AwakenCreative: The Empty Shell

It tries to call itself the voice of reason but more often than not that voice in your head is speaking from fear. When you can sit with it, discern where it comes from and from what it thinks it's protecting, this is where the creative growth and opportunity lies! Let yourself be an empty shell of receiving.

Transcript

We've all been there. You're standing before your blank surface. Perhaps a large canvas or even the smallest scrap of paper. And there goes the internal dialogue spiraling out of control. Those voices. They tell you things that seem impossible. They point to the inexplicable questions. What is the point of this? Why does this matter? What am I even trying to do here? I can remember being that brand-new artist. Everything was a wonder. I was awestruck by the next color. By the way a mark lay upon a page. Yet also that empty shell feeling. That sense of nothingness like a terminal diagnosis. The empty canvas. This reflection. But once experience. The long trajectory of this rollercoaster ride from blank canvas to finished piece. To one line becoming a novel. Has washed away or at least tempered that empty shell sensation. I now can realize that the well hasn't run dry. It's just needing that fallow period. Its transition. I like to marvel at these times when those internal voices can try to take over. I like to marvel that that next breakthrough is sitting right there at the edge. I know it to be true. I've had too many occasions to see it happen. To not trust the next. But that trusting. That trusting that's always there. Can be counted on. It sits right alongside those voices. That emptiness. They're both there. They co-exist. Some tips and tricks that help me bring that trust back into play. And let those catastrophic voices just temper and sit in the background. When they become too heavy and I want to shrink. I stop. That's the first step. Stop trying to justify that my entire career has to have some grand meaning. Stop thinking that because I've had success with one design that that design is my everything. That I can't experiment or expand and be received. Stop looking for meaning and sit with the wonder. Perhaps one color. One material. One mark. I look around me. Not far. Not distant. But the plants in the garden. The dog in the bed. The wind chime on the porch. This environment. This place. An entire story. A full lifetime. A plethora of possibility. Everything right here. When you can take this time. Give yourself this space. And embrace a little bit of the confidence I'm trying to instill. Confidence that that trust is worth it. That it's not a farce. That the catastrophic questions and mind-melt are not real. They all fade away. Not as if you found answers or kickbacks to throw at those questions. But that they simply cease. Cease to matter anyway. Inspiration is rarely a lightning bolt that answers to this existential dread. More often it's just going to be a quiet realization. A moment as you come back to yourself. Realizing that you were gone from yourself. Because your enjoyment of process, Experimentation, Presence, Just being alive, Has taken full force. If you're currently in an empty shell phase, Take a breath. Don't rush to fill with frantic work. Take that emptiness as a blessing. There's something moving beneath the surface. The answers aren't those that want to come from those frantic mind-melts. The answers lay beside that. So that those frantic questions simply cease to matter. It's a new rhythm. It's a new wonder. And it's a new miracle. You come and begin again. Co-creator. Awaken Creative. Today.