The Fertile Unknown

Extracting the Creative Gifts from the Challenges of 2020

This morning's full moon...
closing down the chapter of our lives that was 2020. While 2020 was unquestionably challenging (for some devastating), challenges almost always come with seeds of opportunities. We can use this "pattern breaking" time to look back and release whatever no longer serves, and cultivate what is or can be useful. We can extract the gifts out of last year, as a creative alchemical practice - turning the led into creative gold. Below are 12 of the gifts I'm taking from 2020 (a year where I had many losses as well).

12 gifts I'm taking from 2020:

 

1. I learned how to use Zoom features (break out rooms, the white board, using visuals and videos, etc.) which allows me to facilitate client workshops online. I would not have learned the Zoom features had all my on-site workshops not been cancelled.

2. I reconnected with old friends and colleagues because we were all home and available, and formed some new and renewed partnerships, ideation sessions, and learning labs.

 

3. I learned new and varied types of body-centered practices online that I would not have taken the time to do had I been going to my health club.

 

4. I created a couple small practice groups and masterminds to explore and try out new concepts and practices.

 

5. I went to more backyard social-distancing gatherings/dinners/rituals/bonfires with local friends instead of public events.

 

6. I started updating my website, which had been long overdue (coming soon).

 

7. I took a lot of time to reflect on who I am now, what I still want to offer that I have been offering, what to let go of, and what new offerings and practices are calling to emerge. What I offer and how is changing - in my coaching and my facilitation. I had the time to take stock on where I am now, and what is next.

8. I started working on some projects and products that I will be unfolding in 2021.

 

9. I re-visited painting, and started creating Emergent Mandala drawings, which has been transformative for me at many levels...and also will be leading to new offerings.

 

10. I found some thought-provoking, inspiring (some more analytical, other more aspirational) podcasts which I love - a kindred, diverse tribe of like-minded aspirational people who I don't personally know - that I wouldn't have taken the time to do had life been as-usual.

 

11. I learned a lot, questioned my assumptions - in my own life, in society, and in the world - about what I value, and had countless thought-provoking, generative, sometimes challenging/often enlightening conversations that continue to help me grow and evolve. It was a year of deep reflection, questioning, and discovery around certain issues and ideas I had not previously reflected upon in the same ways. My frameworks expanded.

 

12. I feel I was able to serve my clients at deeper and more expanded levels due to what they were/are facing and experiencing with their own 2020 challenges..and helping them stay creative, resilient, and adaptive during these times.

 

I'm not trying to paint a pollyanna picture. There was much I missed terribly (like in-person facilitation, which is a big part of my soul-food) for which there is no substitute. And many people suffered much larger losses. My heart goes out to you if that was you. This is just to say that once we are forced into a contracted space, not of our own choosing, we still all have the capacity to extract some meaning and creativity from it - some creative nuggets. This has been true for every society in every era - many of which had more limitations and darker times that we have just had.

 

Instead of looking at only what was lost in our work, we can acknowledge it, and mourn the losses...and...look at some of the gifts, even if still only in seed-potential form, as hints of what we can create in the new year. Our creative source (the creative wellspring inside of us) is unlimited...and will give us ways to create new doors when old ones close if we embrace the mindset and heart-set to engage with it...and give ourselves the time to do so. There are always choices within every contraction.

What are some of the nuggets, learnings, or seeds of potential you are taking into the new year?

Michelle James ©2020

Using the Moment for Creative Insights

When we stay present In the moment, time
expands.  When we fill the moment by talking only about what we already know, or about what others have said, we bury the dynamic, creative aliveness of the moment with history. We have been socialized to fill the moment with history (what we've learned, what others have said said, what are accepted assumptions) - going out of time - instead of staying in time, where creativity emerges and flourishes.

The more we cultivate presence, the more we deepen our relationship with the moment, the more it provides - insights, ideas, creativity, solutions, aha's, guidance, peace of mind, an expanded framework, etc. I've learned this over the years through improv theater, meditation, being in nature, expressive arts, contemplation, etc. that when I engage in these practices, I live more connected to the moment and feel more access to creativity, meaning and motivation. When I get caught up in the daily grind without consciously giving myself the space to pause and engage presence, I lose that connection and feel the loss. Luckily, the moment is forgiving, and always here.

It's about clearing out the mental clutter so we can be present to what wants to emerge from our creative unconscious. Our creative unconscious always has more information and possibilities than anything we consciously know. The moment offers us more options, choices, and possibilities when we become fully open and present to it. It contains next-level possibilities that we don't always see from our habitual thinking lens. It's what allows something to seemingly emerge out of nothing. Presencing to the moment is a bridge to our creative unconscious that contains next-level answers, visions, and directions.

CREATIVE PRESENCE PRACTICE: Take a pause to breathe out anything that is on your mind (plans, worries, fears, to-do's, concerns - knowing you can come back to them after the practice) and breathe in the current moment. Really feel the moment expand as you breathe it in. Then bring your intention - whatever it is you want to envision, create, or solve (project, workshop, product, idea-generation, solution, situation, etc.), and be with it, expanding the feeling of the moment...and being present to what emerges. Like with any meditation or creative practice, it may take a few times before you get the clarity, but it will deliver if you stay present to it. Have paper on hand to write out or draw what emerges into your consciousness, so you don't lose the insight.

 

Michelle James ©2020

Valuing Intuition in the Creative Process

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift
and the rational mind is a faithful servant.
We have created a society that honors
the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

― Albert Einstein

We've been generally educated and socialized to see reality/create/act from only the rational mind - from only what we currently see or consciuosly know (and it times of challenge, when people contract, that becomes louder). But the intuitive mind allows us feel into/see into/have knowings into that which goes beyond what we currently know, have evidence for, or can be proven - in our own lives and in society.

 

The intuitive mind allows us to leave the confines of "space-time" and go into the world of our yet-untapped possibilities - our emerging-future selves - and bring the knowledge it carries back into the present. It allows us to access more and varied ways of knowing and imagining - from much more deeply in our creative unconscious - and it bypasses the conscious editor, who carries a lot of limited stories and assumptions about who we are, who others are, why we are here, what's ours to do, etc.

The intuitive "right brain" information we get is direct and immediate, and sometimes abstract (colors, feelings, shapes, a-has, awareness', knowings, glimpses, words, energies, sounds, surprising connections, etc) - and it's the job of that rational mind to unpack it - to mine its riches - for next-level information...and often transformation. The rational mind is supposed to carry out the insights of the intuitive mind, not block it, keep it down, discredit it, and treat is as "woo-woo" like is done on most of our current systems.

So if you get an idea or intuitive feeling out of "space-time" (something that does not fit into your current knowledge or information system, or may not make complete sense to your current self), don't be quick to discard it just because it's unfamiliar, incomplete, or disjointed. Honor it, and bring the rational mind on board to explore and engage it, and see what it has to tell you.

Creative Emergence is all about that future what's next showing itself into the present...where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and can not be predicted by what the rational mind knows alone, since there is no existing evidence yet for what the emerging future carries - outside of the hints from the intuitive mind. And connect them with the rational mind. That's the "Both-And" sweet spot of next-level creative thinking and being...and the sweet spot of cultivating our sacred calling in the world. For that, intuition is the sacred gift indeed. When we value it, we can experience the creatively unique ways it wants to engage with us.

Michelle James ©2020