R is for Receptivity

I was sharing with a friend a short story I'd written. She wondered how I'd come up with one particularly striking image. The truth is stranger than fiction. I pretty much wrote down exactly what I'd seen. This specificity helped ground the scene in a way, which I might never have been able to imagine. Creative people know, and we are all creative people, that a large part of our work is to live with eyes and ears open. Our receptivity and the open space we hold are essential to our capacity to synthesize and create.

When we are too full of distraction, there's nowhere for new energy to come in and stay. We become like an overflowing closet. That's when we need spring cleaning, to clear out the clutter in our minds and our internal creative space to allow the energy to flow again. This could mean literally cleaning up our writing space or art studio, sweeping the dance floor.

Or it could mean properly storing our odd thoughts, idea seeds, scraps of dialogue, or stray images. I use my laptop or my journal. Raymond Carver apparently kept his scraps in his bathrobe pocket. Jotting things down, doing sketches, playing with movement and gesture are ways to give things raw form and reassure them they can have your attention at the right time. It gives you something solid to return to.

Once those are given initial form, there's a clear arena for what wants to emerge. Again, it's listening, watching, being curious about what is going to show up. Why is it that I can trust something will come in my creating life, when the same uncertainty in other aspects of my life just makes me anxious? I think it has to do with practice. Some people, especially meditators, know about the comings and goings of ideas and energy and have a broader perspective of nonattachment.

So notice where you are receptive and where you need to clear out some space for new energy to come in.