Here you will find a selection of recorded meditations for artists, writers, or anyone interested in opening more skillfulness, ease, and inspiration within their creative endeavors. In different ways the practices presented here can be a support for those experiencing creative blocks, as well as those interested to expand the terrain of their creative explorations.
The meditations are variations on Buddhist meditation (both insight and samadhi meditations). The contemplations are intended to open or reveal inspiration or freedom within one’s creative endeavors.
Meditations (Mindfulness etc.)
Checking in with body, emotion, and thoughts
This is a 29 minute practice encouraging mindfulness and skill with the inner life. It’s so easy to be primarily focused with what we are making as we create, while turning away from our inner experience of creating. Cultivating familiarity and tolerance with the specific arisings, patterns, and contractions that move through us as body sensation, emotions, and recurring thought patterns supports us in navigating and persisting as we create. This kind of familiarity allows us to hang in there with our process and to ride out contractedness that arises in the forms of restlessness or closing down. Equally importantly, familiarity with the experience of our body and being’s response to what we are creating allows us to navigate towards aliveness and inspiration, and away from judgement and self-criticism.
Tuning into what is pleasant within experience
This 27 minute guided mindfulness practice encourages turning towards the pleasant, relatively pleasant, and neutral aspects of experience. Habitually the mind tends to privilege the noticing of what is unpleasant or problematic, zooming in on what is painful or not working. It’s usually some arising of unpleasantness (a judgmental thought, a sense or uneasiness) that is responsible for exiting or abandoning a creative work session. This practice offers one approach to working with the habitual tendency to focus on what is wrong at the exclusion of what is ok, or even good. It’s a practice that can and should be done repeatedly, as with practice one can make this kind of “re-tuning” of the attention a new potential habit – one that helps an artist “stay in the room” with the work whether it’s going great or going poorly.
Seeing through aversion
As we create we will necessarily experience contractedness and aversion – usually many, many times within a given work session. Developing skill with unpleasant feelings, body sensation, and emotional experience can allow us to hang in their with the process of creation when we might otherwise give in to avoidance or distraction. This practice offers the suggestion to take a second look at what might be present in experiences of contraction or unpleasantness to allow a means to stay with and move beyond that contractedness. Sometimes, there is the seed of inspiration hidden within the aversiveness.
CONTEMPLATIONS
Reconnecting to a Past Image or figure from your work
This short contemplation holds open a space for a previous image, theme, or motif from your creative work to re-appear within your consciousness. Sometimes receiving elements of your past work that are still resonant can reveal something about your current creative life. You may find this kind of contemplation works best after cultivating some stability through mindfulness or samadhi meditation (see the “checking in” practice above for a suggestion).
Revisiting a memory freshly
This contemplation offers the possibility of bringing to mind a past experience of transition and connecting to it through the remembered senses. You may find this kind of contemplation works best after cultivating some stability through mindfulness or samadhi meditation (see the “checking in” practice above for a suggestion).
Eliciting an image or motif from an emotional/mental state
This contemplation offers the possibility of connecting to your current emotional state or mind state as the grounds for revealing an image, motif, or figure. You may find this kind of contemplation works best after cultivating some stability through mindfulness or samadhi meditation (see the “checking in” practice above for a suggestion).
Questioning limiting.beliefs about our creative capacities
This short guided reflection opens a space to reveal and question limiting beliefs about our identity and capacities as an artist or creative. The structure of this contemplation is taken directly from my teacher Rob Burbea’s book “Seeing that Frees”, but I’ve made a few small adjustments to the language to tailor it to this particular exploration.