These days, in the intense period after releasing my second book, I find that my creativity is being expressed as a meditation, involving patiently and lovingly holding a space of intense stillness, and seeing what is revealed next. (The four-day lockdown in Seattle’s snowstorm has happily complemented this!) But wait, being creative is about producing something, right?! So how can creativity be expressed as stillness?
In the last post on my series on Harmony, I wrote about balancing within, the feminine and masculine principles of creative stillness and creative action, respectively. Here, I attempt to elaborate on the feminine creative principle of stillness.
One of the wonderfully creative women I’ve coached through the Creativity Workshops offered by Flying Chickadee, was telling me on snowed-in Monday afternoon, how frustrated she is that 2012 hasn’t started with quite the bang - with the prolific creative action of 2011. She felt stuck; she assumed, naturally, that she was being uncreative. The image that immediately jumped to mind, and that I shared with her, was how, to improve the fertility of land, farmers cycle crops and then allow for a season of no crops. Mother Earth, Nature’s best example of a prolific and fertile womb of creation, also needs a break – a break for stillness, a break for replenishment, a break to pause and take stock of what she’s inclined to grow and produce next!
It is clear, then, that a period of stillness and replenishment is necessary for creativity. Further, though, this stillness is not to be mistaken simply as the benign pause between bursts of “real” creativity, but as an intentional, equal and complementary half to creative action. It is part and parcel of the full cycle of creativity - creative stillness and creative action are the yin and yang of the cycle.
Creative stillness is the feminine half of the cycle of creativity, because it is the cultivation of fertility, intuition, and receptivity. Just like in procreativity the feminine act is to receive the male aspect, so also in creativity, creative stillness is the receiving act of deep listening and observation, of visionary imagination, of magnetizing ideas and recognizing the significant revelations. It is the act of the receiving the Muse – allowing it to penetrate for conception. Without creative stillness, no idea would be recognized or envisioned, and there would be no fertile womb to seed and nurture it in, either.
Both men and women creatives, therefore, benefit from actively cultivating this feminine principle. Cultivating creative stillness requires ongoing practice in awareness, presence (attention to the Now) and intention. Together, these practices ensure that we see the unusual in the mundane, that we connect the dots in new and meaningful ways, and that we know intuitively which opportunity presents most potential - all hallmarks of creative genius!
