Open and Listen

For this week's inspiration and encouragement, Open and Listen, I'm sharing another excerpt from Jack Kornfield's book, No Time Like the Present. These thoughts pick up where we left off last week, with the idea of trusting the process.

From No Time Like the Present, by Jack Kornfield:

"Creativity is a way of allowing the ever-renewing energies of life to move through you....

"When you open yourself to creativity, faith in life's wellspring grows. This trust allows you to listen, collaborate, fail, discover, explore and see anew. As you open and listen, something new will be born.

"Creativity needs letting go, an attentive releasing to allow something new to be born. Follow your instincts, your feelings, your senses, your body. let a small feeling of irritation become a rivulet that leads to a poem...Let a jiggling foot or a tense shoulder make a movement that grows into dance....

"Initiate wildly, break up, build up, try deliberate errors, circle, get down, get over your ideas, get over yourself, and above all, trust..."

Here's a photo of my husband, Dick, breaking into spontaneous dance while packing up our house in Santa Fe, NM. It's an old photo, but it always cracks me up. Be like Dick!

We talked a lot about intuition, listening to and trusting our inner voice, during our first class in June. In fact, the whole class focused on this idea of bringing our intuitive feelings and our emotional feelings into alignment, so that when we express our creativity - in whatever form - it will reflect our own authentic voices, unaffected and uncensored by the ideas, opinions or voices of others.

As we move through July, I invite you to continue listening - not just with your ears, but with your inner ears - your intuitive, emotional and physical senses. What feels right to you?

I like these suggestions from Kornfield for activities to help us on this journey:

• Take walks, without friend or phone. Look at the sky, the trees, nature with all its subtleties. Listen.
• Imagine that you are starring in the movie of your life. See your role, your part in the story. Much of it is already written, but you choose what happens next, and how to play your part.
• Envision your whole life as a work of art. What might you add to make it more interesting, more stylish, more beautiful, more fun? 

In our July class, we'll be talking about obstacles that get in the way of expressing our creativity. I suspect that one we might all share is one that Kornfield mentions above - getting over ourselves! I experienced this very thing last week, and I'll share more about that when we meet. 

Our inspiration for this coming week is Open and Listen...and I also love Kornfield's suggestion of making deliberate errors, so I think I'll give that a try!