Artist Pep Talk: Spiritual Electricity

I know for creative folks, sometimes our lives can feel a little flat, we have so many great ideas and big dreams, but it can be so difficult to actually make our dreams come true for ourselves. 

I don’t think it’s supposed to be easy to be creative. I think we are working with a lot of resistance and with this thing called ‘entropy’ in the world - have you heard of that word before? Entropy?

It’s important to understand what Entropy is and how to work with it.

What Is Entropy? Generally, entropy is defined as randomness or disorder of a system. This concept was introduced by a German physicist named Rudolf Clausius back in the year 1850.  

When we engage in creative work, we enter into a different, altered state from life as we know it. For me, I have to go through a little bit of a withdrawal. 

Julia Cameron in her book, ‘The Artist’s Way,’ describes this withdrawal state as a detachment or nonattachment state, which is similar to almost a meditative state or a meditation practice.

There are so many ways to practice healthy withdrawal. I used to do it in my yoga practice regularly. I used to teach my students in my yoga classes how to do it, and I saw my students awaken a heightened sense of autonomy and confidence and possibility as they would experience epiphanies and breakthroughs of things they needed to do more of and things they needed to do less of. 

I’ve also seen it happen for people who journal and write their prayers down. Or for people who go on long walks, I used to do this in my hometown in the foothills where I used to live close to the mountains, long walks without headphones, there are so many different ways to practice intentional withdrawal.

And so My question for you is - have you experienced what I’m describing here before? 

Tapping into ourselves, and withdrawing from everything external. 

Sometimes when I bring the idea up of practicing intentional withdrawal, you might think of having a substance removed like sugar, or alcohol, or drugs, or caffeine, and suffering through withdrawal. That’s not what I’m talking about. 

I’m talking about how we ourselves, in our own lives, kind of like swimming around in the same fishbowl, need to get out of our fishbowl, we need to remove ourselves from it, swimming around in the same thoughts, the same visual places we’re accustomed to, our phones, and instead of always being in the same environment, we tap into our own creative energy and put it back into our own core being. 

And as we practice intentional withdrawal, we begin to unearth, to uncover our buried dreams. And it’s like the ice starts to melt, and there’s flow, and there’s movement. 

But it isn’t easy to say yes to this process. We know, or we have a sense that we are about to enter new, perhaps dangerous territory. So I fully understand why it isn’t easy to Embrace the fiery flow of your creativity, because maybe we know that on some level, we are more powerful than we can possibly imagine, I mean, lava has the power to reshape the world.

Many of us have been denying our creativity for a long time. And with that denial comes a sense of loss, and a sense of grief. So it can feel painful.

But it is at this point when you are finally saying yes to your creative yearnings, where we start to heal and restore back to our authentic selves, and we start to open our arms wide to the self who has always been in there, but was put on the backburner, and we open our arms wide to her and embrace her and kiss her on the cheek and we say, “welcome home, I’ve missed you,” as we might greet a little girl we once knew, who was lost but somehow she found her way home to your doorstep.

And so in order to facilitate a healthy relationship with your creative self, we might go through a process of grief and sadness of time that was squandered when we weren’t in tune, or when we weren’t listening to our authentic self, and when we let other people’s ideas and opinions of how we should do life be more important than our own voice or our own ideas.

I think you know this is happening, when there are actual tears and grief. The tears are fertile ground for growth. Without this creative thawing, we may remain like ice. We may feel numb and not know why. 

But using spiritual electricity, which is available to all of us, is the way to nurture, protect, and guide your inner artist through this entropy process.

I’ve said this before, but I want to say it again. Your creativity is a spiritual process. It is a partnership with the Creator. There is a loving, encouraging, light-filled source in the universe who is so happy and willing to help you in your creative endeavors. 

If it feels hard and heavy, or even numb and cold like ice, you might need to go through this thawing out period of entropy - but it doesn’t mean your creativity has died. It just means that somewhere along the way, you compartmentalized your inner artist, your creativity, and you told her it wasn’t time, or it wasn’t safe, or it wasn’t good enough to be allowed to be in your life. 

But here’s what you can say to yourself now, moving forward: you can say, 

“Hey inner artist inside of me, I love you, and I want you to know it’s okay to be creative now. I know I didn’t always let you be. But I’m going to do better from now on. And I’m going to start listening to you more and giving you the attention you’ve been wanting. It’s safe. It’s time. It isn’t too late. And you don’t have to be very good at anything right now. But it’s time to come out and play. And we’re going to start having some fun together again, okay?”

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