Why Not To Search For Meaning In Your Creativity (And Life)

Why Not To Search For Meaning In Your Creativity (And Life)

I’ve only publicly shared my paintings twice. Once in an art show in Los Angeles and once they were featured in an indie New York art magazine.

 

 

I prefer to keep my creations close. They are my safe space, in which I can explore and express myself. Some people are moved by my paintings. Many aren’t. It’s not their thing. Some find them to be too dark.

 

 

But what others think doesn’t matter, because what wants to come through when I paint has nothing to do with ME.

 

 

We’re so used to focusing on what things “mean” about us rather than what they don’t.

 

 

After decades of devoting myself to the creative process, I’ve learned what we create is who we are NOT.

 

 

What we are is a channel, a passage for the current of creativity to come through. Just as with life, in every moment, every out-breath, something departs, moving through us.

 

 

In an interview for Honeysuckle Magazine, I was asked, “Your images are so raw, vibrant and viscerally beautiful but, dark too. How does beauty and darkness collide for you?”

 

 

I told Royal Young, the interviewer who was also a painter and author, “I can’t help but wonder, who are we to decide what’s dark and what’s light? And why live in that duality?”

 

 

Why do we judge anger, or pain, or grief, whatever, as dark? Where did we learn that we have to ONLY be in the light?

 

 

The beauty is in allowing ourselves to feel without interpretation. Then, we allow room for what wants to be released.

 

 

We may feel it, we may think it, but we’re NOT IT. It’s just a movement through us.

 

 

Analyzing and searching for meaning puts us into our head and blocks our energy. Instead, our opportunity is to allow whatever wants to arise even if it’s scary, painful or difficult at times.

 

 

Without our inner-judge’s interference, we transcend into unbounded expansiveness.

 

 

Our opportunity when we feel any emotion is to remind ourselves that it doesn’t have to mean anything about us or the situation at hand—with this will come true freedom, love and acceptance.

 

 

Have you ever been upset about something, or feel like you want to cry but you don’t know why? And then you tell yourself you shouldn’t feel the feeling because it doesn’t make any sense?

 

 

Or you search for the reasons from a psychological perspective?

 

 

Or you feel upset because of what someone else has done that you don’t understand? And then you set the feeling away for another time, or suppress, and then find yourself increasingly anxious, irritated or aggravated?

 

 

This is what happens when we search for meaning before feeling our feelings.

 

 

Our inner-judge wants to tell us what our feelings mean before allowing us to feel them. It pressures us to have to think it out rather than allow what is ready to rise up to come out. It wants us to interpret our doubts, fears, and sadness, wanting to make sense of our soulful questioning right away even if it’s unrealistic as humans to always understand what we are feeling before feeling them.

 

 

A deep connection with an inner insight and awareness and an openness to explore is what we’re really after.

 

 

When we let go of having to know, we create space for the energy to flow. When we feel stuck or unsure, it’s okay to be uncertain. When in tune with our intuition, we are truly guided and protected.

 

 

What if:

 

 

Whatever you were feeling wasn’t wrong or bad, or didn’t have to make sense, or wasn’t figure-out-able right now, and that was okay and you could feel it anyway?

 

 

You could be open without worrying about what it meant?

 

 

You could let the feelings come and go without having a clue as to why you’re feeling them?

 

 

There’s something so magnificently enchanted about stepping into the open unknown. This is where the new, surprising, unexpected elements come in. Things we wouldn’t have thought about. Things we couldn’t know. We open to a whole new experience with love. We relax and allow our lives to flow.

 

 

What if:

 

 

You didn’t have to know what you’re doing?

 

 

You didn’t HAVE to make sense of it?

 

 

You were interested and curious about what you didn’t know or couldn’t?

 

 

You allowed the unexpected?

 

 

You delighted in the fun of the mystery?

 

 

You didn’t try to define anything?

 

 

Wishing you freedom from having to know!