Essay
Reliable Creativity
by Silvia Hartmann
Reliable Creativity? What do you make of it when first you come across it? Those
two words seem at odds, as though reliability is in conflict with the very core
of the processes of creativity, which need to be spontaneous in order to be
real.
Well, that's what we are led to believe.
It seems that there is a factor of unpredictability built into
the structure of a great many concepts and activities, such as love, romance,
creativity, luck, fortune, and their likes - they are lightning strikes, aren't
they? Coming from a clear blue sky? Without warning, the muses swoop down upon
the unwitting artist, and the thrashing throes of uncontrolled and
uncontrollable outbursts of insanity, oops, creativity produce this amazing work
of art in the end ...
Or our good friend Cupid, who is anywhere and everywhere and whose arrows may
pierce your heart and cause you to fall in love with a tramp in the park, or
perhaps a motor car, or your nanny's high heeled shoes, but then they call you a
fetishist - ah never mind, it wasn't your fault, was it. You can't DO anything
about falling in love, out of control, screaming insanely, just like you fall
off a mountain side or a very high building ...
Consider the man who puts carefully in his diary, "Monday afternoon from 4pm to
5pm. Buy bunch of flowers and be romantic."
Oh no!
THAT is not romance!
Romance is ... ahm ... well, you KNOW! When it just happens, totally
spontaneously, you didn't see it coming, it was just there, you didn't have to
do ANYTHING to make the magic, just lie back and soak it up, sink away into that
dream ...
Yeah? You didn't DO anything? So what's with that champagne there in the cooler?
Why are you wearing that dress? Those shoes? Who ordered the dozen red roses?
And WHAT are we doing in the Blushing Bridal suite of the Romantic Moon Hotel
for newlyweds?
I mean, if it's all so spontaneous and just happens, why can't we be in our
usual get up down at the local cafe? It?ll happen there just as well, surely?
"You're just a cynic!" the young lady sobs, then starts shouting at me, "You're
totally unromantic! You just DON'T UNDERSTAND ...."
As I turn and walk into the night, and the stars are out and if one just looks
up high enough, real high, all those bugging lights from the town just really
disappear and things become far clearer all around, far more beautiful and
realistic too, it strikes me that not being in control of one's own experiences
of romance and creativity is just the tip of the iceberg of wasted lives and so
much disappointment, you could drown a whale in it.
I wonder just how many women across the ages sat in their huts,
hovels, castles, appartments, picket fenced houses and on the side of the road
and they were waiting.
Waiting for the knight in shining armour who would set them free, who would take
them away from all of that, who would transform their lives and their emotions
into other states as never known before, who would make it happen that they
would have a chance at a real life, a meaningful life, the kind you know, they
write songs about or plays.
I wonder just how many people across the ages bought their lottery tickets, much
for the same reason as the sighing ladies from the mist of time above, and sat
down right next to them and also waited, for their boat to come in, for their
time to come, for that moment when it all came right, when life really started,
when it all became real.
It seems to me that such lives are much like pergatory, an endless waiting room
where one may strike up a conversation with a fellow traveller here and there,
just words really, there is no need or even point in making a relationship
because any moment now, the announcer will say that the train has arrived, and
we will board and we?ll be out of here at last, and the journey has finally
begun.
The journey that will take us past the shining rivers and the high grey
mountains, the endless grasslands with their multitude of creatures, the
splendid deserts and enchanted forests, and finally the train will stop and we
step off the last rung and upon the waiting soil of home and here and now.
And there, in that most promised land, we will live happily ever after, with our
prince, or with the queen who waited there for us; we will create great works
that are beloved and received with jubilation for their beauty and their truth
and our contributions are the pure wind that will raise the spiral of our
people's evolution higher and then higher still, until as one we soar ...
Aaahhhh ...
Just take a deep breath and consider this.
If you enjoyed the vision I created there or if there was a single part of you
who yearned for that, who wanted THAT so badly that it cries itself to sleep in
homesickness and loss each night again and yet again, then I would have you know
that all these things are not a dream, but they exist and they are HERE AND NOW
for you and me and everyone who wants to make their lives come out of mothballs,
have the dust brushed off and make their way to festival, to feast or battle,
for it matters not; the key is in aliveness and endeavour, fully lived and fully
now experienced.
There is a single magic spell that ends the waiting.
It is quite simple and indeed, we'll wonder how we never thought to notice that
before; and that, quite in and of itself, of course is nothing but an
affirmation that indeed, it is correct, for the most useful and profound
discoveries are always that - immensely simple, if you know them, and so
elegant, it really is a balm to storm tossed souls who had despaired amidst the
human chaos for a lifetime.
And here it is - there is no need for waiting.
A dog, a cat, an ant or any tree would be quite at a loss as what to do with
such a notion as our romance, or our creativity, indeed.
These things or should I say experiences are ours because of consciousness - we
become *conscious* of the fact that we're having a particularly good time at the
time.
It is a state shift and a moment of awakening, and stepping into different modes
of being and experiencing THE SAME familiar beach, the same familiar song, the
same familiar man or woman, child or creature, cloud or hill - we do our romance
all just by ourselves, it is within, and not without.
And therein lies the key to all the kingdoms and the fruitful lands, all the
treasures contained within their castles and even to the golden dragons which
are guarding these.
The fact is that it is our job to step into creativity, into romance. Into love
and into abundance. It can come to us no more than a lake may arise to give us
that swimming feeling we were waiting for so long; it can come to us no more
than the forests or the mountains at the far horizon for which we are yearn will
manifest inside your bedroom overnight.
When this is known and understood, a turning does occur; a turning round from
waiting and such helplessness to one of active exploration, that of asking other
travellers if they have a map, or heard a tale that might give US a clue just
what to do next, and where to turn our fully focussed, single minded deep
attention, that most magical of all devices which will reveal far more than what
is really happening inside a drop of water, or on the furthest, most distant
star of all.
© Silvia Hartmann 2004
|