Welcome to The Creative. Twice a month I share quotes from the books, Art is the Highest Form of Hope and The Creative Act. I find perspectives on the creative process to be so meta when it comes to life. We are a creative process and everything we do is subject to the same rules. Creation is non-linear. It's messy. It moves forward and backward. And also gets stuck. Often times we do not realize the purpose of a singular creative process until years later. Creativity likes to surprise us.
“When something doesn’t go according to plan we have the choice to resist it or to incorporate it.” - Rick Rubin
I spend more time thinking about resistance than I ever imagined possible. Often, I find myself resistant to resistance itself! This topic frequently arises in conversations with my Mentorship clients, as resistance plays a significant role in viewing creativity as energy. Resistance is where we get stuck. It's the glue, the duct tape, the sap, the flytrap that makes it incredibly difficult to connect with our creativity. Resistance is a trickster, challenging to navigate because our most natural impulse is to resist. We instinctively fight back, force, and push through, trying to grab the wheel and right the ship. However, resistance requires surrender.
Energetically, approaching resistance requires neutrality. And honestly, we are dreadful at finding neutrality! Although we have incredible access to neutrality through energy work and the ability to find and maintain it, we do not start from a place of neutrality. Neutrality is a practice, and one that takes time to master. In energy work, meeting resistance requires trust in our ability to let things move through. By running energy, we create more space for our own energy, which in turn leaves less room for external energies to resist. We can move it through instead of fight.
Resistance is a trickster because it is nearly impossible to avoid getting caught up in it. Resistance demands acknowledgment before we can let go and allow it to move through. In our creative pursuits, resistance appears, as Rubin writes, when things do not go according to plan. If we are doing it right, this should happen all the time. The struggle of the creative is to reconcile that what we see in our minds will never be completely replicated. Our imagination is perfect; the world is not. We can never create an exact replica of what we perceive in our mind’s eye. A successful piece gets close, but perfection always escapes us. When I view a piece as being perfect, it’s not, but it is as close as one can get.
In essence, our plan goes astray the moment we decide to take action on our inspiration. Artists begin with an altered plan. Experts learn to leverage this, and once the foundation of an idea is established, they let go, stop orchestrating, and begin to listen. This listening is a form of surrender, a place where we find neutrality—what Rubin refers to as incorporating. The same principle applies to viewing our creativity energetically. When we stop forcing, and instead listen, notice, and allow the resistance to move through, it moves and we are free.