How to be creative & the 15 qualities you need to survive in a world gone mad
“I love my creative life more than I love cooperating with my own oppression.” – Clarissa Pinkola Estes The world has lost its mind. When I say ‘the world’, I mean the human world – what we are pleased to call ‘civilisation’. The natural world is doing its best to prop us up and keep us… Continue reading Being Creative in a Mad World
Do you know you’re alive? It seems like an obvious question. Descartes summed it up in his famous statement, ‘I think, therefore I am.’ There is no way you can doubt your existence because the very fact of your doubt proves it. Do you appreciate the fact that you are alive, or do you subsist?… Continue reading Being Creative in a Mad World: Existing
Love is a condition of relatedness. True love is a recognition of the fundamental unity of all life. To be alive means to be in relationship – to yourself, to other people, to the earth, animals, plants, water, the sky… Even though unity is the inherent nature of life and love is our natural condition,… Continue reading Being Creative in a Mad World: Loving
If you want to be creative you will have to create the right environment to allow your imagination freedom to roam. Imagination is the essence of creativity. When we create we inspire and enchant ourselves, and hopefully others. Dreaming means opening to experience; expanding your sense of self to include possibilities you may never have… Continue reading Being Creative in a Mad World: Dreaming
Creativity involves much thought. Most of the work of writing is thinking: questioning, investigating, exploring and researching, turning the idea round and round, interrogating it from every angle. There are many different ways to think, but if you want to be creative you must allow intuition and feeling to influence and guide your thoughts. Pure… Continue reading Being Creative in a Mad World: Thinking
Sartre said we are condemned to be free. But you could say we are condemned to choose. Having big brains frees us from being driven by instinct, but our consciousness only makes it possible for us to be free. We are only free if we act on it and make a choice. It is impossible… Continue reading Being Creative in a Mad World: Choosing
What is the meaning of life? We all have our favourite answers to this question, but it’s a mistake to think meaning exists out there in the world somewhere, just waiting for you to discover it. Of course, you can take your sense of meaning from outside yourself, in family, career or accomplishment, but this… Continue reading Being Creative in a Mad World: Meaning
If you are creative then you’re paying attention to the world around you and exploring your inner world looking for inspiration and passion. But the more you look, the more you will doubt. You can’t take anything at face value. You must penetrate the surface of life to find the truth. Like a good scientist,… Continue reading Being Creative in a Mad World: Doubting
Committing to living creatively means you care. It’s an investment in yourself, in your future, in the process of creating, and in others. You are entangled with your inspiration and passions, like two quarks linked across time and space, pulsing with the dance of life. Failure to commit is a refusal to live consciously or… Continue reading Being Creative in a Mad World: Committing
Encountering means confronting life and yourself. This isn’t an aggressive confrontation with lots of bared teeth and frowning. It is non-demanding – more like an embrace. But not clinging, not a death grip. It’s about giving your creativity space to breathe, holding it in your mind and letting it be. You do without doing. In… Continue reading Being Creative in a Mad World: Encountering
To be creative you must act. Creativity is meaningless if it isn’t acted upon and made real. If you do nothing, you’ve got nothing. You become what you do. In the face of the immensity of the universe and overwhelmed by your own smallness, it’s easy to believe you are insignificant. You work to create… Continue reading Being Creative in a Mad World: Acting
Living creatively means being you. Who else are you going to be, if not yourself? Whose life are you going to live, if not your own? Affirming means saying yes to being here and being alive. To be creative you must make manifest who you are through your creativity, and you do that by giving… Continue reading Being Creative in a Mad World: Affirming
