The Creative Now
So here I am, finally, in my new blog about creativity. To be honest, I feel a bit lost. In such a vast territory, where do I even begin?!
The “question of creativity” is enormous, and seems detached from my everyday experience. Then, in the very act of pondering the question, I see it shift under the light of my present consciousness: for these very words on the screen, appearing before my eyes, are an act of creation. I cannot experience creativity in the future or in the past, but only in the NOW.
It seems as promising a path as any other, so I tend it further with my attention, and it sprouts some new leaves: 1) an Idea sustained crosses the threshold into Experience; and 2) the Experience imprints itself upon my consciousness, leaving it forever altered; 3) Experience is the thing: the jewel of NOW set in a band between Past and Future.
Experience, born of our creativity, is the thing of which our every moment is made.
Perhaps creativity only seems insignificant because, rather than exercising our full creative power, we tend to create the same thing over and over again.
The Creation of Our Ancestors
None of this is original: it is an amalgam of ideas attributable to Albert Einstein, Eckhart Tolle, and Zen Buddhism, to name just a few of the influences. The words on this screen, however, are my creative expression. Perhaps the red thread of fate, which has grown short between you and I, dear reader, has called them forth. You are drawing the words out of me that you need to see – to hear with your inner ear – at this moment.
Perhaps we even transcend time, and even as I write these words, you have already read them. Not in linear time, but beyond it, in the space of the heart.
Here in the Now we are each fully present within the heart of our personal experience; we stand at the center of the stream of all humanity. All around us like a rich river delta lies a world formed by the creative moments of our Ancestors, deposited Now upon Now upon Now. Creativity is not only connected to our experience: it has shaped it.
And now, we are becoming the Ancestors…
The Ancestors are no longer here, but the world born of their creativity surrounds us: the dreams of the inventors, yes, but also the triumphs of the victors, the sorrows of the victims. The abused who became the abusers, and the wise ones who founded strong and prosperous family lines.
Each one was creating, but if the evidence around us is anything to go by, too few have been rewriting the scripts when things went badly. Too few even realized that it was possible to rewrite the scripts.
But not you. You know better…
You know we can rewrite the scripts. You know we can change the course of the river. You know we can form a better world through the force of our creativity.
Creativity only seems insignificant because we tend to create the same thing over and over again…
We must immerse ourselves fully in our experience like children, and play with what we find there. We must be willing to risk mistakes, and we must be gentle with ourselves when things don’t turn out the way we had hoped Above all, we must be willing to try again…and again…and again. We must keep trying until we create something like. Something we love. Something, perhaps, that will change the world.
Better yet, we must do it together…
“A Council of Muses would change the world,” my Muse insists.
“I’m sure it would,” I reply, “But how do I call them?”
For now, my Muse is silent. And I am annoyed.
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Journaling Prompt: What would you like the world look like when you are one of the Ancestors?
