Personalized insight
What profound insight did the blind artist share about creativity and being?
Have you ever felt like your creativity wasn’t flowing?
Maybe life wasn’t working out?
Nothing was going according to plan?
Have you ever struggled to keep the faith?
In times of crisis I look for those wise teachers in my life so I turned to my friend, Andrew David Smith because Andy is not only a talented artist, he’s a teacher and a visionary.
He’s also blind and one of the most profound spiritual thinkers I’ve ever met.
I shared my angst with him. I poured out all of my frustrations and fears and Andy responded “it sounds as if your being is coming from your doing.”
My what?
Your being is coming from your doing.
You have it backwards for your doing should always come from your being.
I was so touched by his words that I wrote them down.
My doing should come from my being.
But what does that mean?
It means that the work you do, how everything you do, should come from the essence of who you are.
It should tell the truth.
Be authentic, reveal your vulnerabilities and celebrate your strengths while sharing your story. And as artists this is where our best ideas come from and our best work because this is where we encounter the flow.
Too often we get caught up on productivity and results. We stubbornly cling to the outcomes that we want and we forget that it’s all about faith in the process and about being in the moment.
When you start to define yourself by the results of your work, by timetables you set, when you begin to believe the hype or even worse internalize the failures or give your power to the critics you lose your faith.
Your being has started to come from your doing and this is when we find ourselves struggling.
Andy was right, the best work comes from within not from outside. “Center yourself,” he told me, “and let your being be your guide as you move forward.”
Apply this advice to your art process and see how your creativity starts to flow.
Crista x
