Sunday, February 01, 2009

Surrendering to Creative Cycles

Oooh, I love this chapter title of the 4th chapter in 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women, which I'm reading with many other book bloggers at The Next Chapter.


This subject really resonated deeply with me, as I've definitely got a very distinctive creative cycle, which is challenging and frustrating when I forget about it. Which unfortunately I ineveitably do. So it is good to read about what the function of this up and down and around and around cycle might actually be in my life. There have to be some beneficial things to be gained out of the low points in the cycle right?

Sometimes when I'm down in the cycle, where it is dark and murky I wonder where the goodness and light is, I get impatient with how long it is taking to return to the easier part of the cyle.
But reading this chapter helped me to realize that this part of the cycle is absolutely essential to a creative person.
void=fallow=allowed to rest=neutral zone=a vauum
Natural Order of Dormancy and Blossoming

"The void beckons like a doorway to transformation and new beginnings." - Gail McMeekin

I know that I struggle against this idea and don't easily accept it as a natural course of events, but that knowing is going to be helpful the next time I'm really stuck down in it.

The Norse Rune, Harvest is described by Ralph Blum in The Book of Runes as: "Be mindful that patience is essential for the recognition of your own process which, in its season, leads to the harvest of the self."
Usually I think of harvesting as something outside of myself, but this really struck a chord for me, that all this work of self-examination is going to end up with the end result of a harvest of a new self. At least I hope so!
Trusting that it will come to pass eventually is the unwavering faith I must continue to put in my own creative re-emergence, even when it seems that there is nothing actually changing.

1 comment:

Anne Huskey-Lockard said...

Well, I will have to get this book, because the mention of creative/noncreative cycles perks my head up.
I always want to control them and feel like a *failure* when I cannot. Yet, deep inside, I know that the down part of the cycle is for restoration. I guess I just need to be reminded of that.
So if I have to book, I can smack myself in the head with it...to remind me....this too shall pass!