Beginning Before You Begin
By: Suzanne Sanders
Tags: Creativity, Creative Process, Personal Growth

At the end of a three-day meditation retreat where I had been contemplating my purpose and next steps, Fr. Daniel Renaud, OMI, began his Sunday liturgy with an idea that struck me: “You are beginning before you begin.” This is what I took away from his talk: whether we realize it or not, each action we take has a beginning before the beginning — a seeding or incubation period. Moments lead to other moments, which in turn lead to other moments. As I’m nearing the end of this year’s self-imposed writing challenge (of which this post is part), I realize that this project fits Renaud’s description. It has been my beginning before I begin. It’s still to be determined whether the projects that I begin in the new year will be the actual beginning, but this insight feels significant.

I have been contemplating my creative process these past few weeks, discovering new insights and uncovering deeper truths. I have unpacked my sacred (Chiron) wound a bit more in-depth to understand that its core revolves around my natural-born creativity. Not only did I discover this creativity as my core wound and hence my vocation, I was also led to better understand how it shows up in my life and how I have been unintentionally suppressing it. Here is what I’ve learned:

I am happiest when I’m involved in a creative project that excites me. I need to be inspired by my work and I need to feel like I’m expanding my gifts and learning new things. The worst thing for me is to allow myself to slip into sluggishness or to be trudging away at something that gives me little or no inspiration.

However (and this is my biggest aha), since my core self is creative, it follows a natural ebb and flow that I can’t control. They say the shadow of creativity is entropy, or a “measure of disorder or unavailable energy within a closed system.” The manifestation of this shadow can feel like numbness or a sense of gloom, but it’s really a fertile state within which creativity can occur. It is in effect our system recharging. So, if we are patient enough to allow the process to complete without trying to analyze, repress, or fix it, there’s a distinct possibility that something special will germinate inside of us.

Most depressive states occur when we resist this phase, or our mind turns inward on itself. Had I understood more about this when I was younger, it may have saved me a lot of misery. Instead, I fell into periods of overwhelming melancholy — a cycle which fed off itself for far too long. The agony of my depression led me to fighting my very nature to escape it. Not to mention it kept me from germinating any creative ideas of significance. This not only affected my joy; it also deeply affected my relationship with myself and others. I was not secure enough in who I was to even be comfortable in my own skin, let alone to identify or follow my passion. Rejecting my true nature, I was always trying to find myself outside of myself. I’ve written before about how often I have gotten caught up in measuring my success by other people’s standards, trying to validate my worth externally. When you are cut off from yourself, what is there to validate? Because I was cut off from my very nature, I had no proof of my creativity, and that had the effect of further leading me to the conclusion that I wasn’t creative.

I have always been attracted to creative people and have felt small in their presence. I was mostly attracted to their love of creating, their absorption, their need to create. Whereas I only felt the entropy of my creative abilities. Yet I have, though often too fleetingly, felt the happiness of the creative impulse. Now that I’ve figured out that it’s something I have to consciously nurture and not unconsciously repress, I’ve been feeling its impulse more and more. And that’s exciting. I feel like I’m finally coming home to my true nature. I’m basking in its radiance and feeling its unconditional love. Now that I’m feeling the entirety of the creative process drawing me in, I’m beginning to feel more confident that I’m on the right path.