Eleven Yogic Arts of Creative Living

Victory is a state of mind where obstacles are gifts that can be gratefully overcome. Victory is a great topic leading us into the healing power of art because victory, like healing, can be attained through a change in one's point of view. Belief in your own ability to heal is a victorious attitude; you are what you think and mandalas, gongs, mantras and music can all help you to shift the mind. I played a small portion of Sat Nam Wahe Guru by Tigerstyle, my favorite DJ.  It's the only mantra recording I have found of theirs; most of their music seems to be bhangra and dance remixes. Then talking about the monks and sand mandalas made me think of Alex Chilton's song Dalai Lama from the album High Priest. And since Chilton was the founder and lead singer and writer of the band, The Boxtops, I couldn't leave without sticking in The Letter, one of their greatest (and shortest) hits. Next episode, we finish up Art of Healing by talking about food, the pineal gland, and how to de-stress. 

"Where I come from, we say that rhythm is the soul of life, because the whole universe revolves around rhythm and when we get out of rhythm, that's when we get into trouble." - Babatunde Olatunji, percussionist

I decided to discuss Healing - with an emphasis on stress relief - because so many people I talk to are in need of tools to de-stress and ways to initiate healing patterns in their life. We get sick when we do not metabolize and process the food we eat and we also get sick if we do not metabolize and process our emotions. The body and the mind are so deeply interconnected, that one will often alert the other when something is not right. We have to pay attention to the signals to stay on top of when we are not in balance so we can DO something about it.  Getting back into rhythm will set you on the path to healing.

This episode includes a recording of the intro to a class I taught on May 2 (zooming through Heartbeat House) on the Art of Healing - which is also the seventh chapter of my book, The Eleven Yogic Arts of Creative Living. It includes instruction on a powerful stress relieving Kundalini Yoga meditation with brings the body, mind and spirit into balance with the rhythm of the 8-count breath. 

In the Art of Flourishing, it's all about the process and after all that delicious work, it's time to let go. If you don't let go, the world will never know what you did, your art will never have the opportunity to uplift anyone, communities won't be transformed by your creative engagement, and the people in your life won't know what it is like to be loved by you. Letting go is a spiritual practice unto itself and it sits in between flourishing and delivery in the Law of Creativity. Many creatives get stuck between these two stages and end up giving up, feeling guilty, unfulfilled, victimized and so on - mostly just because of fear and worry.  Fear of judgement, rejection, embarrassment, attention (good or bad), and also, fear of being a success, pretty much takes care of all the reasons a project will stay in creative purgatory forever....and ultimately destroy you. 

Then I move on to The Art of Deliverance in which I begin to touch on the requirements for perfecting the Art of Deliverance. These are willpower, self-determination, prana and radiance and the strength and the willingness to let go. If you use them, your life will change and we will cover them in more detail in Episode 9. Shout out to David Byrne Live from Austin, a 2007 release from Luaka Bop - simply marvelous album from which I play "God's Child"...a song of deliverance if there ever was one.  It just oozes the freedom and power to be one's true self. 

The Art of Flourishing is basically organizing and producing in a healthy way...the operative word being "healthy." Often artists and creatives forget self-care when they are in the throes of making things - they lose track of time and personal needs - but that is the intense level attention one must pay to one's project at hand to bring it into the world. When you are onto something, you are like a dog after a bone. This phase of flourishing is the second part of the "law of creativity" - to conceive, flourish, and deliver and for me, the most fun. It's all about process and it can be exhilarating to be deeply engaged in your work. Kurt Vonnegut said that to practice art was a way to make your soul grow and I completely agree; art making and spiritual practice both nurture the purest and most authentic parts of ourselves and they work in tandem to promote self-realization. 

The Law of Creativity - To conceive, flourish and deliver - is at the core of all creative endeavors, all relationships and in fact, absolutely everything that we do. In today's episode, we look at the Art of Conceiving; the point of the creative process when energy transmutes into ideas and then implants in our consciousness. After we conceive, we can work on the ideas (flourishing) and share them with the world (delivery). 

For me and many other creatives, the conception state is the most exciting of the stages of creativity because it's fueled by anticipation, hope and possibility.  But it's also a stage that we must get ready for; and that involves some elbow grease. By this I mean toning up the nervous system, aligning the physical body so that the channels of energy are free and clear, and nurturance of a neutral or meditative mind. If you impose your ego on this process, you will get in the way of what you can "pick up" and might just close down the process before it starts.  When an idea takes root, provided that it has fertile ground in which to implant, it seems to have a life of its own and you are there to fan the flame...or water it, in this case. 

Whether you call it uplinking or deep listening, the practice of quieting and clearing the mind allows one to dive into the receptivity of creative practice. Through meditation and cultivating a state of emptiness, we can feel, hear and see what the Universe Mind is broadcasting. If ten people receive the same or similar signal, the output as a result of that transmission, will be unique. Some people may not even choose to respond and others may not have the power to complete and deliver the work if started. The Law of Creativity is to conceive, flourish and deliver and Uplinking and deep listening precede the conception phase.