A Conduit for Creativity

by Soul Places | Diane Ludeking

"Lacey" by Kelly Ludeking

“Creativity is not aberrant, not dramatic, not dangerous.  If anything, it is the pent-up energy of not using our creativity that feels that way.”  Julia Cameron, The Sound of Paper.

We all have a creative streak within us.  Whether you paint, knit, sculpt, train animals, teach, raise kids or look at life through the viewfinder of your camera, we all have something that presses us, keeps us awake at night or makes us edgy because we choose to ignore it.  Julia Cameron continues with her experience of creativity:

“Composers more than writers tend to acknowledge that music comes to them from a higher source of inspiration, that they are the gateways and not the source.  The ego may rankle at first, but how much better to be the gateway for a large and mysterious something than the owner and guardian of a small and limited something, my “share” of creativity.  I like knowing that there is something larger than myself, larger than all of us, that moves into the world when we are accessible to it as a conduit.  I like knowing that my art is in a sense none of my business, not “my” art at all.”

At first this statement appears to take the pressure of creativity off:  “It’s not really me anyhow.  When they want to use me, they will contact me.”  But this is not the case at all.  You must show up everyday at your creative threshold and cross it.  Sit at the blank canvas or page, stand before the clump of wax or clay, put your fingers to the ivory keys.  And begin.  This is when they show up.  You must be the available conduit for what wants to come through you.  Do you accept?

How are you available to creativity today?