Who is the one creating? What if you are not who you think you are?

You are not who you think. You Are.

Dear reader, 

What follows is, first, a journal entry that poured out of me as I wrestled with my desire to (again ha ha!) finish a piece of writing, and second, a parsing out of what has been happening as I’ve sunken deeper into my understanding of Eros and the creative process. I hope you’ll find something useful to glean from it, or at least be intrigued to inquire deeper into your own process. I’d love to chat about it with you in the comments, if you are so inclined to dig in. 

xx,

Faye

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The ever-present conundrum inherent in wanting to create something specific - that is, wanting my creations to materialize in a specific way, whether that be in the form of writing, painting, making love, drawing, dancing, cooking… anything - is that Eros doesn’t care what “I,” want. Eros doesn’t care about meeting my desires because Eros is Desire herself. Eros is trying to feed me, and my job is to remain open. To be, as it were, a channel for her. 

I hold this pen and words come through, yet I do not know which are coming next. I am not grasping for the sentence nor contorting it. She is writing it. Not me. Not who I think I am. Eros is moving through this vessel of consciousness -  my body. She is the impulse. My mind remains spacious. I do not resist what is coming.

What is important to grasp in the relationship between she and me. It is a matter of openness. Be like a hollow bamboo. 

A creative block is self-imposed suffering. An unwillingness to be present with - to be feeling - what is, and to express that The story unravels. The plot is a mystery to me. I am simply the channel. Open, waiting, willing to receive her energy. 

It’s all coming when I pause to listen. Whose voice is speaking? Where do these whispers come from? I’ve never known which thought would come next. What does that mean? Perhaps that “I” am not the one thinking? That there is no thinker? Indeed, this thought is simply appearing in the space of consciousness articulated by the breath filling my body.

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Lately my boyfriend has amusedly listened as I’ve been trying to work out the most useful way to conceptualize creativity. ‘You’re cute when you’re overwhelmed with ideas,” he tells me. I come to the understanding that it is perhaps most useful to think of creativity, on a fundamental level, as a spectrum of colors emanating from a molten center. This is important because our concepts - our models of the world - our belief systems - are the foundation of our experience. So I don’t take this lightly. It is the torture I’m currently choosing to tussle with. And it is delicious.

My fundamental understanding, the one that underlies all of my work, is that creativity is the energy - the invisible force - animating us. Creativity runs through all we do, or do not. It is not something we control, but something we channel. And out ability to channel it depends entirely on the openness of our operating systems - that is, our minds and our bodies. 

We RECEIVE and TRANSMIT creative energy, which I’ll hereafter refer to as EROS. 

The word “Eros,” may make you think of erotic, which may make you think of sex. Eros is more than sex. Eros is the creative, connective tissue of the universe. So, when we learn to receive and express Eros through our bodyminds (because they are inextricably linked) we feel more alive and connected. Because we ARE. That is, we are not thinking about what we should or should not be doing. We are BEING. Here, now, present, an expression of the erotic energy that is always pulsing, begging, inviting us closer, into deeper, fuller, richer experience. 

Eros occurs to us as sensation that we recognize as Desire. An impulse to Move Toward Something. The passion that drives us to rip the clothes off our lover, the licking of our lips that leads us to the pantry in search of that bar of chocolate, the song that hits us in the hips and begs for our writhing participation, the thud of heaviness in our chests that asks us to slide down the wall and sit in the thick of our longing for someone to love. 

Whether we are open to expressing that impulse - whether we rip their clothes off or savor the chocolate or let ourselves sob in a heap on the floor - that is where it gets tricky. This is where the question of how our minds and bodies have been conditioned comes front and center. 

The question is: have we trained ourselves well - have we cultivated the capacity to be open to what is? And to express the energy of Eros wanting to move through us? Both mentally, as in, do our belief systems allow us to be open to what is right now, observing thoughts arising and letting them go without grasping? And physically, as in, are our bodies able to handle the intensity of the sensation of the present? Are we able to move, physically, in a way that expresses our felt sense - the erotic truth of the moment?

Do we think we shouldn’t feel or do the thing the impulse of Eros is asking of us? Is it “bad” or “dangerous” to want to feel your lover’s touch, or to eat the chocolate, even though we do feel the impulse, if only for a fraction of a second? Does what we feel grate at our bodymind operating system, threatening to shatter the fragile illusion of safety we’ve built through our belief systems? Do we repress the impulse and go on suffering at the hand of our own unwillingness to feel what is here, now, in the present moment? Do we suffer believing our goodness, happiness, fulfillment, freedom is elsewhere? Do we believe the love we wish for is somewhere other than here, yearning to pour through us?

A basic truth of Eros is that she wants to be FELT, not FILLED with some sort of distraction, nor sublimated, nor shamed, judged, fixed, or otherwise cast into the shadows, replaced with something that is less than exactly what it is we are feeling. Eros wants us to become MORE of her. 

At her core, Eros is LONGING. The molten center that reveals herself as a cavernous, infinite space of longing to open up, to feel, to BECOME an expression of. Contrary to popular models that imply we must have our desires and longings met, else we will suffer, Eros asks us to understand that the FEELING itself - the intensity of WANTING - is where true freedom lives. Freedom doesn’t come from getting the chocolate, or the kiss, or the love requited; it comes from our openness to feeling our wanting of these things with all our awareness. 

For many of us, the feeling of sitting with desire itself - the energy underlying the impulse to seek a lover or a melt-in-our-mouth treat -  is too intense to bear. Which is why we go seek the thing. Seeking the thing is not “good” or “bad,” it is just something we do. Eros is here to remind us that while, yes, it is beautiful to have experiences that delight our senses, our motivation changes everything. When we are driven by a desire to connect with and express our authentic selves - to remain open to feeling our longings without attachment to filling them, and to express ourselves and thereby create our lives from that place of feeling, we are relieved of the suffering that comes from believing our freedom lies elsewhere. 

Eros is the freely pulsing energy of the spectrum of all of Life. 

Life is creative expression. 

Of this, Martha Graham said, “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.”

When we resist feeling what is, we close the channel. We create tension, knots, in the flow of creative energy. Letting go of this resistance is the great lesson through which we find our connection to our authentic nature.

It is in this act of letting go and opening to Eros’ creative impulse - the poem written, the song belted, the violent thrusts, the pulling of hair and biting of lips, the heart breaking honesty, the crying while coming, - the EMOTION of raw, pure, erotic energy - that we find our true selves and our true freedom. It has never been and never will be, “over there, somewhere.” It is always here, now, pulsing white-hot inside you.