Creativity and Trust

    The times when I wasn't creative are likely times when I didn't think I had anything within me that was special and distinct from others.  I have often found myself in situations where I thought that I need to look up to authorities and spiritual teachers, to the point where I no longer know what my "voice" is, and unfortunately these are times when I wasn't so generative or creative. Think about the difference between a plant that is fixed in one place so that it can only grow in one direction, and the happy majority of plants that do not suffer from this impediment. Whereas the plant that is fixed indeed grows to be quite tall and dignified, it lacks the kind of shape that makes it distinct in the world. I think that sometimes I have had to trust that there is something within me worth being a source of creative flow, even when I would sometimes rather just be told what to do and the right way of doing things.

    Creativity, like meditation itself, requires the space to observe. Too much emphasis on method will end up suppressing what is really within us--the raw material that we have to work with, like the soil itself. And a failure to trust that the soil is going to grow good things can lead to a stilting of creativity. This also comes from stereotyping the creative person as someone who is artistic, a "genius", gifted, exceptional, an outlier, and so on. These terms only serve to exotify something that is actually very natural and everyday, and can take the form of even having a conversation.

    It takes trust to allow a flower within to open up, and to know that the flower won't overrun the garden, or won't go out of control completely. We love our creations without falling in love with them--that is, knowing that creativity always yields beautiful yet impermanent things. And in these cases, sometimes the joy of creativity lies not so much in the finished product itself, but that ability to leave a window of trust through which we know that some things of worth will arise when they are freely expressed.