in unseen realms. What is manifested may only be felt, may be hidden until a later date, may be realized in hindsight. In the same way that we remember than everything is sacred, so too is nothing not part of the creative process, once you have remembered that you are an artist.

This imbalanced masculine can manifest as a state of constant busy-ness, an over-assertion of routines and structures in an attempt to maximize our productivity, and the need to do that actually becomes the thing that we do, strangling the creative flow, feminine flow, preventing us from simply being in the mystery of being from which all creation arises.

Competition also comes through the unhealthy masculine, which can take the life out of the creative process. I want to live in a world where we’re cheering each other on, not looking at art as a commodity, coming at it not from a place of lack but of abundance – knowing that there’s enough, celebrating and welcoming more.

Apply your discipline to get you to the edge, then jump, and let the mystery take over. Structure routines that work for you, in a space that works for you, but don’t become a machine. This isn’t about focusing on goals or output, competing against anyone, or being a hard-ass on yourself – it’s about setting yourself up to give yourself a good shot. If you want to be a channel for the muse, you have to use your discipline to show up. Then get the fuck out of the way.

The Saboteur

This fellow was rife. We’ve all got him inside, right? How much time do we spend looking for excuses not to start the painting, the novel, the song, etc.? It’s an interesting energy to see weave through a group field. But this, like all the others, lives inside us.

Notice the parts of you that want to ruin everything. Appreciate the strength of your will to fuck shit up and not get shit done. Apply this trickster energy to your process, and then known when it’s time to crack the whip and say – enough.

The Wounded Feminine

Weaving through much of the creative process. This energy was present in our group every hour of every day, moving through each of us at different times. The wounded feminine says “I’m not good enough”, “my expression doesn’t matter”, “I’m too much and must tone myself down”. The wounded feminine keeps herself small and needs to enlist others in her stories, in order for her victimhood to be validated.

Recognize and see the parts of yourself that are in doubt, that don’t feel good enough. Give them time and space. Love them. Be compassionate to yourself. But understand that these stories are not the truth, are not “who you are” as an artist or human. Listen, and love, but don’t believe what you hear.

The Child

The house we chose was a house that kids were brought up in – the energy of the child was ever-present, and there was no getting away from it. When we allowed it to move through us, a lightness descended that eased any tensions and pressures coming from the other archetypes.

Let your inner child run riot. Allow yourself to play, to run around the garden, to roll around on the floor, to paint even though you told yourself you’d write. This part of you knows where all the secret passages are.

Death

The creative process is a process of death. Whatever you think needs to come out of you, let it go, let it go, let it go.

Be willing to allow your ideas of who you are to die, constantly. Be willing to write badly and sing badly and have all your work erased. Burn your first draft. Apply the grim reaper’s sickle to whatever you create; be a ruthless editor.

There are many truths. Here are some:  

• Nothing that happens is not a part of the creative process. If you’re an artist, you can’t turn it off. That means that every damn thing that happens is to be noticed. Even your unwillingness to create in a moment is still your creativity. You might be being asked to stop and squirm in discomfort for a moment for a good reason. Like when you tense up all your muscles in order to relax them into an even deeper state.
•  What comes from a space of softness and acceptance is perhaps a truer note and a more sustainable method than total chaos and confusion and high-stakes. Now, this is just one truth. There are others. But this one came through in the moment. Spaciousness invites.
• Having the support or presence of another actually helps. Not only does it help, but it affects what is coming through. We’re as affected by each other as we are by music or by the weather outside the window, so having people in the same room as you as you’re writing something or recording something is going to produce something totally different.
• Similarly, writing under a specific tree, at a certain time of day, or wearing a certain jumper, is going to affect what you create.
• There’s a tension between orchestrating and allowing – between the direction of the masculine and the emergence and flow of the feminine. If you can get them to to work together, that sweet spot of bringing your will to meet your surrender, then oh baby, you’re in for a treat. How to do that? Make it a ritual. Open it and close it, like a book, like a door to a world within a world.
• Creativity is our truest nature. It’s not just something that we tap into. In every little word that escapes our lips, every movement of a limb or flick of a wrist or choice to place something just so on an altar or a plate, we’re creating… and knowing that, celebrating it, acknowledging it, sort of blasts through all the stories of the small self that say that I am not a creative person, I am not good enough, I’m blocked, my expression doesn’t matter… actually, everything you do is creation. When we really settle into this reality, the noise of the mind becomes less, becomes secondary to the wisdom of the body in its ever-presence, unfolding from one moment to the next, manifesting itself through time.

Co-creation (monadically relating to group)

This is somewhat hard to talk about yet. It’s like trying to express yourself in a language you have heard around you, in a strange, foreign country, but of which you haven’t learned even a word.

What is it to relate to the “empty center” of a group when creating together? It means is that you’re listening to the thing that is between. There’s a sense of there being a sixth member that is bigger, smarter, and incorporating the five, working through and dancing each individual.

It’s big stuff. Not surprisingly, coming into the physical space, for all of us, was a bit of a production.

At first, there was the delight of living in a countryside house together. This was a short-lived enthusiasm once we realized what we’d signed the tremendous energy that wanted to move through our group.

Every one of us had resistance to actually stepping in. For some of us, it manifested as an internalized anxiety, for others it manifested in sitting in the car parked outside, unable to cross the threshold. In the first couple of weeks, we noticed that we were rarely physically in the same room. There was a lot of communication between us, and we never actually felt as though we were not part of this pentagram, but the reality was that physically coming together was not totally pleasant for our personalities.

And it took two weeks – really two weeks – for all of those parts to come up and cause a hell of a lot of trouble before we could bow to the center of what was between us and make a commitment to relating to that more.

There was no avoiding that magnetic center that was pulling us in. There was no escaping the knowing that we came here for more than this. We were being washed from the inside out. We knew it.

So whether you’re co-creating a business project, a relationship, a community life, a piece of art – whatever, here are some things that we found:

• Bow to the center: stay connected to the heart of the group, and listen to that. If that doesn’t make sense in your mind, sit in a circle and literally imagine and connect your heart to the heart at the center of the group. This helps to get you out of the personal mind and into the larger “purpose” that might want to reveal through you.
• Depersonalize everything: recognize that nothing’s personal, that you could be in any position at any moment, see yourself in everyone, realize you’re all just playing out archetypes, nothing is set in stone, everything is moving and subjective. Easier said that done, but crucial.
• At the same time, don’t avoid the personal – as transpersonal as all this sounds, it’s important that the personal has space to be felt and experienced – things have to move through, just don’t get bogged down in them or think that they’re real thing.
• – Consent: even if you know you’re on your soul’s path, and that you’re exactly where you need to be intellectually, there’s something to be said about verbally, consciously, personally consenting to a journey together as a group. You’re basically saying yes, I’m here, use me.

I hope our beautiful, bountiful journey can help and influence yours.