On Creativity & Self Protection
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We're spiritual beings having a human experience. -- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
I want to talk to you about shields, Latin, and the nature of creativity.
I wrote a post about becoming aware of a deep Want of mine: to feel limitless in my creativity. Have you ever heard the saying, 'you have to name it, to claim it?' I do find it empowering to name my Want, yes. In fact, I recommend it! But, while I've been "claiming" mine - acting upon it with intention - I've encountered a layer of "spiritual grime" that's built up within me.
This is where shields come in. I'm talking battle shields.
Picture Roman, Viking, Medieval, Chinese armor, whatever you fancy. Oblong, rectangular, or circular, I'd like you picture these shields grouped together to make an impervious surface. No painful arrows are going to penetrate that surface. The goal is Protection, with a capital "P."
Since I mentioned Romans, I’ll point out that the Latin word, "creo," means to create, make.
Verb
- I create, make, produce.
- I beget, give birth to.
- I prepare, cause.
- I choose.
Here's where I pull all this together. I agree, wholeheartedly, with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
I believe we all originate from All That Is, that boundless state of eternal awareness and wholeness. In human form, we each get to experience individuality, the alchemy of creation, and the nature of free will in tangible ways: senses and feelings, actions and reactions, choices and consequences.
While inhabiting this divine Lab of Creation & Materiality, wielding our choices, we get hit by some arrows.
Heck, we launch a bunch, too. Arrows = hurt, pain, loss, shame, sadness. We might notice a pattern of where arrows have come from, and then we create stories about those patterns.
“Every time I speak up, I get knocked down.”
“I’m not worthy unless I can show achievement.”
“Whenever I love someone, they abandon me.”
Somewhere in all this drama, we learn about these nifty shield things for protection!
Make this “blocker” against those arrows, and they won’t hurt so much.
Now we’re talking! Sure, it’s a little “shadier” under the shield, and your view is a bit blocked, but, hey, those arrows are peskily painful.
Oh, hey!
Incoming, new arrows! Quick, make another shield for that exposed flank you got there…!
Do you see where this is going? Pretty soon, all you’re going to see is the underside of your protective blockers.
Remember the whole CREO thing? You’re not here to only view life from the grimy underbelly of your shielding. Life is an act of creation, moment to moment, bursting with possibility, joy, variability, thrills, chills, highs, lows. It is essentially powerful and bright, and so are you.
Back to my spiritual grime.
A big shield in my personal arsenal has been, “You must show achievement, results!” to be worthy of respect and acceptance. Under the shade of this arrow-blocker, I made choices for years that were colored by my story that “If I’m not financially successful, it’s because I’m not doing enough/smart enough to achieve it.”
Do, do, do. Go, go, go. Research it. Analyze it. Figure it out! And, if and when I encountered a failure, a disappointment, a painful, oh-jeezus-that-was-awful-I-never-want-that-again consequence to a choice of mine or an event, it must be my fault because I didn't have enough padding for my shielding. So, I added more.
You can guess what happened, can’t you?
My shielding ended up bottle-necking my connection to my essential self. Yep, the Me that came from All That Is was camping out under the canopy of my protective Blockers. I started believing that what’s possible to create is only what can fit under that shade.
I’ve believed I can’t act on my creativity without conceiving plans for its outcomes to justify it.
- I’m creative, in service to producing plays and films.
- I’m artistic, in service to working with writers and filmmakers.
- I’m a storyteller, in service to showing others how to tap into their own voices and stories.
These feel true to me, but they're also cop-outs.
I’ve come to see by limiting myself to only the outcomes I can see from under my shielding that I’m not embracing the fullness of my inner creatrix.
I believe I come from limitless loving creativity, and I’m here as a human to experience this inherent ability on Earth. I don't have to have it all figured out in my mind first.
I’m ready to drop my shields and trust I can take what arrows may come. I'm an artist, and I don't know where that is going. But, I'm ready to be fully present in the light of All That Can Be.
I’m a spirit having a human existence, and I’m a divine, creative dynamo.
So are you.