Creativity

I love this Ask Leela thing!

So much wisdom coming through inspired by a virtual dialogue, vulnerable inquiry and reaching out for connection. This is the rhythm of the divine feminine. Through conscious and honest expression, and resourcing of our own and each other's wisdom, we create a stir in the universe that inspires truth to dance forth. Tapping into that well spring of truth is how the paradigm shift is taking place, and we ladies are both birthing and dancing to that rhythmic awakening! Pictured here is my dear friend Kara's creative expression as a mother. She's taken one of her son's first pair of shoes and used them as planters!

Thank you for the great questions once again. Creativity is indeed a loaded issue and based on the abundant questions I received, it seems that so many of us are literally starving for it. Join me below for a powerful infusion of the creative life force that is our birthright.

Creative love,

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In this issue

"My creativity doesn't exist"

What is one thing I can start doing to explore my non-existent creative side? The one thing you can start doing is stop calling your creative side non-existent. How rude of you! How would you like it if you were treated as if you didn't exist? You would likely choose not to hang out in those environments. Your creative side, which is less a side and more a texture of your being, is alive and well, she just needs some loving care, rather than name calling and judgement. Read on!

Creativity is not something reserved for those artsy types. It is an attitude towards life. Anything is a creative experience if you approach it with curiosity, imagination and possibility. Start bringing that to the little every day tasks and you'll notice your aliveness amplified. i.e. take a different route to work, wear colors that typically aren't you, strike up a conversation with a stranger. Live outside of the box you've come to know as your life and watch the creative juices flow.

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Shakti-the Creative life force

How is creativity related (or connected) to spirituality and sensuality? Shakti is the creative life force energy of the universe, the divine feminine that gives birth to all of life. Shakti is the abundant well spring that empowers and ignites all 3, our creativity, our sensuality and our spirituality, because they are each vital for that abundant well spring to flow. These 3 inform, inspire and invoke each other. So if you are missing one, look to the other 2 to spark the flame.

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Time for Creativity as a Wife & Mother

How can I find the time required to satisfy my creativity and still meet my responsibilities as a wife and mother? Make being a wife and a mother a creative adventure. Creativity isn't just about artistic endeavor. It's about bringing fresh insight and innovative approaches to your life. If you spend your life waiting to have time to be creative, you'll wake up one day and feel you missed the boat. If on the other hand you make each experience an excuse for creative play, you will awaken the eternal child that loves to discover. Emily Conrad, one of my teachers and the founder of Continuum Movement, claims that finding new ways of doing things is what keeps the body and the organism young. This is a great definition of creative aliveness.

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Humor and Creativity

What is the relationship between humor and creativity? I love this question. I really don't know the answer for sure but I imagine that finding the humor in a situation requires a creative/original perspective.

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Developing Creativity

How do you develop creativity? I have never thought of myself as creative and feel I lack imagination when it comes to decorating and would love to try my hand at oil painting. I think what stops most people from trying new things, new crafts or expressive hobbies is not that they lack imagination but rather that they feel there is a right way to do something and that they will be judged. The most liberating experience I ever had in a drawing class when I was in art school was when the teacher put us all in a circle with a blank paper in front of each of us. In the middle she dropped a big pile of tools and wires and odd shaped instruments into a heap of abstract mess. We had 5 minutes to render a still life drawing using ink or charcoal or whatever medium we each had. After 5 minutes she had us each stand and walk to the drawing on our right to contribute to that drawing for 5 minutes, and on and on until we went all the way around the circle and had added to each of the drawing boards. Our non attachment and non identification with each piece was incredibly liberating, allowing us to take creative risks.

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Creativity and Business

How can I access my feminine creative flow when I am needing to be business like to accomplish the task in hand?? This is exactly what we as women are now on the path to discovering. I am learning as much about this as you through my own life's dance, and it is precisely each of our committment and humility about this dance that is helping to bring about the paradigm shift. Here a few things that I've found help to cultivate more of what will infuse the feminine into our stress ridden, performance driven world.

1. Ask your heart what it loves about the task at hand. Just bringing that into consciousness will extend a heart vibration that is powerfully healing/feminine/creative flow. The Heart Math Institute teaches this as a way to expand heart resonance/vibration of the feminine and reduce stress vibration/vibration of the masculine.

2. Change your own associations. You've created a dissonance between creative feminine flow and what is business-like. What is begging for change is our attitudes towards business and the standards that have been in place that limit the expression of the feminine in business-like environments. Learn more about your emotional quotient to be able to harness the power of your emotional passion and aliveness rather than have to squelch it in order not to rock the boat. At the Vividly Woman Leaders Circle event we connect to our emotional intelligence to be empowered by the depth of our emotions rather than believing them to be a hindrance.

3. The power to think laterally/creatively is a benefit rather than a limitation. The linear approach of the masculine can be near sited and detrimental to innovative advancement in any arena. Remember the asset of an expansive, lateral perspective that your creative feminine inspires and you will tap into her gifts.

Leela Francis
info@vividexistence.com