Following my divorce I established an art glass gallery and studio and the business is growing steadily. Now that I’m earning my living as an artist I need to put a fee on my work that compensates me more accurately for my time. In this valuation process I begin to track the time I spend on various projects. After tallying the time involved in the many steps, I realize there is an unaccounted amount of time spent in the mental process. Mulling over, choosing, and changing ideas, anticipating problems, exploring subject, shape, color — working and reworking in the creative imagination.
In fact, I discover, the time spent in the imagination is usually as much as the time spent with the hands. I see that the thought process is crucial to the outcome of the work. It almost seems that they are imagined into being. Very interesting.
This makes me wonder how it works in the rest of my life — how my daily thoughts affect the outcome of my physical daily life. “In fact,” I wonder, “what on earth am I thinking about all the time?”
So. I spend the next three days trying to see what I’m thinking. I make notes in my journal. It’s not easy noticing every thought — one leads to another, mutating rapidly. Many thoughts are just pictures of information, others more like abstract feelings, but over the three days many pages are filled.
What I discover is this: Here it is! It’s all here in my thoughts — my whole life. Especially the past and the future. And it is very clear why my present is like it is. The fearful, boring, narrow aspects of my life are all laid out there in my fearful, narrow, boring thoughts. It’s a total match!
As I read through the days of written thoughts certain patterns emerge. Thoughts that recur frequently are especially illuminating because they are more intense, less conscious, and many of them are quite limiting. Lots of worries and fears and mediocrity. There isn’t much there that’s innovative, playful, exciting, or even very uplifting. Exactly like my life.
Recently divorced, without job experience or skills, and struggling financially, I’m not able to have my children with me; they live with their father. This is a source of great anxiety and grief for me and it haunts my thoughts. I fearfully wonder when or how I will have a place for us. Now I can tell exactly when — it is repeated again and again in my notes — “When I can afford it I’m going to have a place for us to live.” So it’s obvious when I’ll have a better place — when I can afford it.
That thought is defining my reality in a way I definitely d i s l i ke. There might be a lot of time between now and “affording i t”; I don’t want to wait. So I start applying the same thought process that I use in my artwork to create other options. I begin to think about other ways to have sufficient housing so I can have my children with me — house-s i t t i n g, elderly care, low-income housing, apartment management, roommates. I play with these ideas, choosing and refining, growing excited and hopeful. Very soon I have a far better situation. More and more I am applying this to other areas of my thoughts — to my fears, needs, perceptions. My life is beginning to improve dramatically.
We are thinking.
What are we thinking?
Try keeping track of your thoughts; they will surprise you. Keep a log for a period of days and see what you are saying to yourself all the time. Another interesting way to do this is to choose a time during which you say everything out loud that you are thinking. I recommend that you choose a time when you are alone, unless you want others to assume you have gone mad. Unless you are on the streets of New York, in which case you may talk out loud and others may think you mad but will pay little attention. As you speak all of your thoughts you will be surprised how very like a madman you seem when you actually listen to all the drivel and nonsense and fear and fantasy and repetition you are going on about constantly.
Listening to your thoughts will bring a consciousness to them. Learning to think more creatively will change your life. My creativity has shaped my personality and my life. My father was an alcoholic and this consumed the energies of our family. In my parents’ attempt to protect us from the substance abuse, the alcoholism was hidden, resulting in confusion and fear. They also had little energy for our emotional needs, and my sister and four brothers and I experienced many difficult and lonely years. My creativity, along with my deep faith in life and the solace of nature, were the means I used to cope, to heal and grow and, eventually, to radically change my life. It was my good fortune that I was raised in an environment where creativity and innovation were not only valued, they were necessary for survival.
Innovation and creative application, even eccentricity, were in fact very common in the frontier Alaska of my youth. There were many unusual characters in my childhood. I recall a man whose daily attire was worn and soiled tuxedos. His fingernails, filled with dirt, were nearly three inches long and curved like those of a Chinese sage. He was a gifted pianist who had fled the expectations of his family and the pressures of the classical concert circuit. One old-timer that we called “chicken man” lived with his beloved chickens in a tiny tree house that had plastic windows and a rope to haul supplies inside. There was another man who lived underground — you entered his subterranean dirt dwelling by opening and stepping down into an old refrigerator lying in his yard. Not all early settlers to Alaska were so eccentric, but they all were courageous, creative, and adventuresome people willing to leave convention behind and create anew. Their spirit of courage and innovation was an important example to me.
I loved music and art as a child, but there were few opportunities in school, so I pursued my own creative interests. I filled many notebooks with sketches, poetry, and stories to satisfy and develop my creativity. I thought a great deal about making my life my artwork. It was an idea planted at the time of my twelfth birthday by the unique Indian visitor who stayed with us, as related in the story “Make Space for Magic.” This idea that my life is my own creative project has had much to do with my survival, growth, and my success.
The most interesting thing about art is that it can be done. An artist moves back and forth between the seen and unseen worlds, between the tangible and intangible, wresting a mere idea into physi-cal form — a book, or song, a poem, movie, play, painting, a life. Again and again the artist goes into the abstract world of ideas and comes back with concrete forms — becoming adept in the process. It is this familiarity and skill that have power: knowing how to ground a dream into this reality, to actualize it. They learn to imagine powerfully. Artists learn to allow ideas and beliefs to change, expand, contract. They become proficient at finding the right question to move their idea forward. They learn to reroute around apparent obstacles, finding options where none seemed to exist. They learn persistence and discipline. Artists have an ability to incubate ideas over time, waiting for the right moment. They know how to think creatively, uniquely if need be, to be inventive. The artist is able to surrender completely to creation, becoming aware of nothing else. Creativity is a dynamic energy, contracting and expanding. This vigor is available to the artist.
Frequently artists have admirable abilities to shift context; their creativity and discipline are great assets in the process. They are able to reroute, conceive anew, and overcome limitations, changing the context of their requirements and their projects until they are accomplished. They identify with a far broader range of options, emotions, and potential that form their context of living. They remain much more fluid in their perspective, identity, and context.
This is a most helpful group of skills to have. These tools, applied courageously to one’s life, are the keys to the prison door. They are the keys to freedom. Throughout history tyrants have suppressed, exiled, and murdered artists because of their ability to question, think, vision, change, and create, and for their power to stimulate these qualities in others. These tools have a powerful ability to change lives and societies.
There are few abilities as important and powerful as the creative process. The abilities of the creative person are absolutely key to prosperity; no one with a richly provident life lacks these tools. Without access to a creative process we are vastly diminished in our ability to experience the glory of life and we are also more prone to plodding, difficult, or confined lives. How many times does someone say, “Oh I’m not creative at all. I don’t have a creative bone in my body. I’m no artist.” Absolutely false. Without exception, every single human being has an innate creativity. In fact we are here, in part, to exercise that creativity.
We do not need to have ability or interest in “the arts” to develop and use this process; we need only begin to apply our innate creativity to the context of our emotions, our thoughts, and our circumstances. Becoming the artistic, creative force in our own life is one of the most important, productive, and fun commitments we can make. We do not need to be artists in the formal sense of one with “talent” in the arts. Not at all. Each one of us is already crafting our life, though perhaps unconsciously. Bringing a fuller measure of creativity and consciousness to that process is something we are all capable of. If we are to do more than survive, to become fully provident, we must bring these qualities into our dayto-day existence.
I’m only five and I don’t know what to do. Every night I’m afraid to go to sleep. Bear will get me. Bear comes in my sleep and chases and chases me. Each time Bear gets closer and closer as I run, until his huge jaw yawns around my little head. I smell his bad bear breath and feel his spit dripping on my scalp. Waking terrified, I lie sleepless, crying and listening to my fast-thumping heartbeat. This happens night after night until I can’t stand it anymore.
I pray and pray to know what to do, how to get rid of Bear. I get an idea: in my next dream about Bear I am going to turn around and holler at him to leave me alone and get out of my dreams. That night I wake frightened and crying like usual. The next night Bear chases me again, and the next night too. But finally one night I remember in my dream to stop and stare him down and I holler at him angrily, “Get out of here, Bear, this is my dream. Go away and never come back!” I’m surprised because Bear stops and says he is my friend and to prove it he will give me a gift, he will be my helper. Then I wake up but I’m not scared, I’m excited. I did it!
Soon I start kindergarten and I like it a lot until something really bad happens. One of the big boys from the high school starts following me after class every afternoon. At first he just follows me and doesn’t say anything. Then he starts to say things to me I don’t understand and I feel scared. Then he starts to follow closer, each day a little closer behind me. He talks to me saying he’s going to hurt me. He says that if I tell anybody he will kill my family. Now I’m so scared and every day I start to get sick to my stomach when it’s time for class to end. I put my coat and boots on very slowly hoping he will go away, but he’s always there, following me. I can hardly breathe and I feel like my heart will burst I’m so afraid. I don’t know what to do. Then I remember Bear. He said he would be my friend so I ask him to help me. I decide I’m going to have to do the same thing again, face the boy and holler at him to get away. It is the only thing I can think to do. The next day after school I try to do it but I can’t make my voice work. So I think, “Okay, tomorrow then.” But that day I’m too scared again. Each day I try but I just can’t do it.
After a few days, he is following so close that he shoves and pushes at me and I am crying and he’s being really mean and I can’t stand it anymore and I turn around to him and clench my fists by my side and poke my chin out and holler at him really mean and angry. I’m surprised at what I say: “Get away from me! I don’t care what you do, you can kill me and everyone, I don’t care. And I’m going to tell my biggest brother and he’s a boxer and really tough and he’ll come and find you and beat you up!” Suddenly the boy looks frightened, then he turns slowly and leaves. I never see him again. I feel so free, like I can fly. I’m glad Bear came in my dreams so I would know what to do.
Courage is required to create dramatic change in one’s life. Sometimes it is necessary to let go of all that you think is safety and comfort in order for providence to move into your life. Courage I have in plenty, but I gained it by acting courageously in spite of fear, and that is the essence of courage. My first memory of courage is the dream of Bear, facing him down. I then applied that to the young man who was threatening me in kindergarten. Even though I felt terrified I couldn’t stand to go on any longer as things were.
It is first helpful to own and appreciate the fear instead of avoiding it. The fear is a flag, a gift really, showing us an area where — by overcoming it — we can gain considerable personal power. We lose focus and energy to every area of fear and pain that we give ourselves to. When we heal and move beyond our fears, we gain use of the energy required to hide or compensate for them.
We can then realize that while the fear is real it is also true that what we fear is like a mirage rising off the heat of a past or projected pain or experience. At the root of fear is usually a memory of the past or a projection into the future. Even when the fear is before us it is still our own perceptions and actions that determine the outcome. Our perspective and beliefs about it give us our range of choices and determine how we respond in the situation and whether we remain victim to fear.
To gain courage we must act — especially when we are deeply afraid. It is courageous when you change a habit, take a new direction, are deeply truthful and compassionate with yourself or another, when you act true to your values. It was an act of courage when I determined to get on my feet after divorce, to take charge of my health, and when I began to follow the voice of my soul rather than outside advice. Again and again I learned that when I took action I was able to move beyond my fear and became free of it. And even more, I brought home the gifts, the trophies and victories of fear. Repeating this process frequently, my courage has grown and I have developed a discipline and strength, a pride and self-trust that now form a powerful platform for my dreams. I highly recommend the courageous journey into fear. There really is nothing to lose. Welcome all your fears. Know them intimately. This will free you to live an abundant life.
This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival —
A joy, a depression, a meanness —
Some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows
Who violently sweep your house
empty of its comforts.
Still, treat each guest honorably
He may be cleaning you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice —
Meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes
Because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.