A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship.  But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.  Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves.  No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself.  ~John Muir

Growing Your Roots

What Path Shall I Follow in Life? 

This question forms the basis of one of the primary chapters in Caroline Myss’s book, Invisible Acts of Power. 

We shall consider this question in terms of your own creative expression.   Myss says, “...each of us is meant to treat our life as a journey, and at each step on that journey, we are meant to notice what is around us and act on opportunities that present themselves.”  I believe the personal creative process is much the same.  We are meant to form a creative path by following our intuition and letting it guide us as we make artistic decisions in a painting or a poem.  As Myss states, “[i]f we ignore everything around us, if we cover over our senses with a cloud of indifference, we’ll miss the coincidences and synchronicities that signal where we are to go and what we are to do [next].” 

Growing your roots is the first step in the process, Myss connects this act  to our first chakra and we might consider before starting to paint or write, doing just that. Try imagining rooting down in to the earth, sending energetic cords into the terra-firma like the axis mundi. 

As defined in Wikipedia: The axis mundi (also cosmic axis, world axis, world pillar, columna cerului, center of the world), in religion or mythology, is the world center and/ or the connection between Heaven and Earth. It expresses a point of connection between sky and earth where the four compass directions meet. At this point travel and correspondence is made between higher and lower realms. Communication from lower realms may ascend to higher ones and blessings from higher realms may descend to lower ones and be disseminated to all. The image is both feminine (an umbilical providing nourishment) and masculine (a phallus) .

So the first step in developing intuition for your creative process might be making this connection clear in your consciousness. Much like the developing fetus is connected by an umbilical cord to its mother to grow and be nourished during gestation, we as artists need to be continually fed.

The Nature of Insight

It is interesting to note that Isaac Newton made his greatest  breakthrough when he was forced to spend a year in virtual isolation, at his mother’s house.  I wonder if there is a connection to being in his mother’s home, able to be nourished and safe, that led to the right set of circumstances for him to intuit the information that formed the basis of his famous work, Principia- said to be the most important book published in modern European history?  Is it possible that the umbilical cord of Newtons’ connection to his birth mother was such that it continued to nourish him, ground him, and therefore help to bring insight to his work as an adult? The nature of insight may come in various forms, through dreams or through an inner knowing, you may hear the solution to a problem or see something that sparks an idea, you may simply understand a solution to a question through a hunch.  We are continually living in the realm of mystery. To encourage our creative expression requires the belief that the path we are on will lead us to the right insights for completion. Our perfect palette for poetry or painting is always available to be intuited no matter our ability to comprehend all that is.

Staying Grounded

To go into the ”wilderness of your intuition” as Alan Alda says, requires stepping out of the known into the unknown place. How to stay grounded when we are in the unfamiliar may seem like a puzzle.  In fact it may seem like the opposite of all that is required to be open to our intuition. Myss makes clear, that developing our self-esteem is the primary way that one’s intuitive instincts thrive. Because following ones intuition requires that a choice is made and a fork in the road is taken.

The moment that you choose for consciousness, the closer you are to the path of your own satiated creative expression. Think about all your favorite artists and note how their confidence as an image maker shines through their work. As much as we know about Van Gogh’s suffering in the world, we can see in his oeuvre an absolute groundedness, a surety in every brushstroke of his magnificent paintings.

a video we love: www. johnframesculpture.com/the-tale

an interview with John Frame: www.vimeo.com/24706483

 www.treehugger.com/sustainable-product-design/living-bridges-in-india-have-grown-for-500-years-pics.html