It took me a long time to understand creative blocks. Not simply with respect to my calling to write, but also with respect to my inner work—the art of self-creation. Rumi said, “Some people pick up their tools—others become the making itself.” I always liked that, because it accurately reflected my own creative experience. Whether I was writing, or self-crafting, I felt as though I was becoming the making itself. I began with an empty page, or an empty vessel, and it was my job to sculpt something anew. To fill the open space with meaning. The life of the creative.
But then it would stop. I couldn’t find it. The words weren’t there, nor was the impetus to work on myself. My call to create had suddenly become frozen in time(less). What to do?
I activated my ever-reliable will, somehow imagining that all it needed was a good push. It didn’t work. So I tried the art of surrender—trying to not try—imagining that my callings would rise to the surface if I just let go. That didn’t work either. So I became a student of the block, asking it from whence it came. It soon became clear that there were many reasons why the well runs dry—shame, self-doubt, fear, personal triggers, practical concerns, societal pressures, the activation of the worry-mind etc.
But there was something else, something at the heart of it all. I got in a little closer, inquiring into its textures and contours, and there it was: the dynamic relationship between chaos and order. Not some generic relationship, but the one that reflected my own personal patterning and range of tolerance.
Both outer and inner creativity are like a plummet into chaos. It can be a beautiful chaos, but it is chaos nonetheless. You are essentially trying to make something from nothing. Your will is necessary, but its not enough. You also have to surrender to the not knowing, so that the next level of expression can emerge. And to do that, you need a certain amount of order in your inner and outer life. If everything is chaotic, your system will freeze, because homeostasis—on a broad range of levels—is not possible. You are swimming in chaos, and you can’t let go and craft something fresh.
By chaos, I don’t necessarily mean crisis. We can experience chaos in many different ways—messiness in the home environment, structural instablity in your practical life, challenges in a foundational personal relationship, metabolic disarray, nervous system flooding, overstimulation and overwhelm, unreleased and unresolved emotions, eating crappy food. And sometimes its not chaos so much as a need to integrate previous creations. When we “become the making itself”—both with respect to our outer expression and inner transformation—we continuously change form. And there is a need to integrate those changes before we can re-engage creational processes. We need to stop, sit on a plateau, and allow all that we have expressed and all that we have become to land within us. In other words, a new ‘order’ has to consolidate. And then, when we are ready, we experience something that Abraham Maslow referenced as ‘grumble theory.’ That is, we begin to feel a kind of frustration—a reliable harbinger of change—that reminds us that we are ready for the next version of ourselves to emerge. Back into the fray we go…
If you are struggling with creative blocks, don’t beat yourself up. Get to know yourself. Inquire into the relationship between chaos and order that works for you. And once that becomes clear, honor it to the letter.
I have a vital new course to share with you. Beginning March 27th, 2024, I will be launching my very first Enrealment Method Course. I had endeavoured to launch last autumn, but it was sidelined because I was experiencing a medical challenge. I'm well now, and the course is complete. A 7-week on-line course that supports your journey to humanize and to deepen your spiritual life. To truly arrive here in embodied form, and to clarify the reasons why you are here. Guidance and inspiration for anyone ready to find and to walk their truest path in a distracting world.
The course is available at Soulshaping Institute (Course Description Link), but it is also available for free for anyone who has chosen to be a paid subscriber to this Newsletter. I will send out the first newsletter with links to the audio and workbook on the evening of March 26th. So if you have been considering supporting my efforts with a paid subscription, please do so and enjoy the course along with it.
The Enrealment Method is my home-grown and custom-made offering, from my direct lived-in experience. “What does it mean to be truly human?” is a question that threaded through my entire journey. I longed to find a way to be both present for my life and also to find my purpose at the heart of it. At first, they seemed like two different questions. Yet over time I came to find that they were inextricably linked, and ultimately indistinguishable from each other. That is, the more present I became, the more access I had to my purpose(s) in this lifetime. And, the more able I was to live in the heart of my purpose, the more present I became. At some point, presence and purpose became the same experience. In a sense, I had become the making itself.
In The Enrealment Method, there is a liberation from narrow, highly-tread spiritual paths from those who came before. This Method prepares and readies you to walk your unique and truest of paths. You will be invited to own and inhabit every aspect of the self—even those parts that you are longing to heal or transform—both as a reflection of divinity, and as your blessed lens on reality. It took untold centuries to develop the self, with all its pathways of perception and individuated personal traits and qualities, and it is not to be denied its place at the sacred banquet table. And that surely includes those essential aspects of your selfhood that are frequently shunned by the ungrounded spiritual communities: ego, story, emotions, your uniquely nuanced personality, your beautiful body-temple, and your brilliant mind. It is all welcome here.
At its heart, The Enrealment Method is a celebration of our beautiful and bountiful human nature, in all its many colors, textures, facets and forms. It is your invitation to toss aside your conditioned spiritual roadmap—and to open to a direct, alive experience of the moment, in its multitude of humanifestations: the darkness and the light, the agonies and the joys, the mystical and the mundane, grocery list and unity consciousness, fresh mangoes and stale bread. It is a way of being that threads right through the heart of the everything, moving closer to something that feels like wholeness, and then back into the skirmish, before stepping forward yet again. That’s what it means to be really, truly, fully, authentically, genuinely, comprehensively HUMAN. In other words, you will be invited to experience the world through every available frame of reference. To bridge your humanness with your sacredness, your presence with your purpose, while continually stepping on to your next newest and truest path.
I look forward to sharing this very human approach to spirituality with you—and providing some guidance, direction, tools and techniques that will make your journey a lot more gratifying. There is a path within you with your name on it. I believe that this method will help you to clarify it and prepare you to fully walk it. When we identify the paths we are here to walk and the gifts we are here to open, we explode into a world of unlimited vitality and gratification. No longer wondering why you are here, no longer being worked and played by the puppeteers that benefit from your malaise, you move through the world with a clarity of focus and a kind of personal sovereignty that is unshakeable.
LETTING LOOSE EXERCISE
One of the ways that we unknowingly limit our experience of presence (and purpose) is by armoring our body (and hence our consciousness). We all do this to some extent. We do this in any one of a number of different ways: mastering the body (as though it is a perfectible machine), rigidifying some/all of the body, obsessively body-building (rather than body-inhabiting). Of course, armor has a dissociating quality to it. To the extent that we move through the world tightly held, we limit our access to the broadest range of feeling. And by limiting our feelings, we limit our degree of life satisfaction. This too is not something to beat ourselves up for. A certain degree of physical, emotional, and energetic armour is utterly necessary if we are going to survive this challenging world. And it may well have been the thing that saved us from unbearable traumas. At the same time, it is essential that we explore a broader (and more surrendered) range of motion so that we can taste more of presence as a whole being experience. In other words, so that we can create an even more magnificent life.
One of the simplest ways to explore living with less armor, is to engage in embodiment practices that loosen us up. Activities that ground and energize, and invite us to experience reality with a greater degree of fluidity. With that in mind, I invite you to give yourself permission—to the degree you are comfortable—to engage in at least one practice this week that has a tendency to loosen you up. It may be a wild or frenzied dance, an undisciplined and spontaneous yoga practice, a run or mountain bike ride through the woods, uncontained love-making, Osho’s Dynamic Meditation (and yes, I do have issues with Osho, but my Enrealment Meditation isn’t ready just yet), holotropic breathwork. It may involve sounding, shouting, screaming, crying. Anything that has the effect of breaking through some of the armor you are carrying, and softening your emotional edges. When you are done, ask yourself whether the states you are in during and after the activity, are meaningfully different—with respect to depth of feeling and breadth of awareness—from what you experienced when you were more tightly held. Simply put, does reality feel better or worse when you are more open? And, if it actually feels worse, why is that? What kinds of feelings (and fears) arise when you shed some of your armour and experience the moment with more fluidity? And, which state of being—armored or fluid—feels more aligned with your idea of a spiritual life?
HEALING LETTERS
If you are on a healing path, one of the other things that can help you to feel more integrated, is writing a letter to someone who has abused or neglected you. You may not send it to them either because it isn’t necessary, or because they aren’t available or alive, but there is still much to be said for granting yourself permission to express—in the clearest words possible, and over as much time as you need—exactly what you feel and need to express. The most important thing, as you are writing, is that you stay heartfully connected to that individual and to what has to be expressed in its totality. Don't rush the process, don't try to do it all at one sitting. Take your sweet time, until you feel truly and fully self-expressed with respect to all your feelings, including grief and anger. And if you are someone who doesn’t like to letter write, you can certainly accomplish the same thing in other artistic forms, including but not limited to dance, painting, and the making of music. Anything that expresses what wants to be expressed.
There can also be value in writing the healing letter you long to receive. It may not be remotely realistic that your abandoner(s) could write such a letter, but that’s not necessarily relevant. What is relevant is that you grant yourself permission to have an experience of what it would be like to feel seen, heard, honored, and loved.
Treasure yourself, Jeff
Brilliant - learning to hold chaos with enough ground to support creation. Have to sit with that for a while - echos giving birth to a child. I love and appreciate how life ( in this case, you 🙏🏻 ) generously provides one's next steps.