JOIN USCreativity is more than just a spark, it is an entire healing experience, feel Bharat and Shalan Savur.
Creativity is the sweetness of our soul. When we bite into a mango, we taste its heavenly ambrosia. Likewise, when we delve into our creativity, we savour the divine nectar of our soul.
Being creative transports us from dull sickness to tingling aliveness. Cellist Pablo Casals proved this consistently. Every time the ailing 80-year-old played his cello, his arthritic fingers flexed with new life, nimbly making the bow flit, fly, vibrate over the strings; and his emphysema, a breathing disorder, disappeared as he breathed freely in the joy of creating music.
Ah yes, creativity is the inner genius that stimulates yet calms. Psychologists believe it evokes and uses dormant healing powers by compelling the hormone-producing endocrine gland to function optimally. No surprises here because creativity’s natural urge is to bring order to chaos, make sense of things that baffle and restore living to life.
In my book, creativity isn’t just a spark, but an entire healing experience: It begins with the big bang of anticipation as we venture into the mystical… Once into the creative act, poof! we transform into this gifted Great, infusing our uniqueness into the prose, prelude, painting, poem… Concentration shuts out the world.
Contentment spreads, fulfillment flowers. Time stands still for the soul even as it accelerates on the clock. Deep absorption chases away self-pity, loneliness, boredom, aches, ailments, inflammations… Confidence climbs. Fresh waves of well-being surge. From the fullness of a glad heart, accepting others becomes easier. And petulance, resentment, depression, low self-esteem? Gone! Life brims with meaning.
So awesome is creativity’s power that in its vast embrace, you can break all the rules yet keep all the laws. In its boundless freedom, you repeatedly create health, constantly re-invent yourself.
That’s why, never say “I’m not creative.” Everybody is. You were a child artist. Every child is an artist. Don’t let adulthood rob that. If you painted faces on the clouds then, you can paint them now too. Aver, “I’m creative.” Sketch stick figures, cartoons… Doodle swirling balls of dust. The crayon beckons…
Similarly, if that inner voice cries, “I can’t write”, sit down and…write! Put your feelings into words. Pen a letter to a beloved child. Explore your ideas on paper however crazy, outlandish, even outrageous! Take a leaf of faith from Lewis Caroll’s, “Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Believe and… w-r-i-t-e. That inner voice then becomes your loudest cheerleader.
Ah no, don’t let a small, irrelevant thing like, “I’m not good enough’ restrain you. Shrug good-humouredly, “So what?” and do it. There’s no ‘bad’, only different versions. Besides, it’s Salvador Dali’s irreverent, “Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it!” that makes masters of mice.
Also, please recognise worry for what it is — under-utilised, stagnant creative energy. Free it. Take worry for long walks. Freud, Beethoven, Einstein did that and gifted us this liberating profound truth: “It is never crowded along that extra mile.”
You’re special; take care of yourself. Drink 1.5-2 litres of water; eat balanced meals — the brain needs its fluid-and -glucose-fix. Read, research, write prolifically. Find beauty where others find ugliness.
Tell stories. Select five words and compose a poem using them. Re-frame an unpleasant situation — make it pleasant. As Maya Angelou says, “A solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.” Do old things in new ways. Tweak, add, subtract…
And never stop learning. To say, “I don’t know, tell me” opens up new worlds, revelations. As Edward Cayce, the ‘Sleeping Prophet’ said, “You don’t go to heaven, you grow to heaven.” Amen to that.