Many years ago I sat on a stool in the Art barn at Esalen Institute painting a paper mache mask. I'd originally signed up for some sort of contemplative workshop, but found it too cerebral and ended up here.
I painted the mask magenta and then decided to paint a vine of flowers on the side. As I slowly drew a long vine down the side of my mask—getting into the feeling sense of the vine's graceful, elegant beauty—I found my hand being moved by something Greater than myself.
I was no longer directing my hand, something else was. Something was moving me, stroking the paint on this mask.
We humans set goals for our lives and make all kinds of plans, schedules and commitments. We trudge along, continuing to believe we're solely in charge of our destinies.
While all the while... something else urgently wants to move and express through us.
We access that Something Else through metaphor. Metaphor gives us direct access to the powers of creation.
One of my clients, who was tired and worn out from writing a PhD dissertation and in desperate need of fresh creative energy, received an image of seeing herself dancing.
But when she metaphorically stepped into it, she was no longer looking at it. She was BEING danced...by something far greater than herself.
Another client, going through a traumatizing divorce, received an image of a deep, still pool of water. But then he realized he wasn't resting in it...
He was BEING rested in a profoundly deep way.
Can you see how allowing yourself to be moved by something greater is a much different kind of experience?
Being viscerally moved by otherworldly creative energies is transformative and exquisitely beautiful...
like nothing else that I have ever experienced.
No one has ever walked the path that you are walking. No one else has the particular gifts that you have.
By allowing yourself to feel and express profound, deep metaphoric energy, you participate in the unfolding of a new world.
What might YOU produce, if you allowed yourself to be moved by deep creative energies?
Are you curious what might want to be birthed?
Kim Hermanson, PhD is a coach and consultant at Doorway Sessions for Creative Breakthroughs and adjunct faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience and many other books, recently said this about her upcoming book, A Portal to the Creative: Using Metaphor to Unlock Creative Genius and Inspire Breakthroughs: "Not since Carlos Castenada's books 40 years ago, have I had such a strong reaction to anything written. This is very powerful stuff."
