nurturing your creative life

“Solaris,” watercolor on paper, 2017 by Rosa Phoenix

Giving birth,

nourishing life,

shaping things without possessing them,

serving without expectation of reward,

leading without dominating:

These are the profound virtues of nature,

and of nature’s best beings.

~ Lao Tzu, The Tao Te Ching

I’ve been reading a lot from the ancient Chinese philosophical text, The Tao Te Ching and thinking about the quotation above, about the virtues of nature and of nature’s best beings.

And I’ve been thinking also of motherhood, and birth, and raising and nurturing life.

Although the Mother is the archetype of creating, nurturing and caring for life, this is an energy and a gift that all humans naturally carry within us. We all have the ability and instinct to nurture other living beings.

This beautiful nurturing energy is the energy to call on, when we want to do good creative work.

The very nature of creativity is providing space for life to take shape, allowing it to grow and change and become its own being, in its own way.

It is not about dominating, controlling, or forcing the outcome.

In my work as an art teacher, where I’ve seen people have the most difficulties and blocks in creativity is when they don’t understand this gentle way of allowing, witnessing and stepping back without forcing.

Understand that the thing that wants to be created through you, is a separate being from you.

Understand that though you may have your own ideas about what this thing is going to look like and feel like and what message it’s going to express . . . ultimately it has its own life, own process, own reason for being . . . and it will change through the process. It may turn out very differently than you had initially imagined. And this does not mean that you failed as a creator.

In fact it means that you are a good creator, because you have brought something to life that is truly alive, that is mutable and natural and grows and changes and evolves, like everything else in nature.

If you are open to change, and interested in seeing what happens throughout the process, then creative acts will be enriching episodes of discovery, exploration, and fascination.

On the other hand, if you are rigid in your expectations, then creative acts, and Life itself, will bring disappointment, for the simple fact that what unfolds will be different from your own concept.

Shape things without possessing them.

Let go of expectations of a particular outcome.

Be open to the discoveries and the gifts

that the thing you’re creating

wants to share with you.

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