Creativity Essay Reliable Creativity by Silvia Hartmann

Essay

Reliable Creativity

by Silvia Hartmann

Reliable Creativity? What do you make of it when first you come across it? Those two words seem at odds, as though reliability is in conflict with the very core of the processes of creativity, which need to be spontaneous in order to be real.

Well, that's what we are led to believe.

It seems that there is a factor of unpredictability built into the structure of a great many concepts and activities, such as love, romance, creativity, luck, fortune, and their likes - they are lightning strikes, aren't they? Coming from a clear blue sky? Without warning, the muses swoop down upon the unwitting artist, and the thrashing throes of uncontrolled and uncontrollable outbursts of insanity, oops, creativity produce this amazing work of art in the end ...

Or our good friend Cupid, who is anywhere and everywhere and whose arrows may pierce your heart and cause you to fall in love with a tramp in the park, or perhaps a motor car, or your nanny's high heeled shoes, but then they call you a fetishist - ah never mind, it wasn't your fault, was it. You can't DO anything about falling in love, out of control, screaming insanely, just like you fall off a mountain side or a very high building ...

Consider the man who puts carefully in his diary, "Monday afternoon from 4pm to 5pm. Buy bunch of flowers and be romantic."

Oh no!

THAT is not romance!

Romance is ... ahm ... well, you KNOW! When it just happens, totally spontaneously, you didn't see it coming, it was just there, you didn't have to do ANYTHING to make the magic, just lie back and soak it up, sink away into that dream ...

Yeah? You didn't DO anything? So what's with that champagne there in the cooler? Why are you wearing that dress? Those shoes? Who ordered the dozen red roses? And WHAT are we doing in the Blushing Bridal suite of the Romantic Moon Hotel for newlyweds?

I mean, if it's all so spontaneous and just happens, why can't we be in our usual get up down at the local cafe? It?ll happen there just as well, surely?

"You're just a cynic!" the young lady sobs, then starts shouting at me, "You're totally unromantic! You just DON'T UNDERSTAND ...."

As I turn and walk into the night, and the stars are out and if one just looks up high enough, real high, all those bugging lights from the town just really disappear and things become far clearer all around, far more beautiful and realistic too, it strikes me that not being in control of one's own experiences of romance and creativity is just the tip of the iceberg of wasted lives and so much disappointment, you could drown a whale in it.

I wonder just how many women across the ages sat in their huts, hovels, castles, appartments, picket fenced houses and on the side of the road and they were waiting.

Waiting for the knight in shining armour who would set them free, who would take them away from all of that, who would transform their lives and their emotions into other states as never known before, who would make it happen that they would have a chance at a real life, a meaningful life, the kind you know, they write songs about or plays.

I wonder just how many people across the ages bought their lottery tickets, much for the same reason as the sighing ladies from the mist of time above, and sat down right next to them and also waited, for their boat to come in, for their time to come, for that moment when it all came right, when life really started, when it all became real.

It seems to me that such lives are much like pergatory, an endless waiting room where one may strike up a conversation with a fellow traveller here and there, just words really, there is no need or even point in making a relationship because any moment now, the announcer will say that the train has arrived, and we will board and we?ll be out of here at last, and the journey has finally begun.

The journey that will take us past the shining rivers and the high grey mountains, the endless grasslands with their multitude of creatures, the splendid deserts and enchanted forests, and finally the train will stop and we step off the last rung and upon the waiting soil of home and here and now.

And there, in that most promised land, we will live happily ever after, with our prince, or with the queen who waited there for us; we will create great works that are beloved and received with jubilation for their beauty and their truth and our contributions are the pure wind that will raise the spiral of our people's evolution higher and then higher still, until as one we soar ...

Aaahhhh ...

Just take a deep breath and consider this.

If you enjoyed the vision I created there or if there was a single part of you who yearned for that, who wanted THAT so badly that it cries itself to sleep in homesickness and loss each night again and yet again, then I would have you know that all these things are not a dream, but they exist and they are HERE AND NOW for you and me and everyone who wants to make their lives come out of mothballs, have the dust brushed off and make their way to festival, to feast or battle, for it matters not; the key is in aliveness and endeavour, fully lived and fully now experienced.

There is a single magic spell that ends the waiting.

It is quite simple and indeed, we'll wonder how we never thought to notice that before; and that, quite in and of itself, of course is nothing but an affirmation that indeed, it is correct, for the most useful and profound discoveries are always that - immensely simple, if you know them, and so elegant, it really is a balm to storm tossed souls who had despaired amidst the human chaos for a lifetime.

And here it is - there is no need for waiting.

A dog, a cat, an ant or any tree would be quite at a loss as what to do with such a notion as our romance, or our creativity, indeed.

These things or should I say experiences are ours because of consciousness - we become *conscious* of the fact that we're having a particularly good time at the time.

It is a state shift and a moment of awakening, and stepping into different modes of being and experiencing THE SAME familiar beach, the same familiar song, the same familiar man or woman, child or creature, cloud or hill - we do our romance all just by ourselves, it is within, and not without.

And therein lies the key to all the kingdoms and the fruitful lands, all the treasures contained within their castles and even to the golden dragons which are guarding these.

The fact is that it is our job to step into creativity, into romance. Into love and into abundance. It can come to us no more than a lake may arise to give us that swimming feeling we were waiting for so long; it can come to us no more than the forests or the mountains at the far horizon for which we are yearn will manifest inside your bedroom overnight.

When this is known and understood, a turning does occur; a turning round from waiting and such helplessness to one of active exploration, that of asking other travellers if they have a map, or heard a tale that might give US a clue just what to do next, and where to turn our fully focussed, single minded deep attention, that most magical of all devices which will reveal far more than what is really happening inside a drop of water, or on the furthest, most distant star of all.

© Silvia Hartmann 2004