THE WHEEL OF CREATIVITY

In Station 10, you enter the final quarter of the Wheel, where the new thing takes shape and finds independence. From your simple longing for something more, you have manifested a new form. But that form needs to mature if it is to serve a purpose in the world at large. The Cultivation quarter is where that work is done, and Station 10 is the first part of that work.

Station 10 is Nurturing. It is the mothering energy of the creative process. It accepts the new thing unconditionally and protects it from outside criticism and judgment until it is strong enough to withstand it. This quarter is where you begin to integrate the masculine and feminine energies of creation, as they work together to protect and perfect the new form.

This station is an integral part of every creative process. It may last days or months. It can occur when life is in full swing or may require a time of withdrawal. But if it is bypassed, the new thing will emerge in the world immature and underdeveloped. Its capacity to truly serve the world will be thwarted.

I can cite several periods of my life where I’ve been given the opportunity to nurture a new thing to maturity, and other times when Life has nurtured me.

For me, being led to France was a mystery of perfect design. When I left the USA, I had no idea that it was France to which I was being called, much less what would nourish me there. I was an ambitious, driven, self-employed writer and producer. I knew my life was out of balance, but I had been unwilling to let go of anything. I thought I was taking a short timeout from the life I would return to in a few weeks. I couldn’t know what I didn’t know.

I’ve often said that the US and France are strong in opposite domains:  the US is a master of doing, and France is a master of being… la vie quotidienne (daily life). My time in France showed me another way to view the world and another way to live; and, by offering me my opposite, it brought me naturally into balance. As I became more accepting of the process of my life, I found that Life itself nourishes me. And it teaches me how to nourish the new things it sends me for creation.

Sometimes it is you who nurtures, and sometimes it is Life which nurtures you. This is true of every station, as the process of creation is a collaboration with life itself. This dance between the world and life and you is a dance between Form and Essence, between the perimeter of the Wheel and its center, with you as the bridge between the two. The work you create in the world is a reflection of the work you do within; the work within frames the expression.

The experience of Station 10 is tenderness, and its task is to protect the fledgling new form. Today, as you contemplate your vision, become a steward of it. Hold it with tender loving acceptance, while it matures into a form all its own.

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Station 9 is Breakthrough. In this station, you finally watch the new young thing you’ve been gestating take form. Welcoming it into the world restores your confidence in your creative process and brings you through to the end of the Incubation quarter.

The concept that would become this station first occurred to me almost 20 years ago. I was living in Chicago then, beautifully held in the support of a generous creative community, writing and producing TV and film, and studying at the nationally famous Old Town School of Folk Music. I was writing songs!

One night, with a new song just hatched, I couldn’t sleep. I was so excited about this particular weaving of melody, harmony and lyrics that I kept getting up out of bed and going into my studio to read and play it again.

What I felt, in those sleepless hours, was nothing short of love. I felt as if I was going into the nursery to check on my new baby, just because I found him so beautiful. Grace was upon me, with temporary freedom from the self-criticism that usually kept me company.

I realized that night that our creative products are our children, and they are beautiful just for being themselves. We would never call our newborn child ugly; yet we often we judge our creative work very harshly indeed. There is a time in the creative process for criticism and refinement, but it is not here.

For the artist, what breaks through in Station 9 might be the first draft, the rough cut, the sketch or the maquette. For a romantic, it could be the first date. For a scientist, a theoretical equation. For the entrepreneur, it is what the French call the young seedling (la jeune pousse). It is a beginning point in the physical world.

Station 9 is a time of appreciation, as the little green shoot pushes its way through the dark soil into the light of the world or the baby pushes her way out to breathe her first breath. For the creator of anything, it is a time of humility, knowing and taking your place in the creative flow of life.

At Station 9, you are a midwife more than a manufacturer, witnessing and supporting the newborn coming into the world. The Task of Station 9 is to be present. Its reward is Confidence, as finally you come to see that your days or months or years of waiting are bearing fruit.

If you critique your creative newborns too harshly too soon, you will kill them. I call it censorship. It is addictive. Not only does it diminish you; it also diminishes your world and the people in your path who need what you’re creating.

So, ask yourself today a few questions:

1. Where in your life are you giving birth today?
2. What does your young seedling look like?
3. What do you need to appreciate about it just as it is?

See you tomorrow for what to do with this new young thing, in the next station and the final quarter of the Wheel of Creativity.

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We’ve almost hit the mark! Tonight, just after midnight in the US and early tomorrow morning in Europe, the North Pole reaches its farthest point from the sun. This moment is what scientists call the Winter Solstice. Tonight is the longest night of this year. So, it’s an appropriate time to enter Station 8 in the Wheel of Creativity, for Station 8 is Gestation.

Station 8 takes you into the center of the Incubation quarter, where the tender new life conceived in Station 7 remains hidden from view. The creative seed within you cracks open, making space for the fragile new thing to develop, protected from outside influences.

While gestation periods are predictable for our children, our animals, and even most plants, the gestation period of an original thing in your creative process often cannot be known. In Station 8 the game is waiting, and the task here is to be patient.

To look at this egg, balancing on its end here on last year’s Solstice, is to visualize the mysterious and invisible action of Gestation. No matter how hard you try, you cannot see what is happening within. Time passes, and nothing’s happening still. You’re waiting and waiting. Still nothing. And the blissful feeling of a new thing inside turns urgent.

In more than 25 years as a freelance writer, I often experienced this urgency around my work. Deadline is looming; client is squawking; still nothing. I guess it’s where I first coined the phrase:  “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. And then suddenly, I know.”

I have also experienced it in my life. When six weeks turned to a year for me in France, I trusted the process. I went back to the US for a month’s visit, and received a surprise offer for a dream job. Ten weeks passed as details were negotiated, until at the last minute, we could not agree on money. I was furious, as I had trusted that process too and given up my place in France. Almost a year later, gestating myself in a small room in a friend’s house, I got an email from France “out of the blue.” It was an offer for a project. I was on a plane the next week, took on the project within the month, and continued it for the next three years.

The Task of Station 8 is to relax. What is needed here is faith. But just as patience is developed by waiting in line, faith is developed on the edge where it is lost.

I had heard it said that, on the day of the Solstice, an egg will stand on its end. And it has become one of my favorite semiannual experiments. Last year I tried it. It works! But only on two days each year:  the Winter and Summer Solstices! So try it at home today! And while you’re learning to relax, supporting your egg until it stands on its own, meditate on this:

1. What does it mean to carry an original creative life within you?
2. What is needed to make space for the new thing to develop?
3. What do you risk if you rush it?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been waiting for this day. Starting tomorrow the days will grow longer and longer until Summer. Hurrah! Maybe the little shoot will appear!

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Life comes in with a bang, makes a mess, and leaves us with the building blocks of the future. What we do with them is up to us.

When the pyrotechnic power of the Exploration quarter explodes into Chaos, the seeds of the new thing are scattered on the waters. It’s time in the Wheel of Creativity to downshift from full-steam-ahead to all’s-quiet-within. Time to let Life in.

If Chaos is the turning point of the creative process, what lies around the corner?

On my 2001 walkabout, Chaos first appeared to me in Florence. It was my first day on my own, and it was September 11. I returned to my hotel after lunch, hoping they had found me a new room for one more night. A pale-faced American man stood in an archway, jabbering wildly and pointing to special-effects images on TV. I sat down and didn’t move for four hours. I left Florence two days later for Chianciano Terme and then on to Villefranche-sur-Mer in the South of France; but that day had put me in my place. I stopped. I began sketching my surroundings. I lay on the beach in the sun with my eyes closed. I stayed.

Arrival in Station 7 of the Wheel of Creativity deposits you into a new neighborhood where life on the street is softer. Incubation is the quarter, and Conception is your first stop there. It is a place of wonder, with an invitation to settle into stillness and listen for the still small voice of the new thing.

The Task of Station 7 is to be receptive. That’s it. When the masculine energy of Life comes to the feminine in the creative process (I’m speaking of principles, not genders), the feminine response is to receive. Here you must allow Life to penetrate you, and awaken the seed within you. The reward of this station is fertility.

For many of us in modern society, the more internal, feminine energy of Conception takes some getting used to. There is a lot of action in previous stations; but here, if you keep looking for action outside, you’ll miss the subtler, invisible movements of new life developing. Shifting gears from the active, masculine outward thrust of Exploration, Conception brings you back inside, where you will stay for the next three stations.

Accustomed as we are to doing, being is unfamiliar. But somewhere, for creation to occur, someone must surrender. Active (masculine) and Receptive (feminine) principles work together; there’s always a little of one in the other. Check them out in three simple steps:

1. Stop. Whatever the signals to slow down, heed them. Get still again.
2. Look & listen. Observe your surroundings; use your senses.
3. Be receptive. Notice what you feel in response. Let it open your heart.

Where is your life asking you to let go and receive today?

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I call Station 6 in the Wheel of Creativity Crisis, because it brings you to the turning point of the Wheel. The new world you’ve been seeking sits on the horizon like a sparkling jewel… or an elusive promised land. “Catch me if you can!” it beckons. You can see it, but you cannot set foot there until you have crossed the distance and the met the challenges that separate you.

T.S. Eliot charmed me the first time I read his Four Quartets, with the following verse:

“In order to arrive at what you are not, you must go through the way in which you are not.”

The Wheel of Creativity offers a paraphrase:

“In order to create something new, you must first go through the dissolution of the old.”

You know you’re in Station 6 when your primary experience is P – A – N – I – C!

The unexplained terror I felt on the morning of September 10, 2001 eased as I left the hotel, and Athens, on my way to Florence. But it intensified again when I changed planes at Rome Fiumicino and continued to fail, battling with the Italian payphone, to find one hotel room for my three nights in Florence. The city was heaving. I was in tears. Finally, a kindly hotelier took pity and offered me a tiny room with no bathroom and no window for one night. That was all there was. I surrendered. I took it.

The creative process is fraught with setbacks and storms. They are frightening; but they are not the enemy. Survival instincts – Fight or Flight – kick in; but it is only when we stop fighting and come to stillness that we see clearly. Welcome the storm, for it clears the way before you. Only in its wake does the path to the new world come into focus.

How do you welcome the storm?

1. Recognize the limits of your control; know what you can and can’t change.
2. Detach from the storm around you. Remember to locate yourself in it.
3. Get simple. Jettison everything that’s not essential to the moment.

Station 6 is an intense place in the creative process, and coming through it lands you on the far side of the Wheel of Creativity. It is the point called Chaos, and it is as far away from Home as you can get:

• If Home is familiar… Chaos is unfamiliar.
• If Home is known… Chaos is unknown.
• If Home is stable… Chaos is unstable.
• If Home is order… Chaos is disorder.

I like to picture Chaos as a house with the roof wide open and the stars falling in. When we finally stop trying to patch up all the leaking places in our lives, when we finally surrender to the purpose of the storms, the stars simply begin to grace us with their light. Dissolution – the first half of the creative process – is complete; and Creation – the second half – can begin.

Are you ready for that?

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Today I continue my tour around the Wheel in 12 Days of Creativity. Day 5, and Station 5, is Isolation.

Have you ever launched a project, gotten it off the ground with great enthusiasm, only to have the wind knocked out of you a short time later? This is the point in the journey where the voices of doubt begin screaming:

• What were you thinking?
• Who did you think you were?
• How could you possibly have thought you could…?
• You should never have left… [your day job]!

This is the point in the creative process that I call Isolation. Station 5 is midway through the Exploration quarter, and you are out at sea. The shore of all you’ve left behind is out of sight; the shore of the new world is nowhere in sight either.

Each quarter in the Wheel of Creativity has its own dark places, where the old forms stop working in order for something new to come in. In the Exploration quarter, it is here. In Isolation, it is easy to be distracted by the circumstances of ‘reality’, which are inevitably not what you were expecting:

• The agent rejects your book proposal.
• The business angel decides to invest elsewhere.
• Your sample warehouse goes up in smoke.
• Another boyfriend turns out to be married.
• You don’t get the job.

Station 5 is the place of despair, where after weeks or months or years of searching, there is still no land in sight. The voices within you – what I call the crew – cry out for mutiny:  “There’s nothing out here!” It is a frightening time, one that every great explorer has surely faced when the land that was supposed to be there wasn’t.

My European walkabout began, three months behind schedule, with two American friends at a holistic holiday center on the Greek island of Skyros. It was just what I needed to reconnect with myself. After two weeks in paradise, we said our goodbyes in Athens. They headed back to the US, and I got on a plane alone for Florence. I did not know why, but I was completely terrified. It was September 10, 2001.

Three tips for navigating Station 5:

1. Stay vigilant. Only if you are alert when land appears will you see it.
2. Learn to navigate. The only instruments you will ever need you have within; learn to use them.
3. Form a deeper connection. Turn you attention away from the disheartening circumstances and remember your vision within.

Though Station 5 may feel extremely uncomfortable, you are exactly where you need to be. It is in your lostness, where you will connect the dots between yourself, the stars and the horizon, in order to reap the reward of this difficult station…

Discovery of the new world.

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Station 4 in The Wheel of Creativity is Launch.

You have only to type the word launch into your Internet browser to see the range of its influence today. You can find thousands of success tips to:

• Launch a business
• Launch a new product
• Launch an ebook
• Launch a new brand
• Launch a website
• Launch a hedge fund

… and many more. The commercial world has co-opted the word from its first meaning. The word Launch originated around 1300 with the Latin lanceare (to wield a lance); it passed through the old French lancher (to fling, hurl, throw or cast); and by 1600 it had come to refer to any new beginning. I see it slightly differently than the commercial world.

The first three stations in the Wheel of Creativity comprise the Vision Quarter and give direction and energy to your desire. In Station 4 you must launch yourself into a new quarter, Exploration, where you finally leave the shore of the status quo and set out into the unknown. Your action harnesses your creative energy and begins to make your vision real.

Station 4 takes what it takes. Preparation and planning are crucial to a successful journey, but perfectionism can kill you on the launch pad. Eventually you must simply break the cords, let go of the shore and leave home.

In June 2001, I put my belongings in storage in Colorado, sent my beloved cats to visit my cousin in Texas, and booked my ticket to London. I set out in my Jeep Cherokee with a plan to visit friends and cousins in other states, after which I would begin my “walkabout.” By the time I finally got on the plane, I had spent three months saying my goodbyes and changed my departure date 10 times. I was afraid to let go.

The moment of launch may be exhilarating, but the months leading up to it are not easy.

So, today, as you sit with a deep desire burning its way up through your heart, ask yourself:

• What is the shore that calls you to take for this journey?
• What is the shore you must leave?
• What must you do to prepare for the trip?

Begin it.

For, in the timeless words of Henry David Thoreau, “You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.”

Freedom awaits you on the horizon.

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Station 3 of the Wheel of Creativity is what I call Anorexia.

Anorexia made a name for itself in the world of eating disorders, where it describes a person’s compulsion to starve herself. For me, it describes our compulsion to say No to whatever nourishes us. In the face of the Appetite we have identified in the first two stations, Anorexia leaves us paralyzed. And it is a hurdle we must all clear in order to fully live.

You could say the voice of Anorexia is, “Don’t you dare!” It is the automatic No within. Whether you hear its doubts and fear outside your from the people you love – “You can’t do that!” – or within – “Who do you think you are?” or “What right do you have…?” – it is a habitual pattern of self-deprivation.

For most of the people I work with, this station offers the biggest wake-up call, as they come to identify how and where the automatic No occurs for them.

• For one client, it is always leaving the good fruit for her children.
• For another, it is refusing to smile to strangers on the street.
• For another, it is giving so much time and attention to his partner that he has nothing left for himself.

Best-selling author Stephen Covey uses the phrase in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, “Exercise integrity in the moment of choice.” This station reveals our tendency to do the contrary. And it plays a powerful role in the creative process.

Each time we come up against this No in ourselves, our suffering is just a little greater. We recycle back Home (“Couldn’t I be okay with the status quo?”), through Hunger (“But this isn’t it!”) and Appetite (“Now I know what I want!”). The cycling between Yes and No creates friction, and energy, and eventually torque.

As Steven Covey so eloquently reveals, we are required to make a choice here. In the face of the No within or without, we are invited to choose what we love. And that choice launches us from the shores of others’ agendas back into the center of our own lives.

From the time I heard my own deepest longing in 2001, until the point when I was actually ready to set out on my life-changing journey, I recycled through these stations many times. Finally choosing to take the risk and trust my inner truth brought paralyzing fear as well as exhilaration.  It was all part of the process.

Station 3 invites you to live in integrity with what you now know. With the awareness and the direction won by listening to your own longing in the first two stations, it requires you to choose what you love.

• Where is the automatic No in the area you’ve chosen to look at?
• Where is the love here that you’re denying yourself?
• What is your life asking of you?

That path of love unfolds through the next 9 stations; but it here where you step onto it.

Have you chosen an area to work on during these 12 days of Creativity? Email me via the CONNECT tab above and let me know!

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“On the second day of Creativity…”

“If only I knew what I wanted.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say this through the years… and how many times I’ve said it myself along the way. Discovering what you’re called to – what you want to do, be, have, or create – seems like the first step in the creative process. In fact, it is the second.

Knowing what you want is a response to knowing what you don’t want.

Station 2 of the Wheel of Creativity is Appetite. Telling the truth about your Hunger – the vague sense of emptiness in Station 1 – brings you awareness of what you’re hungry for in Station 2. Paying attention to your Hunger tells you what you what you long for; it reveals your desire. And that gives direction to your life.

In late 2001, I reached a major turning point… the convergence of three endings: a two-year relationship, an all-consuming work project and the lease on my home. I knew I needed to leave where I was… but I had no idea where to go next. “This isn’t it” became my mantra. As months of restlessness passed, and I finally stopped fighting, a deeply buried longing became clear: “I need to lie on my back in the sun with my eyes closed.” That’s all I knew. But that knowing, which came from my deepest Self, gave me direction for my next step: a six-week “walkabout” in Europe.

Most of us, myself included, get stuck in the NOT of it all, resisting our longing because it is uncomfortable. We are conditioned by the pessimism around us to believe that we cannot have what we want, or that we need the latest XYZ to have it. Eventually we stop wanting what we want, stop knowing what we know, and stop feeling what we feel. We must regain our inner senses in order to truly live our own lives.

Station 1 asks you to tell the truth about your hunger. Station 2 asks you to pay attention to it until you know what you need. The gnawing in the spiritual belly reveals the empty places in your life; what will nourish you becomes clear in the space there. This can apply to:

• Your work
• Your health
• Your marriage
• Your art
• Any area of your life

Station 2 is where you translate what you don’t want into what you do want.

Yesterday, you chose one area of your life you’d like to change. Today, I invite you to pay attention to your hunger until you know what you need and want there.

• What do you wish for in this area?
• How would you like things to be?
• What do you dream of here?

Come out into the sunshine and witness your own Vision.

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I have been remiss. In my last blog, I invited you to commit to something you wanted to realize by the end of 2011. I told you I would provide you a framework within which to achieve that. And then I disappeared.

I have my reasons, of course: five weeks of nonstop travel around the US, 10 days recovering from jetlag and preparing my British family’s first Thanksgiving Dinner weekend, and then another week of travel to France. Now the holidays are upon us.

Christmas is 12 days away; the end of the year just another week more. So, if you’ll allow me to cram my promise from weeks into days, I will give you that framework in the next 12 days… 12 days of Creativity.

My last post described the starting point of the Wheel of Creativity; it is what I call Home – that archetypal experience of the Familiar. The Wheel of Creativity begins to turn in our lives when Home loses its comfort, and we begin to long for something more.

The journey of life – the creative journey – unfolds as we leave the status quo (Home) to follow this longing.  The framework I promised is a map of this journey, the Hero’s journey, your journey.

In the creative journey, the first step is knowing that you don’t want to stay where you are. This is what I call Station 1:  Hunger. Hunger is a feeling of emptiness and can be verbalized in so many ways:

• This isn’t it.
• Something’s not right.
• This isn’t working.
• This is not sustainable.
• I don’t feel comfortable with this anymore.
• There must be something more.

Hunger is the gradual, intensifying process of coming to know that the status quo – what has always worked – doesn’t work anymore. It occurs in everyday life as much as it does in the painter’s studio. Let me use myself as an example.

For the past three and a half years since we got married, my husband and I have maintained two homes. When he is at sea, I am at home in one place; when he is at home, I leave that place to be in his home with him. As glamorous as our globe-trotting lifestyle might sound, it is neither practical nor sustainable. It is beginning to exhaust us both. We have not yet arrived at our solution, but we are becoming clear that our status quo is no longer working. We need to make a change. We need to create a new way of life. The Wheel of Creativity is turning.

How about you? What area of your life – perhaps comfortable and familiar for years now – is no longer working? If you haven’t done so already, I invite you to choose one thing you’d like to change. Feel your Hunger today. And join me for these next 12 days as I take you around the Wheel of Creativity, for the…

• Vision
• Exploration
• Incubation
• Cultivation

… of what will feed you.

See you tomorrow (I promise!) for Station 2!

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