West of the Moon Creative Retreat

It's Not Just Creative Writing, It's Creative Living

The Power of Rituals

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WritingI love coaching creatives and being part of their creative journeys.

And the best part of the coaching, so far, has been to see writers smiling and saying they are writing again, creating again. Because, I believe, that is our natural state. We are all creators. That is part of our collective myth. It is at the heart of our individual myths.

Your personal myth is your story, the story of who you really are, the center from which you live, love, and create.

One of the initial reasons people come to work with me is that they are simply not writing, not creating. And they are frustrated. They feel guilt. They are stressed. The clock is ticking and they have nothing to show for their time. Because they are not creating, they doubt their abilities, citing the lack of productivity as clear evidence they are not writers. Some even go so far as refusing to acknowledge they are really writers.

The first step in working with creatives is helping them learn their own story, their own myth. Remove the world’s expectations. Remove the parents’ hopes and dreams. Eliminate the well-intentioned third grade teachers admonitions and directions. Remove checkbooks and mortgages. Quiet the voice without and within. Who are you? Now…who are you, really? And there we begin on a journey to you.

Joseph Campbell says that a ritual is the enactment of a myth. I like that. It is a tangible way of participating in the myth. In the life of a creative, a ritual is a practice you establish to participate in who you are as a creative. In essence, a ritual becomes a entryway to your practice as a creative, regardless of how you express your creativity.

Think of the other areas of your life in which you participate in rituals. Our religious lives are filled with rituals we observe to connect us with the sacred. Think of your family, especially at the holidays, when we gather and do things a certain way, whether knowing where everyone will sit at the table, how we open our presents, stories always read or shared, movies always watched, whatever. These are all rituals that give expression to the myth we live, the myth of our life.

A ritual is sacred in the sense that it leads you to something greater within you. When created according to your own personal myth, a ritual leads you to…well…you. Because at your very essence, your very core, you, my dear friend, are a creative.

A lot of creatives just catch snatches of time here and there, plop down, and expect Faulkner to pour forth in about the same time your barista can whip up a double espresso and you consume it. When you make time for your art and approach it with your rituals, designed to help you participate in your own myth, your own life, the results are different. The critical, doubting voices all creatives hear begin to fade. The world is put back into its proper perspective. Expectations and demands are not allowed. Through our personal ritual, we prepare ourselves, full of wonder and anticipation, to just express. You deserve no less my friend.

Move Toward Your True Self

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Flow by Alayna Palmer Hanneken

Flow by Alayna Palmer Hanneken

“I believe ardently that you should drop everything
and run toward your true self.” – Kyran Pittman

Chances are, most of us are not going to be able to “drop everything,” but that doesn’t mean we have to forget about being our true self as a result.

The important thing is to identify our true self and then to find ways to honor it – to run or walk or move toward it – as often and as fully as we can.

In his book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (a pioneer in the scientific study of happiness), writes:

The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times . . . The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”

Doing something that is both challenging and worthwhile!

Like devoting time to your passion. Like honoring that part of your true self. That doesn’t mean we have to be doing what we love 24/7 in order to be happy or to feel fulfilled (though if we can, that’s awesome). But we do need to devote some time to it.

Unfortunately, many creatives give up the pursuit of their art because it isn’t practical, because they won’t be able to (or may not be able to) support themselves on that alone.

I’m not going to suggest that most of us can just give up our day jobs and run in that direction, like Pittman suggests, but I do believe our cognizance of that limitation often influences just how much we do (and even more often do not) move in that direction.

There are certainly myriad reminders and pressures on us to forget about that direction (sometimes entirely), to stop following what Joseph Campbell called our “bliss” (whether that’s writing, or painting, or running, or whatever we feel called to do).

Most of us, however, give away time each week, if not each day, that we could spend doing that thing we love.

Maybe it’s only fifteen minutes some days, maybe it’s more. But the thing is, once we start making even a little time for that part of ourselves, we tend to find more time available for that very thing. And we also tend to start feeling happier and more fulfilled, as we get into what Csikszentmihalyi calls “Flow” doing that worthwhile activity.

Most of us can walk in the direction of our true selves if we allow ourselves to slow down and to listen, to identify what it is we truly want to do (our calling, so to speak), and if we give ourselves permission to honor that side of ourselves even just a little.

As Zig Ziglar put it, “You seldom, if ever, get lucky sitting down.”

We can’t get to that destination if we don’t actually get up and take the steps. And denying our true selves is often what leads to frustration, resentment, regret, guilt, and feelings of something missing and dissatisfaction.

So if you haven’t gotten started on the path toward your true self, begin by answering these questions:

Who is your true self?

What do you need to do to move in that direction?

If you have started, what do you need to do next in order to keep your momentum going? Giving yourself permission and time to do the thing you love is probably on the list.

It Really Is About Creative Living

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Creativity is at the root of everything we do.

Our Western culture tends to compartmentalize art and creativity and, in doing so, minimizes their value. But life itself is created and nurtured through childhood. Creativity and art, imagination and exploration, are encouraged during these years.

LabyrinthBut then we’re taught that we must get serious, be serious about life. And most of us leave our art and creativity behind. As Wordsworth writes, the “Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy” and we follow what our culture tells us is right, what we must do, how we must “grow up.”

Writing, painting, photography, sculpting, weaving, and all of the many other forms of artistic expression are ways we learn who we are, are ways we process these lives we lead. They are expressions of our essence, our very souls. Joan Dideon said “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.” 

Art is about expressing the inexpressible. Art is about metaphor through which we sense and feel that which we cannot express with words. Art is beyond language, beyond borders, genders, religions, beyond anything that separates us. Art is that which resonates so deeply we begin to understand that on that level, we are all truly one.

And so we find ways we can come together with others of like mind, to get away in an idyllic setting, away from the routine, the requirements, the numbing repetition of existence, to find and reclaim our art and, therefore, ultimately our lives. And once reclaimed, we can return home, knowing that the magic was never in that location but rather, is within each of us. It is us and is wherever we are, whatever we do, and is part of that essence that this world has never seen before and will never see again. And ultimately we realize that by retreating we are never “getting away from” but rather, if we are lucky, we live a life in which we are always following our own sacred path toward who we are meant to be.

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The Intention behind West of the Moon is to help writers and other creatives recognize and move beyond obstacles to a creative life.

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Whether you Write, Paint, Dance, Play Music, or work in some other medium, you do it because it's in you. You do it because you must.