Conversations for Creative Awakenings
It’s a very rainy Saturday evening here in Nice. I’ve just come home from an afternoon of conversation with two different women, both dear friends and former students in my WOC groups. Each of them touched my heart today by spontaneously sharing a turning point in her life when things changed for her – moments that occurred in my presence.
In fact, I’ve had a number of touching conversations this week, many with people who were on last Sunday’s free tele-call. They’ve told me in emails, on Skype and face to face that they know what they want now. The creative dreamers are awakening. And my heart is singing.
Today one woman spoke of knowing your purpose, your big why – why you’re on the planet, what you’re here to do, and why you get out of bed in the morning even if no one requires you to.
For each of us, purpose is unique and must be discovered.
For me, it’s conversations like these. From the women and men around me here, to people across four time zones in the US, to enterprising entrepreneurs from South Africa, facilitating these awakenings is what I’m here to do.
There was something special in that quiet hour on Sunday in which a dozen or so people on three or four continents entered the same space to listen to their own hearts, make inquiries and take notes. In the anonymity of that group phone call, in the structure of my questions, something entered in. They opened their hearts to the possibility of something better.
“Better” comes in all kinds of forms:
- For the single mom at home with a troubled teenager, it’s creating space for herself and being able to honor it no matter what.
- For the solo writer working on what she thinks will be a book, it’s finding a telephone buddy just to talk with every day.
- For the passionate leader of a non-profit, it’s writing the book that gives voice to women who’ve lost their children.
Creativity in the sense that I mean it has so much more to do with life than art. And, whether your product is a book or a business, closer connections or farther reach, the process of creation is the same. The dream connects you with your purpose, in a step-by-step sort of way.
Purpose does not live in the mind. It lives in the heart. And when you cannot let yourself dream, it’s because your heart is keeping secrets from your mind. There are so many ways we keep our dreams secret from ourselves, or when we dream them, keep them sleeping.
Awakening the creative dreamer within you awakens the pain of the gap (between where you are and where you want to be), but also of the demons you must face (lifelong misplaced assumptions about how things are). When you embark on the journey of creative awakening, you can be sure all these things will come to you for reckoning. That’s why so often we leave the dreamer sleeping.
These days I’m awakening too, coming out of the dark night that, in the Wheel of Creativity, I call Chaos. It’s that place of weightlessness, where you can try and work and push and fight without effect, until in exhaustion you give up, let go and … now what?
Last Autumn I hit this place. I finally stopped. I turned inward, I cleaned house (literally), and I waited. A couple of months went by. Then, little by little, a stirring. In the Wheel, this is Incubation, where the seed of something new (still unseen and unknown) embeds itself in fertile soil. It’s not a place for doing, but for being (receptive) and listening.
This week, my heart is speaking to my mind again. Ideas are coming fast and clear. It’s all about surrender:
- On Monday, to the child in me that still longs for Mother’s love
- On Tuesday, to the body in bed for 24 hours unable to move with illness
- On Thursday, to the humbling discovery that my desire to help is naive
- On Friday, to the renewal of clarity, focus and a surge of pure energy
- And today, to the simple truth of something working
And somewhere in all that surrender, purpose is revealed again.
But it’s not for the faint of heart. I also spoke this week to someone who wanted to be on that call, but wasn’t. She told me she wanted to, and didn’t know why she didn’t, but she had believed she would have to join another course to get any value. She was wrong. And she regretted it.
So, for those of you who didn’t make it last Sunday I’m offering another free tele-call on Sunday, January 26th. Yes, it is an opportunity for you to experience the work I will offer in my 12-week tele-course, and of course I hope you will. But my intention is during the conversation we have on that call for you to have a creative awakening.
Awaken the dreamer. Discover your purpose. Live your life. Join us on the call.
