Spine: The Evolution of It's All Coming

or: noticing the growth of my creative backbone

This blog started as It’s All Coming in the midst of a sexual awakening, when I decided to reflect on my erotic process through the written word. Perhaps you’ve noticed sex is not the blatant focus anymore, but it’s not like I’ve stopped my erotic meditations; to the contrary, this exploration of sexual energy, which I learned to be but one of many forms of creative energy, underlies everything we... well, create. Somewhere along the way, the sexual line of inquiry stopped feeling like the thing I wanted to share, so the blog expanded into an exploration of creative energy at large. 

Which brings us to the change you may have noticed: the name of this space has transformed. Welcome to Spine. An exploration and practice of creative backbone. 

Let’s rewind a moment, though. Last night, in a liminal dreamscape, I was caring for a very hungry, very giant, opalescent black caterpillar. I fed him yellow lentil soup out of a comically large bucket and made sure he was always drinking enough water and he grew and grew and grew and turned different colors and different shapes depending on which direction I was looking from. 

I’m no Jungian dream analyst, but this growing, morphing caterpillar seemed to me a metaphor for the spine —the core — of creativity. 

Speaking of spines, in the Hindu tradition, a serpent coiled at the base of the spine is used to represent creative energy, also referred to as Kundalini. When this energy is “awakened” by any number of practices — in other words, when we connect with it by learning to sense it moving through our bodies — the snake is depicted as uncoiling and traveling up and down the spine. 

But if we don’t connect, the snake is sitting, coiled in a circle, dormant in the body, much like the image of the ouroboros. 

Ouorboros (left/top) and Kundalini (right/bottom)

[this ouroboros is] always drawn chewing his own tail and eating it… This snake, is a symbol of what the Buddhists call saṃsāra, that is to say, the round or rat race of life and death. And this goes on so long as the snake doesn’t know that his tail is himself. When he discovers that, he lets go of it and wiggles happily along like every good snake. ​

You might say, well, why in the first place did he not realize that his tail was his own? Well, because he wanted something else. See, there wasn’t anything except this snake in the beginning. —Alan Watts

Through these symbols, we’re getting at the nature of transformation, and the desire to experience contrast that provokes creation.

The uncoiled wiggling snake, or the caterpillar shedding its skins and going through the process of metamorphosis is allowing the innate creativity of life to quite literally take over and transform it into a different creature. Perhaps this is a way to look at and experience ourselves?

What would happen if we let go of the thought that we must remain static? What if we stopped wishing we were something or someone else? What if we stopped chasing our own tails? What if we could experience the something else we wanted by getting out of our mind spirals and relating with the world around us, and indeed within our own flesh? What if we could feel the transformation happening within our bodies and wiggle along with it? What if we let the movement happen? What if we just went where we felt like going?

Seems great, right? Yet often, our attempts at transformation land us in more distress. Why? Because unlike a caterpillar whose transformation is largely determined on a biological level, us humans get to direct our transformations (which is not the same as controlling the outcome - think of creativity as a river & the direction as riverbanks). This can be dangerous, because often we get stuck in our minds and thus, don’t develop a sense of inner direction. We think our power comes from somewhere outside of ourselves, because that’s what we were told and that’s what we stuck with. We haven’t had the experience necessary to cultivate a sense of the power that emanates from within us.

As Carl Jung says, “the world will ask you who you are, and if you do not know, the world will tell you.” 

We’ve got to take our direction into our own wiggly bodies.

And though we can’t determine where we’ll ultimately end up, we can create the riverbanks of a journey for ourselves.

From what I’ve learned thus far, the usefulness of our journey (meaning, does it support us in moving toward our purpose? which is also something we need to determine for ourselves) has everything to do with our environment. 

An ecologist would tell you an organism and its environment are inseparable, more like an organism-environment. A mystic would tell you the same thing.

Our environment both influences and is a result of what we take in and what we put out; it is — we are — an amalgamation of:

1. what and how we feed our physical bodies (e.g. with with food and movement)

2. what and how we nourish our minds and hearts - our metaphysical bodies— our creative spirits (ideally with useful knowledge and meaningful connections)

3. how we process and digest and use all of the above; how we move and direct, and create from that energy; how we put it into action (are we operating as a connected body/mind/soul?)

4. WHY we do all of the above (does our purpose come from within or without?)

The Artist’s Way author Julia Cameron says in her basic principles of spiritual electricity, “Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creative energy.” Certainly, then, we need a strong spine — a strong sense of our self, our purpose, our stability, our territory, our story — to support this energy, and to allow ourselves to branch out, expand, and transform.  Unfortunately, society at large tends to want to squash the creative impulse of this natural order…

Which leads us back to a practice of embodiment as the true spine of creativity. The way I define embodiment is: bringing the abstract (a spark of inspiration, an idea) into form through connection with our bodies. This could mean form like dance or backflips, a trek through the woods or a quivering kiss… or form like poetry or an essay or a painting. The spine of it, though, is the felt sense in our bodies that underlies it. 

The Kiss, Edvard Munch, 1897 (left/top) The Kiss, Gustav Klimt, 1907 (right/bottom)

Most of us know what it’s like to contort ourselves to fit a mold of who we think we should be or what we think we should do. Many of us know what it’s like to force ourselves into a yoga pose our bodies are not ready for, or to lift heavy weight with poor form, or to have sex without connection, because we think we “should.”

Embodiment discards the sentiment of the “should” and instead asks us to fully inhabit our bodies. Why? Because what we can feel is realer than any abstract idea of goodness or rightness. What we can feel is present, here, now, true in this moment. And Here, Now, my friends, is where the creative act happens. 

Speaking of NOW, what is happening now, in this newly renovated space? 

Well, the poetry and the essays will remain free for all, aaaand! I will be adding a paid option that includes weekly body-based prompts and practices to support you in cultivating the SPINE of your metamorphosis - your creative backbone. 

Think writing and movement explorations rooted in developing and deepening a felt sense of the body and learning to translate that feeling through your movement, whether it be on the dance floor, or the climbing wall, or your lovemaking or your poetry, paired with inspirations from all sorts of brilliant, expansive minds. We’re mapping new territory, baby! And that territory will reveal your body’s story. 

So keep your eyes peeled for the launch in the next few weeks! And, if you know anyone who might be interested in such explorations, please do spread the word :)

xx Faye