Via Purpose
The first of the five paths we are exploring is the path of Karma Yoga. In this context, karma can be thought of as purpose, work, or service. Simply stated, the Karma Yoga creator works at it. Through a clear personal purpose, or intention, and via a four-prong approach to action, you can be in service to your true, creative Self.
Dharma: The Intention Behind Your Art
The Sanskrit word dharma translates as “duty” or “purpose.” Karma, or the patterns of our actions, is guided by our understanding of the duty that underlies our work. When we begin with a clear purpose, our actions filter through that intention. Like a golfer visualizing the ball landing in the hole before taking the swing, the Karma Yogi visions purpose before starting the work.
Exercise: Your Creative Purpose (Dharma)
This exercise gives you a chance to explore your creative purpose. Reflect and clarify your potential identity as a creative person through personal vision and intention.
Step 1: Reflect upon why you wish to be more creative. How is it beneficial for you to connect to your creative essence? Do others benefit as well? In what ways does your creativity relate to your purpose in life? Do you believe you have a duty to express yourself through creative acts? Why?
Step 2: Set an intention. This can be a word, a feeling, or a hope to express something that you’re working through right now … Whatever is meaningful for you. Let it be brief and simple; imbue it with emotional relevance. Bonus points for writing it down, drawing it, or creating a collage that represents this purposeful intention.
When we know why we’re creating, we have connected to dharma; we’ve set an intentional purpose for the creative act which then guides us. Intentional action guides the work and its outcomes—it’s part of the karma.
Acceptance: Allowing & Trusting
The first step on the Path of Karma Yoga is “Acceptance.” When we are aware of our dharma as creative beings, it becomes easier to accept the creative task at hand. On the Karma Yoga path, we approach all work with equanimity. We do not resist a chore; rather, we see all work as a creative opportunity. A balanced, accepting mind is open to the imaginative potential in every moment and action. The first step in any job is acceptance that the job exists.
When we are specifically talking about your art, accepting the need to create may be easy: “I accept that I’m seeing pretty pictures and must paint them.” Or “I accept that these characters’ dialogues are in my mind and I must film or write them.” Or “I accept the lyrics and melodies that waft through my conscious and play them out on my instrument.” However, it is not always that easy. Sometimes our creative urges swell from the darker corners of our psyches and express thoughts and impulses we would rather not admit to. Maybe something painful seeks expression as a way of releasing from our inner world. We tend to be less accepting of these kinds of creative tasks.
Many creative types who cannot find inspiration or initiate artistic action are not accepting the internal or external task at hand. The following exercise helps you build tolerance to what may be within you, allowing more room for acceptance and, by extension, creative freedom.
Exercise: Working through Triggers to Accept Strong Emotions
Most times when we have strong reactions to sensory input from the environment, we have tapped into a larger issue. The larger issue is probably some old, deep-rooted pain that is a little too terrible to face head-on, so instead we respond to immediate triggers in our environment. We don’t wail about our dad walking out when we were four, we just get irrationally angry when we smell hot dogs, the last meal we shared before he left. We don’t seek counseling after an assault, we just leave the party whenever we smell a particular cologne. We don’t talk about the embarrassment of throwing up in class, we just never eat pizza again. The following exercise helps you connect with a deeper level of feelings and process to a more secure level of awareness—and hopefully acceptance—of those emotional reactions.
Step 1: Think of a song you skip every time it comes on. No matter where you are or what mood you are in, you still won’t suffer that one track. You hate it that much. (At this point I could recommend you revisit Chapter 4 on aversion, but for now, let’s continue with this hard-to-listen-to song.) Cue it up, but don’t play it yet.
Step 2: Lie down on your bed or yoga mat and perform a few gentle movements to get in touch with your body and bring a sense of physical pleasure and relaxation before settling into a relaxed position.
Step 3: Play the song and remain connected to the thoughts, feelings, and images that arise as the first verse happens.
Step 4: After the first chorus, stand up and use movement to express the thoughts, feelings, and images that you observe as the song continues. These movements may also be informed by step 3. Let yourself go into the process, accepting the shapes, sounds, and feelings that occur. Dance with these shadow emotions.
Step 5: You may replay the song a few times, emphasizing either step 3 or step 4 to gain a greater understanding of the real reason you have an aversion to this particular creation.
By giving yourself the opportunity to examine and express your authentic reactions to this song, you offered acceptance to the situation. This was not an exercise to help find appreciation for something you previously disliked; rather, an opportunity to witness and allow your genuine feelings. The skill of acceptance will support your endeavors as a creative person. As you practice accepting your internal states, thoughts, and feelings as they are, you have more genuine materials to create with.
Concentration: Be With It
The second step on the Path of Karma Yoga is “Concentration.” Once we accept what we are bringing with us to the creative act, we focus on it. Give yourself over to the creative task! When we concentrate on the artistic act itself, being with our breath, emotions, and the expressive modality, our meaning comes through more clearly. Sometimes we express things that are beyond words: the depth of our pain, the heights of our joy, the vast isolation of human existence, the subtle awe of nature … When we contact the ineffable in this way, we may have a habit of becoming calculating, judgmental, or analytical. In other words, the depths of our expressive potential trigger our resistance. We may lose focus when we encounter something deep and true.
The following exercise gives you a chance to induce concentration and practice in maintaining it throughout the creative act. It is also a relaxation activity that can be applied as a mind-quieting technique.
Exercise: Creating from the Meditative Mind
You may use this technique when your nay-sayers get too loud or you feel disconnected from a project. It is also a lovely self-soothing practice in times of stress.
Step 1: Sit in a comfortable, erect position with finger paints or chalks in front of you. Close your eyes and attune to the natural rhythm and pace of your breath. You need not change anything; simply focus on the sense of each in-breath, each out-breath, and any breaks between them.
Step 2: Call to mind a shape or color. If you are less visual, you may posture your body into a particular shape or make a specific sound instead. As you hold this image, posture, or sound, notice how it interfaces with your breath. When you inhale, what does it do? How about when you exhale? Does it change during the pauses between the breaths?
Step 3: Continue concentrating on the depth, rhythm, and quality of your breath as you open your eyes. Using your nondominant hand, squirt the finger paints or begin creating shapes with the chalks. Allow the hands to work as an extension of the breath.
Step 4: Let your breath facilitate this process—no thinking! As you follow your breath, your nondominant hand or both hands swirl the colors in relation to the inhales, exhales, and pauses. If your mind wanders, bring it back to the link between breath and expression. Your hands are instruments of your breath.
Step 5 (optional): If you are an experienced meditator, you may bring mindfulness to this process, consciously observing the motion, breath, thoughts, and feelings as your hands express. If this added dimension of awareness is distracting to your process, leave it out.
When you are in the zone with your creation, no one needs to tell you to concentrate. You are under a spell. Time has ceased to exist and your personality sets itself aside. Many folks say they feel as if their art were creating through them. This is creative magic! It happens spontaneously; furthermore, when we practice concentration and stay connected to our breath and internal senses, we enter that zone of creative flow more frequently and readily.
Excellence: Getting Out of the Way
It’s very challenging to give your complete, relaxed concentration to something and do a bad job. The third step of Karma Yoga—“Excellence”—arises from the previous two steps. Once we have accepted ourselves and the task and fixed our breath, bodies, and mind to it, excellence follows. Excellence in this context does not mean creating a critically acclaimed piece; what it means is realizing the ultimate truth of the moment. Trusting what is and not letting judgments, preconceived notions, or expectations interfere with the purity of the experience.
Exercise: Excellence Is Doing Your Best: A Practice for Perfectionists
The trick to being excellent is to accept that each of us has our own “best.” Even within ourselves, what is best one day might be better or worse on another day. “Excellence” is about doing your best in the moment, not about being better than yourself or anybody else who has done a similar thing. The following practice helps bring a broader perspective to the concept of excellence. Follow either a or b.
Step 1: Lay newspaper or a drop cloth over your creative space, then line up paper and crayons (a). Alternatively, you may settle in front of your musical instrument (b).
Step 2: (a) Blindfold yourself or (b) put on mittens or gloves.
Step 3: (a) Draw a picture or (b) improvise a musical solo. Be free with this. Enjoy all of it, even the missteps and frustrations.
Step 4: Reflect upon the work. What did you learn about your ability to be excellent? How can you accept yourself more completely the next time you do something creative?
Oftentimes when we work on a creative endeavor we hold the end in mind, not from the perspective of dharma, where our effort falls in line with a personally meaningful intention, but from the perspective of “outcomes,” where we seek a specific result. In hoping for a particular ending, we lose concentration and interfere with the excellence of our process.
Consider the story of musical great Herbie Hancock, who once struck a “wrong” chord while backing up the incomparable Miles Davis. Instead of judging the experience or even doing what most professionals would have done and played on, Davis took the accidental chord as a cue and played a phrase that made it fit. When we trust what comes out in the moment and work with it, we meet the opportunity to transcend what was possible before that unexpected event.
Trust yourself. Get out of the way. Work with what comes up. Let excellence speak for itself. Failing that, remember that everything you create is a step in the direction of your personal masterpiece. Ultimately, the final product is far less important than the grounded awareness you bring to your process. What you come out with is a piece of yourself … and we ain’t always pretty.
Nonattachment: My Truth Is Enough
Now that you have explored the first three steps of the fourfold action of creative work, it is time to let go of the outcome. That’s right. You were Accepting, Concentrated, Excellent, and now I’m asking you to not be attached to the end result. The final step is “Nonattachment.”
If you are putting yourself out there—submitting your poem to magazines, trying to sell your photographs, or attempting to get your paintings into a gallery—you have a specific outcome in mind, and it is challenging not to be attached to that. When you show your best friend a new drawing—“Look what I made!”—then it’s your heart on a plate. How can you not be attached to how others receive it? Yet in order for us to remain enlightened in our creativity, we must trust the life of the art itself.
For each expressive piece you make, your creative process is a journey. Believe in the truth as it comes out of you, no matter how it ends up. Imagine that your creative Self is its own entity flowing out of you as an expression of your true Self. If it is true to you—if you accepted, focused, and did your best—there is no need to be attached to how it turns out or how others respond. It is your truth, and it is perfect.
Exercise: Practicing Nonattachment by Showing Yourself
This exercise challenges you to practice nonattachment. It is a systematic process, so you may wish to flag this page and return to each step a week or two later. Otherwise, gather it all up and get it over with. Learn about yourself, journal the insights, and feel strong and proud. This one is not easy.
Step 1: Find something you made that isn’t great. Maybe its balance is off, maybe an experiment failed, maybe it’s just ugly. This piece would probably be rejected by critics but it means something to you. Show this piece to someone you care about, without defending or explaining it. “Look what I made!”
Step 2: Find something you have worked on that has potential, such as a poem that needs a few more edits, a song without a chorus, or a short film that is missing a scene. Put the finishing touches on it and ask for feedback from one of your artistic mentors.
Step 3: Find a finished piece. Go to a local small artists’ gallery and ask to show it. If it is music, find an open mic night. If it’s literature go to a coffee house and do a reading. Put yourself out there for the sake of practicing nonattachment.
Remember for each of these steps to refine your ability to let go of outcomes. Do not judge your end piece or others’ reactions. Do not hope things go well. Simply know your intention and let outcomes be outcomes, without attachment.
Your personal purpose gives meaning to all of your jobs. Let life itself be a creative act. Rather than getting hung up on your art as solely a final piece of work, you are enriched by intention—imagination and artistry are personal growth tools and the act of creating is valuable. By taking emphasis away from the end result, the path of Karma Yoga gives you a truthful perspective on your creative endeavors and keeps you enlivened and encouraged through times when the end result may not align with your hopes.
The path of Karma Yoga may be repeated several times with the same creation. For example, you might need to Accept the level of editing your story requires, or Concentrate on where the light is as you place the final shading on your drawing. You commit to Excellence when improvising the solo of a piece you’ve practiced a hundred times. You cultivate Nonattachment on opening night. All the while, your sacred duty (dharma) guides your process.
For example, as a member of a community orchestra, I have a sacred duty. I am responsible to the other musicians in my section to play well so we sound good together. Similarly, I must be well-practiced so the conductor doesn’t have to waste time at rehearsals isolating parts. I have a duty to the composer to understand the piece and convey the message/feeling to listeners. The duty to entertain the audience may be the greatest of all; however, I believe the greatest duty is to my creative soul, who wishes to be seen and to express through union with the orchestra.
Even if I have to play something very fast, in a key with many sharps, I must accept it before I can go further. Saying “I hate this piece” isn’t going to get anyone what is best. From there, I concentrate on learning the notes and rhythms, in addition to how they fit together with what others are doing. I do my best to practice in a variety of ways to secure my learning, and when rehearsals or the big show happens, I am not attached to the outcomes, knowing that I did my best all along. Although the intention is to be brilliant, if it doesn’t turn out that way it’s okay. If I practiced, listened, visualized, stayed relaxed, etc., what else was there? Beyond my best, there was nothing else I could have done. If I learned something from my mistakes, I will do even better next time.
Whether Karma Yoga, or the path of purposeful action, seems like your authentic path or not, check out the next chapter for a systematic approach to connecting with your creative soul.