How to stop censoring your thoughts and let the creativity flow through you
Flamingoes look like such fragile birds to me, like a ball of fluffy peach, pink feathers supported on skinny, tall legs and that sinuous neck seems so vulnerable. And yet these birds can fly up to 500 kilometers in one night and travel across continents - talk about stamina and resilience!
This is how conversations about creativity seem to me sometimes - often creativity is talked about in an ethereal and delicate kind of way. As if, if we look at it too closely, it might wilt 😄.
And yet the creative force is the most resilient force we know because it is the force of life itself, growing and flourishing in diverse ways, adapting, evolving, dying, living - the world within and around us is a big, continuous, and tangible experiment of creativity.
A practice for creative breakthroughs
Talking about creative experiments, I am working through the famous book The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. One of the central exercises in the book is writing the Morning Pages.
Every morning you write 3 pages (by hand) of whatever is on your mind, e.g., your worries, the breakfast you want, fears, half-finished thoughts, joys, ideas, what you see or hear around, it doesn't matter. Anything that comes to mind goes on the paper. All thoughts are welcome, no censoring at all.
Julia says that if you follow the 12-week program laid out in the book (centered around the morning pages), you can see creative breakthroughs in life.
I started it last week, and yesterday found myself writing a lot of swear words which makes me laugh out loud because I am not much of a swearer in everyday life.
So far, I find the morning pages to be an excellent exercise for letting go while accepting any thought that comes, without approval or censorship. And I know from experience that this creation and observation without judgment is key to letting creativity flow through us.
If you are interested in doing The Artist's Way program or the Morning Pages together with others in a community, message me and I can set something up.
Thank you and till later!
Beant