This week in The Artist’s Way, I am recovering a sense of connection by learning to hone my receptive skills as well as my active skills. In today’s post, I’m exploring ideas around humans as conduits between Heaven and Earth, and how art has a way of taking on a life of its own.

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100 Liminal Days is an experimental project of embracing my current transitional season after exiting my business by sharing an honest, real-time account of my self-initiation experience in daily posts. I’m using The Artist’s Way as a guiding tool, and sending shorter weekly recaps only via my newsletter. Visit Day 1/100 to learn more and sign up to get the weekly recaps delivered to your inbox.

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Art Creates Itself

In last week’s Artist Date at the book signing for my friend, C. S. Jennings, he shared that once he gets started on a book, it eventually writes itself. It has been said that Michelangelo remarked that David was always there in the marble block; the artist simply released him. Similarly, Jackson Pollock stated, “The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.”

Cameron expounds on this further by saying, “In dance, in composition, in sculpture, the experience is the same: we are more the conduit than the creator of what we express.”

If these artists all discovered this same truth, perhaps it’s worth noting.

Listening Helps Us Recover a Sense of Connection

In Week Seven of The Artist’s Way, we are recovering a sense of connection – that is, we are learning to practice the right attitudes for creativity. This chapter is showing us how listening to our soul’s whisper through our Daily Pages and Artist Dates helps us drown out the voice of our inner Censor and Critic, and to notice that the actual act of making art is not done by thinking something up, it’s about getting something down. It’s about creating in connection with a force greater than ourselves.

What I especially love about this idea is that there is no striving when we approach creativity in this way. Cameron says,

“We’re not doing; we’re getting. Someone or something else is doing the doing. Instead of reaching for inventions, we are engaged in the listening.”

The reason this resonates so strongly for me is that I love the idea of collaborating and being a conduit. In my opinion, this is the very thing that makes work and art purposeful and meaningful – because it is bigger than us as individuals. Should it be solely from my own making, it seems that only I am the one to benefit. But truthfully, I think everything is connected, and it’s essentially impossible to do anything exclusively on our own.

Some folks might feel like that takes away the uniqueness of things we create, but I believe that’s what makes anything so special. Probability for the exact circumstances to line up again are lower as the complexity of the connective parts increases. When I look at it this way, everything feels like a miracle. I like living life with that attitude.

We Are All Conduits of Energy

Last night, I attended an IRL qigong class here in Austin for the first time, and the teacher explained that qigong helps us bridge the energies of Heaven and Earth. She said that we are all conduits of energy.

I had never heard this Daoist philosophy before, but somehow I already knew it and believe it. This is what my cliff portal dream was about – becoming a conduit (a portal) between Heaven and Earth. I know I keep going back to this dream I had of the Native American chief holding Embracing the Tree pose on the edge of a cliff, but this single image continues to speak to me. This was the way I interpreted it before I had ever heard of the ancient principle of Tian-Di-Ren (Heaven-Earth-Human). This image is why I feel called to the art of qigong. It’s more than just movement and breath – it’s a way I can become a bridge between Heaven and Earth, to bring harmony and balance to our world. (And it’s not a role just for me to integrate, it’s for all of us!)

If this is true, (and I think it is) it easily explains why so many artists describe their artwork as taking on a life of its own. We are not the only one involved in the creative process.

I love this line from the chapter:

We are the instrument more than the author of our work.

If we are the instrument, our best art will always flow through us when we are supple and open to the flow. It’s not something we strive to do – to choose the correct color or pen the perfect prose. It sounds as if these decisions reveal themselves to us as the “right” move when we are tuned into the energy around us. I heard someone say once that creativity starts with awareness of what we are already a part of, and only then does imagination have a chance to grow from there.

When I think about artistic expression through this lens, it begins to feel much more crucial to being world-changing than one might think. When artists expand their awareness and notice what we are already connected to, we are empowered to imagine – and create – even more. What seemed hopeless or impossible can transform into something better. When we allow ourselves to tap into that ever-present flow, and get out of our head and into action, our creativity really can change the world.

Make Art During Transition Times

This is how we navigate this collective liminal space, too. If you feel like you are in one big long transition season like me, try tapping into this creative flow. Don’t try to make “good art”, just listen and get something down. Even if you don’t see yourself as an artist, this just might help you feel more connected, grounded, and part of something bigger than yourself. Sometimes that’s all we need to move through change with a little more ease.

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