I often hear from my creative friends that they sometimes struggle to find the flow to write or to be creative; like an “artistic block” of some sort. This can be a particularly confusing thing if it is your passion to be creative, because you know what you want and what makes your heart sing, and yet you can find it difficult at times to feel like you are actually making progress with those passion projects. If you think of the Creation Formula (Desire – Resistance = Outcome), and view each writing, painting or other creative session as its own little creation, then you can see for yourself why the outcome is perhaps not the outcome that you would want. Or maybe you have found your place in the flow, and you are interested in understanding how you can stay in the flow, or get into it with more consistency.
If we remember that creation here happens at a level of passion, joy and fulfilment, like most artists feel about their craft, then it makes sense that you need to be in a place where your emotional state is compatible with that. So you need to prepare your emotional weather (that is your short-term emotional state) to be compatible with that of your Creative Source, if you want to have access to that part of you. In other words, you need to be in close proximity to your Inner Peace.
You are always connected to this non-physical part of you – the Self which forms part of the Create Source, and this stream of energy is always flowing to you while you are alive in this human form – or the avatar as I like to call it – but through your mind you are in control of how much of this stream you allow to flow into your experience. When you are in the place where you integrate with your Self, and become the Integrated Self, you are receptive to the inspiration, the ideas, the creativity that comes from your Creative Source.
Doesn’t it make sense that you want to be in a place where you feel the passion, the joy, the fulfillment that comes from the creative process? The joy that comes from completing a project is rather short-lived. It is but a waypoint on the journey. In order to have a life that is joyous and fulfilling, the journeys between the waypoints need to be joyful and fulfilling, because that is where most of your life happens. You need to enjoy the flow of the energy and the creation process itself. Many know that it is the resistance from their thoughts and thought patterns that keep them from syncing up to their Creative Source, even if they don’t articulate it in this way. Some may even resort to the use of substances that alter the mind to slow down those resistant thoughts, like alcohol. So they are trying to reduce the resistance in th e creation formula. But that is really not a crutch that you want to use. You want to be fully present for the joy of the creation process, not to mention what is sustainable and good for your body.
If you can understand that it is the joyful journey that you truly want, then you can see why forcing a creative process is not compatible with that objective. So some might try and motivate themselves by being more disciplined and setting up specific deadlines, or ‘forcing’ themselves to be creative every day. And it does work occasionally, because by forcing yourself to sit down and focus on the project, it sometimes is a catalyst to allow your mind to allow the Creative Stream, because now you are sitting there quietly with an intention. But if you are forcing yourself to make progress on a project, you are often no longer in a place where the journey itself is joyful. And compensating with action for a lack of being in the flow will always feel more like efforting, less joy, less passion, less creative fun.
Don’t get me wrong, there is discipline involved in directing your life, but it is not at the level of forcing a creative process. It is rather about applying a discipline to your mind. Are you directing your mind and therefore you are in sync with your Creative Source? Or are you focusing on and resonating with politics, family drama and then in the next moment expecting yourself to be in the flow? Are you worried about the future, and perhaps about the future sales of the book that you are writing, or the little time that you have available to work on your project, or your bank balance or the injustices in the world and then expecting to be in the flow because it’s 10am and it’s the start of your creative time in the calendar? All of these thoughts just brought resistance into the Creation Formula.
Do you make time for heart-filler activities to shift your emotional weather and your emotional climate to a place where you are in close proximity to your Inner Peace? Heart-filler activities are all of those activities that help to align you, or “put you in the flow”. These can be things like meditating, going for a walk, reading an inspiring book, listening to your favourite playlist or playing with your dog. All of these help to refocus on your desire and to reduce resistance in the moment. Herein lies something important. It doesn’t really matter what the activity is, and it doesn’t have to have anything to do with your project or writing or painting to be of assistance in its creation process. As long as the heart-filler activity puts you in the flow; it syncs you up to your Creative Source, and then you can apply the energy stream (to which you now have access) to your creative project.
Just to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with setting time aside to be creative or setting objectives – but let that be the culmination of your preparation of your emotional weather to be in a place where you are inspired to be creative as opposed to being motivated (i.e. forcing yourself) to be creative.
You can think of it as an aeroplane that is getting ready to fly. It does not just go from being in the hanger immediately in to the sky. There are system checks, considerations of the weather, and the building up of speed on the runway, before it lifts up into the air. So before your next creative session, you want to set yourself up for a wonderful, inspired experience. You want to build up the speed of your directed thought and you want your emotional weather to be good to have a successful and smooth take-off.
Alignment cannot be forced, but it can be cultivated and allowed. So care about what you give your attention to, have the intention to be in the Creative flow, and then allow yourself to be in that flow. Do things that help to put you in the flow. Let your alignment be your first priority and let your inspiration be a natural extension of that. And that goes even beyond just the creation of a book, or a painting or a sculpture – this is the formula for the creation of a joyful, fulfilling, and directed life. That’s why the Buddha said that a disciplined mind brings happiness. Because a disciplined mind, is a directed mind. And a directed mind is a mind that allows you to be the Integrated Self, the synthesis of you as the avatar and the Self as your Source.