Remember the part of us that needs healing is not the part we create from; that part is far deeper and stronger.
-Steven Pressfield
I read this in The War of Art and stopped on the page for a minute. Reached for a utensil to underline the passage.
It strikes the same chord that calls out the fallacy of the tortured artist. Pain is not creativity. Pain is pain.
Creativity – creation – is far deeper and stronger.
I like the image of a core self beyond emotion and daily experience; a tight ball of light and pearl in our consciousness that is a gift and protector. And it remains there, untouchable and incorruptible, for energy and identity if we only remember to reach for it.
Like the idea of the blue sky in meditation. The climate may appear rough, but there is always the blue sky above the storm clouds. A constant for our mind to rest if we can only quiet our mind.
The part of us that needs healing does need healing. Yet that is not the part we create from. That part is far deeper and stronger. That is who we are if we find the courage to act, to be, to embrace our power. (Recall what Marianne Williamson said, “our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”)
I’ve used the part of me that needs healing for creation; I’ve wound myself in circles writing about the present and surfaced pain I felt. And in writing it, stayed in it. Fueling pain into poetry can have a pretty ring to it, but there’s no sustenance there. When I revisit those poems I am starving all over again.
I stopped writing because I wanted to write about joy. My creativity felt poisoned; I couldn’t find that pearl of self. It was clouded by too much wine and the colossal weight of feeling very sorry for myself. It was tearing my writing apart and I couldn’t separate the part of me that needed healing and the part I create from.
I don’t know if I have yet.
The only way out is through. It’s easier, in these cloudless days, to let the blue sky into my heart.
With Love,
Natalie