Human
Just as you have been going through a process of personal evolution through this book, so the human brain has been evolving over generations. As our species learns and grows, those lessons are reflected in the size, shape, structure, and function of the brain. Human brains are the only ones that have a highly developed neocortex—this part of the brain wraps around the hind- and midbrains and is characterized by many folds (sulci)—and prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for personality expression, planning, anticipating outcomes, and other complex cognitive processes. The brain is not the only thing that makes us human.
Humans, along with a handful of other animals, express altruism (seemingly selfless care for one another), shame, and rituals. We have social codes and complex language, including written symbols. Despite our ability to foresee outcomes and plan ahead, we mess things up all the time and have the ability to feel badly about it and learn from it. We go through a similar learning curve with our creative expression: visualize an outcome, go through the process, wind up dissatisfied with the end result. This is where our higher reason can interfere with our creative endeavors. Let the following exercise help you hearken back to your simpler, mammalian habits as you enjoy the present moment and create without shame.
Exercise: Let It Be Awful: Creating for Creation’s Sake
You have permission to dream … and make really bad art. Really bad. Like, what were you thinking?! Because those initial pieces of truthful expression are important, no matter how they look. Be playful! Let the process be the key aspect of this, not the outcome.
Step 1: Settle into a reclined relaxation posture. Deepen your breath; allow the surface to hold you as you release layers of tension. Turn up the corners of your mouth and soften your eyeballs behind their closed lids. Notice your personal process of releasing tension; how do you unwind and let go of those areas?
Step 2: Create something you never have before. Use a new medium, style, or subject. Witness the nay-sayer as you might in a mindfulness practice: letting it wash over you without attending it. Focus, instead, on the creative act itself.
Step 3: When you are finished, no matter how it turned out, feel a sense of achievement for having endeavored. The victory was in taking action, not in the outcome.
This is a truth that I hope you can carry through each creation you attempt. Create for creation’s sake—for the purpose of doing. Trust yourself and your vision and know that your output is one marker on an entire process of becoming.
Connecting with the creative soul is a course we cycle through again and again. An important aspect of that cycle is the poor or not-pretty things that come out of us. Stay playful, experiment, and relax as you just let it be awful.
Change Your Brain, Change Your Life
Like making art in a new way, our attempts at personal change are often clumsy and ugly. We used to be taught that we had a set number of brain cells and when we killed them, that was it—they were gone! We now know that the brain is genuinely plastic and total change is more possible for us. The brain can change shape and size in different areas and build new pathways within itself. Neuroplasticity gives us hope even if something has gone terribly wrong for the brain—there is corrective action we can take in cases of brain injury or stroke. This holds true on smaller levels too, such as rewiring old pains and learning new behaviors.
Research shows that meditation thickens parts of the brain associated with the areas responsible for our ability to reflect upon and offer meaning to the past, project into the future, strategize, and have greater compassion and empathy. As discussed above, these are parts of the brain that set us apart from most other animals.
What we focus on becomes real to us in deeper and more precise ways. What we do not focus on remains unobserved and parts of the brain responsible for noticing it will not develop as much as areas we attend to. In this way, we rehearse our emotional and relational habits and get very adept at feeling and perceiving basically the same way day after day. We have the same routines and beliefs repeating themselves within us on an almost continual basis. We automatically follow the same path in the brain again and again because it is the habit.
Cultivating new emotional habits and transforming underlying beliefs forge new neuronal connections. At first, we have to focus on making the change. When we catch ourselves repeating old habits, thinking in patterned ways, or rehearsing beliefs that no longer serve us, we higher-thinking humans have the choice to consciously redirect. When you identify the person you wish to become, be it happier, more artistic, calmer, etc., and dedicate yourself in small, meaningful ways to practice being that person, your brain will eventually rewire itself to comply with that personal vision and intention.
Being Human
Despite our best intentions and most committed practice, we still slip away from our ideal vision of ourselves. We become mean or worried; we fail at things that are important to us. It is validating to know that even joyful people feel anger, sadness, and fear. Even spiritual people can behave like jerks. Every human is human!
Exercise: Gaining Inspiration from Dark Emotions
A thriving, creative person views these commonly uncomfortable emotions and lapses in excellence as fuel and inspiration, so even in the darkest places, there is a hint of delight. This exercise gives you a template to live into that truth.
Step 1: Have a bad day. You don’t need to make that happen just so you can complete this exercise. Live a normal life—bad days happen. When you catch one, either because of a current situation, hormonal shifts, or trauma resurfacing, come back to this exercise and use that darkness as a creative force.
Step 2: Express the darkness in your own fashion. It may come out as images, melodies, or words. Allow it to flow from you; it may be intense. Do not interfere with its process. Judgment has no place here. The darkness has its own presence and intelligence. Let it out.
Step 3 (optional): Relax or care for yourself in a healthy way, such as deep breathing, a walk, or one of the exercises in this book.
Step 4: Review your work. What does it say to you? What is the unmet need and are you able to cultivate that quality? If there were a moral to its story, what might it be?
Step 5: Create a piece that is a response to your expressed darkness. You may choose the same medium or create with different materials. What do you want to say, convey, or offer to that darker part?
Now that you have expressed, witnessed, and acknowledged a darker or painful aspect, is there a shift within you? Once we externalize held pain, we open closed places. Depending upon your history, this truth may not be evident at first. Whenever you approach gloom, overwhelm, or despair you can repeat this exercise. In time, you will experience a lightening. When that happens, you may bask in openness or consciously fill those places with divine qualities and self-assurance.
Be aware that you do not get caught in a dark, brooding way of being. Although we may be genetically, chemically, or behaviorally predisposed, depression is not our natural state. It’s human to feel that way sometimes. Continue applying the principles of this book to channel your painful experiences and emotions into self-expression while remembering that your creative essence is divinely joyful. It’s okay when we’re human; it’s lovely when we’re divine.
Human Condition
As humans, we are more alike than different. Your sadness feels the same as the sadness of those in other countries. The way you feel about your children is basically the same as parents who have completely different customs and beliefs. We all get hungry, tired, and sad. When you laugh, it’s similar to the uplifting release I feel when I laugh. Most of us enjoy sneezing and abhor hiccups. Humans around the world have similar wants, needs, and emotions.
Our commonality is one of the reasons we travel the world to engage with the art of other humans. Books are translated into many languages. Music moves us to tears. Even in lineages well outside our own culture or from completely different times, art offers powerful reflections of the human condition. Yoga tradition teaches that we are one. Society teaches that we are separate, resources are limited, and we must compete with one another. Such programming keeps us feeling isolated and impoverished.
Human behavior studies reveal that stimuli in our environment, such as words on billboards and song lyrics, even when we are not paying attention to them, affect how we feel and treat one another. Watch or listen to the first sixty seconds of a news report and then read that sentence again. What are the implications? The mainstream world around us seems to be set up to keep us separate and afraid; in other words, living into our base, reptilian nature rather than putting effort toward our uplifted, creative one.
Now that you are awake to this idea, you may sense the world with a different kind of discernment. You are more likely to notice the negative programming that appeals to the inner lizard and keeps us selfish and separate. You will perceive humor that is more mean than witty, political messages more frightening than informative. From this discernment, you will cull your environment, choosing that which feeds and inspires uplifting action and true self-expression. In order to stay connected to the creative essence, we must be in a place of safety, self-connection, and inspiration.
Most folks go through life loving one another … unless they cut us off in traffic or say something unkind behind our backs. Then all bets are off. We are creative, peaceful, and compassionate until we aren’t. With established spiritual practice and some creative thinking, we are able to perceive that maybe we got cut off because we were driving slowly in the fast lane, or that person had a family emergency we don’t know about, or their own egoism makes them drive like a maniac. What that person gossiped about us had a grain of truth—we can work on those things in ourselves. They spoke unkindly because they think unkindly—of themselves, that is. Projection is a thing. The next exercise lets you work on it a bit.
Exercise: Why Is That Guy Such a Jerk?!: Understanding Your Triggers
Carl Jung taught us about our “shadows.” Not the dark patch on the ground that walks with us on sunny days; this kind of shadow is the psychological dumping ground of all human aspects we don’t like to see within ourselves. This exercise helps you identify your shadow so you are less likely to see it—and hate it—in others. The more we accept all aspects of ourselves, the more compassion we can offer to others who are also living out their humanness.
Step 1: Who really bugs you? It may be a sibling, coworker, or person at the car dealership’s service desk.
Step 2: What bugs you about that person? Write down as many traits as you can think of. If no one person bugs you, you can just make a general list of things you don’t like about other people.
Step 3: Get really, really curious. In what ways do you possess each of those attributes you listed? Even though you don’t like to admit it—you have worked hard to distance yourself from those traits—notice how you actually have them in some way … Hey, man, don’t project your resistance on to me. I am not the one who discovered this universal truth. Stay curious and you will perceive how it is so.
To answer the question in the title of this exercise, that guy is a jerk because we are all jerks. It’s human nature. As creative souls, we have the ability to transcend that human nature. You are equipped to perceive alternative reasons and realities and you have the internal resources to use others’ hurtful behavior to fuel your inspiration. In this way, you transmute their poison into medicine and move in the direction of unitive consciousness. I once heard the Dalai Lama speak of burning others’ karma for them, through our own compassion and nonattachment. That is a deep form of service to humanity and requires great purity and connection to one’s true Self. The following exercise gives you tools to stay connected to your essential Self, even in times of interpersonal strife.
Exercise: Burning Karma through Neutral Awareness or the Virtue of Joy
Before embarking upon the steps of this exercise, let’s do a quick karma refresher. Earlier in this book we spoke of karma as a path of service and effort, guided by personal purpose, or dharma. Karma indicates the action and its fruit, or outcome. Despite pop culture’s quest for “good karma,” we are truly seeking no karma and wish to burn off the karma we have already accrued. You can check out some of the yoga books in this book’s recommended reading list for more information about this concept.
Step 1: Be karma-free. Just kidding—many cultures believe that as long as you have a body it is proof that you are not free from the residue of your previous actions. However, if you can accept circumstances and the people involved as they come, you are on a strong path to freedom. Do your best to perceive all people and situations as neutral, noting it is only our projections of right, wrong, and wanting that give them a charge. As you hold this state of equanimity, you limit the amount of karma incurred.
Step 2: Enter a situation you find happy or exciting. Do your best to maintain this accepting, compassionate, neutral perspective. Using the mindful awareness approach from previous chapters, witness the ways in which you lose equanimity. What triggers your excitement? Can you discern the difference between the limited emotion of happiness and the pervasive virtue of joy? In this step, you may allow a sense of joy to flow through you, noticing that it does not impact neutrality. Joy is a virtue, like compassion, benevolence, and generosity. Like each divine quality, there is joy available in all things.
Joy In All Things
When we are being our true selves, living in alignment with a vision of what is best and real for us, answering to our own authority rather than programming and “shoulds,” a sense of joy arises. Joy is qualitatively different from happiness. There is a come-down from happiness, a perception of lack once it is gone. We may feel sad that we are no longer happy. Joy, on the other hand, is available to us in even the darkest of moments. The following exercise can help get you in touch with that.
Exercise: Getting In Touch with Joy
This exercise guides you through a process of moving through emotions to discover joy. This process takes you beyond your verbal processing and asks you to trust yourself. Let your memories, body, and imagination guide you.
Step 1: Consider a time when you have felt deeply despairing, alone, or hopeless. You may be moving through such a difficulty in your life even now. Let your eyes close as you set your body in comfort and put yourself back to that time. You may imagine yourself in it, as if it were happening now, or watch it like a movie.
Step 2: Observe the physical feelings that occur alongside this grief. Where does it live in your body? How does it make you breathe? What happens to the quality and content of the thoughts moving through your mind during that dark time?
Step 3: Select a song that consistently makes you cry. Alternatively, you may select a song that accompanies the phase you are remembering. Let the song be appropriately despairing and play it as you select five colors of crayon, pencil, pastel, or paint. Do not overthink the color selection.
Step 4: Continuing to play the sad song on repeat and holding your connection to the memory of hopelessness, use your nondominant hand to express the emotions. Let your body be a conduit for feelings, so that each stroke or swipe at the page is an emotional representation. Be truthful in this action by not thinking about how to express. Your body already knows how to say what is. Get out of its way. If you start to think, tune in to the song instead, allowing all of your wandering thoughts to merge with the music. Your nondominant hand fills the page with shape and color, not for the sake of art or beauty, but for truth.
Step 5: When you feel done, or have expressed what your body wished to, put the page facedown or cover the canvas and spend five to ten minutes on a relaxation or structured movement sequence from one of the previous chapters. Upon its completion, sit tall and close your eyes, basking in the sense of vitality or relaxation.
Step 6: Without looking at your piece, hold that invigorated or relaxed sense and select one to three more colors. Breathing deeply, gaze upon these colors and imbue them with a sense of upliftedness, well-being, kindness, and healing. Using your nondominant hand again, reveal your previous work and let the colors interact with what you laid down earlier. Imagine these new colors are offering exactly what you needed in that moment of despair.
In real life, we can remember the process of this exercise. On some level of perception, even in the darkest times, joy is available to us. The next time life shocks you with something painful, seek a connection to the virtue of joy. From where are those soothing “colors” available to you?
The human brain and its associated psychological habits offer a path to creative awareness and enlightenment. Inspiration from who we truly are—and our capacity to move toward that true Self—keep us open to new perceptions. We can combine habits and truth to create something never seen or heard before. Our perceptual shifts and intentions toward the creative Self change not only what we believe about ourselves but also how we interact with the outer world. The following chapter builds on this shift, offering a broader view of your creative potential.