Releasing creativity

My body has adopted itself and it has gone to protect my creativity as a soldier would hide deeply in a bunker.

Imagine being a coal miner. Your job is to go beneath the surface of the Earth, a hundred feet or more, and to descend into a dark pit. Equipped with a tiny plastic hardhat you work in fear of the millions of tons of rock that might fall onto your head. This is exactly how it has felt for me to excavate my creativity.

I am not a coal miner’s son. These conditions are dangerous and frankly it feels abusive. Even the air in the coalmine is polluted with coal dust and toxic gases. Digging into creativity has felt completely unsafe.

My feeling unsafe is a false notion, because no longer are there monsters lurking in the dark pits hoping for another chance to take my creativity. They are all gone – except the memories. These thoughts are haunting and they are recorded in my mind like a slow motion scene. Most of all, my body has adopted itself and it has gone to protect my creativity as a soldier would hide deeply in a bunker.

I didn’t know it, but my body has created a net of fibrous tissue –fascia- all around my sacral area. It has affected the way I stand and walk, but I’ve been unaware. I didn’t notice my body’s layer of protection until I ran. I hurt, but abusively, I pushed myself forward anyway.

Crawling underground, looking for my creativity, in inhumane conditions seemed normal. And whenever I would strike it rich, those in authority would steal my precious discovery. Enslaved, I have given away my creativity as if I had to. I have been indentured to this pattern.

Like a coalminer who gets black lung disease, my body has had enough, and the fascia net around my sacral area has knitted so tightly it resembles the fabric used to make bulletproof vests. No projectiles can penetrate this fortress but all this protection has been costly. My body is rejecting my desire to run forward, and unless this is released, it will impair all my forward movement.

Dangerously, I have crawled into the pit that I have learned so much to hate. It has been too torturous to visit these feelings and values that formed the mission and my cause to protect. I tell myself it’s safe to create and my body reacts as if its propaganda from the abusers who would use dark psychology to get what they want. I know better but my body still reacts in fear.

I have to trust, but I feel stupid even considering this thought based upon my self-created experiences that scream I shouldn’t. Painfully, I crawl forward determined to free my fears while my body wretches and goes into shock based upon what’s remembered. I inch forward focused on finishing what I have started. All I want, is to free my creativity.

Occasionally, outside the pit, I look around and observe others who walk uprightly, instead of crawling in fear as I am. They are without concern, and I don’t understand how they make it look so easy, as if excavating creativity isn’t even more dangerous than coal mining. I am not sure how they do it. I try to observe how to allow, and open myself, to what has felt so unsafe, and again my body reacts in severe discomfort of what I have made comfortable.

This is a clue, a significant one, that I have reinforced this thought to make something painful, tolerable. Sheepishly, I open up to the pain. Like a fire, everything that I’ve held deep in the deep dark pit comes reeling to the surface and it burns my skin again. This is what I’ve been afraid of. But something is different. The fire, which directly represents my anger, does appear, but it doesn’t burn.

Or at least, not like it once did. Gaining a little more confidence, even though I am emotionally exhausted, I go again into the pit and release my fires of protection. I rest in sleep, and when I awake I feel better. I can feel movement; pulsations -even life- again in my sacral.

My creativity is alive, but like a child who is severely malnourished as a result of severe neglect, I will need to be patient to strengthen my sacral and creative energy that is so starved. My whole body feels agonizing, especially in this region, as I feel myself unfold. It feels so uncomfortable and raw and I feel more exposed than walking down a busy city street naked. I am reminded not to try and make that which has been so uncomfortable, comfortable and to let my creativity breathe.

My mind races again uttering all the rules of protection that I’ve created to prevent such a breach. I still feel enormously unprotected, like a naked walk of shame. I feel guilt and embarrassment. I feel small.

Ultimately, I determine to continue to allow myself to do anything to revive the boy who is trapped inside. It was he, the eleven year old, that started the process of protection as a means to survive. These thoughts and reasons no longer exist and like Harry Potter locked underneath the stairwell of a Muggle’s home, I must release him into the world of magic, where he belongs.

I am deeply concerned that letting my creativity out will change everything. It is a radical shift. It’s what I want. However, I know I can’t maintain or hold onto any constraining thoughts or structure that doesn’t serve me.

Tapping into my creativity, in some ways, has been much harder than letting my spiritual self emerge. I understand the dangers, and the stories, and experiences that I’ve created to support this perspective but they’re leaving. I won’t be hosting a party as they go – I will simply say goodbye.

I have determined to let her, my creativity out. She wants to bare her soul and it’s only appropriate that there is enormous space where she can play. I recognize that I have altered the gender in identifying my creativity, from a boy to a girl, but this is fitting because my creativity, doesn’t want to be pushed around by the male dominance of what it “should do.”

I have drawn something, that I didn’t plan to share, but it feels appropriate now. She is exposed, she is without clothes, and thankfully, she doesn’t care. She stares at me, as she stares at you, in splendor of what might happen next. You might still see some fear but there’s also a deep sense of passion.

I don’t think my creativity will get me into trouble. I can see her purity and innocence. Maybe there’s a reason I created her from charcoal, the same substance as the black coal mined from the pit. She may have coal dust in her lungs but I intend to let her be. In every sense, she deserves to come out, into the light, and as a good parent to myself, I intend to give her a new home where it is really safe to express.

I intend to feed her that she wouldn’t look so skinny and frail. I will love her, in ways the scared little boy couldn’t allow. She looks at me and I look at her. I wonder what she will do in her new place. I wonder how she will change my world as we go forward.

In many ways, I wholeheartedly hope you haven’t understood a word I’ve written, but if you can relate to releasing your creativity, then my sharing is with purpose. Creativity isn’t unique to the artist as every body is given access to this same energy. It is in your sacral, as you are designed to; feel, enjoy pleasure, appreciate sexual energy, and to interrelate with others. Look again at the drawing; look deeply into her eyes, maybe she’s staring at you too, asking you to let out your creativity.