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Life as Creative Process
“Pay attention/Be astonished/Tell about it.” Mary Oliver
This magnificent refuge is inside you.
Enter.
Shatter the darkness that shrouds the doorway.
Be bold. Be humble.
Put away the incense and forget
the incantations they taught you.
Ask no permission from the authorities.
Close your eyes and follow your breath
to the still place that leads
to the invisible path
that leads you home.
~ St. Theresa of Avila
Art is capable of the total transformation of the world, and of life itself, and nothing less is really acceptable. ~Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Nearly twenty years ago a friend and I collaborated on a writing project on the topic of female alchemists. Our original intention was to include historical and quasi-historical women alchemists such as Maria Prophetissa and Peronelle Flamel. The deeper we dove into the topic of alchemy and alchemists, the more we realized the definition could and should apply to artists – to writers (Anais Nin), painters (Emily Carr), dancers and choreographers (Martha Graham) and even scientists (Barbara McClintock, a geneticist who bridged art and science. )
As these things often go, we never finished the project, one of the reasons, I think, being that it was a pretty obscure topic at that time and would have been a challenge to have published. But in a recent book by Mary Antonia Wood, entitled The Archetypal Artist: Reimagining Creativity and the Call to Create, the author compares artists, not only to alchemists, but to shamans, magicians, witches, and therapists, and not only does she compare but she suggests artists are alchemists, etc. Wood even identifies some of the same alchemist artists as my co-author and I did.
There is overlap between all of the archetypes Wood mentions, or maybe in reality they are different facets or faces of one archetype. For Wood, this one archetype is that of the Artist. Alchemy was known as the Art in that it was understood as the quintessential art, the prototype of all arts, but maybe in their own way each vocation mentioned above is also representative of art in general. If we want to understand art on a deep level we can study alchemy and/or shamanism, etc., and we can learn more about each of them by studying the deeper nature of art. But more relevant than understanding them is being them. When we are truly creative, we also become an alchemist, and shaman, etc.
What this implies is heeding a call to a deeper relationship with and experience of Life. It involves finding our ‘way(s) in’ - portals to expansive realities, including what Jung called the Collective Unconscious, and connecting with the force of Life in matter, the earth, and Nature. This vocation involves going beyond our superficial concerns of life and listening to our soul, our deepest inner voice, and trusting and heeding it above all other ‘voices’. And thus we transform, growing and developing our soul. Furthermore, as our soul transforms, so does the Anima Mundi, World Soul. Creative endeavors are a means to the above. As alchemist poet, Mary Oliver, wrote, “Pay attention, Be astonished, Tell about it.”
Art is my vocation, particularly writing and painting. The focus of my writing has been Art and the creative process and their relationship to psychology (study of the soul). In other words, my creative process is about creative process. I am never sure if my life work is being creative or studying it, but no matter. The (alchemical) transformation which occurs through the process of ‘paying attention, being astonished, and telling about it’ is at the crux of it all for me, and my intention is to continue exploring and ‘telling about it’ here.
I was a hidden treasure and I longed to be known. ~ Hadith Qudsi
I am wanting to write about the archetype of creativity. Since I am presently reading The Archetypal Artist, and it is close at hand, also because it is particularly relevant, I will quote author Mary Antonia Wood’s definition (which includes part of Jung’s) of archetype:
In Wood’s words, archetypes are “dynamic potentials….primordial and thematic shaping energies – dynamos with the power to generate enactments in the physical world.” Wood quotes Jung who explains, “archetypes were, and still are, living psychic forces that demand to be taken seriously...they have a strange way of making sure of their effect.” p. 8
What Jung says about archetypes being “living psychic forces that demand to be take seriously” is astounding and challenges consensual reality, but it fits with my experience. Archetypes inform us and also require respect from us. Etymologically, ‘re-spect’ means ‘to look again.’ They call to us for attention, engagement, and relationship. This is not for their benefit, but for our own. Archetypes, if we take them “seriously,” transform our awareness and our lives into something beyond what we would have even imagined or thought to ask for.
When we focus on a particular subject whether it be in our writing, dance, painting, etc., we also call upon its archetypal nature, whether this is intended or not. Well, it is impossible to say whether we call upon the archetype or it has first called upon us. In any case, it is activated, and it expresses itself to us. It communicates what it is about to us through experience. If we don’t listen, we miss out and may even pay a price.
My first conscious experience of this activation of archetype through creativity was many years ago when I was writing a fictional piece about a magician. I didn’t realize the connection at the time, but I became immersed in a reality in which magic in the form of synchronicity (meaningful coincidences) abounded, so much so that I questioned my sanity, but I was being informed about the true nature of magic.
An archetype has a consciousness and you can come to sense its presence. If you want to learn about something in depth, study (essentially meaning cultivate/care for) it, and develop a relationship with it by entering into a creative process with it and it will teach you what you need to know (sometimes leading you to the right book, person, or other resource).
To explain this more clearly I will describe something of what I am experiencing as I write about the archetype of creative process.
Creativity is inseparable from nature, and shares its qualities. In Jung’s view, “we are nature and nature is creative life.” p. 44 One aspect of nature/creativity I am experiencing in particular at this time is fecundity. Nature grows.
As I write about creative process, I am unable to keep up. I have started several short pieces which are so far unfinished because others sprouted in the soil of my mind and I felt a need to attend to them. I am feeling overwhelmed by how much there is to say. This is similar to what it can feel like as a gardener.
My husband and I recently returned from time away and the garden was so overgrown I couldn’t even think where to start. Forget planting squash this year as the squash bed has been overrun by raspberry bushes. Weeds have taken over. Sacrifice is a necessary aspect of gardening and creativity.
The challenge is not just the plants/writing pieces that are springing up in abundance. Often, plants/writing pieces have offshoots and branches that need pruning and shaping. One becomes two or multiple and needs to be divided.
I am experiencing how creativity is like nature – is nature. And I am sensing that the metaphorical form for this project on the subject of creative process is a garden, with each subject I am writing about being a ‘plant’. This suggests to me that I will need to pay attention through the seasons and see where I am after the year’s rotation. We are in spring as I write this, a time of abundance and potential, but in nature there is fruitfulness as well as hibernation and dormancy. There can be times of drought and emptying, flooding, freezing, and death. Creativity is like this too.
The archetype of creativity is informing me and guiding me as I write this. I need to bring my gardening perspective and experience and cultivate this writing project with a similar kind of care. I have to work with the forces of nature, without trying to force my will and I need to attend with my heart. This reminds me of the alchemists who were also working with the forces of nature. Each individual’s Opus guided the alchemist through an archetypal yet unique experiment and experience of transformation.
I have great trust in nature and creativity, as well as their cycles of death and rebirth. I trust that, as with Nature, Creativity is ever present and available and wanting attention and respect. I am aware that many would consider me “crazy” for speaking this way. But then again, maybe we need to re-imagine the nature of our world.
Recently I have been visited by my muse, or what Carl Jung, James Hillman and others refer to as daimon. Genius is another term, though not in the sense we usually use it. In essence, our ‘genius’ is an ‘attendant spirit present from one’s birth.’ (Therefore, everyone has one.) Others refer to soul, ‘anima’ or animus’ or creative spirit. I’m not sure what to call “it” exactly but what I do know is when it arrives.
I recently told a friend that my muse has “captured me again” and that it “has me in its grip.” This sounds a bit aggressive, I know, and even made me wonder if I am allowing some inner voice to control me in a way I would never if it were human. But I know I am not alone in this experience. Julia Cameron, author of the classic Artist’s Way refers to her inner creative command as her “marching orders.” And recently I read in Mary Antonia Wood’s The Archetypal Artist about “Jung’s haunting insistence upon an “alien will” that seizes the artist in order to press that individual into service. Hillman too could be haunting when he spoke of the angel/image whose yearnings and needs overtake our own.”
She writes that Jung was a “servant of the creative spirit”. In his words, “A creative person has little power over his own life. He is not free. He is captive and driven by his daimon...The daimon of creativity has ruthlessly had its way with me.”
I prefer the term, “collaborator,” to “servant” but I acknowledge this isn’t an equal partnership and I might be, to some extent, exaggerating my power in the situation.
The “alien will” is often experienced as both a curse and a blessing. Many creatives long for that “grip” and are envious when their friends and colleagues are “seized” by the daimon. We desire that sense of intoxication in which we lose our ‘I’ identity as well as sense of time and worldly concerns. We forget to eat. It is common to feel we are scribes or that our painting is painting itself through us. As jazz musician Charlie Parker said, "Don't play the saxophone. Let it play you."
The cursed side of this creative state is that it interferes with our normal life, and it can feel like a burdensome responsibility. We become obsessed, frantically jotting down ideas, images or melodies on napkins or train tickets, knowing that if we don’t, they could disappear for good. Like dreams, they evaporate quickly. This obsession can be part of the swoon of the creative process, but we may feel we are in a different world from our loved ones and they, too, feel they are cut off from us.
Making time for our art can feel impossible. And even when we do have time it can take a huge push to get past our resistance. We clean the corners of our cupboards, iron our pillow cases, and polish shoes we no longer wear. Suddenly our to-do list has grown a mile.
Sometimes, maybe often, it feels like the muse has abandoned us. We find that what we thought was gold is merely dust in our hand. How could we have thought our creation had value?
We feel bereft and lost. Henry Miller said he wrote fifty pages before he heard “the fetal heartbeat.” That’s a lot of typing, faith, and determination to find his way back to the pulse.
It is no wonder we feel conflicted when we are gripped by the daimon. But we aren’t totally at it’s mercy. We can refuse the creative call and most people do. The grip will release us but there are consequences to that as well. As Mary Oliver wrote, “My loyalty is to the inner vision whenever and howsoever it may arrive...the most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”
(For now) I am saying yes to this present study (which etymologically means care and cultivation) and exploration of the creative process - yet one more cycling around a phenomenon impossible to fully grasp. I feel overwhelmed by all that I want to say. I am having doubts about whether anyone even cares. But I feel in my bones that this has something to do with my life work and even if this is only between me and the muse, I will show up and work with it. OK, with it and for it..
cited in The Archetypal Artist: Reimagining Creativity and the Call to Create by Mary Antonia Wood. p. 132
2. cited in The Archetypal Artist: Reimagining Creativity and the Call to Create by Mary Antonia Wood. p. 38
3 cited in The Archetypal Artist: Reimagining Creativity and the Call to Create by Mary Antonia Wood. p. 48
Everyone is creative and you are every day. Just by living, doing, speaking, playing, and even if you feel you are working at a dull job, you are creative because you are doing these as a unique individual. Creativity and talent are different phenomena and whether or not you are talented, you are creative.
I will be writing about many aspects of creativity, what it is, how it is a process, how it gets blocked and how it can get unblocked, calling and commitment, the conflicts that come up around creativity, and many other topics related to it. My main interest regarding creativity, though, is how it relates to what Carl Jung termed ‘individuation,’ the process of becoming your true and whole self, and what James Hillman and others (after Keats) have called ‘soul making’. Cynthia Bourgeault observes that at birth the soul is only a potential and we “make soul” though the experiences of our life. This happens unconsciously to some degree, but by intentionally partaking in creative activities, we become alchemists of the soul and support the process along.
Author Kurt Vonnegut said, “Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.”
Why is this important? Because our soul is what deepens us in our awareness, and it is where we experience awe, meaning, and richness. It is connected to our heart and what we love and care about, and it is inseparable from Anima Mundi, the soul of the world. As you discover “what’s inside you” you will be astonished.
