Connecting with Your Creative Vision
Our creative vision will guide us to be different than who we have been in the past:
"Vision is not just seeing an answer; it carries deep personal involvement in that is birthing a new way. We must profoundly open ourselves to filled by the creative force. As such, it is an act of love, courage and generosity. To light the spark of vision, we need only to give ourselves totally to whatever we do until there is a flame and, finally, a fire."
~ Chuck Spezzano
Mythologist Micheal Meade calls our life's work an "Opus." Your Opus is what you feel intensely curious about, what you most want to study in life, and what you are passionate about becoming good at. Your Opus may even involve taking action in your life that other people do not support or understand.
The challenge in living into our "Opus" is the incongruity of our familial conditioned fate. Our life's work is part of our soul's destiny, and it usually differs from our history in some challenging way.
Meade writes, "If a person doesn't face their fate, they may never find their deep resources and natural gifts. If a person doesn't risk their destiny, they'll never know who they are intended to be. Fate and destiny are the two agreements the soul must make and are the core issues we struggle with throughout our lives."
Our Opus guides us to develop ourselves into the best version of ourselves despite the challenges from our past. Living into our creative vision takes a great deal of patience and often involves many slow, faltering steps, especially if there is no outer affirmation for our creative qualities.
The Willingness to be Different
"What is right for one soul may not be right for another. It may mean having to stand on your own and do something strange in the eyes of others."
~ Eileen Caddy
If your creativity feels obscured, it is helpful to look back on your early life for little clues as to what sparked your curiosity, passion and interest. For myself, the first clue that I loved creativity came when I was three years old.
An artist named Steve came to rent the room in my grandmother's basement while he was going to art school. Steve drew quick portrait sketches of my great-grandfather when he came upstairs for tea.
When I was five years old I decided to become an artist and I decided to produce daily sketches like Steve. I wanted to practice my creativity a lot. As my drawing pile grew, I began selling my drawings for ten cents around my neighbourhood!
Expressing from the Outside
I remember struggling to draw realistically at eight years old. I was dogged about being "an artist." I put myself on a rigorous drawing program, struggling to sketch my grandmother's porcelain figurines for many long and frustrating hours.
I was terribly bored with my efforts. My paper wore thin from my eraser. My realistic drawings never really flowed with ease. They looked stiff and forced.
Expressing from the Inside
I conceded early on that I did not enjoy drawing realistically. I wanted to express my inner truth through my drawings. It was not until I was pregnant with my daughter that I found a way of drawing that worked for me.
When going through a difficult time in my life, I finally found a way for my emotional life to connect to my art. My intuitive drawings expressed what I felt on the inside. They started out as simple doodles and became more expressive with practice.
Creative Blocks
On the road to fulfilling our creative visions, we will encounter resistance. We will feel younger, less developed parts of ourselves denying our higher vision, doubting it will come true.
What is a resistance? Spiritual writer Eva Pierrakos explains it well:
"Resistance is very simple. It is the self-protective, finely calibrated mechanism that knows that something in you is not yet ready for this experience. You yourself have put obstructions in the way. Whatever the obstruction is, confront it, explore it, understand it and dissolve it."
Relaxing into Your Soul's Vision
One of my elderly clients at the art studio had a talent for finding four leaf clovers. He found hundreds and hundreds of them in his lifetime and he had a big box in his room to prove it.
When I asked him how he found them, he said, "I soften and relax my vision until each four leaf cover has a glow around it."
Creative visions arrive when we feel soft and relaxed. Your life's Opus will have a "glow" of light around it when you think about it.
"Once the creative passion is stirred up in us, it has precedence over the rules of the world, which become much more fluid and easily effected through vision.
Creative passion comes from love, desire and will. This energy irresistibly invites the Tao or the unfolding will of the universe to move through us and change the world."
~ Chuck Spezzano
