When you create, you connect. As you engage with your chosen activity, you become one with it. We’ve learned from physics that when we interact with something, we change it. This interaction is connection made manifest, sparked by your direct engagement.
When we make our mark on something through creative engagement, we see our true selves reflected back. This mirroring gives us a deep sense of belonging and meaning. Our existence is affirmed. We know that we matter. Our confidence is restored. Your entry point to this way of life? It’s what you already possess: your creativity.
This is why creativity matters in and of itself: it is a reflection of you that literally makes you feel more, well, you. It confirms your place in the world. It acknowledges your dignity and your right to exist — and
everyone else’s — simply because you’re alive. Creativity reminds you that you are worthy in and of yourself. Therefore, it is the act of being creative that matters most, not the products of your creativity, because creativity has no agenda beyond life affirmation through connection.
All tangible side effects such as glorious works of art, inspiring performances, and brilliant innovations are magnificent blessings and encouragements. Yet they all spring from same source: life affirmation. Keep focused on this primary matter, this first principle, and your creative process will flourish.
Disconnection is one of the most terrifying sensations we experience as human beings. Think of the immediate and intense distress babies feel when separated from their parents. When we get disconnected, we feel horribly unsafe. Disconnection doesn’t have to be dramatic to have an impact. Simply feeling set apart from others in everyday life can trigger extreme anxiety and depression. Disconnection from our true selves is perhaps the most frightening of all when, severed from source energy itself, we wonder if life has any meaning.
Our survival as human beings depends on being connected. The reality is, most of us wouldn’t last more than a few days alone in the forest. Surviving, let alone thriving, demands creativity. Humans are not endowed with protective fangs or formidable physical strength. We don’t even run very fast relative to other creatures! Our superpower is our spectacular creativity. It’s our adaptability rather than our strength or intellect alone that has allowed us to survive. Creativity is by its nature ever changing. Adapting to the present situation, creativity then elaborates on it, bringing forth ever more vital expressions of life force. The circle of life turns: creativity affirming life, life sparking creativity.
Our creativity has protected humanity through millennia of radical change. Creativity urged us to evolve. If we want to keep evolving — if we want to further our individual and collective life force — we must stay creative. All this points to creativity’s grandest message: life is worth affirming and amplifying, because it is the energy of connection — love — made manifest.
Many types of therapy aim to reconnect us to the world, to ourselves, to our source. Astounding breakthroughs can happen when we reestablish the connections in our lives, as neuroscientist Candace Pert affirms: “Love is an integrator and a healer, but you have to do the work to love yourself, and you can start by loving others. That’s the core of human health.”
I had a stunning revelation during deep meditation when I suddenly perceived how everything is interconnected. A wave of relief washed over me, and my life changed forever. While this may sound incredible, my direct experience tells me that when connection is restored, we are safe again. Fear fades, love takes center stage, and we become ourselves once more.
This illumination has stayed with me, and those close to me have remarked that I have been more myself since then. The change can become permanent because once you receive this knowledge, you can’t un-know it. This is why your creativity, your direct engagement with life, is so important: it reconnects you, for life. I want this for you.
Engaging your innate creativity is one of the quickest, safest, most available, satisfying, and positive ways to do this. As Above, So Below: reclaim your creativity, reclaim your life. On the Bright Way, it is an article of faith that you aren’t broken. The Bright Way doesn’t try to “fix” you. Rather, it reminds you of who you truly are. By being creative, by actively engaging in your life, you will remember who you are. Welcome to the magnificence of your true self.
Welcome home.
Excerpted from the book The Bright Way. Copyright ©2020 by Diana Rowan. Printed with permission from New World Library — www.newworldlibrary.com.
