Ever since I committed to the creative work of developing The Sitting with Death and Choosing Life Programme I’ve been cultivating the art of co-operating with an emergent process.

In other words, I’m aware of being involved with something bigger than me, something that I can’t fully grasp with my mind or “make happen” but that I can receive and co-operate with and lend all my skills to. I’ve thought of the project as something with a life, a sacred purpose and destiny of its own which I am called to discover and serve, something that intersects with and expresses an emerging consciousness on the planet. I see it as an expression of my soul work.

Right now, six years into the project, with the creation and piloting stage completed, I am  working on a design for the next stage, to grow an engaged community around the transformational practice of sitting with death and choosing life. Rather like an architect designing a house, I am identifying the structures that will provide a container within which a community can grow and thrive.

I’m writing this in an attempt to better understand the creative process

I’m doing this for three reasons:

First, to map the territory. I’ve been fascinated by the creative process all my life and I find it to be a study that is  always exciting and evolving. The evolution of consciousness seems to me to be very closely aligned with acts of creativity because the more consciousness we have available to us, the more skilfully creative we can be, not just on our own behalf but for the good of the whole. Part of my life’s work has been to map this territory within my own experience as I’m living it, with the understanding that the more truly I express and write about my own subjective experiences, the closer I come to transpersonal truths which resonate for others. And, the more accurately I know where I am in the bigger scheme of existence, the more skilled I can be in living consciously and in creatively contributing to life.  

My second motivation is to better understand the optimum conditions for creative flow and how the anxiety of the egoic mind can interrupt this. For me, being in the flow of creative inspiration is one of the most thrilling and fulfilling gifts of life, while wrestling with the challenges of a creative project absorbs and grows me. As I become aware of the underlying dynamics of the process, and how I respond to it, I become more skilled and fulfilled and I can support others to become more skilled and fulfilled too.

And thirdly, I am motivated to write something as a starting place for a conversation with those of you who are similarly involved in creating projects, books, or other soul works which in some way point to the transition to a whole-mind consciousness and culture. Recently, I notice the ways I interpret experience and the language that I use to describe it are changing. This suggests that I may be on the cusp of discovering something new or evolving my point of view in some way. I’m curious about this and I’d love to explore with others on a similar trajectory. For this exploration I invite you to join me in a Deep Discovery Conversation. When we come together with the intention of exploring our experience from a state of presence, deeply listening to what is emerging, we can co-create a charged and expansive field of consciousness in which to receive insight and inspiration and bring forward new ways of seeing, being and acting in the world. I am longing for such conversations.

Is the Creative Process Always a Co-creation?  

For a long time I’ve thought of the creative process I’m experiencing when I’m writing or engaged in educational design, as a conversation, a relationship, a co-creation, an inquiry. Whenever I get focussed on what my inquiry is and I ask a clear question, the answers come. They may come as I’m writing , or later when I pick up a book, or during a conversation with a friend or colleague, or when I’m out for a walk and my mind is relaxed.

Whenever I sit down to write, which I do just about every day, I move into an intentional, focused, meditative state in which I seem to be co-creating with an intelligence bigger than me which is keen to use me as its eyes and ears, hands and feet. This process of receiving inspiration and direction is often referred to as “downloading” information. But where does the information come from?

The personal creative mind is committed to evolving consciousness and culture and to bringing a project into the wider world using  a lifetime’s wealth of skills and experience combined with beginner’s mind – open, receptive and willing to serve.

And then, the transpersonal creative source – that’s the mystery I’m exploring and coming to know and to name. These are some of the thoughts I’ve had about the sources of inspiration and information:

• Soul: the individuated inner world which bridges between the material world and the eternal Mystery and carries information about our unique gifts, purpose and direction;
• Collective consciousness, with all its suffering and genius, which expresses the zeitgeist or spirit of the time;
• The wisdom of the Earth, the body and other sentient beings, expressing instinct, organic self-regulation, natural justice and generosity;
• The imaginal realm: the source of poetry, dream, vision, symbol, myth and archetype, perhaps what Jung called the collective unconscious and a source of meaning, play and renewal.
• Universal intelligence or the evolutionary impulse of the cosmos which directs our attention to infinity, eternity, unbounded freedom and endless possibility;
• The Creative Source, Original Grand Design and Ground of Being – the ultimate Mystery.
• Other people talk about channelling guides or higher beings, this hasn’t been my experience but there are many ways of knowing.

What I seem to be pointing to is a meeting between the individual creative mind, with all the skills and experience gathered throughout a lifetime, and a bigger intelligence that moves through, informs and directs the individual mind. When I am in flow with this bigger intelligence it is such a good feeling – a feeling of quiet excitement, warm fulfilment, coherence and expansive wholeness. It’s truly a feeling of coming home to self, being in exactly the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing. There is nothing else quite like it and it makes my life worthwhile.   

And the “me”, the mind that is interacting with these sources of inspiration and bringing them into form, is exercising both the best skills and level of mastery of which I am capable and, at times, drops into the habitual limitations of egoic mind. In other words, whilst my intention is always to co-operate with the creative flow, sometimes I interrupt it. Part of my growing expertise as a creator is to discern when, and how, I am interrupting and when I need to wait and adjust to the rhythms of the process. Maybe this conversation is a dance or an act of lovemaking, requiring the whole person, in unison with a creative energy which has a life and direction of its own.

How we Flow and Interrupt the Flow

Let me give you a more concrete example of what I mean by creative flow and how I can interrupt it. I completed the creation and piloting stage of the Sitting with Death and Choosing Life project with a lengthy report in October ‘22. At that point I had been exclusively focused on the work of creating courses, bringing groups together and facilitating them, holding people through deep transition and training facilitators, over a long period and I was creatively exhausted. This coincided with a badly broken wrist and a hip replacement surgery which immobilised me for a while. I gladly let go of all effort and surrendered into rest. I contacted a longing for immersion in the imaginal realm where I could float in unstructured, dreamlike consciousness and be held, carried and renewed.

By New Year I was ready to start moving forward again and, at the same time, there were  loose ends to tie up and complete, so I was in that place of ending and beginning at the same time. The purpose, design and structures for the next stage hasn’t come all at once but slowly, piece by piece. As the new pattern reveals itself, I experience the excitement of illumination followed by uncertainty and hesitation. I know I can’t move forward successfully until I have adequately sensed the new design in its entirety and I will know it is complete when I feel quiet excitement and harmony within myself. I know this is something I cannot force or reach through effort alone but I must be patient and open to receive. Yet, part of me (egoic mind) has been anxious, with a sense of urgency, wanting to push forward, to get it finished and move into action. The egoic mind wants to hurry up, takes it all personally, fears getting left behind and left alone, fears losing power and influence or the humiliation of being found inadequate to the task. Meanwhile, the wiser and more skilled mind knows there will come a point when my personal energy will become synchronised with the design, animated by it and integrated with it. Then, any actions I take on behalf of the project will become magnetic and the next stage will unfold naturally and gather momentum. Like the turning of the seasons and the coming of the spring, this is a natural process with its own timing. Until the design is in place any actions I take will be partial and lacking in power. And so, I need to be patient, discerning, diligent and non-judgmental – in beginner’s mind. 

The Unified Field of Consciousness

In the past I would have described my creative process as a conversation between “me” and “soul” or “me” and “universal intelligence” but in this moment, as I write, I sense I am bringing consciousness into form by feeling into a continuum of consciousness, or Whole Mind, and that “I” am not a separate entity but part of a continuous flow and confluence of energy and information, in which many sources and voices are the currents of one ocean, one consciousness, One Mind. Perhaps I can liken this to singing in a choir; sometimes I hear the whole choir singing together, then I can only hear myself, then I’ll tune into the baritone voices, the solo soprano or the accompanying piano. Each voice is expressing a vital aspect of the whole song and together creates harmony, power, beauty and unison. In which case there is no separation between everyday self, soul, universal intelligence, or any of the other streams I have named or am yet to discover. And in that realisation I am touching into the Unified Field of Consciousness, the All-that-is.

When we listen into a conscious, creative space, is inspiration coming from the imaginal realm, from the subtle energies of a higher creative mind which works in a very different way to waking consciousness? Is it coming from the collective consciousness with its mix of genius, longing and suffering? Or from the egoic mind? And how do we interpret that information? Do we filter it through our habits of limitation and attachment? Do we try and force this new information into the confines of our old ideas?

It seems to me that the process of receiving inspiration and then translating it into action is where the work of the transformational artist comes in. This work is thrilling, frustrating, delicate, experimental and humbling. There is a sense that something bigger than the desires of the individual self is waiting to be born and embodied into the material world and it is the task of the transformational artist or sacred activist to learn how to co-operate with that.

And does it really matter what I call the creative process and the language I use to understand my experience? I believe it does. For me, as I’ve said, an important part of the lifelong journey towards becoming a conscious and creative human being has been this mapping of the inner world. I’ve experienced myself as an explorer, a pioneer, an edge dweller, an archaeologist of soul, a deep sea diver and I’ve come to understand that the mapping of the inner world is a science, or a way of knowing or gnosis which is not based on rational principles but received through intuition. It’s a science which cannot be proved but only experienced and discovered.

 Are you a Transformational Artist or a Sacred Activist?

To what extent can you and I, become  open and clear vessels for the transmission of evolutionary consciousness and the transition into a new paradigm evolutionary culture? 

I believe this intuitive way of knowing holds the key to the next level of enlightened creative consciousness and this is  available now to many of us on a conscious path. We can learn to tap into and align with the voices and energies that exist within the One Mind. When we come together with curiosity and in beginners mind we can piece together our unique individual experiences and intuitions, hear more of the universal song and reveal more of the design that it is animating the Soul of our World and calling us into active participation.

For me, understanding grows through a process of experimental action, reflection and inquiry. I learn about the deeper workings of the creative mind through writing, taking action on my projects and through deep discovery conversations with others who are exploring similar questions.

I’m aware I am introducing some very big ideas here which I will unpack further in coming posts and conversations. Writing this piece is my next step towards finding people interested in joining with me to explore and illuminate these ideas together. This morning I asked for guidance about how and where to find companions for conversations about this thrilling arena of the co-creative process and I will be following the trail of synchronicities and hunches to find you. If you resonate with what I’m saying here and you would like to join me for a Deep Discovery Conversation please check the date of the next conversation here.