Nurturing Your Creative Impulse

We Are All Magicians

Creativity is fundamentally, a form of self-expression. It’s about expressing who you are, what you’re feeling and experiencing—your authentic truth—at this moment in time. Your creative endeavors carry the energetic imprint of where you are right now. We are in a state of energetic flux, constantly changing. And our art, whatever form it might take, is a reflection of that.

You are not the same person today that you were yesterday, nor will you be the same person tomorrow. As we transmute our wounds and integrate our shadow, we become more whole. We deepen our capacity to hold more light.

Our self-expression is indelibly interwoven with the anima mundi, or world soul. The light codes streaming down into your upper chakras from the cosmos are encoded with the spirit of the time. They are a mirror of the energetic state of the collective unconscious. Whether you are aware of it or not, your art is, in part, a translation of this zeitgeist energy- the current flavor of cosmic light.

Everything we create is a celebration of our creative nature, our generative power. It is connected to the solar principle, represented in astrology by the zodiac sign Leo. We are true magicians with the ability to create something out of nothing. Create for your Self and lead with your soul and you can’t go wrong.

Creative Stagnation and the Animus

A poor relationship with one’s creativity can develop for a variety of reasons. Maybe you’re creating for the wrong reasons, from a place of ego rather than from the heart. Perhaps you internalized the voices of society, your peers or your family who say that your creative ideas are worthless or dumb, that you don’t have anything meaningful to say or that you’re not qualified enough. So you pick up a pen or a paintbrush, only to put it back down again. Or you think about applying to university or taking a class, but you stop in the middle and can’t bring yourself to follow through. And the insidious cycle repeats itself.

In Women Who Run With The Wolves, psychoanalyst Clarissa Pinkola Estés frequently finds a link between creative impotence in women and an unhealthy animus. In Jungian psychology, the animus is the masculine energetic force within you. A healthy animus is symbolized, among other things, by the wise king, the positive father, the supportive lover.

Pinkola Estés eloquently explains the role of the animus as follows, “Wild Woman, the soul-self is the artist and the animus is the arm of the artist. Wild Woman is the driver, he hustles up the vehicle. She makes the song, he scores it. She imagines, he offers up advice. Without him, the play is created in one’s imagination, but never written down or performed. Animus is a profound psychic intelligence with the ability to act- to carry out the impulses of the soul.”

At the root of a woman’s strangled vitality and ability to create often lurks the negative animus. When the negative animus takes over, a woman is afraid to create, she doubts her talents, her efforts die on the vine. The voice of the denigrating inner critic reigns supreme and stifles the creative impulse. The animus bullies her and invalidates her work. As a result, she is often paralyzed by inaction and struggles to manifest her ideas in the world. The dreams of women with such a psychological complex often feature images of injured or injuring men.

Becoming a Steward of Your Soul

So how does one heal the creative wound? By following the golden thread of the creative impulse and giving life to whatever arises within you, without censorship. By giving yourself permission to fail… and fail again. By promising yourself that no matter what, you will brush yourself off and start again- regardless of how many times you fall down. Sit with whatever comes up in the midst of your creative process. Allow it to be messy and uncomfortable and challenging. Who knows? Maybe it will even be playful, energizing and fulfilling in equal measure.

Consider dredging your creative underworld for any projects or soul ventures that were abandoned or rejected along the way. Take them into your arms, polish them until they are good as new and reclaim them as your beloved artistic offspring.

Guard your creative life. Show up for your practice- and yourself- every day. You are the steward of your soul and the creative flames that roar within. Don’t allow any person, thought, job or critic get in your way. The key aspect of healing the animus and the rebirth of one’s creative life is actual manifestation of one’s precious inner thoughts, impulses and ideas on the Earth plane.

Creativity is an act of radical vulnerability. It is a natural cycle that ebbs and flows. It involves letting go of perfection and humbly offering your work to the world with love and seeing what life it takes outside of you. Knowing that it could be imperfect or wrong and that you could be ridiculed or made fun of for it. You have to say to yourself, in your heart, and that’s okay. Because you love what you do and what you create so much that whatever comes with it is worth it.