Tag Archives: living creatively

Divine Play

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Delightful surprises await us when we surrender our own notions of creativity and allow our creative spirit to play with us and through us. This poem reflects one such spontaneous experiment …

Divine Play

This perfect place
This golden jungle
Of laughing waters
Of raucous parrots,
Of extravagant blooms
This place of perfect freedom
To be
To create.

I relax in Your laughing arms
Your tender love
Your giggling tummy
Releasing all fears of failure
All perfectionism
All need to capture thought perfectly.

Instead, I paint with words
And allow them to tell their own stories.
Each one holds a world
And beyond that more worlds.
Then, laughing, You blow them all away,
Like so much dandelion fluff,
My carefully constructed worlds.

“Live them!” You say,
“Sense them, taste them, smell them
And as you do that
New worlds will form to the dance of your pen.
Let your pen dance you instead of the other way round.
It really is quite easy,” You smile.

Captivated, I try again.
“No,” You say, “Don’t try.
Simply be it.
Allow it to form
And allow it to dissolve, too, when I blow on it.
For it is all just Divine play.
And the blowing of dandelion fluff is just as sacred
As the construction of the perfect dandelion globe.

“Remember, each piece of fluff carries a seed
Allow those seeds to take flight
And see where they land.”

© Copyright 2003 by Gail Christel Behrend — All Rights Reserved

I Yelled at God Today!

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Today, I yelled at God. I had gone out for a brisk walk to try to reconnect with myself. As walked, all sorts of emotions began to arise. Frustration and anger came up big time and I found myself raging at God along the lines of…

  • “I’m doing great work – I’m successfully helping others to transform their lives. So, why can’t I make a living?!! What is it I have to do???!
  • “Give me a clear plan of action, dammit! I’m fed up with guessing and then scrabbling to make a measly living! And I’m not even doing that successfully – Money is pouring out and none is coming in, even though you promised me that by giving I would be rewarded. Yes I am rewarded: emotionally and spiritually, but godammit, I need some fricking income too!!! I have to have income now. This is ridiculous – I’m giving to everyone, but myself.
  • “Surely, that’s not the Divine Plan! And I can’t keep this up. If I don’t get some money – and enough money – before the end of the month, why should I continue helping everyone else? I refuse to do any more until I get appropriate compensation. Where’s my 10-fold return??? Show me the MONEY!!
  • “You said You love me. Well, prove it! Give me what I need here. Give me some help. I’m struggling to make ends meet – I have to have income, I can’t just keep throttling my expenses to nothing – food costs money, shelter costs money. I can’t stop eating or live on the streets and still follow my purpose helping others. That’s ridiculous. It means I join those who are drowning. How does that help anyone??? Surely, that can’t be Your Will!
  • “I want to finally have money – yes, in huge amounts for a change! I want to be able to waste it outrageously on stupid things, just because I can! Not that I will waste it, I probably wouldn’t, but I want to at least have the option to waste it!!”

I ranted and raved out loud, punctuating my speech with choice four-letter words and gesticulating wildly in the air. As I fumed and sputtered in rage, I slowly became aware that some part of my consciousness was chuckling.

“What’s so damn funny? How can you laugh at this?” I demanded.

“You have to admit it is pretty hilarious,” said the Voice in my head, barely containing its mirth.

As I listened, I began to laugh, too. First, because I must look like a raving lunatic! And secondly, because a part of me realized I had forgotten my creative power.

“God has already given you Everything. What MORE can He give you?

“What do you mean everything? How can that be when I can’t even make a decent living??? He must hate me.”

“God loves you! He wants you to have Everything your little heart desires!”

“Oh yeah, sure. He’s got a funny way of showing it.” I snorted!

I sensed more gentle chuckling. Then the Voice continued…

“He’s given you the Law of Attraction, so you CAN have everything you want. Absolutely anything and everything.  No judgements. All you have to do is use it! God can’t do it for you. He’s created the law, and it DOES work.

“Now it’s up to you to use it correctly by focusing on what you WANT, rather than what’s not working in your life. That’s how it operates. It’s operating even now – you are attracting financial problems because you are so focused on money flowing out, rather than in.

“He has given you everything you need to change your Reality. But you have to use your free will to decide what you want to create. Where’s the fun in living, if God does it all for you? How can you ever learn to create, when you abdicate your creative power to God?

“No, in His Infinite Wisdom and Love, He wants you to learn by experimenting. It’s the only way you will truly own it. Do you remember setting the intention that you wanted to master the Law of Attraction?”

“Yes,” I replied, feeling a tad sheepish.

“Well, all true learning comes from direct experience. Don’t give up. Keep experimenting. Have you been spending five minutes a day visualizing what you actually want?”

“Er, no.”

“Have you been acknowledging your successes and the income you DO receive with gratitude?”

“Uh…no, again.”

“Well, God has already done His part. Now it’s time for you to do yours. You can’t abdicate your free will and responsibility for creating the life you want. It doesn’t work like that.

“To create a specific result, the Law of Attraction requires your conscious involvement. Otherwise, all you get is the default result of your and everyone else’s miscellaneous thoughts and emotions. And you can imagine the results – they aren’t pretty.”

“OMG! You are right! One look at our unconscious world shows what a mess we are making of things by refusing to own our collective creative responsibility.”

“Yes, and in the microcosm of your own life, too. But take heart. The Law of Attraction is completely impersonal and works whether you use it consciously or not…”

“So, how is that supposed to encourage me?”

“It means that all you need to do is grasp the reins of your mind and start steering it in the direction you want and the Law of Attraction will do the rest. Isn’t that exciting?”

“Yes, it is! Wow! The possibilities are starting to filter through to me. So here I was holding the Magic Aladdin’s Lamp with no 3-wish limit and raving at God (who gave us this marvellous gift) just because He wasn’t doing it all for me. Duh!”

“And it takes so little to steer the course of your life in a completely new direction. Five minutes a day focussing on what you want and pretending to actually have it – just five minutes. Is that so hard?”

“No, actually, I guess not. So it’s up to me then, is it?”

“Of course. That’s what makes it so much more meaningful and rewarding when you succeed. PLEASE, do yourself a huge favour and do the 5 minutes a day. Don’t just talk about it or theorize. Actually do it. Make time for it. It’s the most important item on your To-Do list. Put it at the top and follow through. Even if you do nothing else all day, do that.”

“But I have to earn a living,” I whined.

“Yes, so visualize having a living, a glorious one, I might add. And if you feel resistance to doing the 5 minutes a day, visualize being able to do that exercise easily and so enjoying the process that it becomes the best part of your day. Start now to create a new habit that will serve you for the rest of your life!”

So, after this message, my heart opened. I felt inspired and empowered. It felt do-able. I felt I have the full creative freedom to earn money any way I want, or even just to receive it in the form of gifts or grants. It doesn’t matter. My choice. Or even better, let go of the how’s and just imagine enjoying the fruits of having money. Focus on what I want it for. That will bring it faster.

How about you? Are you doing your 5 minutes a day? How is that working for you? Please comment – I’d love to hear your experiences.

Caring for the Creative Self

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I awaken naturally with the dawn, or unnaturally with the alarm, or to the warm, rough tongue of my cat, Jeda, licking my face, punctuated with little nibbles. This is her way of reminding me that she is a hungry little carnivore and that if I am not snappy about it, she might just revert to the habits of her saber-toothed ancestors, starting with my nose. Of course, I know she wouldn’t really, but sometimes I wonder if something happened to me and I didn’t wake up, whether a few days later the cops would find just a pile of well-gnawed bones in my place. That’s a gruesome thought!

So how does this fit into caring for the Creative Self? Well, for one, I am allowing my imagination to play with “what-if’s”. So what if they are silly? You never know where silliness might lead. A true Creative understands this and indulges in the need to imagine.

So if I were to truly care for my creative life, I would make time for imaginative ramblings, instead of having to sneak them in when I should be doing something else. When I book my day so solid with To Do’s that there is nothing left for daydreaming, it has to go underground. But the creative force simply will not be kept in–it sneaks out at the slightest break in my concentration, distracting me from my chores. So why fight it? Why not make it a legitimate part of my day?

That’s the problem–it doesn’t feel legitimate, my creativity. It feels like a self-indulgence, something to be done guiltily and hurriedly, when no one is looking. How do I explain to my boss that I was late for the meeting because my morning pages suddenly blossomed into a short story or poem.

Why does business judge pleasure so harshly, limiting it to the pleasure of getting the sale, coming in under budget or on schedule? Things that reflect on the holy bottom line. Business asks: what good is something that does not bring in money? I may argue that it isn’t paying for the time I spend creatively, but business would counter that I could have used that time to work. Hence it must be theft!

So what has all this to do with caring for my creative life? Well I suspect that it is not really about them at all. I am the one who feels guilty when I take time for creativity. See, I even said, “take time” for creativity. From whom??? Obviously, I must have some deeply rooted beliefs about who owns my time. So, it seems to me that the first step to reclaiming the time to care for my creative life, is to heal those beliefs. Because if I don’t own my life and my time, why bother living? So someone else can make a profit? Hardly a compelling reason to exist!

So let us propose another “what-if”. What if I claimed my life, my energies and my time as my own, with all the rights and responsibilities conferred by ownership. What would that look like? I would start each day with a board meeting with my Creative Self. I would spend 30-40 minutes going over my day, work meetings, creative projects, household chores etc., and writing them out in calligraphy of different colors, with cartoons and sketches– as sort of illustrated treasure map of my day. And then, I would hand it over to my Creative Self to mark a big X on the spot where I should start digging for buried gold!

I would ask my Creative Self to become involved in all areas of my life, including work and see how it felt like approaching them. Who know what worthwhile changes might happen? And who says creativity cannot positively affect the bottom line? Of course it can, and does, many, many times. And if it doesn’t, then it can positively affect my attitudes and moods, which will positively affect my colleagues and thereby positively affect our productivity, or at least our enjoyment of our work.

I would take frequent breaks, time-outs, every couple of hours or even more often. I would agree on a secret code that my Creative Self would use when it wanted my attention. When called, I would step out of my office and into Sacred Space — like being summoned into the boss’s office for a private and confidential meeting. Hmmm. Why not? If I include my Creative Self as my business partner, who says that I would starve? Maybe not. All I know is I would have a lot more fun and purpose in my life. And when it is over, I will look back fondly on all my creative moments, before stepping forth into the final creative adventure. Yes, I see now that caring for my creative life is caring for my Self at the deepest, most meaningful level. Definitely worth giving it a try!

© Copyright 2011 by Gail Christel Behrend — All Rights Reserved