Craft as intimacy with the creative unfolding.
I used to have a resistance to the concept of gradual, cumulative progress. Hence routine felt like heavy obligations. Especially when it comes to my creative work, there was this sense that routine forces itself upon the intuitive flow of creativity. Complete lack of structure would be what allows creativity to emerge into whatever forms and structures best suit her.
Now that I have this unbound time to create within, I’ve found myself feeling very drawn to the daily routines of writers. Most have a very regular rhythm, that they’ve found works for them and the unfolding of their projects.
Rhythm is perhaps a good word for it rather than routine. My associations to “routine” are rigid, suffocating, deflating of life force. Rhythm connotes flow, and an intimacy with the experience of flow, reality, life – a complimentary form rather than an enforced one.
The structures that used to suffocate life force are now being called to evolve into symbiotic relationship to life force.
Archetypal clues into the dynamic of feminine and masculine energies, in this age of re-emergence of the feminine.
In these artists’ routines, there is a consistency on the part of the artist. I’m beginning to learn that flow feels safe – feels supported – by consistency. She emerges and unfurls in the luxury of a container (of consistent action, time or energy) that she can trust… that she can depend on.
There’s something about flow that is associated with depth… and these containers of time that we intentionally devote to what we wish to cultivate collect consciousness so that a depth of experience develops that allows for one to drop out and through the vapid mirages of the conceptual mind.
It’s good to remember that the reason why the hardest part is starting – or entering a state – is because a deep conscious way of being may be at odds with the mode of being we practice the most in modern default life, which is the vapid shimmering surface of the conceptual. Thus the initial resistance we feel at the threshold between two modes of being, especially entering into a more intentional mode of consciousness, is the intertial momentum of what we practice as default, and the still-figuring-out how-to-relate-to, the blind discerning of the contours-of, the terrain of the new state.
But regularity in showing up to these intentional states, which manifest as the routine perhaps, allow for us to not feel as orientation-less, confused or overwhelmed every time we attempt to cross that threshold.
It’s good to be aware of the experiential land that one’s in, and the mode of consciousness that is the native language of that place, instead of traveling the world confused why your default language doesn’t foster the intimacy with the environment that you seek, nor acclimate you to the terrain of where you actually are.
The consistent showing up for our relationship with our creative projects is an act of reverence. Through our conscious attention, we demonstrate that we value its Presence. It is a relationship. With frequency comes familiarity, comes intimacy, comes learning the rhythms of how to delicately weaving the threads that it offers us to follow. Creation is an intimate act… not one to race through like a sprint – (unless thats what the moment calls for in time (which sometimes, at take off, can be skillful)).
As someone with ADHD, my default is to think I need to build up the momentum to shoot through the initial barriers to entry of flow, like an airplane taking off. The stimulation of being excited must be maintained. But I want to offer another relation to flow, one that is perhaps more sustainable, nurturing and closer to the earth, which is that if you slow down, its not the fastness or the frenzied excitement of reality that makes it engaging, its the thickness of the Presence that actually connects. Its a different relationship.
Just an offering to remember another way of being through…