Feature November

The Ego on Spirituality and Creativity
By Andrea Whitmore

If your ego's anything like mine, it must be very sly. Mine has mutated as the Personal Journey class has gone on, into trickier ways to trap me. A subject on which it seems to have endless words of wisdom is spirituality. My ego loves to make me think it's spiritual and has a commentary miles long to prove its point. One you might relate to is the "New Age guru" ego voice. This one pipes in just as I'm about to take a risk toward something I really want, especially when I encounter a snag or difficulty in the process. A disembodied voice, (that should be the first clue), croons over my shoulder in a dreamy tone, "This isn't meant to be. This is too hard. Things should just fall into place without any real effort on your part. This is my favorite one: The Universe has another plan for you. You weren't meant to struggle...This must be the wrong thing to do." Because I was frequently disappointed as a child by my family, my ego learned to "protect" me from what it perceived as disappointment by devising a whole cast of characters to dissuade me from even trying. To add more nauseum to the scenario, my ego's had me drowning in these sugary and childish New Age notions about growth and spirituality: "Difficulty indicates not being in the flow...Problems are not spiritual...If only you were more connected to your higher Self your life would flow perfectly and you'd never have to struggle, blah, blah, blah..." This story had me in a holding pattern for years!

Now thank goodness, I'm experiencing a whole new definition of "problems" and delightfully new way of maneuvering them. Before, I would view a problem as bad and wrong--an insurmountable hurdle to leap over (just as soon as I got the courage). Little by little, I'm learning to drop my judgements of the problematic situation and just move moment to moment into the unknown. I've discovered that when I'm willing to just be present with what is, I am able to tap into all of the creativity that awareness has available. The paradox for me is that by accepting the moment as it is and moving creatively into it, it's usually much easier to "solve problems" than I could have imagined. Talk about flow! It's such a relief to know that I don't have to be Wonder Woman ruthlessly conquering one evil problem after another. I'm simply being willing to be in the unknown, willing to be uncomfortable for awhile until that shifts, and experiment with how I'm being led moment to moment. Does this make my ego shake and quiver? You bet. But it's definitely getting easier as time goes on, not to mention a lot more fun.

Another area I've struggled with in the past is feeling really blocked in my artistic expression. This has been really painful because I am a very creative person with a tremendous desire to express myself artistically. Like a lot of people, I bought into the myth that creativity just "happens". If you're lucky, you sit down with your work one day and effortlessly create a masterpiece. If you're unlucky, or if it just wasn't meant to be, you were void of inspiration and should let go of all hope of ever gaining any artistic satisfaction. My own discouraging ego stories on top of it made it extremely frustrating for me to do a simple art project. What I'm discovering now, is that as I'm consistently willing to face these ego stories that block my creativity, by focusing more and more on love, especially while I'm doing art, the blocks are starting to dissolve. I'm not Georgia O'Keefe yet, but now I'm experiencing more joy than I have before by simply expressing my artistic self, in whatever shape or form that takes. I feel more spaciousness inside and more freedom to experiment and take risks. It's a slow opening that I have to nurture, but it's very exciting to see this energy unfolding. And, thanks to the Personal Journey work, my life on the whole feels a lot more creative and flowing.