Increasingly I’ve been incorporating my spiritual practice into my creative practice. As I do so I realise they have always been co-existant. It’s only my conscious self who is needing to unite them more explicitly in my daily practice.
My creativity rises from my ancestry, my past and present environments, and my desire to connect. It rises in acts of resistance to the fast-paced consumer culture that we are told will bring us meaning and happiness. My creative practice is a spiritual practice. It is an expression of love.
As much as I love the specificity of words I am increasingly enjoying the expanse that surrounds them, the non-linguistic space of folded paper, symbols, mark-making and silence (if there is such a thing). This interest in the expanse around words has fed my desire to slow down, to write, create and facilitate easefully, to trust the unfolding of any process, and to bear witness to the lineage of any action (including tought and speech).
I believe in the joy of creativity, its essential integrity to any form of life. To be creative is a fundamental human need as much as any process of germination or erosion, the complexity of ecotones, or the earth’s response to the rise in atmospheric carbon. Nothing is fixed because everything is creative.
As a student of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, I know I am always evolving, that I have much to (un)learn, and that everything around me, what comes from me, and all I encounter is also my teacher. My biggest learning is patience, with myself particuarly. There is no rush. If it’s important, someone else will continue it. Someone else will run with it. Collaboration is the experimentation that unsticks us, that ensures a continuation in some form.
