Ep #136: Honoring the Process and Liberating Your Creativity

“Take your well-disciplined strengths and stretch them between two opposing poles because inside human beings is where God learns,” Ranier Maria Rilke, translated by Robert Bly.

That poem, Just as the Winged Energy of Delight, and that’s just the last stanza. I love that poem. That poem for me does just what the last two lines say. It creates this experience, this knowing that it is inside us human beings where God learns. And so, that is also a summary of today’s episode, which is a little bit different.

I’m going to share with you why I’m so excited for one of my summer adventures and then also something that my own poetry speaks to, as a place of learning, as a place of exploring consciousness, and as a place of artistic expression, but also spiritual growth, evolution, and an opportunity for soul-building. I hope you enjoy.

You are listening to The Art School Podcast; a show for artists and creatives who want to become the next greatest version of themselves. Learn how to cultivate an extraordinary way of being and take the mystery out of making money, and the struggle out of making art. Here is your host, master certified life coach, artist, and former lawyer, Leah Badertscher.

Hello my Art School Podcast friends and welcome back. So, I just recorded last week’s episode for you. And now, I’m recording the next one because, as you’re probably tired of hearing me talk about by now, but maybe not, I am headed to Cancun for a week-long Joe Dispenza immersion retreat experience.

And so, while I will be setting all the auto-responder emails, you know, on my email accounts and my assistant knows that I’m out, clients know that I’m out, Art School is currently on break until we kick off the first summer workshop, the Energetics of Wealth at the end of June.

But this, to me, I realized me going there is also my life’s work and it’s a way of life and it’s play and it’s everything that years ago I envisioned, that I would get to live what I love and learn and grow in mind, body, and spirit. And not only learn it intellectually but use it in my own life in deep ways, in transformational ways, and then share that.

And so, I’m really excited to go. I’m really excited to come back. And as I mentioned on a prior podcast, I feel like the energy of change is strong right now and that there’s a strong current of it and I am stepping into it, stepping into the unknown.

And while I don’t know exactly where it will lead, what I do know is it meets a desire and a need for deepening my craft, for mastery. It meets the need for the fascination I have with consciousness and with our evolution and with creativity and creative genius and human potential, like what we are truly capable of. And not only theoretically, but the how and the how to do it and the how to apply it.

Not just let’s sound smart and think about it. But actually inside out changing and changing your energy so it also is not just a forced, “Well sure I’m trying to think better and I’m trying to do better but I don’t actually feel better.”

I know that there’s so much more available to us and there’s so much more available in us. And it’s also why I love poetry. Poetry like Rilke’s. Not all of it, but much of it I feel like, when I would read it, I would have my mind blown, like a new way of looking at the world was just available to me and it was also that new way which felt so familiar to me. Like, he had revealed something that I have known all along and he reminded me through his art, through his way of wielding words. He reminded me of what I know. He helped me remember what I know. And it’s that kind of spark of truth that to me feels like a spark of enlightenment, a spark of aligning with truth.

And it’s one of the reasons I felt the design – I can see it now in reverse. My love of poetry, love of language, love of deeply listening to people, how it was guiding me into this place for coaching, which is also about deep listening and listening not only to the words but to the energy and the energy between the words.

And what’s also interesting to me – and I want to share this with you because I know I had the experience of discounting a lot of my earlier work, like my ideas for poems, my ideas for painting because I couldn’t make sense of them. I couldn’t explain them logically. I couldn’t explain the whole idea. I couldn’t tell somebody in an elevator pitch what the idea was about. I couldn’t write up this sexy, snappy little artist statement.

But I felt something was being expressed to me and I, for a while, did dismiss it and then I had to work to not dismiss it. I had to work to acknowledge that there is something original, Something coming through, capital S, Something coming through and I needed to make a space to honor and acknowledge that.

And no, it’s fascinating to me to look back at earlier works and even fragments of work and then things that I strung together and then completed works and understand what I was trying to say then. I understand it on a completely different level now. Partly because of all of this intersection of the things I’m fascinated in, like neuroscience and meditation, mythology, poetry, energy-healing, all sorts of things that seem very disparate and random, and I can see the interconnectedness of all things now, physics for example, it’s all coming together and making sense.

And so, as I was rereading my own book, The Wild Blue Yonder – so, if you’re new I published a book of poetry and creative prompts that was released in May. I was reading some of the poems which I wish I would have included the dates from which I’d written every poem because some of them are from years ago. And I know the dates, but it’s interesting for me to look back and to think, you know, at that time, I didn’t know now about, for instance, what Joe Dispenza is teaching, what’s available now in the latest neuroscience.

But I can see that, like a knowing in me, a sensing of something coming through in the poems. So, again, I just want to offer that to you, to create a way, create a container for yourself of honoring and acknowledging what is ever coming through, whatever wants to be expressed through you creatively.

Because I think too often, we’re told by the world, “Well, if it’s not fully formed and fully hatched and if you can’t explain it, you don’t understand it and you don’t know it.” If you have any amount of confusion over it, then it’s not worth the salt. And that is very wrong-minded and I think dangerous and tragic, that too many great ideas and also too much great human potential is lost.

We need to have not only safe spaces but nurturing spaces for these ideas to flow and constructive workshop processes where there is a sacred space and you have people there who are deep listeners and who are adept at sensing a truth that’s trying to come through someone and that they feel like they can flow in fragments, or however it needs to come out, so that it can start to take shape in the world. And that also becomes a collaboration.

If you have someone listening deeply and with no judgment in front of you, you’re going to learn really quickly that you know so much more than you think you know. And those two words have very different meanings. Thinking and knowing. And I want to offer you, I highly recommend putting yourself in places where you have listeners and supporters who know the difference between thinking and knowing.

Because having a space where you can flow and try to put together and into words what you know is very different than thinking something. Like, thinking assumes that we already know it. Knowing sometimes you just have to flow it out for the first time and get it out in drafts, whether it’s a spoken draft, written draft, many iterations. But honor that which is trying to come through you.

And be very awake. Put your ear to the ground for all of the ways that it’s trying to help you know how it best wants to be born. I see this being another area where people get hung up or unnecessarily abort a really valuable rich idea or potential way to soon is that, for instance, maybe they think they have an idea that is supposed to be a book. But if they can’t make themselves sit down and write out an outline or a proposal, then they think, “I must not be meant to be a writer. It must not be meant to be a book.”

Well, who knows? Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. But maybe even if it is a book, maybe it doesn’t want to come out in that way to begin with. Perhaps that’s not the best way to birth it and it will let you know.

So, an example I recently gave to a client who has been looking at what seems currently like a daunting writing project is to consider writing letters instead. Because if you think about many great thinkers and leaders throughout time and artists and creatives, before email in particular, many of them had pen pals. And I would say either creative soulmate kind of pen pals or strategic pen pals, you know, thinking of the people in the years leading up to the birth of the United States Constitution, before the Federalist Papers, what was going on.

But people were corresponding, sharing ideas back and forth, fine-tuning via letters. Yates and I believe it was Cummings – I’m not sure. The details are slipping me right now – had back and forth letter-writing process for sharing drafts of poetry and then one poet would make a lot of corrections and share it back.

I think Yates had one poem that had 175 drafts. Many of which were shared in letters. And so, again, the idea that something has to come out, that it has to come out in poem form, no, you could hear yourself say a line, hear someone else say a line, and be like, “Damn, that feels like it belongs in a poem. Or that feels like it belongs in a song.” And then you can build it and play with it from there.

So, those are just a few examples. In general though, attune yourself to the way that your own inner creative genius will guide you in very out-of-the-box creative ways for moving what wants to happen through you out into the world.

It could be something that looks nothing like, in the beginning, the end product. Honor that. Try to put your ego aside that it’s got to look like a draft, it’s got to look like a painting, it’s got to look like an album, a song, a full-fledged hatched business plan. Put all of that to the side and instead allow yourself to know what you know and allow it to come through in whatever ways it wants to come through.

A lot of times, this requires vulnerability, so finding somebody that’s a great listener and feeling that you trust them enough to share what feels to you like a half-baked idea. I think again generally speaking that that is one of the most powerful things you can do, is find a way to, in that moment, speak or share or do something to get as close to the essence of that which is trying to come through as you can. And then also, at the same time, simultaneously, allowing for it to be wholly imperfect and just a fragment. But honor that step and honor that beginning.

So, I want to share with you an example of this from my own work from my book, The Wild Blue Yonder. So, I wrote a draft of a poem called The Rose, and then in this book too I included notes to myself, notes from my mentor. Because I’m still not sure if these two versions, if one or the other is the ultimate destination for this poem. But I honored what wanted to happen through me by writing them both and then next, by putting them in this book and publishing it, and now too by sharing them with you.

And I have already heard from readers – and it’s only been a month – how much this poem in both versions resonates with them. And it’s also relevant to our topic today. So, this is the first draft I wrote in April 2016.

The Rose. The heavy ache in my chest for so long, a big black block, a brick of coal, I realized all the flowers, they were roses I hadn’t been giving away because they weren’t good enough. I didn’t know if you’d understand them, so I held them in, held them tight, my body clenched around them and the pressure turned them to coal. But now, I’ve been burning that coal. And from the ashes, roses grow. This time I’m giving them all away.

Here’s the second version which is titled For Giving. For giving, that dark weight I felt in my chest, I looked to see a black rock, like coal, but more dense, like obsidian, made of all the roses I hadn’t given away. I kept them not for myself, not for you. They were not forgiving. I didn’t know if you’d want them anyway, so I held them in, my heart wrapped tightly around them, closed in on itself, un-for-giving. That hand that should have been giving instead was clenching, holding on for dear life but crushing any chance of it. But I breathed the other day like I haven’t breathed in so long, maybe decades, and felt an unfurling. This time, I’m giving it all away.

So, this brings me to the part of the podcast, my friends, where I want you to do more than just listen. I want you to lean in and really work with me, coach with me. So, consider those two versions of the poem, The Roses or For Giving, what wants to happen through you that perhaps you have clenched your heart too tightly around, that you haven’t been forgiving yourself of just our inherent humanness and our perfect imperfectness? And therefore you’ve been keeping this garden inside of you that wants to grow, hoarding it, crushing it, instead of allowing it to flow through you.

Where have you been holding too tightly onto your creations, onto your creativity because you’ve been harsh and unforgiving of yourself and of where you are and of your process and of the stage of the idea or what you are judging to be the quality of the idea?

And because of that un-forgivingness towards self and how the creativity occurs to you or how it wants to happen and what kind of process, because of that, then what could be yours for giving is not, is just held within. And what would it be like for you this time going forward to just give it all away?

Thank you for listening to another episode of The Art School Podcast. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, if these episodes have been useful, meaningful, inspiring, empowering to you, if they’ve helped you move the needle, I am so glad. That has been my intention and more every step of the way.

And if you would like to help me spread this work and build that paradigm of thriving creatives and flourishing humans, the best way to do that is to share, is to subscribe, is to go to iTunes and leave a review. And if you are an artist, a creative human being who is looking to take their life, their art, their work to the next level, I would love to help you make that happen.

I would love to be your coach. We are currently enrolling for the next session of the Art School, beginning with our Summer Workshop series. The workshop in June being the Energetics of Wealth. The Summer Workshop series is no additional cost. It is just included for those who enroll in the fall Art School 2021, who reserve their spot. And then we will launch the official 12-week Art School August 31^st, 2021. And I would love to have you in that class. It’s already shaping up to be a brilliant, brilliant, amazing class.

So, if that’s been calling you, you can go to my website, www.leahcb.com and click on the Art School to learn more and to register and reserve your space.

If you would like to have questions answered, you can email support@leahcb.com with exploratory call in the subject line and schedule a free, complementary exploratory call with a member of my team. This is not a sales call. This is just a resource, a free resource for you to see if the Art School is the thing you’ve been looking for, to see if it’s the right home for your next-level goals and dreams.

My philosophy is that by cultivating an extraordinary way of being in mind, body, and spirit, the extraordinary results that you’re dreaming of become inevitable. So, this is not about a force or a grind or sacrificing your values or your way of life. This is about creating your dream on your terms. To me, that’s what a creative does, from the inside out.

And if this is calling to you, we would love to have you in this upcoming class. And if you’re interested in private coaching, I currently have a waitlist. But if you email us, support@leahcb.com with private coaching in the subject line, we will send you all the information that you need as well as a link to apply.

Here’s the thought I want to share with you in closing. It has been said that magic is 10% intention and 90% liberation, that when we liberate ourselves from past thoughts, behaviors, conditionings, energies, false beliefs that we are limited, that then that energy can go into then fueling that intention.

One of the ways we imprison our energy, keep it tied up, don’t liberate it, is keeping it invested in ideas that we should be further along, we should somehow be different, we should somehow be better, our ideas should somehow be further along, be somehow different, be somehow better.

And so, you can see then the thread that has been weaving, if you go back through many episodes, that comes up again in this particular episode. Allowing yourself just an isness, an I-am-ness, allowing that which is trying to occur through you to also come as it is and not be further along and not be better.

If we could liberate ourselves from feeling that we have to armor and be protected by having a more progressed idea, a more complete idea, something further along, I think more and more of our own creative genius would be liberated and that it would create a momentum that would open up bottlenecks within us.

So, just some thoughts from me on this eve of packing to get ready to go to a week-long retreat that is about becoming unlimited that I wanted to share with you out there listening, who I believe are on a similar path, knowing that there is so much potential, so much creativity that wants to happen through you, acknowledge that, honor that, serve that. Ask yourself, in what ways do I unnecessarily limit myself that my brain is arguing are completely rational or completely logical? And then ask, who would I be without those limitations? And then, practice the embodiment of that. Take action when you are aligned with that. Take action from that place.

Have a beautiful week, everyone. I can’t wait to talk to you on the other side of this experience and I will talk with you next time.