Creativity

For the last week or so I have been doing The Artist’s Way, a program designed by author Julia Cameron. Through journal practices, you gradually get to tap into your creativity by speaking to it, and blocks that keep it from flowing. These blocks usually stem from old insecurities and even traumas around our confidence and ability to be creative.

I’ve always loved being creative. When I was a kid, I would cover my parents’-a full time mom and city cop, respectively-modest apartment with watercolor paintings that my mom lovingly called, ‘abstract’. I continued to paint, draw, and make collages throughout my childhood and adolescence, and I also love to write. My mother loves fashion, and for a time always had Harper’s Bazaar around the house. I used to buy Vogue with my allowance as a teen, and loved drawing designs. When I was in my early twenties, I began making small pieces every once in a while from vintage saris. I love thinking about the concept of something, what its pieces are and how to work with them, and then putting them together and creating something that wasn’t there before: a whole thing, out of small things.

However, all those art forms aren’t the only expressions of creativity there are. Imagination is the ability to see what could be, and how we can realize that vision. It takes imagination to design a dream home and find a contractor to build it, to pick a career path and go to college, to heal from an emotionally damaging experience. Imagination is a form of hope-you must believe that your vision will happen. Creativity is the inner strength and flexibility to gather the resources and information you need to realize your vision, and play with them until you have a finished product that you’re satisfied with.

Creativity is a comfort, because it is the inner strength that allows us to solve problems when we are faced with them. Anyone who has ever had a good idea is creative, and using creativity. The arts are not the only way to exercise that energy, but it is  a way to share them with others. All arts exist to give joy. However, we can heal ourselves with the focus that creative expression requires, and the happiness it gives us to practice it. When we know what makes us happy, we know ourselves better.

The Adi mantra, ‘Ong namo guru dev namo’ can be undertaken as a mantra practice. It can be translated as, “I bow to the teacher within.” We all have to ability to learn about ourselves through observing how we perform, and creative endeavors are an opportunity to observe ourselves, to be our own teachers and see how we react when in the midst of realizing a vision. Do we hesitate and hang back, looking to others to lead? Do we take the lead, do we collaborate or work alone, and what form does our creativity take? In this way, we teach ourselves, and we always feel gratitude towards our teachers, when what they say teaches us who we are. This self-gratitude can give us more compassion for our mistakes, and more clarity about our perspective in the midst of feedback from others. What feels true to you? What did you create, and what was your vision?

What feels true to you matters, and everything you feel and experience is apart of the creative process.