Whatever you want to change, improve, refine, or create this year… some days will be easier than others. To lend you a hand with the tough days and help you celebrate your successes, here’s a quick tour of the 12 stations of the creative journey you’re on.
If you can pinpoint where you are in the process, you’ll know which way to go to keep moving forward toward your goals.
Whatever you want to achieve this year, you’ll go through a creative process to do it. The quality of your life this year depends on how you take that process on. Join me for this sneak musical preview of what that little trip is going to look like.
P.S. It’s the ride of your life!
Now, go live this year CREATIVE!
* The Wheel of Creativity: Taking Your Place in the Adventure of Life is a book by Katherine Robertson-Pilling. Learn more here by subscribing to my monthly Creative Adventure Journal.
LYRICS: 12 Days of Creativity: A Musical Tour of The Wheel of Creativity
Station 1 and the Wheel of Creativity gives you… a hunger for something more than this.
Station 2 and the Wheel of Creativity gives you… an appetite for that… and a hunger for something more than this.
Station 3 and the Wheel of Creativity gives you… anorexia… an appetite for that and a hunger for something more than this.
Station 4 and the Wheel of Creativity gives you… a little boat to launch… anorexia, an appetite for that and a hunger for something more than this.
Station 5 and the Wheel of Creativity gives you… isolation… a little boat to launch, anorexia, an appetite for that and a hunger for something more than this.
Station 6 and the Wheel of Creativity gives you… crisis-a-brewing… isolation, a little boat to launch, anorexia, an appetite for that and a hunger for something more than this.
Station 7 and the Wheel of Creativity gives you… conception of a new thing… crisis-a-brewing, isolation, a little boat to launch, anorexia, an appetite for that and a hunger for something more than this.
Station 8 and the Wheel of Creativity gives you… waiting for gestation… conception of a new thing, crisis-a-brewing, isolation, a little boat to launch, anorexia, an appetite for that and a hunger for something more than this.
Station 9 and the Wheel of Creativity gives you… finally breakthrough… waiting for gestation, conception of a new thing, crisis-a-brewing, isolation, a little boat to launch, anorexia, an appetite for that and a hunger for something more than this.
Station 10 and the Wheel of Creativity gives you… a new thing to nurture… finally breakthrough, waiting for gestation, conception of a new thing, crisis-a-brewing, isolation, a little boat to launch, anorexia, an appetite for that and a hunger for something more than this.
Station 11 and the Wheel of Creativity gives you… a grown plant for pruning… a new thing to nurture, finally breakthrough, waiting for gestation, conception of a new thing, crisis-a-brewing, isolation, a little boat to launch, anorexia, an appetite for that and a hunger for something more than this
Station 12 and the Wheel of Creativity gives you… a ripe crop to harvest… a grown plant for pruning, a new thing to nurture, finally breakthrough, waiting for gestation, conception of a new thing, crisis-a-brewing, isolation, a little boat to launch, anorexia, an appetite for that and a hunger for something more than this.
Thank you for stopping by during these past 12 for your daily breath of spirit in the midst of the festive flurry.
I have a gift for you! A tiny but heartfelt gift from me for your tree!
Get your FREE DOWNLOAD of my book. Details below!
Lean back.
Take a deep breath.
Look up from the screen.
Relax.
Station 12 and the Wheel of Creativity gives me… a ripe crop to harvest
Often have I heard you say, as if speaking in sleep,
“he who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone,
is nobler than he who ploughs the soil.
And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness of man, is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet.”
But I say, not in sleep but in the over-wakefulness of noontide,
that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks
than to the least of all the blades of grass;
And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song
made sweeter by his own loving.
Work is love made visible.
- Kahlil Gibran
For much of my life I struggled with what seemed an insurmountable choice between two opposing paths: the work I did for love and the work I did for money. Never the ‘twain shall meet was my mantra then. But something about this just did not sit well with me. Now in Station 12, as I harvest my new book, I can see how they work together.
As I have lived my life, I’ve come to realize that we live in a world of opposites: up and down, left and right, day and night, male and female, good and evil. This is how the human being experiences life. And it can seem like a major conflict most of the time. But that’s not the whole story.
It’s taken me many years to realize that the fundamental principles of life are opposite forces: active and receptive, masculine and feminine. When they are used together, they are the most creative force in the world. This is what, when I set out on my first journey into the void in 1994, a beautiful yogini in Chicago introduced to me as “The Sacred Marriage.”
The creative journey of life is not about choosing one path or the other but integrating the two. The work you do in the world to make your living is the active (masculine) principle: Go out and get what you need. The work you do for love is the receptive (feminine) principle: Be open, welcome and take care of what you have. Both are required to create a New Thing of any sort. The New Thing that calls you is your companion through The Wheel of Creativity. Don’t quite before you harvest the crop.
The HARVEST is station 12 and brings The Wheel of Creativity full circle.
What will it take to make the work you do for love the work you do for money?
It’s a gift to yourself that keeps on giving all through the year.
On December 25-26, 2012, get your FREE KINDLE DOWNLOAD of my book on Amazon: The Wheel of Creativity: Taking Your Place in the Adventure of Life. Make 2013 a transformative year. Get my Creative Adventure Journal for a companion on the journey.
So each day from now until December 25, drop by the Wheel of Creativity blog for a deep breath of spirit in the midst of the festive flurry.
Let’s be creative and connected this Christmas!
It’s the best gift under the tree!
Lean back.
Take a deep breath.
Look up from the screen.
Relax.
Station 11 and the Wheel of Creativity gives me… a grown plant for pruning
The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.
Orson Welles
There comes a point in the process of creating anything new that is about nothing but sheer nose-to-the-grindstone, out-of-balance-for-a-while, get-the-job-done discipline. By the time you’ve gotten to this point, you’re serious about what you’re doing: you’ve clarified your vision, you’ve done the research and you’ve completed the draft.
Now you have to perfect the product. Nature in its wisdom puts the work here, because by this point your investment is so great that it’s usually too painful to quit. But abandoning ship may cross your mind more than a few times.
When I was producing documentary film and TV, people often approached me with a good idea. “You should make a film about…,” they would say with hopeful eyes. It took me a while before I stopped feeling the pressure of “Yes, you’re right. I should make your film.” But the more programs I produced, the more I realized that many projects are years in the making. Only the person with the passion has the stamina to see them through. No one can do that for you.
This is a timely subject for me now, as I have just released my book, The Wheel of Creativity: Taking Your Place in the Adventure of Life for sale in the marketplace. The first seeds of this book planted themselves in me ten years ago. It has taken this long for them to grow into a plant that I hope will nourish many of you the way it has nourished me. All the living, learning, experimenting, teaching, listening and revising I have needed to do is done now. These past months have been the most intense of all, as I have cut away what needed cutting and shaped what remained into a finished product. Now, it’s time to let go.
So each day from now until December 25, drop by the Wheel of Creativity blog
for a deep breath of spirit in the midst of the festive flurry.
Let’s be creative and connected this Christmas!
It’s the best gift under the tree!
Lean back. Take a deep breath.
Look up from the screen. Relax.
Station 10 and the Wheel of Creativity gives me… a newborn to nurture
“Some say the creative life is in ideas, some say it is in doing.
It seems in most instances to be in a simple being.
It is not virtuosity, although that is very fine in itself.
It is the love of something, having so much love for something
—whether a person, a word, an image, an idea, the land, or humanity—
that all that can be done with the overflow is to create.”
- Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D.
Music has always touched me. Not just listening to it, but also making it. One day in 1992, inspired by the music of Peter Gabriel, I wrote a song about my own creative process—the journey of it—and all the creative “children” I had abandoned along the way.
Alone in the house that night, I left the handwritten sheet music on my keyboard and went to bed. I couldn’t sleep. I kept getting up and going back into my studio to check on it. At one point in the night, I realized this must be what new parents do. “Isn’t he beautiful?” “Is she still breathing?”
The tenderness flowed from somewhere deep within me, unconditional love for the New Thing I had mysteriously created. And I realized how rare this is. The judgments all too often rise up instead, flashing feelings more akin to shame than appreciation. The judging mind was there with “Not good enough,” but that night I managed to keep it at bay.
You would not expect a newborn baby to go to the office. Yet all to often we want our new creations to make money right out of the delivery room. Hold on a minute! The time for perfecting the New Thing will follow. For now, it needs protection and care. It’s okay. For today, just love what you’ve done. Just give what you have to give.
NURTURING is station 10 in The Wheel of Creativity.
What is needing your unconditional acceptance to grow today?
So each day from now until December 25, drop by the Wheel of Creativity blog for a deep breath of spirit in the midst of the festive flurry.
Let’s be creative and connected this Christmas!
It’s the best gift under the tree!
Lean back.
Take a deep breath.
Look up from the screen.
Relax.
Station 9 and the Wheel of Creativity gives me… FINALLY breakthrough
“You are not accidental. Existence needs you.
Without you something will be missing in existence
and nobody can replace it.
That’s what gives you dignity,
that the whole existence will miss you.”
- Osho
I didn’t plan, when I started this series of posts, to have Breakthrough fall on this particular date. But I can’t think of a better day in history to talk about it. With so many predictions of cosmic metamorphosis pointing here and now, you could just think of today as humanity’s Due Date.
In the Wheel of Creativity, Breakthrough is giving birth to the New Thing. It could be a new screenplay or a new life story, a prototype for a new product or a contract with a new client. The context is less important than the contrast. Something that was not yesterday, is today. The mystery is revealed, and now you have the real baby in your hands, crying for attention.
I don’t know as I write this how all the predictions will manifest in our lives. Perhaps by the time you read this, that question will have been answered. What I do know, and what has been predicted and proven in laboratories from quantum physics to metaphysics, is that the ending of one thing is the beginning of another. The caterpillar emerges from the chrysalis… with WINGS!
This big BREAKTHROUGH is station 9 in The Wheel of Creativity.
What New Thing will you commit to usher into the new world?
So each day from now until December 25, drop by the Wheel of Creativity blog for a deep breath of spirit in the midst of the festive flurry.
Let’s be creative and connected this Christmas!
It’s the best gift under the tree!
Lean back.
Take a deep breath.
Look up from the screen.
Relax.
Station 8 and the Wheel of Creativity gives me… waiting for gestation
“Vulnerable we are, like an infant.
We need other’s care
or we will suffer.”
- St. Catherine of Siena
Just one day to go until “the end of the world (as we know it).” December 21, 2012 is less than 24 hours away. So many have predicted a change: the Mayans did it, Nostradamus did it, scientists are doing it still. But what kind of change? We all have our interpretations, our theories and our fears. People all over the world are preparing for something, but what remains a mystery.
The creative power of the Life Force is also destructive. This scares us. Energy—which vivifies all-that-is—is freed when old forms dissolve. It is the weightless possibility between old and new. It is destabilizing. Naturally.
The Wheel of Creativity is, above all else, a way of seeing the creative cycles of Life itself. In the grand story of Life’s unfolding, we are small dots on an enormous sketch. Indelible, yet evolving. This transformation called 12/21/12 (or 21/12/12 depending on your GPS readin) is not just something that will happen to us tomorrow. It is something we will participate in. We all play our part in it.
In the creative process, Gestation is a period of waiting, when growth remains mysterious and unseen. To refrain from trying to control the process requires patience and faith. So whether you’re stockpiling food for the apocalypse or buying booze for your end-of-the-world party, take a moment to reflect on your part in this passing moment. This is the preparation to be doing today.
GESTATION is station 8 in The Wheel of Creativity.
What are you waiting for today, all mystery and shadow still?
So each day from now until December 25, drop by the Wheel of Creativity blog for a deep breath of spirit in the midst of the festive flurry.
Let’s be creative and connected this Christmas!
It’s the best gift under the tree!
Lean back.
Take a deep breath.
Look up from the screen.
Relax.
Station 7 and the Wheel of Creativity gives me… Conception of a new thing
“But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world …“
- Mary Oliver
I know. I do have a tendency to go on a bit. I get swept up in my desire to inspire. But it’s the holidays and I know you have plenty to do. So, short and sweet, that’s the ticket for today’s post!
Station 7 is a moment of wonder and bliss: Aha! Eureka! Emotional. Fluid. The feeling is wonder as you catch a glimmer of something new out of the corner of your eye. It’s indistinguishable still, but you know something in you has changed.
What brought you here?
Everything that came before. All six stations of the Wheel had to be passed through for you to get to this point. The entire first half of the creative process is about letting old forms go: the worn-out workplace, the tired old attitude, the overused opinion of yourself.
Once you’ve dared to see what you really want, to stretch out toward it, and let go of what is taking up its space in your life, the roof flies open and the stars come in, each one a seed of ecstasy sowing itself in the soil of your heart.
Today, all you have to do is relax and receive. The heavens are raining down upon you.
CONCEPTION is station 7 in The Wheel of Creativity.
What do you need to let go of to make space for the New Thing?
Christmas is upon us. So each day from now until December 25,
drop by The Wheel of Creativity blog
for a deep breath of spirit in the midst of the festive flurry.
Let’s be creative and connected this Christmas!
It’s the best gift under the tree!
Lean back.
Take a deep breath.
Look up from the screen.
Relax.
Station 6 and the Wheel of Creativity gives me… Crisis-a-brewing
There is a moment in any kind of struggle when one feels
in full bloom . . . vivid . . . alive.
One might be blown to bits in such a moment
and still be at peace.
- Alice Walker
The holidays can be stressful for us all. Emotions, expectations, priorities and celebration mix a potentially explosive cocktail, and when we try to manage it all we can easily feel overwhelmed. These moments of overwhelm are part of the creative process too. Respond to them consciously and transform them.
Good rope, bad rope
In the mid 80s, I participated in a self-development seminar in the Adirondack mountains of New York. One day of the seminar was a ropes course in the forest, which included three events. It was my undoing. And that was a good thing.
For the Tyrolean Traverse the ropes team secured a rope across a high gorge, some 50 feet across. I stepped into a harness and was attached to the rope with a carabiner. I stepped off the cliff and felt all my weight suspended below that rope. On my back with the carabiner at my waist, I was to pull myself to the other side.
Advancing was much easier than I expected until I got to the center of the gorge. Suddenly the angle of the rope changed from downhill to uphill. No matter what I did, I couldn’t move even an inch. I was furious. Tearful. Desperate. Someone was going to have to come get me. But no one did.
I dangled there for about 10 minutes, facing the sky, powerless to move. I got more and more angry, more and more helpless, until finally I kicked. With each kick, I discovered that I could lift my weight off the rope just enough to put one fist ahead of the other. And that was enough; just like that I moved my body across the second half of the rope and got myself to the other side. And then I got it!
Crossing over
Crisis is inevitable in the creative process. Seeing the Promised Land is not the same thing as entering it. Whatever you want to change in your life—whether it’s actually enjoying your family this season, managing the holiday have-to’s differently, or both—the obstacles between you and the new you are the way through.
The crisis, your feeling of overwhelm, is a wake-up call. In the midst of the storm, it yanks you from the crescendo of external demands and rivets you to yourself. In the center of every hurricane there is an eye, a still point where everything is silent. The storm brings you to the end of yourself, and finding that still point within it reveals the new idea, and the new you waiting on the other side.
This moment of CRISIS is station 6 in The Wheel of Creativity.
Where in life do you feel overwhelmed and out of control?
Christmas is upon us. So each day from now until December 25,
drop by The Wheel of Creativity blog
for a deep breath of spirit in the midst of the festive flurry.
Let’s be creative and connected this Christmas! It’s the best gift under the tree!
Lean back.
Take a deep breath.
Look up from the screen.
Relax.
Station 5 and the Wheel of Creativity gives me… I – SO – la – tion
“To navigate you must be brave . . .
and to be brave you must remember.”
- Mau Piailug
In yesterday’s post, I mentioned that while confidence and optimism will surely visit you in the creative process, they do not necessarily stay for long. The process of creating anything original—whether you are Man Ray in Paris or Cowboy John in Lubbock—requires that you leave what you know. And somewhere along the line, that is likely to make you a bit anxious.
“What was I thinking!”
I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve found myself in this station. More than 20 years ago, when I first got a glimpse of the truth buried deep within me and the possibility that I could live my life in harmony with it my first reaction was fear. Established society does not always take kindly to those who honor their own truth above all else.
But I could also see the possibility of a world in which every person takes their place in the creative unfolding of because they listen and respond to what they know inside. Through every year I have lived since then I have come to see very little else. It’s the vision that inspired me to create The Wheel of Creativity. It’s the courage to stay my own course that changed the course of my life.
The gift of the creative process is that once you’ve left the shore, there is no turning back. The dark night of the soul is part of the cycle, and learning to navigate your way through it will show you strength and resilience you didn’t know you had inside. Find your center deep down in the bottom of the canoe, watch the stars and waves and keep your eye out for signs of land.
This ISOLATION is station 5 in The Wheel of Creativity.
What becomes available to you way out there, far away from all you know?
The greatest myth today about creativity is that some of us have it and some of us don’t! It’s a myth that can cost you your life, waiting for fill-in-the-blank to begin the life you dream of.
Life is a creative adventure. The Wheel of Creativity is a compass for the journey. Understanding the 12 stations of the Wheel of Creativity puts the power in your hands to create the life you dream of from the life you have today.
