My version of the via creativa isn’t a well-signposted, paved pathway. Actually, it’s not even a path at all – I just love the image above, and what it conveys to me about the heady glory of being alone on a high pass that one hasn’t traversed before – a feeling not dissimilar to that experienced as one explores the unknown in the unmapped adventure called creativity.
As I use the term here, the via creativa represents the dynamic journey itself, the process of meeting unending change. The journey unfolds beneath one’s feet as one wonders about and explores the possibilities presented by life. Life as-it-is, here and now, in this very moment.
I’m in awe of the movement of the via creativa in my life. If I’m open and my mind isn’t yapping away telling me what I should do and how it should look, amazing ideas and possibilities arise. Connections happen. Questions form themselves. Wonderingmind flowers.
The way that the flowering of questions held in a heart determines the life-path of the questioner has always interested me. On my own creative path (thus far) there seem to have been five broad ‘chapters’. Once relieved of the pressures of teaching, I set out to examine these chapters and identify the questions that put the creative fire beneath each passage. What was I wondering about? And what was filling me with wonder?
The results of my (on-going) inquiry came together into an e-book which will be available for free download here soon. Excerpts have been – and will continue to be – posted here.
But there’s much more material in this category – from artists, writers, sages and scientists. Please pop via creativa into the search box on the blog to see the entire list of posts. I hope you enjoy the banquet!
This oceanic feeling of wonder
is the common source of religious mysticism,
of pure science and art for art’s sake.
– Arthur Koestler
A retrospective glance back down my own via creativa appears on this page:
miriam louisa simons 