The Creative Motivator # 34 – A Sample
A Compilation of Quotes and Images
to Keep You Creatively Motivated
Reconnect With Your Purpose
“Find your own quiet centre of life, and write
from that to the world.”
~ Sarah Orne Jewett
Reconnect With Purpose
“As artists, we have a vocation. There is something that ‘calls’ to us to work. There will be bleak seasons and fruitful seasons. There will be successes and there will be failures.
We cannot control the reception of our work. We must find the dignity in the doing. We must learn to say that our work,
even if unsung, does count for something.”
~ Julia Cameron
It is an archetypal necessity for human beings to seek out, and to nurture, a purpose that supports their life with meaning and fulfillment. If we don’t have a purpose in life, we suffer from within. A gnawing and yearning fills us, and we feel that something important is missing. Creatively speaking, having one or more specific purposes can enhance and enrich our life in ways that nothing else can.
Journal and/or Art Journal Prompt
If you have found your purpose and are living it, then you are one of the blessed ones. If, on the other hand, you are still seeking what it is that you feel will make your life complete, be comforted in the knowledge that you are not alone.
Let’s say you have either not yet found your purpose, or have lost it or it has, for some reason unbeknownst to you, disappeared off the face of your creative world. What to do? How to reconnect with your creative purpose?
This Week’s Play “Homework:”
“Every day that I write, I am keeping my side of the bargain. In order to write, I must be willing to write badly and to have the faith that if I go forward ‘writing badly,’ some purpose is still being served.”
~ Julia Cameron
Being in touch with your purpose is akin to touching the Light that resides in all of us, at the centre of our beingness. One’s purpose is derived from the streak of spirituality that flows in nature, in dreams and in our psyche’s resilience and need to play. We are all connected to that. Be in touch with that. Be aware and conscious of that streak in your life, wherever it may appear, however fleetingly.
Connect with what stirs you to shivers, tears or momentum forward in your creative endeavours. Where are you being led to go, walk, drive, when you let your intuition guide you? What are you drawn to? Muse on the places that you’ve visited or lived that have nurtured your imagination and sense of belonging, and list them in order of how much or how little they matter to you.
What matters to you? Ask yourself if what you do, or want to do or be, has special meaning, and only for you? That connection is linked to your purpose. Pursue it until you have a firm grasp of it. And don’t let go.
Try this exercise. Get a blank sheet of paper or a cardstock page, as well as different coloured markers or pens or pencils, whatever your favourite writing, ‘art-ing’ instruments are. Settle in for a small seeking session with yourself. Before you start, take a few deep breaths and close your eyes. Think thoughts of grounding yourself to Mother Earth, and to your centre, that part of you that is, as Rumi puts it, beautiful:
“The very center of your heart is where life begins.
The most beautiful place on earth.”
Give yourself positive affirmations about your self, your life and your creative/life purpose. Once you feel ready to begin, open your eyes. Step 1: Pick up a marker or pen and in the middle of your sheet of paper, write “Purpose,” and put a circle around it. From this circle will emanate all your thoughts and ideas on this very pertinent subject.
Step 2: Pick up another marker of a different colour and make a short line from the middle circle’s edge, at the end of which you will draw another circle. It doesn’t matter toward which direction this second circle points. Now comes the hard part. Well, somewhat hard. Let your intuition tell you how to proceed next. Inside this second circle write down one word that relates to your purpose.
It will come to you, if you give it access and time. Is it “create,” or “helping others?” Or perhaps, it’s “write a book!” Repeat Step 2 until your page is brimming full of ideas about your purpose. You may generate enough ideas that lead to a decisive “Yes!” about the specificity of your purpose, who knows? This “cluster” exercise can then be used to move forward to put all your purposeful details into action.
“When we become clear about what it is we need and hope for, help comes to hand. Clarity triggers manifestation.
Willingness and humility open the door to diversity.”
~ Julia Cameron, Finding Water
Inspiration
Blessings
When you find yourself holding something
you’ve wanted for a very long time
That is a Blessing
When your mornings kiss you
with enthusiastic expectations
That is a Blessing
When a dream comes around
for a second and even third time
That’s a yearning from deep within
The Universe speaks in multiplicity:
Loudly whispering its gifts onto your path
Giving sight to your blind denials
Only wishing you to see
Yearnings for the Blessings they can be
“Creativity lives in paradox: serious art is born from serious play.”
~ Julia Cameron ~ The Artist’s Way
Soulful Blessings for a purposeful week!
© 2023 Raymonde Savoie