Never Underestimate the Power of CREATIVITY, BEAUTY, AND AWE

If you think you aren’t creative or don’t have the capacity to recognize or create Beauty, I respectfully and heartily disagree! It’s our nature. Like most all things, there’s a spectrum of experience, but we all have creativity and we all have the capacity to be Beauty in its most exalted meaning. I’m not referring to what we look like, I’m referring to what we are in essence.

I was talking with a lovely client about Michelangelo’s David sculpture and it dawned on me that I don’t speak enough about Beauty and art and the immense power in both. It is MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER to engage with and/or create organic art and organic Beauty.

I know this intimately, as I’ve always been sensitive to my surroundings, to Beauty, and have experienced the healing power of art both personally as a maker, and as also as a therapeutic practice in the context of a private sessions with clients. I’ve also witnessed the complete awe (or the disgust or neutrality) when people are viewing art in person. It’s incredible!

Some people travel with the sole intent of viewing historic fine art. And, while some are not moved, many who are present with masterpieces are moved to tears, experience chills, or otherwise have their heart opened or softened in some way. Most have no idea why. It just happens for them involuntarily.

While styles of art and personal leanings are subjective, one can’t argue that some art and some spaces of Beauty simply have the power to open a person up to their felt sense, to their heart, in a new, expanded way. Think Grand Canyon. Photos are wonderful. But something unique happens when one is standing at the edge of such expanse, such beauty, such magnitude of nature and geologic and cultural history.

The unexpected awe response is usually unrelated to the style. For instance, I could walk past a thousand classical marble statues and admire the skill level but not be moved at all. What touches one person may not be what touches or opens another. If you haven’t already, consider exploring what opens or softens you in some way. When possible and desired, go see some new art. Go sit in a gorgeous garden or park. Get in a restful position and be with the sky.

One can argue that one is tapping into the emotions of the artist, palpable in every chiseled and smoothed marble sculpture or the brushstrokes in a painting. Of course, this can be part of it. It is also true that a person is tapping into parts of themselves they’ve never touched before. Or the part of themselves that has a connection with the ineffable. That infinite mystery that all words are inadequate for.

I have a friend who is a brilliant author. Her writing never fails to evoke emotion in me. Because of the magnitude of Beauty, because of the palpable pain that is a part of shared humanity, because of the skill level combined with Spirit. Because of reasons I don’t know. It moves me. It opens me, usually taking me by surprise.

I remember the first time I heard a string quartet in person. It was outdoors, in a park. I was standing only a few feet away. I felt the vibration of the strings. The part of the cello in the piece they were playing moved me to tears.

The first time I saw Pieta by Michelangelo at the Met in New York City, I was so stunned I literally couldn’t move my body. I just stood there until one of the people in the party I was with dragged me away by the arm. I was in awe. It doesn’t matter why. I was changed.

If you don’t think you can make art, fine. Few can create like Michelangelo. Indeed, we aren’t meant to. We’re meant to create from our unique skill sets and spirit and emotional landscape. And if you think only “emotional art” by highly skilled masters of representation are portals to the heart ways, think again. When I saw the Jasper John’s painting Figure 5 in encaustic and paper on canvas at LACMA, I had to sit down on the bench. I sat there the longest time, in awe over how I could be moved so deeply simply by composition, benality, and material use. It was so palpably human. Inspired immensely, that’s when I began creating work with oil paint and encaustic (organic resin and wax).

Experiences of this nature take people by surprise.

But let me tell you that we’re here to feel, to open, and to create. And anyone can have a surprising heart opening awe moment when it’s least expected. And the accumulated energies of all that have stood before a piece of art, architecture, music, writing, or nature creation all hold the awe, the wonder, the curiosity, the cracked open hearts, and the passion and love and … from every single person who ever stood there, admiring (or not) a great Beauty, creation, and/or mystery.

There are many research studies that have involved trying to understand why some art moves us so. There’s even a field devoted to neuroaesthetics. It will be interesting to see how things change as AI becomes so common. Here’s what I want to strongly encourage—not from fear but from the capacity of Beauty—see what it’s like to create organic (purely natural, human based) art. Or go to a local museum to be with art, or go to a live symphony, or to the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone or some other incredible, awe inspiring natural landscape. Notice what happens inside. It doesn’t have to be something requiring travel or expense. It’s a field of wildflowers, a creek, a sunset. By being with Beauty, you are touching something of Beauty in yourself that perhaps has been hidden from awareness up to this point. And might retreat again. But every time we consciously not only seek Beauty, but live it and create it, we expand the spirit within. We heal a bit more in some way, we connect with a sense of greatness and spaciousness that is nearly impossible to describe adequately. And we don’t have to. We can experience it, which leaves an imprint of wonder in the collective, accumulating, allowing for the experience to continue to be built upon by the next unsuspecting tourist who thinks they’re just going to check another thing off the list and post another sight seeing photo, who instead gets touched by the enormity and the smallness, the beauty and the grief, the healing and the admiration, the inspiration and the passion. The FLOW. What we’re really tapping into is the inspired flow of organic creation, the spirit in all things, the spirit within.

It can be as simple as being with a strong tree, a single tiny wildflower, the sky, or a canyon. To PRESERVE and CREATE from our organic nature, from the places where we feel connected to something bigger while also feeling it within ourselves is crucial. Not only for the coherent heart, but for the ability to preserve a vital creation way. It is through and with our imaginations and our sense of wonder and curiosity that we can create new realities instead of them being continually created for us haphazardly through collective unconsciousness. Begin within.

If some part of you is excited about this, consider being an explorer of beauty, of inspiration, of works of art, of organic nature. See what opens next.

I know from personal experience—both as a sick person who got well and as a quantum energy seer and healer who sees additional realities in light—that imagination, creative expression, and art therapy are crucial pathways to healing, to connecting more with spirit and to creating new reality. Don’t like how things are going? Begin creating. Something. Anything. Arrange a few objects in a new way, start a cross stitch, a flower garden or potted plant, watercolor, collage, bread, weaving, braid your child’s hair… There are a myriad of ways to begin bringing attention to our natural creativity.

And if you’d like to see what it feel like to begin to be in creator flow, to open the creation channels, to touch your own spirit, to express in new ways, and to feel more calm and balanced, consider joining me for the first of many art inspired explorations.

We are including bonus creativity sessions in the next ascension offering Transcending with the Rose Lines. Beyond that, stay tuned and expect more focused creativity based offerings in the coming year! In the meantime, whether or not you want to join us for a group creativity offering, consider beginning to cut out and save images from magazines, or on free sites like pexels or unsplash. Or save papers with colors or patterns of interest. Then you’ll have a stash ready for creativity classes or for your own explorations.

Computer programs can collect, sort, reconfigure and simulate but pure human imagination creating from the spark of the Infinite cannot be replicated. It’s the mystery. Let us honor that gift in ourselves by exploring and expressing with it! Imagination is creation.