I'm Skylar Liberty Rose and today's meditation is on connecting to your creativity.
Especially when you're struggling to get started or you're finding that you're standing in your own way.
Please take a moment to get comfortable.
Feel free to close your eyes if you'd like to.
Let your awareness come to your breath.
Noticing your inhale.
Noticing your exhale.
Not changing or forcing anything to be different.
Just creating awareness between you and your body.
It is only you who can be discerning about what is true in your life.
And it is only you who can create from that space of truth.
There is no competition.
There is no contest.
There is only your creative core,
Your creative calling and the ways you either silence it or let it shine.
Sometimes we tell ourselves and the rest of the world a story about why we can't create.
Often that story speaks of busyness and time.
It speaks of energy and capacity.
It speaks of and to the ridiculous amount of pressure we are under to constantly be producing and consuming.
And all of this doing drowns out any opportunity we have to create.
Any chance we have to make from our moments.
While it is often true that energy and capacity are limited or unavailable,
It is also sometimes true that we hide behind those words and we allow the partial truth of them to determine what we do or don't do next.
What we do or don't create next.
We drift.
We hide.
We stay in our stagnancy and we don't break through that gossamer thin layer that is all that stands between us and our creative magic.
We don't engage with the magic because we have swallowed the lie that unless it's a masterpiece it has no meaning.
Let go of that lie.
Let go.
Know this.
You do not have to suppress what is true for you.
You do not have to power through,
Push down or ignore the needs of your body,
Your energy or your capacity on this day,
In this moment.
But I ask that you lovingly look for those slivers of time when there's an imperfect moment asking you to seize it.
Moments that aren't in a cabin in the woods or a studio overlooking the sea,
But a snatched 10 minutes,
Maybe 5,
Maybe 3,
Where your home is messy and your hair is unwashed and none of it looks like the creative fantasy you believe you have to cater to.
None of it looks worthy of a photo or a caption.
And I know that in that imperfect opportunity,
Your first instinct is to fill the time with barbed thoughts about how this moment isn't the one you long for.
You want to tell yourself a story about how you don't look or act or feel the part,
About how it's too lay and you're too old and who are you trying to convince anyway.
I know,
I know,
That story is as familiar to you as it is painful.
It's as comforting to you as it is tragic.
And it's easier to hurt yourself one more time with that story than it is to just take the moment in front of you and make something from it.
There's an irony to aging,
Which is that we reach a point when we start to understand that a lot of the clichés we heard from our elders are laced with more than a little truth.
One of those clichés is that time goes by in the swiftest blink of an eye.
So much so that we almost gasp with the shock of what we've missed.
The life we forgot to be present for,
The moments we neglected to gift ourselves or the art we never shared with the rest of the world.
And why?
Because we were waiting for everything to be perfect,
Because we were afraid to let ourselves be seen with spilled tea down our top or a background we believed wasn't beautiful enough for anyone else's eyes.
Because our inner critic told us we weren't good enough,
That our art wasn't good enough.
Let go of those lies.
Let go.
Take an inhale.
Let yourself surrender to an exhale.
Creativity has never cared what you look like.
It has never bothered itself with how many likes it's mustered on social media,
Or how many awards it's been nominated for.
Creativity doesn't care how old you are or whether or not you know exactly what you're doing.
That's ego speaking my friend.
That's not your creative offering talking at all.
Because all your offering ever wants and ever needs is just to be born,
To be made,
To be created,
To have life.
Your art of choice does not have to look like the art you see in galleries.
It doesn't have to be bought or sold.
It doesn't have to mean anything to anyone other than you.
But every time you tell yourself that it's not worth seizing that creative moment,
You're reinforcing the untruth,
That you're not worthy of creative joy,
That you're not deserving of creative pleasure.
Sometimes you'll tell yourself that you'll get around to creating later,
When you feel ready,
When you look better,
When the conditions of your life are right.
I call that the lie of later,
Because later almost never materializes and then nothing ever gets made.
There are some moments that we do have to let go of.
We do have to swallow down the disappointment that we don't get to make the thing we wanted to make today.
Because not all of us have the same access to the same hours or energy or support.
But commit to being honest with yourself about when those days and moments really are.
Commit to that honesty.
Maybe there is no energy,
No time,
No capacity today.
But don't let that be true if you know it's not.
The perfect set of conditions will never exist.
Not for long.
It's all so fleeting,
So incredibly fast and fleeting.
Our lives hurtle by and we cannot stop or slow the hours.
We can only show up in them and create whatever we can from them.
The time is now.
Let your offering be imperfect.
Let your art spill and smudge and still be worthy of space.
Let the critics bite at your heels if they must,
But do not let them stop you from starting.
Do not let doubt determine how your 10 minutes or 5 minutes or 3 are spent.
Pick up the pen,
The camera,
The paintbrush,
The earth,
The clay,
The stray pieces of wool or wire,
The pan,
The instrument,
The needle and thread,
The scraps of something you've been saving,
The microphone,
The broken chips of what once was and begin,
Begin again and again for as many moments as you can.
Because this is where life is.
This is where love lives.
This is where you get to change the corner of the world you're in,
Sending out ripple upon ripple of energy that cannot fail to make a difference.
Regardless of where it's seen or how it's measured.
Know this,
Trust this,
Keep coming back to this.
In your own time,
Gently open your eyes.
Let your gaze be soft.
Let your breath be easy.
Let your creativity continue.
Thank you for joining me today.
Sending love and deep gratitude from my heart to yours.
